I'm just watching the mini match on Paramount Plus for yesterday's game. I'm all for giving Paramount Plus every chance to develop into the broadcaster our game needs, but gee they make it hard. Among other things, in a 24 minute mini match they have just used 90 seconds of that time to show the entirety of Aaron Calver receiving treatment and being replaced. What a waste of time in what is essentially an extended highlights package. Was the game that bad that that particular 90 seconds of non-action is part of the highlights?

Steinmann actually gets a good foot into break up play quite often in every game. It looks accidental or lucky, but it happens so often I think he has really good timing.

I had to wait till this morning to see the full game replay because it was not available last night.

Seems odd that they can post a mini match and highlights but not what I would consider the simpler 'just show the whole bloody thing'.

I wanted to watch all the bits that did not make up a highlights or mini match reel because I find I lose to much of what we do well or poorly in the shortened versions to see how we are really playing.

To answer your question though, the game was not that bad...

Been away so long I thought you'd been deleted.

Been away so long I thought you'd been deleted.
Not you but the subject, to be clear.

i disagree, i thought that was probably one of the lowest quality aleague games i have seen in many many years, probably since the opening two seasons. 

on our performance you could tell we were going to loose that one in the opening 10 minutes. terrible passing and ball retention. slow on the press and disorganised. probably our worst defensive display this season. It is really disheartening to have become such a counter attack only team. under fowler we were defensive minded but methodical at moving the ball forward, even last season we retained some of that slow build up while being a little more expansive (particularly with our defensive press), this season it is park 11 men behind the ball and hit on the counter, but it doesnt work when we go down a goal and doesnt work against disciplined teams, and particularly doesnt work when we dont have any speed or ability to keep the ball up front.

looks like lescano is done hopefully Ryo provides more. it is such a shame that our once great club has become an absolute shell of itself on and off the field. 

Agree, I thought the game was pretty painful to watch. 

One of the things that has stood out to me this season is how panicked the team seems to be most of the time, and how this leads to either moving the ball backwards inviting more pressure closer to goal, or a rushed pass to a player who loses the ball or to an opposition player.

I can only assume that is down to a lack of quality and ability in the playing group rather than coaching, and you could see how frustrated Moon was. 

Apparently Aldred played a half and Ryo played 60 minutes in the youth game, so both in contention to play on Friday. Lescano getting dragged in the first half says to me he won't be starting again. Dehmie obviously can't lead the line, at least not yet, so I assume we could see Ivanovic start and Ryo come on in the second half? Apparently Mileusnic is injured for another few weeks and Parsons is injured as well. 

I meant the game was not so bad that we had to watch all of Calver's injury break.

Agree it was pretty hard to watch - but even with our struggles we continued to create multiple good chances that we fail to convert. When you see the calm that Fornaroli and others possess in front of goal and compare it to our frantic efforts it shows the gulf.

We struggled to bring the ball through the press and through the middle where we have been able to do that well in previous games. To sum us up, when we play well we are more than competitive, excluding goal shooting of course, but when a few players are off their game or off the pitch we fall back to just the sum of our parts rather than a dangerous co-ordinated side.

I know we are better than Sunday's game, but that is meaningless in professional sport if it happens more than once in a blue moon. We have had a few off games this season and our consistency has to improve along with our goal shooting.

While i mostly agree that we are better than sundays game i cant say we are that much better. I cant point to one player and say oh they had a real howler (or many players and say their output was well below what they can give). I said that the team performance after the bulls game was the peak of every player on the pitch, none had another level to go to, and the next two games really showed that. against the bulls everyone was playing to their maximum potential, on sunday the team played to their level. 

O'Shea often played deep - that takes a lot of our attack out. His performance was well below what we need from him (further forward).
Trewin and Akbari made a lot of uncharacteristic mistakes. For them, I would say they both had howlers because turning the ball over just added to the pressure when we should have been the ones applying it.
Lescano was more invisible than usual. Well off the odd moments he has given us so far. Ivanovic showed once again what pace, commitment and enthusiasm can bring when he came on.
Mileusnic has been a leader for us in the final third - forcing opportunities by well timed runs off good passes and his opportunistic use of pace. But he was out injured.

That to me is at least five players who had performances well below what they can offer or who were out - I know we can do much better than last Sunday without stretching ourselves to our limits.

We now have a depleted Melbourne City on Wednesday and Western United on Saturday.

As good as the two opponents are, I am worried we are going to see some more long term injuries from our older legs with the effort they are going to have to sustain in those two quick games.

The good thing is we know Moon is not afraid to bring on the younger and less used legs but it is always at the expense of the overall quality of the group on the field.

Hope Aldred just has tired legs - it did not look great when he went to ground last night and did not want to leap back up.

I loved how pleased the entire team was for Lescano with his goals - says a lot about the spirit Moon fosters.

yeah Ryo has made a difference to Lescano (and perhaps being hooked at half time a couple of weeks back). we have looked a little more composed overall with melusenic being out (which is no surprise to me). aldred coming back in has definitely made a difference in the leadership of the team. 

the first 20 mins of the perth game was dire and we probably should have been 2 or 3 down. We came back into the contest well, however the game really looked like the bottom 2 teams playing each other (except for the build up to our second goal which was the best football we have played in about 8 years). 

we could still make a charge for finals as we have bulk games at home now but the next 2 games will show if we are competitive or not

Great to have the 2 home games in quick succession after the win over Perth. Hopefully will mean less tired players at the end of it. Gives us a chance to jump a spot or two on the table with MC having a few out.

We then have Jets and Nix at home 3 and 6 April - so 4 games at home in a row with Melb City and Western United to start.

I am going to the first game for a while tomorrow. I expect its possible to get tickets at the ground? Cheers

We have been getting about 5k to games from memory so should be plenty of seats. That said - with two wins in a row seats are going to be in great demand ;)

There are always some people at the ticket window when I go so you must still be able to buy tickets on the day.

Did you all take your annual leave at the same time? Anyway, you're back and it's good to see that deluded optimism is still alive and kicking.

lol, we are house sitting not far from the grounds and I eyed this game as a possible when it was booked in.  Glad the fortunes have turned around as the wife is happy to join me.

Well, here we are again.

A much better turnout for the weekend game and a much better atmosphere at the ground.

A few really good chances for us, but again we play the defensive sit back and let them come at us.

The frustrating thing is that we have now clearly proven that when we play football we are capable of applying sustained and intense pressure to the best teams in the competition and have them worried about conceding.

And yet, going a goal up early in two games we have fallen into some sort of bloody minded defensiveness and (it appears) desperately trying to protect our lead rather than increasing it. Going goals down we played some of the football that we love seeing - with both commitment and desperation in defence, and quality in our ball movement and attacking build ups. Got to say, that IF we played like we were two goals down and had 20 minutes on the clock more often we would be closer to offering up what I know we can produce.

I am waiting for Paramount to post highlights and the full game so I can see what went on for myself, but that red card contact looked as weak as they come - even rivalling the foot clip on Besart in the final some might say.

Big call out to Jack Hingert tonight. I thought he did a fantastic job and for that I don't care that we conceded 3 goals. The man down and defensive formation caused that. Great effort by Tom Aldred for that late diving header to clear the ball in addition to his usual presence. Really glad he is back on board.

Plenty of players did excellent things tonight. O'Shea a bit closer to normal and what a ripper of a shot on goal from him. Dehmie again offering without really delivering - but he has enthusiasm and I think he has a forward's mindset for the most part - just got to get his body balance and touch under control and he would be dangerous.

Less of the stupid and unnecessary fouls would not hurt either across the team generally. Don't put your hand or arm on a player you are chasing and they can't play on that to get the foul.

All we need is to continue with the good things and the intensity and stop letting teams pass the ball round safely in the first two thirds of the field. We can do that.

Now we get a good long break till our next game on worknight Wednesday at home against the Nix.

I'm probably a biased roar supporter but what is the rule on last man and red cards? Was the keeper the last man/ was it a clear goal scoring opportunity? I saw roar defenders between Eagles and the goal or is it one eyed vision?

I have watched the replay now.

There is no such thing as 'last man' - it is being denied a clear goal scoring opportunity as far as I know. And you are right - Neville is ahead of Wales when he goes down. Brindell-South is a moment behind Wales and Hingert is also running centrally in a position to get involved.

The refs point of view would be if Wales took his shot straight away then the goal was a clear empty shot. But when you watch, Wales put the ball so many metres ahead before the keepers contact that it is likely Neville would have gotten to it before him. VAR should have picked that up because there is no way in hell you can be sure Wales would have got to the ball he knocked ahead first. He was clearly making sure he got the ball clear before intending on getting the contact. Wrong call - fine for the ref to make it initially but VAR should have referred the ref to the monitor and I think he then might have overturned the red for a yellow if he even awarded a free kick. Personally a play on call would not have been totally unreasonable when you see how minimal the contact was and the intention and choice of Wales to go to ground rather than run on.

I won't wade in on the contact level other than to say milked beyond reasonable like any number of forwards would do and expect something in return.

Did Roar lose again?
 

Yeeks.

No Aldred, Brown or Hingert and we have a very suspect defence. Nix simply put all their attackers around our keeper for the corner and they got a goal. Too easy.

