YOU CAN'T WIN THEM ALL by The Oracle

The mantra concerning the Melbourne Football Club has, since the start of the season been midfield, midfield and more midfield. From the time Simon Black and his cohorts from the Lions sliced open the Demons in the middle of the MCG in Round 1, it's been the same story. Opposition midfields simply have more run, greater smarts and are prepared to work so much harder than their one- dimensional counterparts at Melbourne.

The result on Queens Birthday Monday was that Collingwood iced the game in the opening minutes by going bang, bang, bang out of the middle and before the midpoint of the opening term they had a four goal plus lead. Thirty minutes later and into the second term, the Pies had eight on the board, the Dees were still goalless and the smell of 186 was starting to permeate through the nostrils.

To its credit, Melbourne managed to regroup and almost work its way back into the contest, kicking three on end before the half time break and moving back to within four goals at stages within the third quarter. Things were not helped by the odd self-inflicted gaffe. Turnovers which lead to easy opposition goals can be heartbreaking but the team persisted and refused to wilt.

Faced with a similar picture in 2011, Melbourne sank into the oblivion of a near 15 goal defeat but, at least this time it showed some resistance even after the Collingwood midfield opened the last quarter by going bang, bang, bang again and converting a slightly worrisome 26 point differential into a seven goal lead in the space of less than three minutes, a position which it maintained through the shoot out that ensued for the rest of the game. Collingwood kicked nine straight goals in the final term to record an easy 42–point win. Given that they booted the first eight and were so accurate at the end, the result could have been so much worse for Melbourne whose first half record of 1/10 has been positively underwhelming.

The midfield statistics told the story. Collingwood, even without Scott Pendelbury had Dane Swan, returning after two weeks from a hamstring injury, with 42 disposals, eight marks and two goals. I got the impression that during his layoff he might not have showered because the Melbourne players weren't too keen on getting anywhere near him and particularly not between him and the leather. Dayne Beams was almost as prolific with 37 touches, Steele Sidebottom was close behind with 36 possessions and Jarryd Blair had 27 with two goals thrown in for good measure. Melbourne's best midfielder, as usual, was Nathan Jones with 30 and it fell away badly from there. Only Jack Grimes with 25 managed to surpass the 20 possession mark.

Jeremy Howe continues to improve in leaps and bounds with his strong marking and two goals a feature for Demon fans. Mitch Clark was dangerous with four goals up forward but there was simply too little in the way of forward line support even though the team notched up its highest score for the season.

Nathan Jones (30) and Jack Grimes (25) led the way in terms of possessions, but on the whole it was another pretty disappointing day for Melbourne.

Tactically, nothing much that Mark Neeld tried actually worked. Having a couple of men behind the ball seemed counter productive. Of course, if your skills are well behind those of your opponents then you're always going to struggle, especially if the minds of some are weak and tired as well.

With half the season gone and no chance of any finals action, it's inevitable that Neeld is going to have to look more and more to the future in the rounds to come. Some of those who lowered their colours badly in this game might never be seen again in Demon colours because whilst it's true that you can't win them all, it's also true that if you can hardly win at all with what you've got, then it's time to ring in the changes.

There are some young kids performing impressively at the Casey Scorpions. Some play in the middle and some in key positions. Their time is coming.

Melbourne 0.4.4 3.4.22 7.7.49 13.9.87

Collingwood 6.3.39 8.9.57 10.15.75 19.15.129

Goals

Melbourne Clark 4 Dunn Howe 2 Blease Magner Rivers Sylvia Trengove

Collingwood Sinclair 3 Blair Cloke Fasolo Goldsack Jolly Swan Wellingham 2 Beams Sidebottom

Best

Melbourne Howe, Grimes, Clark, Jones, McKenzie

Collingwood Swan, Beams, Sidebottom, Blair, Bellingham, Goldsack

Injuries

Melbourne Nil

Collingwood Didak (groin) Young (ribs)

Changes

Melbourne Nil

Collingwood Nil

Reports

Melbourne Nil

Collingwood Nil

Umpires Stevic Nicholls Bannister

Crowd 64,250 at the MCG

Im all for trying new things, and correct me if Im wrong, but did Rivers go forward at the beginning of the last quarter thus the filth kicked 4 straight early in the quarter thus killing any chance we had??

Oh look Green - 7 disposals 1 tackle. Sylvia 10 disposals 3 tackles. Moloney 14 disposals 1 tackle. Magner 9 disposals 2 tackles.

Somebody please explain how long you can hold a player out/down before and after he has the ball because those flouro maggots were all over the shop today .

OPSM being their sponsor is yet another sick joke designed to put me in a mental hospital .

Take out those annoying twerps and their deluded attempts to befriend the big name players and take out the first 10 minutes of the 1st and last quarters and I would be a lot happier than I am.

This forum already has a couple of people who agree with Bruce McAveney that Tappy was "dangerous".

