Byrne's should just retire, bring in Kent for him asap

Howe punched three that he could have marked all three went straight to bulldogs players

McDonald should have gone onto crameri

Tyson and viney will make a great midfield combo

Salem showed more good signs

Toumpas lack of impact at vfl level is a real concern

We lost because the umpire stuffed up a free, Jones should have run in further, steadied and kicked the goal and finally they simply ran out of legs in the last few minutes. Players were running up and down on the spot at the end and fitness let us down.

Gotta goal when you get your chance. We had all the play in the first quarter - they break the lines twice and get goals that never looked like missing. We had multiple half chances that didn't get close. A dodgey free kick to Crameri, a lot that once again weren't paid our way - although up until the Crameri one and the Williams free for Cross "sliding into his leg" looked like a kick to the head to me and should have been a free to Cross. Thought the Umpiring was generallyuch better tonight - no crappy holding the balls when the bloke has zero chance of getting it out. Dawes should get about 20 more frees for being held, arms getting chopped and being blocked. Speaking of blocking the one against frawley for holding his ground and then turning onto the ball was a shocker as well. 3 howlers against us is a much better result from the umpires - would be good to get a couple our way for a change

I love Dawes but at almost every contest his opponent was able to get a spoil in.

The floater kicks he received didn't help mind you.

I agree. He managed to turn what looked to be the beginnings of a big night out into just another performance where he "plays his role." He's a better player than that, and I hope he can start taking games by the scruff of the neck as we get better.

A few observations.

Shannon Bynes,

should not play another game for the club.

Mc Donald,

Fatally flawed!! colors lowered by a bloke on one leg, yep I know he has dash but he seems unaware of where his opponent is and as I have said before disposal can be "Iffy"

Watts,

played a reasonable game BUT doesn't impose himself enough at this level, or break games open, nice "Neat" player and it pains me to say but gee is it time to think about his value?

Matt Jones

skills let him down ,could have put scoreboard pressure between us and them! need I say more?

Finally, Jones, Vince, Cross, Tyson, Viney, Very good midfield unit but as I have often said "You can never have too many in and under mids on rotation"!

So whilst Toumpas continues to struggle at Casey, Wines keeps tearing it up!

Begs the question? doesn't it ? Get recruiting right and you are infinitely better placed with more options! Another Strong mid tonight and who knows !?

Begs the question why you even post here. Pzzzz off. You have been banging on about Toumpas for two years. Give it a rest . We don't need or want ppl like you.

is it just me or whenever we nabbed the lead there seemed to be some really soft dubious frees paid? about four of them over the course..

Unlike many MFC supporters, I agreed with the sliding free that Cross gave away for a goal. But Byrnes should have got one in the fwd pocket in the last to put us 8 points (?) up.

Looking at the stats. How good are the doggies at tackling? No wonder we couldn't break the game open.

Griffen - 15 tackles

Libba - 14 tackles

Macrae - 11 tackles

Boyd - 10 tackles

They are huge numbers.

Those are crazy numbers.

Libba is elite now. He was the difference.

Over umpiring is destroying our beautiful game

This game stung. More so than the West Coast loss. I left that game knowing that we were beaten by a much better side.
After the Gold Coast match, I was philosophical. We didn't really deserve to win that. There were positives but the Suns kept us at arms length all day and we never hit the front.
Tonight, there were periods I felt that we were going to run over the top of them. Scotty Lucas felt as much at half time.
That Crameri free was like a kick in the nuts. To have that f***head Bulldogs supporter look me in the face and yell 'Go Doggies!' nearly got me out of my seat to snot the bastard.
As was said earlier in the piece, the bigger picture is encouraging. The short term picture hurts. Overall, this feeling sucks but it's an unusual one. Games like this would have almost been treated like a win by our supporters. The fact it stings like all hell shows us that expectations are rising and that near enough is not good enough.

Unlike many MFC supporters, I agreed with the sliding free that Cross gave away for a goal. But Byrnes should have got one in the fwd pocket in the last to put us 8 points (?) up.

24 to 13 FK in our favour. We got a good run out of the Umps. Jones two misses and the two posters, killed us.

Dom Tyson. Wow. Next MFC Brownlow Medalist....

I thought Russian was tremendous for us tonight. Minson is a mountain and Jamar beat him comprehensively to give us first use consistently. With as many stoppages as we create, having a quality tap ruck man is very useful.

I'm so angry. I guess that's a good thing, given we've not been in games for most of of the last 7 years, but we were clearly the better side tonight. It's no one's fault that we lost tonight except ours, we lost this game much more than the Dogs won it.

I am so rapt with Tyson, he is getting better each week. I can't remember the last time a young Melbourne midfielder looked so composed at clearances.

Those two M Jones misses were shockers, but so was Frawley's miss from the set shot. Any of those going through would have kept the momentum with us.

Umpiring was pretty poor again, it wasn't totally against us like last week but so many free kicks gave them goals - the sliding tackle paid against Cross was utterly abhorrent, the shepharding paid against Frawley was equally bad, and the push paid against Dunn was worst of all, and each one of those directly led to a Bulldogs goal. All in the last 35 minutes of the game.

Whilst Grimes beat Griffin, which was handy, we missed him badly down back. I'm not sure I agree with taking him out of the backline after his effort last week. Feels like we cut off our nose to spite our face.

Worst game our backline has played all year. The West Coast game was bad because of no midfield pressure, but I haven't seen our defenders make mistakes like they did tonight all year. Howe has to learn to kill contests, Dunn was outpositioned too often, I thought Garland was nowhere near as good as he can be (to be expected, but he wasn't great tonight), and McDonald got towelled by two hacks.

