a certain sense of deja vu ...

Dear Dan,

In some ways being in Manila was probably an advantage for you.

In the first instance it spared you the embarrassment of your parents discovering your responsibility for Nathan Thompson's season ending knee injury. Secondly, you managed to avoid the desperate disappointment of losing to Collingwood in a game that should have been well and truly over by three quarter time.

Yet again we were witness to a display of woeful inaccuracy - it did not have the same sinking feeling of 2.11 in the second quarter of the 98 grand final - that leads to the sense of inevitability that north seems to have. For three quarters we were doing pretty well. Hamish was starring in the ruck and around the ground, simmo was unstoppable and most of his disposal seemed to be pretty good (except for the two flying shots at goal in the second quarter, neither of which ended up as drop punts, and combined for a total of one point), boomer was working hard and the backline was working well.

Spud got to play on Travis Cloke who really appears to have very little idea and drew was good on the lesser of the roccas. Riggio played in defence all day and played quite well.

Despite controlling the play and putting on great pressure all over the ground we just couldn't kick enough goals - lindsay thomas had five points for the day and hale, swallow, harris and others missed set shots that should have been goals.

When three quarter time rolled around 8.15 should have been 15.8 and the lead should have been 10 goals not 4. Collingwood goaled early in the last, but shagga scored from the next centre clearance. Still they came back and back and the ball seemed not to spend much time in our forward line. The level of pressure dropped off and a bit of inexperience set in. By the 25 minute mark we were 5 points behind. At this point shagga marked 40 metres out from goal - heath shaw hung on for too long and a 50 metre penalty was awarded ... yet somehow the mark was set about 12 metres out from goal on a slight angle ... as shagga skipped it seemed that the certain goal would, at least momentarily, put us back in front, but the slow spinning drop punt hit the post twenty metres from us - it was not quite the same as being behind the geelong goals in the last quarter of the 1994 preliminary final, but by now the game was gone ...

in a game we should have won there were some other concerns ...

despite swimming in your goggles in the lead up to the game wells was quiet and appeared to be avoiding contests.
archer was very quiet and shifted back after abusing an umpire early in the second quarter
corey jones has an unhappy knack of fumbling at crucial times
daniel harris was very very quiet
whilst there was a reduction in the amount of happy handball we saw earlier there is still a degree of "unpredictability" in this regard

overall, it was extremely disappointing to lose a game we should have won - admittedly against a team that really looked pretty bad - but at least we showed that there might be some good moments for the year.

Here's hoping you haven't been drugged, bound and robbed.

There was some good footy north.

Justin