Steinmann and O'Shea seem to be dual DMs as far as I can tell so we are basically structuring around 7 at the back. I did not think Akbari had that much of an impact on our play, but since he has been off playing for Afghanistan we have become less effective through the middle. Maybe it is the quick games and tired legs combined with our opponents being the weaker ones like Melb City and Western United <cough> but we can normally play through and around the good teams when we try.

Lack of composure and clinical finishing is a huge problem for us. We got lots of shots on goal and applied so much pressure but it was mostly all just random play without much sign of direction or leadership. They were just a bunch of guys running round and if someone happened to be in a good position they took a shot - but no apparent system or structure to the attacks.

Once again, the instability in the side prevents players getting to know each other's game properly so the seemingly random attacks are a natural outcome I guess.

Player movement was back to its worst tonight. You could easily keep track of every movement by Roar players in most attacks because only the one with the ball and the one who was going to get it (usually the closest player) bothered to move at all. For long periods, no-one ran into space or created opportunities off the ball.

I felt that tonight's game was about as bad as we can get - and with that I acknowledge that there were plenty of moments once again where a clinical finish would have hidden some of the disfunction and possibly stolen the win.

Dehmie had quite a good impact when he came on and only lacked the luck and/or composure to have scored a couple. Rounding the keeper and getting a chance at an open goal from a nasty angle was a bit of a highlight but he kept his feet and got a few chances off in his minutes on the pitch.

Olsen was very busy up the left hand side (while Zabala got ignored for most of the game on the other side) but just does not have the quality of cross that Brown was showing before he disappeared. Is it just me, or do others think that Zabala runs out of engine too early in games? His chasing back after the first half hour always seems like he is close to exhaustion and he does not seem to get back to influence much once he pushes on. It is actually quite similar to complaints about Brown from a few seasons back.

Lescano had a lot of chances to show how good he is tonight - unfortunately it confirmed that he cannot outright earn a goal just take the tap ins. Too slow to take advantage when he got in a good position and not skilful enough to improve his chances.

Ely did some very good things for his appearance too - just needs time at this level to learn you can't turn blind expecting no-one to be there and that a pass that is a metre or two off is rarely recovered like it can be at lower levels of competition.

Everyone in the team shows promise and can do much better (except Lescano in my eyes) - don't get me wrong - but they are not working well as a team in any part of the field and they are playing like individuals who don't know each other again.

I think we need to get back to a fixed team for a bit, whoever Moon chooses, and just work on playing better as a team.

Next game - Jets. Orange glasses firmly attached and hopeful expectation says Moon can get them playing well together again soon. We had it recently for a game or two so it can't be too hard to encourage it out again.

Did Bore lose again?

i dont think it is Akbari that makes the difference, it is putting stienmann in the DM role that drags us down. he is way way too slow and his positioning and passing has just not been anywhere near good enough. the amount of times a ball has been crossed into our attacking box and cleared directly to one of the opposition players with our DM no where to be seen was ridiculous. happened about 5 times last night and put us under pressure every time. Daley and akbari actually hold their defensive positions so we dont get hit on the counter and have an option to retain possession to build attacking pressure.

lescano and ivanovic do not work well together. lescano while not up to a foreigner spot standard has been better than ivanovic and should have at least had an assist last night for zabala. ivanovic was directly responsible for the second goal trying a stupid turn, giving away possession under very little pressure when players had committed ahead of him, unforgivable. 

there were 3 huge weaknesses in our team last night Ivanovic, Steinman and Freke. i would be happy not to have any of them play for us again. what a difference having a decent keeper makes, sail compared to freke, and how many games did we give up at the beginning of the season playing freke over holmes.

It's funny with Freke. I have felt relatively OK with him at the back, but in the two performances since Holmes got carded he seems to have lost confidence or dropped a significant degree. He looked out of place yesterday.

Quite a few times we had players trying to challenge for the ball and putting themselves in bad positions when they did not win it. We had players caught the wrong side of their opponents often enough to be scary.

Hard to come up with many things the club has going for it at the moment. 

• Moreton as a venue seems to be getting worse and worse. The weeknight games aren't helping, but even on a weekend, for people who aren't on the far north side of Brisbane, it's not super appealing. Can't see anything changing here either. 
• The squad really isn't up to scratch and without further investment (which we can assume is where we are at), this isn't going to change. Even with our full strength squad, everyone needs to have an unusually outstanding game for us to compete, and this is not happening for the majority of games. 
• Moon is a mystery. We don't seem to have a lot of direction in the way we're playing, but it's hard to know whether it is him as a coach, our lacking squad and investment in better players. The commentators last night did make note of him not getting the investment in the squad to get the players he wants, so you'd assume they might have had some conversations with Moon about it? 

