Basically, when you have none of your midfield playing anywhere near their best, the team is going to struggle.

Not only did they not play their best. They were all completely off their games.

Gawn, Tyson, Viney, Jones and Vince all had shocking days and unfortunately nobody outside of that group looked like they were going to inspire a comeback.

Fumbly, decision making, kicking. They were all at their worst.

What's been most pleasing over the past month as that when one or two of them have quiet games, at least a couple will bob up.

But nobody did today.

There were plenty of others in that boat too all over the ground, but obviously it's got to start in the midfield.

Thought Hunt was great. Pretty much zero errors, was clean, courageous, won all his contests and his run and carry is like gold.

Disappointing but already looking forward to what we're going to look like next year.

 

 

Edited August 21, 20169 yr by stevethemanjordan

2 hours ago, SaberFang said:

I guess the positive is we still secured 10 wins despite losing to both Essendon and Carlton. 

Compare that to St Kilda: 11 wins off the back of 4 wins against those two teams.

Not hard to see which team is better placed, IMHO.

Next year we should win the 10 games we did this year, plus beat the Blues, Essendon and St Kilda twice. That gives us 14.  Once we start dealing with the tag of favourites, we'll be mentally stronger and 14 wins could get us in the top 4.

I think the biggest thing holding us back next year is the mental stuff. Otherwise, we could be anything next year. I'd certainly welcome a first round Friday night game against a bunch of drug cheats whose games should be banished from primetime broadcast slots. A good test to start next year with and a test of our early mental strength.

2 minutes ago, dazzledavey36 said:

I personally didn't think Michie was that bad at all. Besides the one blunder i thought he was ok.

Bernie Vince on the other hand...

Michie was always going to have to be exemplary to avoid being smacked. You're right, he wasn't that bad. I was more disappointed with ANB, not withstanding his role limiting his ability to have an influence. He looked particularly slow today.

2 hours ago, Samael said:

Playing off the half back flank what damage were you expecting?. Particularly today when not only did the midfield fail dismally they did not get back to help when the blues mids were racing forward all day. Michie has become the Jack Watts of this site and is everyone's whipping boy. He had 20 disposals at 90%. He hit up Hogan twice but he missed both. Michie did not set the world on fire from the HBF but tell me what damage did Brayshaw, Viney, Oliver, Stretch Watts inflict today? No he wont be at Melbourne next year but today he was far from our worst.

Hunt managed to impact the game from half back...

I'll put it out there that Hogan was actually a better kick for goal when he had his awkward, stuttering approach.  It's probably the same routine he's had his whole life, he's changed to a more straight on and a lot smoother approach, but his kicking is worse. It's been a gross over reaction to one really poor set shot in the NAB challenge IMO.

 

1 hour ago, ENYAW said:

Good to see next week we have a bye ( good bye to us) next week. Time to take up the Shiraz,any others interested?

Way ahead of you Wayne.  Started as soon as I got home from the game.  Not sure how I'll go tonight at a birthday dinner with the kids.  Thankfully, they can drive me to the restaurant.

17 minutes ago, Rusty Nails said:

The idiots who think we're all skiing have probably misheard what we usually say after a loss.....

"I'm gonna go hit the [censored]" with Piste! Mostly too drunk to stand up let alone ski

 

Slopes is censored?

29 minutes ago, tonyh said:

Arrogant & lazy, every time this group are favorites they collapse.

Also cannot believe that coaches allow these guys to go out playing with wrong boots or even more fundamental, that dont tell them to stop dry weather football when pissing down rain, ....handball, handball, drop ball turnover, ever going backwards.....when all they have to do is kick ball immediately anyway possible, off ground, anyway get forward.

Give up for another year. 

Am 67 now, will I ever see another grand final???

 

Hopefully you'll see one in a few weeks.

However, if you mean involving Melbourne, then I'd say you're [censored] Tony!

The foolproof way to beat Melbourne:

Nullify Gawn and you'll win the clearances.

Put a spare man in defence and you'll totally stop their run through the middle.

We have yet to beat a team that does this.

Another disaster at the selection table. Why drop Pedo.? In favour of a bloke playing game number 2 and we expected he would be a world beater coming back from injury. FfS.  Michie should never play again, but this wasn't a game to experiment and see what he had. ANB in the same boat. Lost at section table. Pathetic attitude from our leaders. Hogganfield can't kick for s. ...t. I need a drink.  Or ten

4 minutes ago, McQueen said:

Slopes is censored?

Haha! Touche'

We had a stinker, totally overwhelmed by the opportunity in front of us. We lose too many games like this - think Essendon, St Kilda, North (they're not that good), port (first go round), and now Carlton, it's frustrating but we're getting better. Totally need to stop believing their own hype in the media and play each game contest to contest. Hogan ffs hands off hips and impose yourself like u can.

Some very unusual selections this week, perhaps born of unrealistic optimism.  Weideman for Pederson made no sense to me nor did the preference for ANB & Mitchie over Grimes & Trengove.  When we're still a mathematical chance of Finals,  it's not the time to experiment.  At least, G & T always give it their all and are playing for their future.  And they are both smarter footballers than the alternatives. On top of this, our normal core did not perform.  Our forwards could not convert and our skills were very ordinary.

The exceptions were our back 4 were great.  All performed well.

I noticed at training that when Hunt is practising sprints he always takes a ball and bounces it while he's running at full tilt.  He looks like a professional who knows his strengths and is trying to build on them.  What a shame that others on the list don't apply the same focus and use it to also overcome their weaknesses e.g. Kent, Viney, etc who can only kick off one foot.