Suck it up ladies-people get hurt out there-when your team is crap and someone is menacing and threatening violence that is what you call a good thing .

It's rough and tough out there and Tappy did well .

Apart from that- I think I will make it to next week .

Im sorry but if Jack watts has to go to casey then surely it's Jack trengrove's turn he is well down on form.

I love the kid but he has no impact on game anymore and needs to go get some form just like Watt's.

Great game from Grimes today.

Im all for trying new things, and correct me if Im wrong, but did Rivers go forward at the beginning of the last quarter thus the filth kicked 4 straight early in the quarter thus killing any chance we had??

He went back at the end of the 3rd. He had no obvious match up in their forward line apart from maybe Goldsak who Tommy Mac had so it was worth a shot. I must admit it was a strange looking back 6 with Tommy Mac, Nicho, Watts, Sellar and it seemed Morton with Frawley the only constant.

Great game from Grimes today.

Yes but remember he was one of the mids that was crunched by the Pie crew, so whilst he worked hard and got a lot of ball he was badly beated by Swan, Beams, Wellingham and Sidebottom. Thomas and McKenzie were a match up so draw your own conclusions on that one.

take out the first quarter and we played well IMO

First quarter blow-out due to inexperience on the big day, was always on the cards. Good fight and comeback, although we didn't get the chocolates the team is showing something.

the bads - Morton with impeccable timing of when to turn the ball over.. Garland MIA.. Green not being able to kick the (ex)captain goals.

Wellingham & Swan killed us.. again.

Like the Bull doing what the Bull should be doing.

H-Sun biased reporting again. Sure Tappy and Sylvia will be looked at. No mention of Swans dangerous trip. AFL needs to be lobbied to have this matter dealt with in a balanced manner.

Hate losing but not completely unhappy with today game. Need to get more out of Moloney and a few others but we are going in the right direction.

in reality its the result i expected, but i was happy to see us show some fight, especially when we could have rolled over after not turning up in the first quarter

H-Sun biased reporting again. Sure Tappy and Sylvia will be looked at. No mention of Swans dangerous trip. AFL needs to be lobbied to have this matter dealt with in a balanced manner.

Or Wellingham or Goldsack or someone elbowing Nate Jones in the face, or Nathan Brown snotting Colin Sylvia 100m behind the ball...

Jamar wins most of the centre bounce taps but almost always taps it to the opposition. Surely if he is goof enough to win the tap then he is good enough to put it down Moloney, Trengove or McKenzies throat! We were smashed in the middle all day today (except when Clark rucked).

I think one of the best things to come out of today was the fact that at 2 or 3 times the floodgates really could have opened, and we could have ended up 80 points down, but we didn't.

Dont know what to make of it

Good comeback and we defintely didnt look like the dees of the first 8 rounds or GWS,Gold Coast level and ran well with them

BUT

we have them a 55-4 lead and just couldnt break that 24 point barrier. Everytime it got to 24 points they would kick 3 or 4 goals before we could even blink.

But it was nice seeing us not give up or drop heads etc and we fought back everytime

However, how could you leave Swan unattended all day long. Surely he warrants the number one tag. I knew before the day we need to combate Swan Beams and Sidebottom and we let them have 100+ possessions, just NOT good enough

Jamar wins most of the centre bounce taps but almost always taps it to the opposition. Surely if he is goof enough to win the tap then he is good enough to put it down Moloney, Trengove or McKenzies throat! We were smashed in the middle all day today (except when Clark rucked).

Part of the problem is also the amount that we fumble the ball, even when it is put down their throat. Or, today in particular, the first handball out was sharked by a Collingwood player who read the next move.

The Good:

Grimesy, Howey, Mitch, our highest score for the year!

The Bad:

Sylvia, Trenners, Moloneys impact, Cale's turnovers

The Ugly:

Going missing in the first quarter and game over at quarter time.

Yet again, another sub 50 dt game from Moloney.

Have to also mention Tapscott almost putting Maxwell through the back window of the interchange bench.

We haven't had a player willing to do something like that since Grinter!

Watched Swan all day, he was free for about 3 1/2 quarters. I'm at a loss with that one.

Also the first 5 minutes of the last were freaking awful.

Clark, Jones, Grimes, Howe and another pretty reasonable effort from Watts, and the fact it was a vast improvement from the 88pts last year shows at least the side is heading in a positive direction.

We lost the game in the first quarter and a bit of scoreboard pressure in the last 3 might have made a difference.

Hardly saw much of the game, but was livid with Moloney over a bit I saw in the second quarter. Think that Irish pastie Clarke had the ball and Moloney had him lined up and went to tackle.

Clarke brushed off Beamer like he was an under 16 player.

Classic case of looking like Tarzan playing like Cale...

This game must surely put to rest the argument about the game plan changing! It has absolutely, categorically, evolved and/or changed for the better - but now it is time to put a massive amount of time and work into developing the skill levels required to turn this game style into success!