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Game Review

Whilst many of the early season games would go down as cracker matches - even if we lost - this round 7 clash was so disappointing in so many ways, that you'll probably find Carlton fans still shaking their heads across the country.

The Blues went in as heavy favourites against a no-names Dockers outfit, and were barely in front all day. Missed opportunities, poor skills, muddled decision-making and a forward line of Fevola, Cloke and Wiggins that barely got a touch all day were just a few of our problems. Jarrad Waite was our top goal scorer, in a 3-goal second quarter cameo, but there were signs that maybe the Blues were perhaps over-rated and failing to live up to expectations.

This fourth loss in five matches put us right back into the quagmire and potentially out of the eight. Although all four of our losses were close, our skills in this match were sorely lacking and Carlton required a huge boost to improve.

Standouts for the Blues were Chris Judd with 28 disposals, and Marc Murphy with 31. Bryce Gibbs also got the footy 31 times, at 84% efficiency in his 50th game. Chris Yarran became the 1122nd player to debut for Carlton and the 790th Blue player to score a goal.

Carlton’s management made a very wise decision, financially, by taking up the League’s ‘advice’ and playing this ‘home’ game at Carrara on the Gold Coast. The match attracted a crowd of 10,249, from which the Blues were expected to make $400,000, or the equivalent of $39 per person. On the same weekend, North Melbourne were reported as claiming that they had had to pay the Dome at least $100,000 for the crowd of 14,342 that went to their match against Port Adelaide.

Umpires' coach Rowan Sawers showed that he had a sense of humour by recalling field umpire Jacob Mollison for this game. after 'resting' him for three weeks following his disappointing game in Round 3.

Team

B:	18 Paul Bower	40 Michael Jamison	32 Bret Thornton
HB:	45 Aaron Joseph	30 Jarrad Waite	2 Jordan Russell
C:	27 Dennis Armfield	5 Chris Judd (c)	29 Heath Scotland
HF:	3 Marc Murphy	34 Simon Wiggins	13 Chris Yarran
F:	19 Eddie Betts	25 Brendan Fevola	28 Cameron Cloke
Ruck:	8 Matthew Kreuzer	4 Bryce Gibbs	24 Nick Stevens (vc)
Interchange:	6 Kade Simpson	10 Richard Hadley	21 Mark Austin
	22 Shaun Hampson
Coach:	Brett Ratten
Emg:	15 Steven Browne, 26 Joe Anderson, 47 Greg Bentley

Milestones

Debut: Chris Yarran
50 Games: Bryce Gibbs, the 5th youngest Blue to achieve this feat.
First Goal: Chris Yarran & Aaron Joseph

Brownlow Votes

3. Aaron Sandilands, Fremantle
2. Paul Hasleby, Fremantle
1. Luke McPharlin, Fremantle

Best and Fairest Votes

38 Chris Judd, 38 Marc Murphy, 34 Paul Bower, 33 Bryce Gibbs, 29 Dennis Armfield, 25 Matthew Kreuzer, 5 Heath Scotland