I felt on Thursday that we should have included fitzy for this game and given him the job in Petrie or brown.

Lumumba needs to look up Casey fields as that is where he should be playing for the next few weeks

Garlett is a momentum killer with his simple Auskick mistakes

I felt on Thursday that we should have included fitzy for this game and given him the job in Petrie or brown.

Lumumba needs to look up Casey fields as that is where he should be playing for the next few weeks

Garlett is a momentum killer with his simple Auskick mistakes

Also felt we should have picked Fitzy, but fact is he has pulle out of Casey game crook so it's irrelevant

The team played like they had the flu -- from the sounds of it, half of them did.

According to one poster on the Casey game, 17 Dees players were sick including Watts and the Captain.

Watching the game, I assume the ones with the flu were:

Garland, Dunn, Watts, Jones, Vince and Prince for starters.

I suspect Lumumba has had the flu for about 15 weeks

Every ruck gets monstered by Goldy. Gawn did a better job than 90% of ruckman.

He is going up against the best ruckman in the history of the game, it's a good learning curve.

WTF??

Higgins is at least a good footballer. Nahas and Thomas won't go near a contested ball and generally have no impact on games of football, but they keep getting on the end of other players' good work and being rewarded with undeserving goals.

I hate them both so much.

Someone has gotta be on the end of good player work. Thomas just happens to be exceptionally good at it.

WTF??

This year!

WTF??

Possibly referring to the records Goldy holds. He's got the record for the most hitouts in a match and probably a couple of others for hitouts to advantage and such.

Whilst I wont be happy with losses anymore there was a lot to take out of that. Our football in quarter 2 and 3 is some of the best we have played in years. The comeback was off the backs of kids and not mature leaders. You will go a long time before Jones and Vince are that quiet in the same week. Good to see Tyson hit some form and Viney and Hogan just keep on keeping on.

Watching the game, I assume the ones with the flu were:

Garland, Dunn, Watts, Jones, Vince and Prince for starters.

I suspect Lumumba has had the flu for about 15 weeks

Yeah, yuppy flu

Blame Hunt. He's the one who had the bug last week. Clearly he infected the rest of the team.

I just got home from the game and have had enough time to calm down so I will stick to the positives:

Jesse Hogan

The two drunken face painted loudmouths who were sitting behind the Melbourne cheer squad will have a severe hangover tomorrow morning.

Chin-up, Essendon are losing.

I just got home from the game and have had enough time to calm down so I will stick to the positives:

Jesse Hogan

The two drunken face painted loudmouths who were sitting behind the Melbourne cheer squad will have a severe hangover tomorrow morning.

Good on you!

Better start meditating!

Chin-up, Essendon are losing.

I celebrate every essendon and carlton loss.

Last week was a rare perfect weekend for me!

I thought we fought it out well. The margin at the end flattered North and was helped by 3 mystifying frees in the last quarter that snuffed out our challenge. The one on ANB in our forward 50 was unbelievable, he should have been lining up for his second. However we lost it in the first with 0 to 9 centre clearances and then coughed up numerous vital goals with our kick outs and our failure to defend their kick ins.

Can we do some coaching on these area? Our centre set up for Gawn seemed wrong. We mainly set up behind him and are static while he managed to win a fair share of the centre ball ups today and tap forward or sideways mostly to North players on the move.

Can we devise some semblance of a point kick out strategy? Kicking long to Waite or Goldstein doesn't make much sense. And when they are kicking out can't we man up and try to keep in our 50? Fixing some of these basic things to the point where we are highlyncompetitive in the clearances and moving the ball swiftly out of defense would make a huge difference to our score lines.

N Jones hasn't played a big game in a while. Needs to work on breaking a tag

Just reading the Casey thread, states that Fitzy is out sick and up to 17 players affected with the bug this week, including Jones and Watts.

Something to take into consideration, maybe not for the first quarter, but definitely the last

Something was definatly amiss. Dont understand when we rally for 2 quarters and then have an almost carbon copy of the first? Why??

Possibly referring to the records Goldy holds. He's got the record for the most hitouts in a match and probably a couple of others for hitouts to advantage and such.

I was thinking about this after watching some games from the 90's at a mate's place. 20 hitouts by a ruck was good back then, shows how many more ball ups there are in the game now

Seems like a lot of hand-wringing over a a game none of us should have expected to win. I saw enough today to roll the membership over for another year. The fact that we were that close without the usual input from Jones and Vince says something about the young blokes coming through. We're going to be okay.

While I was disappointed at Qtr time I now have some level of confidence that I didn't think "oh, here we go again" even with the stats saying we hadn't turned up.

Loved that fight to get back in the game. While Lumumba makes me nervous after he has run 10 and unloads to Berwick - he has a few inert players in that backline. I harp on that a great deal but when Jetta is doing more creation than McDonald, Dunn, Girmes, and Garland - we really need someone to try some stupid things.

The way I saw the game was that - around the ground - we were better. But they got truly fantastic movement forward from stoppages and some of their clearances were so damaging; we get a tumble punt forward and they get a bloke running at goal ready to hit someone or the goal. The Higgins snap in the last was great skill all around - from him, the ruck, from NM players to open that space.

They rely on their clearance work to win games and it shows - I don't think they will do much this year - but they are easily better than us at the minute.

Was not able to watch, listen or attend. I followed the scores from time to time.

Is there truth in the rum our that several,players were ailing?

I don't care who it is, if it was just the captain then he shouldn't have played for several,reasons: the team and his own health being paramount.

If it was too many to rest than it could explain, in part, the drop off and the poor start - and the poor output from some of our recent better performers

Edited August 9, 201510 yr by monoccular

Was not able to watch, listen or attend. I followed the scores from time to time.

Is there truth in the rum our that several,players were ailing?

I don't care who it is, if it was just the captain then he shouldn't have played for several,reasons: the team and his own health being paramount.

If it was too many to rest than it could explain, in part, the drop off and the poor start.

If it's 17 players as has been stated, then you are going to struggle to pick a team without people that were affected

Norf killed us running out of our backline, too often they went end to end without a Melbourne players touching or putting on pressure. Norf had men free all over the paddock as our players ran around behind or beside them instead of tackling. I hated to see Boomer Harvey dancing around and faking our players out so easily. All in all not a total disaster I saw a lot of positives today, Dawes was very good as was Hogan. Viney's up and under was impressive as usual, we sadly missed Vince, Nate Jones and especially brayshaws drive. I would have preferred to see brayshaw in the half back line as he breaks the lines and delivers forward well.

As others have said apart from the first quarter we played some fantastic footy. Some of the best in years.

But the game summed as up as to where we are at at the moment. We still can't maintain the great football we are capable of, but we can sustain it for longer than last year and we play a better brand of footy.

Hogan is a gun and Dawes FINALLY played as well as we all want him to. Now he needs to keep it up.

There are good times ahead guys.

As a side note - Michie is not up to it. Butchered the footy ALL day. Those crying out for him to get a full run - you got it and he fluffed it. No good.