All in all, a cold & miserable day matched by the quality of our football.  We'll probably win next week when it doesn't really matter.  And Nev should do well in the B & F.

Third year in a row I get off a long-haul flight to find we've been smacked.

In 2014 it was GWS, 2015 was Carlton and 2016 Carlton again.

I'm not surprised. [censored] that St Kilda is going to finish above us, though.

What is it about North, Saints and Blues just constantly beating us the last decade? Argh.

7 minutes ago, Akum said:

The foolproof way to beat Melbourne:

Nullify Gawn and you'll win the clearances.

Put a spare man in defence and you'll totally stop their run through the middle.

We have yet to beat a team that does this.

Port did and we won by 40.

1 hour ago, ENYAW said:

Good to see next week we have a bye ( good bye to us) next week. Time to take up the Shiraz,any others interested?

Back to your best ENYAW!

another crap day in the life of a melbourne supporter

We are terrible,

in the wet,

as favourites,

against he extra defender,

against crappy teams.

Having said that we might beat the Cats.

am so filthy on them today we had a real reason to win and they chucked it in,big changes due for next year ,hope hogan enjoys being back at home his body language says it all

Football is a full time job, what's with these people expecting them to turn up 22 weeks a year.

They still don't get it.

30 metres out, directly in front, miss.

2 minutes ago, barneymfc said:

another crap  typical day in the life of a melbourne supporter

Try that Barney.

6 minutes ago, praha said:

Port did and we won by 40.

They nullified Viney not Gawn.

2 hours ago, Lucifer's Hero said:

Not surprised. 

I think Roos was overruled at the selection match committee, again! 

Earlier this year (can't remember which game) he flagged a 3-4 changes to bring in fresh players and we made only one change (then we lost).  At the time I posted that I thought the selection committee had won out.  This week he flagged that if Garlett wasn't fit Salem would play...not even an emergency.  Roos is very astute - he doesn't flag team changes if he doesn't have a good reason for wanting the change.  There is a limit to how much control Roos can exercise.  I think Goodwin is making selection decisions with a view to 2017; 2016 is of no interest to him.  I firmly believe Roos would have selected to win.

Roos would have tightened up our defence today.  Maybe Goodwin is experimenting with 'attacking football' and they have yet to find the balance between the Roos' defence first' and the Goodwin 'attack at all costs' approach.

Hope they sort that out, fast!!  We snookered ourselves today.

We started the game with particularly attacking midfield positioning and adjusted to one-on-one reasonably quickly. 

We went for it at the top of the last quarter with the Diamond Defence, but ultimately, the players simply weren't working hard enough and when that happens, any game plans falls down.

2 hours ago, Ungarie boy said:

Once again we have also shown we don't handle sides that apply strong tackling pressure.  Our instant handballing to anything red n blue, is very predictable and allows for cherry picking, in fact it encourages high tackle counts against us

I actually think it was all about work rate and mindset. A bit like my Reds last night (I thought their loss would be a bad omen - both my football teams tend to lose at the same time). And like Liverpool last night, today we failed to take the game on and move the ball quickly. The reason we've shot up the ladder this year is our attacking game. We flick quick handballs about to players in space and then kick long and quickly to the advantage of one-on-ones. 

They applied tackling pressure, but we didn't know when to pull the trigger on the correct disposal, which was a result of a lack of work rate from the majority of our players.

34 minutes ago, Dante said:

10 wins is not a good return, we should have beaten, at least, Carlton and Essendon and probably one of the Saints games. I'll excuse them for the North and Weagles games because we were crucified by the umpires but if we are to be taken seriously we must beat teams on our level and below. Don't fall for the Richmond mantra, "we finished 9th this year so it's finals bound next year", every year is different so we may not get the chance.

Make no mistake we were absolute crap today and the players should be ashamed, particularly the leaders in the midfield.

On Hogan, this was a low pressure game and his kicking was awful, how would we react if it was a final and he lost the game for us because of the yips?

We have beat teams above us, around us and below us.  Yes we should have won today but there is always games that you should win that you don't and there are also games that you not expected to win and you do.  We have been outsiders in a lot of games this year. 

The team is developing and a very different prospect to Richmond who don't have the talent coming through that we do. 

Im not saying I enjoyed today and I agree in the 1st qtr they were crap but after qtr time they still continued to fight which is not the old Melbourne we know. 

Hogan missed some easy ones today but so did Vince, Jones, Petracca, Gawn, Vanders and im sure a few others.   Hogans hands were very good but he does need to improve his kicking. 

I was having a go because the bloke said they were arrogant which is a load of sh*t. 

 

23 minutes ago, jimcor said:

Some very unusual selections this week, perhaps born of unrealistic optimism.  Weideman for Pederson made no sense to me nor did the preference for ANB & Mitchie over Grimes & Trengove.  When we're still a mathematical chance of Finals,  it's not the time to experiment.  At least, G & T always give it their all and are playing for their future.  And they are both smarter footballers than the alternatives. On top of this, our normal core did not perform.  Our forwards could not convert and our skills were very ordinary.

The exceptions were our back 4 were great.  All performed well.

I noticed at training that when Hunt is practising sprints he always takes a ball and bounces it while he's running at full tilt.  He looks like a professional who knows his strengths and is trying to build on them.  What a shame that others on the list don't apply the same focus and use it to also overcome their weaknesses e.g. Kent, Viney, etc who can only kick off one foot.

All in all, a cold & miserable day matched by the quality of our football.  We'll probably win next week when it doesn't really matter.  And Nev should do well in the B & F.

That's amazing if true and makes me understand why he's so good at such a young age.