The only mark we didn’t make on the day was that in the win column. Tough day against a typical Rossco regime. But there’s no panic here, only pragmatism. Time to Restump Podcast review round one.

It was a tough loss to endure. Expectations were high, excitement was in the air and the Sainters had a ton of their best out. There was cause for optimism. Did we mistakenly overlooked the Ross the Boss component and his ability to deliver in spades something we should have seen coming?

Did Collingwood produce a step-by-step plan on how to dismantle us Dockers in last season’s semi-final? Ross mentioned he analytically went to town on that game and, as he has the knack for doing, got his young plucky chargers to reconstruct parts of it.

There is no hiding from the fact we struggled to cope with the defensive running of the Saints. It saw our slow possession play further suffer as we couldn’t get any run and carry going. Our forwards suffered as a result but their own systematic incoherence has to carry some of the blame.

A more measured assessment recalls that Fyfe, Jackson and, to a lesser extent, Treacy are all new components of a forward line that didn’t exactly enjoy great functionality last year. Practice matches and preseason games only reveal so much. Add in a Sam Sturt and possibly a Josh Corbett to the mix and you can see we’re going to remain in experimental mode for a while yet.

With our mids getting demolished, should Fyfe have gotten the tap on the shoulder to venture in there and level up the contest? 

Did the Sean Darcy and Luke Jackson combo, otherwise known as Jackarce, show enough in the debut performance? 

Was Jaegar O’Meara carrying a bit more of an ankle that we may know? 

There is so much to methodically unpack from what was, in context, a demoralising loss. There is no shadow of a doubt failing to bank those four points was an opportunity lost and one we may look back on with further grief come the end of the season. 

But are we throwing the baby out with the bathwater? Well, babies don’t deserve that treatment and you know…. with water restrictions today….  I think we’ll hang on to both.

Its round one, it might be a simple case of getting stung and taken by surprise. Ross the Boss may have left us with some pain on Sunday but he previously left us with the philosophy that failure is feedback. We get the benefit of the early loss to know what needs improving. Dwell in negativity and you’ll manifest more of it. 

So join us as we dig deep, probably deeper than we dug out there on Sunday, into the wash up and look further into what went wrong, what went right, what was, what wasn’t, what could have been and what needs to be done. 

Will we solve the purple problems? Highly doubtful but we’ll air the grievances, spin the positives and just enjoy having footy back.

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