All in all, very disappointed, as disappointed as I've been in years, but the future is clear and bright.

So whilst Toumpas continues to struggle at Casey, Wines keeps tearing it up!

Begs the question? doesn't it ? Get recruiting right and you are infinitely better placed with more options! Another Strong mid tonight and who knows !?

No, it doesn't.

Yep!! Blease for Byrnes sounds good to me!

Whilst Byrnes isn't giving us anything, Blease is the last player I'd bring in.

Unlike many MFC supporters, I agreed with the sliding free that Cross gave away for a goal. But Byrnes should have got one in the fwd pocket in the last to put us 8 points (?) up.

I like the rule in general, but I feel like if someone kicks you in the head it should be your free kick not theirs.

is it just me or whenever we nabbed the lead there seemed to be some really soft dubious frees paid? about four of them over the course..

Its because goals were so hard to come by and they got 3 from soft frees

We got plenty of soft frees too. But the ones they got really came at a bad time. And more importantly, they converted.

Our kicking really lets us down, specifically kicking to blokes on the lead. Far too many show too much of the ball to the opposition and sit it up on the marking player's head, making it easy for defenders to spoil.

spot on. We were poor going inside 50, particularly in the first half when we were the better side. Cost us the game.

The Crameri free was a disgrace (why is it the Dogs always seem to get some absolutely ridiculous frees when we play them?) and Matt Jones' miss really hurt (I'm sure I wasn't the only one who was 95% sure he'd miss), but in the end I thought two things prevented us from being 4-5 goal winners:

First was the bulldogs' tackling. Was absolutely superb. We really struggled to break out into the open - they worked hard all game to tackle and their tackles.

Second was our backline. They have been tremendous all year in restricting sides, but I thought they were really poor tonight. To let the Dogs, a team with one of the worst forward lines in the league, kick 15 goals from only 40 entries is terrible. I thought we just weren't structured up well in defence all night - they seemed to be able to get it inside 50 into space and at times I thought we could've used a soccer sweeper style player who probably would have been able to mop up a lot of the entries. They did kick some fluke goals but really we needed to close the space and make it more difficult for them.

Really frustrating to lose as I thought we were the better team and although we looked capable of breaking free of them, we just never did. Though to win the contested ball and clearances against a pretty solid Doggies midfield who are really strong in those areas is a good sign. Some more class in the side and a tightening of the defence would have made the difference.

Positive steps forward again which is good, but still frustrating to let that one slip.

Unlike many MFC supporters, I agreed with the sliding free that Cross gave away for a goal. But Byrnes should have got one in the fwd pocket in the last to put us 8 points (?) up.

No way. That's not the situation the rule is there for. Cross didn't slide into him, he couldn't even see Williams. He made a legitimate contest at the ball. Meanwhile that spud wouldn't even bend over to contest, just kneed him in the head.

Disgraceful free kick.

Unlike many MFC supporters, I agreed with the sliding free that Cross gave away for a goal. But Byrnes should have got one in the fwd pocket in the last to put us 8 points (?) up.[/quote

I agree Cross shouldn't have picked up the ball

The Crameri free was a disgrace (why is it the Dogs always seem to get some absolutely ridiculous frees when we play them?) and Matt Jones' miss really hurt (I'm sure I wasn't the only one who was 95% sure he'd miss), but in the end I thought two things prevented us from being 4-5 goal winners:

First was the bulldogs' tackling. Was absolutely superb. We really struggled to break out into the open - they worked hard all game to tackle and their tackles.

Second was our backline. They have been tremendous all year in restricting sides, but I thought they were really poor tonight. To let the Dogs, a team with one of the worst forward lines in the league, kick 15 goals from only 40 entries is terrible. I thought we just weren't structured up well in defence all night - they seemed to be able to get it inside 50 into space and at times I thought we could've used a soccer sweeper style player who probably would have been able to mop up a lot of the entries. They did kick some fluke goals but really we needed to close the space and make it more difficult for them.

Really frustrating to lose as I thought we were the better team and although we looked capable of breaking free of them, we just never did. Though to win the contested ball and clearances against a pretty solid Doggies midfield who are really strong in those areas is a good sign. Some more class in the side and a tightening of the defence would have made the difference.

Positive steps forward again which is good, but still frustrating to let that one slip.

This is pretty much spot on.

Our defence deserves plaudits for the year so far, but this was a very poor effort against the league's worst (or maybe second-worst after us) forward line. We showed what we can do last week, but the rebound we created against Adelaide was nowhere to be seen tonight,

24 to 13 FK in our favour.

That is the king of meaningless stats. It says absolutely nothing except that one team was seen as having infringed more often. It doesn't tell us whether any of those free kicks were there. It doesn't say where they happened on the ground. It doesn't say which free kicks were missed. It doesn't say whether advantage was payed when it shouldn't have been. And on and on we go.

Between Tyson, Salem, Viney and JKH I finally feel like we are heading in the right direction. Throw Hogan in there as well and the future is starting to look brighter. Might as well tell Byrnes he is no longer required and work with guys like Toumpas, Tappy, Gawn and Riley.

Unlike many MFC supporters, I agreed with the sliding free that Cross gave away for a goal. But Byrnes should have got one in the fwd pocket in the last to put us 8 points (?) up.

Well you would be wrong. Cross didn't slide into his legs at all.

Was a shocking decision

The Cross free kick was almost as bad as the Crameri one. Almost.

Whinge away about the umpires crucifying us then. Our players didn't convert the chances when they were presented to them, 4 in fact. Kick them, we win.