41 minutes ago, Slim said:

I dont think we looked dominant at all 

First half we got a lead not because we were good but because they were bad,As soon as they improved we were in a fight

Leaky defence 

Too many passengers

And a forward line that simply dosent work that well

We just dont look like an 8 worthy team atm

 

Yes, they were poor, but we still had to play well to put the score on the board.  If we were playing badly as well then it would have been 2 goals each at half time.  We played much better footy in the first half and we got the reward for it.

8 hours ago, DV8 said:

I agree we show the ability to fightback now, compared to the post 2010 era, but even in the early 2000's we weren't all that good at lifting, against a team that was keeping its foot on our neck.

 

This is a habit of Melbourne teams that have tended to be front runners. good in the easy going.  bad against Real Pressure teams. found out in finals.

Yesterday we played a team of kids.  We have a few years on them.

 

This is what I want to see from this club/team. a club team that will maintain the pressure on oppositions sides until they break.

What worries me is that even tho we might rebuild the list, we still might have those traditional Melbourne flaws of being too soft to bury opponents. (individuals and teams).

TMac and Viney; we cannot keep making excuses when a couple of senior players are out.  2 out of 22 .

 

Its just that we HAVE to Expect More,,,,  if we are to ever do better. 

This club has done very well at making many players wealthy, and they didn't achieve, or perform at their absolute possible best, most professional, for us.

 

Yet we still herald them as champs.   champs of what?  nice boys club.

 

It has to change, or we will continue putting out more, and more, of the same as in our past. 

I'm on the same page as you on this.

My great hope in this regard is that Goodwin steels the club with the work ethos and never say die attitude that he had as a player.  Though I thought it was a bit bloody minded at the time, I think the way Jack Watts was dealt with last year was part if that culture change.  I think Roos also set these sort of higher expectations and desire to build hardened team and game style capable of competing in finals in motion too.

Alot of it all seems a bit like hot air when we have some of the inconsistentcy and loose games we think we shouldn't along the way, to some degree I have a fair bit of faith in current coaching/club administration group for the turn around they have acheved to date and what Roos achieved and put in place at Sydney which has been an enduring winning culture.

10 hours ago, small but forward said:

Oh - before I forget

i hope the spud that rolled Bayley Fritsch onto his neck in the 3Q tackle that saw him leave the field is cited and given weeks for that. It could have been seriously dangerous and was completely unwarranted.

Yes it was very dangerous, never saw Jake the Snake Roberts ever give a better DDT than that.

Who on our list can add speed and class around the packs. We have the strong contested ball players in Clarrie & Trac but Bris have a fleet of small quick players. We have Garlett, Harmes who is prepared to run and Jayden is way down on form. So who generates run and carry?

North beat St Kilda with Hrovat, Sympkin, Turner, Atley & Hartung running and carrying. Structure alone will not stop their run

At the end of the round we r sitting 6th. 

Not too shabby and hopefully we stay there or higher come round 23! 

Time will tell. 

We will be beaten up physically and on the scoreboard versus North next week. Brown will kick at least four and we will be subject to media scrutiny due to our paltry tackle count. 

I hope I'm proven wrong. 

Edited April 1, 20187 yr by Luke

We rely on contested ball and when it comes free, we don't have the players to spread. Taylor, Cox, Cameron, Christensen etc cut us to ribbons like the Cats last week in the second quarter.

The ball was greasy and that affected our game. 

We had a 6 day turnaround interstate and gave up a longer break to our opponent. Same will happen next week .

We have some players like Hunt and Jetta who are badly out of form.  

We have sub AFL skilled players like Bugg getting a game. 

We are not using Lever like the Crows did . He needs to take the third forward, not the main or second one, as that then allows him to spoil more contests and sweep and set up play, which he can do very well .

We don't shut down play when a side gets a run on . 

The umpires were pathetic and we don't have duckers and actors. 

We have one of our best mids and our second best forward out injured . 

Players like Kent, Stretch and Baker, who have pace need to come on to give us that outside run, or we need to find a couple.

In the end we won and fought back at the death and it was a hard earned 4 points and I will gladly take them .

 

 

Edited April 1, 20187 yr by Redleg

1 hour ago, Wiseblood said:

Yes, they were poor, but we still had to play well to put the score on the board.  If we were playing badly as well then it would have been 2 goals each at half time.  We played much better footy in the first half and we got the reward for it.

I agree we did put the score on the board but there lack of structure,there turnovers and lack of positioning allowed us to move the ball easier

Once they tightened up it became a lot tougher

We need to improve on a fair few things

We are not holding marks inside 50

We lack a clear marking target in forward 50

When we lose possession we allow teams to move the ball in there forward 50 far to easy

 

 

 

 

 

 

44 minutes ago, Luke said:

We will be beaten up physically and on the scoreboard versus North next week. Brown will kick at least four and we will be subject to media scrutiny due to our paltry tackle count. 

I hope I'm proven wrong. 

You're just channelling the game from last year. I expect it to be quite different.

@DV8

I chose that because that documentary is available and the Essendon one isn't yet.

But since you mention Essendon, let's expand upon that.

One thing Iron Mike touched on towards the end but didn't delve into as deeply as he could have was the fact that administrations at Richmond were held hostage by a rabid support base who were constantly agitating for a return to 'the way  things were'. Meaning sacking coaches, dropping players, and as CS said, generally eating their own.

This isn't the only example of a team who were swayed by a vocal plurality of their fans.

Rewind back to 2010. Despite having two years to run on his contract, