I've got to admit, I like to accentuate the positive but beyond the season almost over, I'm struggling to find many. I even found myself agreeing with Stuie.

agree, who

Im [censored] scared that Roos ALREADY has passed match day duties over to Goodwin.

& he's yet to take the blinkers off.

ah well, P/P for the lions? then we'll have to get one, as well.

Today I apologised to my adult kid's for supporting this joke of a team and getting them onboard!

Shieit do they have to endure the same Mess!??

51 years of OBLIVION!

Can we declare bankruptcy?

Bankrupt for Run

Bankrupt for Speed

Bankrupt for Skill (in fact double Bankrupt)

Bankrupt for Decision making ( including recruiting team)

Bankrupt for Coaching NOUS ( Sheeit Roosy it aint Swans)

Just so freakin Bankrupt!

I am over it!

stop offending others PF, will you. there are a lot of unfortunate bankrupts out there due to no fault of their own.

.

Unfortunately (or fortunately) I have been in remote West Papua for the last fortnight and have only just now seen the results of the Brissie and Saints matches (via weak airport wifi). Looking at the AFL website, and seeing the Melbourne players achieved the top seven spots by number of disposals (Viney with 31), how on earth did theSaints nearly double our score? Can anybody explain it?

It was Paul Roos. No wait, it was Dawes. Or maybe Watts. The rain possibly. Let's just blame it on Stretch looking a tad tired.

I just want to clarify that my posts on demonland are in no way a reflection of my sex life, Moon

witches britches Munga, don't worry, Moon just likes to 'hang-out', & shine on people once a month, especially through car windows.

I was at that game and the Saints problem was we had Neitz and Robbo who kicked 14 between them I think. Those were the great days of footy, fast, free flowing, one on one battles and great forwards kicking goals. Was that before interchanges were introduced?

no, it was before sports science kicked in, magnifying the amount run the players are capable of & together with the rotations effectively makes the ground smaller compared to yester-years players.

its the same situation golf found itself in, when the carbon-fiber shafts & over-sized metal drivers made all the courses play too short... which played havoc with the bunker positions & all sorts of troubles.

thats what the combo of 'rotations', & sports science has done to our full time Pro players.... & to our once beloved game.

We're no longer at the point we can blame injuries for our lousy showing. Kent and Salem would have been handy but they would not make the difference with the Saints. But the injury that is hurting us most is Frost because he would free McDonald to go forward and still keep our defensive structure.

you may be a bit ahead of your time, pit

atenolol

əˈtɛnəlɒl/

noun

Medicine

noun: atenolol

1. a beta blocker used mainly to treat angina and high blood pressure.

very good, d-l

so, bbo has got a sore angina. why am i not surprised

Lastly, I am usually not one to have a go at officials, but yesterdays officiating was absolutely outrageous. The three decisions that did me were the high tackle paid against Watts when he was almost slide tackled by Armitage (the definition of the rule), the non holding the ball of Sinclair in a perfectly executed tackle by Howe in which Sinclair was dispossessed after having a good 10 seconds to get rid of it, and the illegal block in the ruck at the end paid against Gawn in the center square. His eyes never left the ball and it was a textbook ruck contest.

I was disappointed with the rub of the green on Sunday but I also do not worry about the umpiring, nothing you can do and usually supporters see it in a one eyed way. However the second half of that bolded sentence is confirmed by an article in the Herald sun today about Sunday's umpiring in our game.

The average holding the ball decisions for each club before Rd 17 was 3.7. We had TWELVE paid against us in that game. Even Wayne Campbell agreed that he was shocked at the changed interpretation over the weekend. Clearly the Demons were probably the worst affected club.

We played poorly, but those decisions really rubbed salt into our wounds.

I was disappointed with the rub of the green on Sunday but I also do not worry about the umpiring, nothing you can do and usually supporters see it in a one eyed way. However the second half of that bolded sentence is confirmed by an article in the Herald sun today about Sunday's umpiring in our game.

The average holding the ball decisions for each club before Rd 17 was 3.7. We had TWELVE paid against us in that game. Even Wayne Campbell agreed that he was shocked at the changed interpretation over the weekend. Clearly the Demons were probably the worst affected club.

We played poorly, but those decisions really rubbed salt into our wounds.

He shouldn't be...he asked for it because that's what his boss (Evans) wanted.

Love the way he dumped the umpires under a bus...

Surely he doesn't expect us to believe that every one of his umpires misheard the message or decided to go their own way in entirely the same way.

27 umpires got it wrong, now that's an interesting version of Chinese Whispers...

Maybe the umpires aren't playing for him, I wouldn't be this week after that p....weak effort.

The bane of my existence.

What frustrates me the most is the forwards run up the ground, then run back again without having any impact on the play. However, when the ball does come down they are either knackered from running so far or running with the flight of the ball instead of at the ball carrier on the lead.

I may be very naïve but has any coach tried having a forward go no further from goal than the 50m arc? Surely at least one defender would have to stay with him. That would offer at least one target, even if a one on one, for toes bringing the ball out of defense to aim for?

Too simple I guess.

I may be very naïve but has any coach tried having a forward go no further from goal than the 50m arc? Surely at least one defender would have to stay with him. That would offer at least one target, even if a one on one, for toes bringing the ball out of defense to aim for?

Too simple I guess.

I think they would use the spare defender to create the overlap, would be like playing 1 man short

Not sure if this has already been commented on, anyway, did anyone notice that something was being said to Max Gawn during the saints game that

seemed to upset him to a degree. just wondering if someone picked up what he was saying to another dees player about it.

very good, d-l

so, bbo has got a sore angina. why am i not surprised

Well, word on the street is it's certainly not 'a cute' angina!

Ok I couldnt kick a ball 10 metres, i couldn't run 50 metres unless someone was chasing me with an axe. The high point of my footy career was the first 18 at St Pauls Bentleigh ( I was good) But what I cant work out for the life of me is why, when Watts dishes off a handball to a teammate, doesnt he run on to protect the team mate with the ball??? Sheperd for gods sake. Give your mate a fighting chance. Many others could have done the same but didn't either.

This is clearly not being taught, because it happens every bloody week. Not just Watts, just about every player in the 22 fails to shepherd. Our midfielders rarely block for each other either, because they're so focused on getting the ball or preventing their man from getting it. I just wonder what it is with some of these guys. It has to be a couple of blokes continually setting bad examples for the rest of the younger players, because things like shepherding and blocking should come naturally.

I realise I'm worse than PF about Wines but I wrote this in 2011 which refers to another post in 2007. Basically not a lot has changed in eight years and whilst all teams tend to push their forwards up the ground, when we do it it just never seems to work.

That's a work rate issue and a lack of understanding in the game style, I believe.

I'm talking before it even gets to this point, when the opposition have the ball all forwards push right up into the defensive half of the ground. However, most of the time the deep forwards (Hogan who I'm not personally blaming) rarely actually impact on the play so when Melbourne do win the ball back he has to run back to the forward line.

If Hogan didn't push up the ground (and his opponent) did then yes, the opposition would have more players in the defensive half of the ground but we would have Hogan (maybe eve more forwards if we were so lucky) on his own at centre half forward. How many coaches would leave a player like Hogan on his own in the forward line?

As a coach myself, I'd be doing my best to isolate him inside 50 as much as possible. Collingwood managed this a couple of times against us last time with Cloke. It's about quick, instinctive ball movement. It rarely gives the defenders any chance. Unfortunately, our blokes don't play instinctively, they play reactively, particularly blokes like Nathan Jones (even though I love him).

It was the instinctive ball movement that won us the game down in Geelong. I cannot believe we're not modelling our game on that win every week.

Back off a bit about Roosy. Yes we lack run and were beaten by a quicker, younger side that like the Dogs has recruited quick, hard youngsters.

But Roosy has spent his first two years overhauling the list.

In year one he opted to recruit guys that were big-bodied midfielders (Vince, Tyson, Cross) and by correctly making our most courageous hard worker (Nat Jones) captain, he fixed our inability to win clearances and be competitive around the pill. Only Fremantle, Hawthorn, WC and GWS (second half) have smashed us at clearances this year.

In year two he recruited quicker players because we couldn't transition into attack and Garlett has been a revelation, Lumumba hasn't really lived up to his pre-season form and Frost and Petracca got injured.

But clearly we are better than last year.

Sure we can all dispute team selections - eg: Garland on Riewoldt - but it's somewhat understandable given how T-Mac had gone the past two weeks up forward and he obviously wanted to give it another go.

As to gamestyle, we do seem to have lost our ability to go forward and the obsession with handballing backwards or sideways is frustating, but that's part of modern-day 'possession at all costs' football.

Our biggest problem now is that we don't have linebreakers and against a quick side like Saints, we just didn't have the ability to link up and break the press. Hopefully Prestia's arrival will give us more confidence of linking up through the middle.

While Wattsy has made steps in recent weeks, he went back into his safety mode. That's picking on him, but he's one that has to run and take risks, because we don't have many that can do this and he's now playing the prime outside run position. Billy was also poor in this area this week - so I think you will find Matt Jones back for him. Don't get grumpy, until we get Kent back and Frost, we just don't have the pace to hurt sides and M.Jones is one of the few, that, on paper at least, can provide it.

