GFCW look to improve after loss to Roosters in Round 11

It’s a bitter pill to swallow this week after our disappointing loss to North Adelaide.

That’s the thing about football, it owes no one anything and if you don’t bring your best game week in, week out, the opposition will take advantage and North Adelaide did just that on Saturday. It felt like a game that we just didn’t show up for. Credit to North Adelaide, they outworked us and were a hungrier side on the day.

There is no doubt we will have a hungry group of players looking to make amends for our effort that wasn’t us.

We’ve had to make several changes for a number of weeks now which challenges cohesion, but we definitely have a group of disappointed players that know we are capable of so much more together. Despite these changes my expectations are always high. Statistically, we were relatively even across key performance metrics, but just failed to make the most of our opportunities.

We lacked consistent pressure across all lines. After laying 120 tackles the previous week, we just couldn’t pressure and cover our opponent well who worked much harder than we were prepared to do. We just had too many passengers out on field and we didn’t adapt quickly enough.

There were some great passages with great marking goals to Eloise Mackereth, and a superb run and carry goal from 2 bounces to Jorja Eldridge who returns after illness. Jess Bates and Jo Miller trying everything in the midfield, combining for 48 disposals and 20 of our teams 70 tackles. Franson worked tirelessly up the ground, with good strong defence from Alex Walker and Tamsyn Morriss.

Due to the pressure and defensive set up of North Adelaide, we struggled to get the ball moving the way we want to struggling to find our clean passages of play in a high-pressure game.

Our skill level was off and the North defence only added to our troubles through the day, leaving us playing catch-up all day.

This performance doesn’t reflect the standards we’ve set for ourselves, and it’s clear we need to regroup and refocus.

Without adversity we can’t improve, so we learn from our losses and look forward to making amends Saturday back at Stratarama Stadium against reigning premiers Central Districts.

– Lexia Edwards, Senior Coach

Goals: Mackereth (2), Eldridge