Positives I can't see at the moment is the introduction of Zabala and Hore. I feel they are two very decent younger options which provide us with good depth. 

I noticed Zabala was in the midfield last night. Against City he was RB and seemed totally lost. I've seen positive reports on him, so am wondering if the midfield is best suited to him.

We got physically beaten by Adelaide - no presence through the middle just about the whole game. Most of it was strong play by Adelaide to knock our younger players off the ball, some of it rough play, and bits were just nasty. We just could not match it, and for some reason we could not play around or past it.

Second half we got better, but never really got on top.

I don't object to our six yellows, but I do object to not a single yellow being issued throughout the whole game for what was pretty cynical professional fouls by Adelaide to upset our play on turnovers. It happened all game and free kicks were awarded but nothing done to actually stop it. That is on the ref.

The loss was on us.

Tonight we held the game most of the time but once again were unable to convert dominance and opportunity into anything on the score sheet. We did a great job of controlling Mariners dangerous players - keeping them very quiet - except for the times when we didn't...

I have not seen Trewin so dead on his feet before. For the last 20 minutes he was running on willpower alone. When the games come thick and fast, for your younger players to be so exhausted shows how hard it is on teams.

Great game by Hingert and Neville - and what a shame for Neville to go out that way this season. He is such a good, clean, quality player I felt for him getting sent off.

We have such a fine base for our team - sitting much the same as we were the last couple of seasons with dreams of a proper proven striker and a good DM, but otherwise having the pieces of a great team.

I like Ivanovic, Mileusnic, and Adams up front. Hore is showing enough to be given opportunities. O'Shea is quality when he is not too tired to run or too deep to attack. Brown we can only hope comes back with most of what he had developed before his injuries - but that is a hard road for him. Hingert and Zabala are a good pairing for experience and backup/emerging player. Trewin, Neville and Aldred make a great CB group, and while we don't have a world class keeper anymore Holmes and Freke are both capable keepers. I am not sold on Holmes as a better shot stopper than Freke, but he seems a bit more solid/reliable when it gets busy. Akbari and Daley belong in the squad. I find Brindell-South is a good bench option as a backup but not a game winner.

Parsons has lost something since his injury and getting dropped. Lofthouse and Dehmie just show glimpses of something but neither belongs in the starting side - and both need to develop significantly before they should be regular bench options.

Connor Chapman is another who looks like he belongs in the side once he is fully fit.

Lescano adds nothing, I have no idea (or have forgotten) what happened to Steinmann but he did not turn out to be what we needed in DM, and Ryo Wada also did not turn out to be what we needed.

When you see what most teams bring off their benches in the second half it highlights the weaker side of our squad. We can make up a pretty good starting side (noting the lack of a proven striker and quality DM mentioned above) but there is very little coming off our bench to turn a game on its head.

There are a lot of positives I have seen in this season; most notably the way we have played against the best opposition when we have worked properly. Almost a whole starting side of really good players at our disposal.

Tonight, I was actually quite happy for Mariners to win the game to help keep SFC out of the six. Shame Kuol's great goal was helped by such poor defending. No-one covered Roux's run and no-one tracked Kuol after he passed off. They were left to do what they can obviously do so well which is madness given how well all the Mariners were contained most of the game.

If Nix can get a win next then that is something anyway.

I am assuming Moon is giving opportunities to emerging players these last few games and will run with his best side more consistently next season. The mix and match nature of our side all season is no small factor in where we are on the table.

i think some serious consideration needs to be given as towhether or not Brendan Moon is the right person for the job next year (I am undecided). On the one hand he has been great in bringing in the likes of Trewin, Akbari, Hoare, Zaballa and a few others. But he does seem to get a free pass for some of his other bad things he has done.

Against these good things, remember that he took over a top 3 side and turned them into a bottom of the table type of side. He elected not to sign Young and Wenzell Halls, which meant we were short of Goal keepeer who on average earned about 8 or 9 points a year.  Those points would have come in handy this year.  WenzellHalls release may have been correct but when you look at how we have struggled for forwards.  He also didnt get the best out of and released Nobu.  Likewise his 3 import signings of Wada, Lescano and Steinman havent done the job.  Surely he has to shoulder some blame for this.  

One does have to wonder just how low we will fall, if we lose O Shea. Moon hasnt really had any success in signing an import yet, unless you count Danzaki who only lasted a year.  This is an important year.  We need to have a good start and become powerhouses again, to have any chance of getting crowds back up.  I would be interested as to what others think of Moon and whether or not he is the best man for teh job next year.