Our lack of pace across the ground was perhaps most evident against St Kilda, but we come unstuck against GWS every time because of it as well. We need a lot more pace than just Jeffy, Frost and Kent. Hopefully that will be added this off season too.

dont' forget the Watts holding the ball call where he followed the name of the game and actually put the ball on his foot...

I think Jack actually played it too cleverly. He tried to keep the ball in his area and inside our attacking 50 with a dinky kick, but unfortunately this made it look a little bit like he'd been dispossessed. Of course, had the umpire been watching properly, he would have seen exactly what I saw and called play on, but he was a little man, with the power of a whistle.

I'm back od but I stumbled onto the 'Radio and football racists' thread.

It looked very dangerous in there so am seeking refuge back here with just the angst of my football team to deal with.

I'm just avoiding it altogether.

Some good news. Viney's snuck into the team of the week.

http://www.afl.com.au/news/2015-07-28/team-of-the-week-round-17

How good is this kid? Limited one of the most dangerous midfielders in the competition to 18 touches and racked up 31 himself. Would be leading the B&F if it weren't for injury. However he still could finish top 5.

If he could kick he'd be in AA form, but alas his kicking really lets him down. His old man never really improved his kicking either and it always held him back. I'm hoping our coaches can teach Jack to play to his strengths. If he does this, he'll be an absolute beauty. You realise how important he is when he's not playing.

If I were Roos (yeah I know, big "if") I wouldn't review last week's or the week before or the week before game this week.

I would review the Geelong and Bulldogs games and show the players what the benchmark is and what they can achieve. I think it needs to be reinforced that they're not necessarily a "bad" team, they're just in bad form.

This is clearly not being taught, because it happens every bloody week. Not just Watts, just about every player in the 22 fails to shepherd. Our midfielders rarely block for each other either, because they're so focused on getting the ball or preventing their man from getting it. I just wonder what it is with some of these guys. It has to be a couple of blokes continually setting bad examples for the rest of the younger players, because things like shepherding and blocking should come naturally.

I think they are taught not to overcommit to a contest. Hawthorn do it. You rarely see three Hawk players tackling. Usually its one. The other two wait for the ball to spill out. We often have 2 or three players commit to a tackle and then the ball flips out to an opp'n player and they are away. We aren't very smart in that dept.

Sheperding is similar I believe. They should not get rid of th eball to a player who needs shepherding. They shld get rid of the ball to a player in space. Because we play hot potato our players put themselves under pressure. This is exacerbated by not shepherding...

I think they are taught not to overcommit to a contest. Hawthorn do it. You rarely see three Hawk players tackling. Usually its one. The other two wait for the ball to spill out. We often have 2 or three players commit to a tackle and then the ball flips out to an opp'n player and they are away. We aren't very smart in that dept.

Sheperding is similar I believe. They should not get rid of th eball to a player who needs shepherding. They shld get rid of the ball to a player in space. Because we play hot potato our players put themselves under pressure. This is exacerbated by not shepherding...

From the above jnr I conclude they are not very clever.

From the above jnr I conclude they are not very clever.

I don't think you need me to tell you they aren't clever OD!

Some pretty basic under 11 stuff that we don't do well....

If I were Roos (yeah I know, big "if") I wouldn't review last week's or the week before or the week before game this week.

I would review the Geelong and Bulldogs games and show the players what the benchmark is and what they can achieve. I think it needs to be reinforced that they're not necessarily a "bad" team, they're just in bad form.

Completely agree, mate. The Geelong win was the best I can remember. A really consistent team performance for four quarters.

I think they are taught not to overcommit to a contest. Hawthorn do it. You rarely see three Hawk players tackling. Usually its one. The other two wait for the ball to spill out. We often have 2 or three players commit to a tackle and then the ball flips out to an opp'n player and they are away. We aren't very smart in that dept.

Sheperding is similar I believe. They should not get rid of th eball to a player who needs shepherding. They shld get rid of the ball to a player in space. Because we play hot potato our players put themselves under pressure. This is exacerbated by not shepherding...

I've seen countless examples this season where overcommitting to a shepherd would not have been the concern. Our blokes handball and then stand still and watch their opponent chase after the guy who just received the ball. It's really so obvious.

I can't access replays of the game but my memory of the start of the Geelong match centered around our insistent use of the corridor. That we fluffed our first couple of forays through the middle but surprisingly didn't drop our heads and persisted. Can anyone confirm from their recollections? Did we possibly concede this game as unwinnable or at least ungrindable and go out there with different more singular attacking tactics?

I love the club but I've already agreed to see my friends football team play next Saturday over the Dees. However knowing my luck, Hogan will kick 8 and we'll smash the Pies by 10 goals.

Eh...close enough.