To begin with this is my first ever post. I am a very passionate dees fan and have been a member for 10 consecutive years, not bad for a 15 year old. As my name says i am one fired up maco. yes i was at the game yesterday and watching the beginning of the 3rd quarter our boys looked slower. When it got to 10 mins in my judgement was jusitified. when our boys go in for the contest most of them look weak and scared, jamie bennel especially. why is it that our blokes have the inability to win a centre clearance. next to the dawks our blokes looked small and overpowered. does anyone else have this view. It is something that i have noticed against the better teams

Underdeveloped, young players. When you hit 22 or so your metabolism slows thus it makes it easier for you to bulk up - Scull, JT, Watts, Jordie, Bennell, Gysberts, even The Tap are all below that margin (although there's a reason the nickname for Tapscott is Bull!). The guys are just too young to get that sort of size.

Hell, I reckon even Lynden Dunn could do with a bit of bulk on him.

Duhhhhhhh... Cos they're kids playing against men??

Don't feed the troll.

what's a maco ?

To begin with this is my first ever post. I am a very passionate dees fan and have been a member for 10 consecutive years, not bad for a 15 year old. As my name says i am one fired up maco. yes i was at the game yesterday and watching the beginning of the 3rd quarter our boys looked slower. When it got to 10 mins in my judgement was jusitified. when our boys go in for the contest most of them look weak and scared, jamie bennel especially. why is it that our blokes have the inability to win a centre clearance. next to the dawks our blokes looked small and overpowered. does anyone else have this view. It is something that i have noticed against the better teams

Maco, firstly welcome

Secondly, I understand your point of view that they looked slower, but you always look slower when you don't have the footy. Watching the dees last year play against the swans is a good example of when you have the footy you make the other team look shite. And that's not making excuses, but basically we were outplayed. But don't panic pal, just because it's a new year doesn't mean that the players have played any more games together than last year. There seems to be this extreme expectation that we are going to do well fast but when you have big bodied players like Mitchell hodge sewell playing on, and around the ball, they've played a lot of footy together.

My point is, I know you've been patient ( well you haven't for a Melbourne supporter you're only 15) but wait until the players have played more than 40 games with each other before you start doubting. I'm not making excuses as I thought they were in it until the third. But, they've got some serious talent, and when it starts to click, the fear will be in the opposition

I think Dermie got it right-we are undersized, partly because our list is so young, but also we do not have great size all over the ground. We need more height and bulk, particularly in key positions. That is one reason why I advocated elsewhere on this site that I think in the medium term we will play Stef Martin in a key position, either forward or back, because of his height, bulk and mobility, and have the very big and mobile Max Gawn partner the Russian in the ruck.

Over the next couple of years we will get bigger and stronger, both by our selection decisions and the maturing of our list. In the meantime we unfortunately will have to put up with getting mugged by the Hawthorns of this world from time to time.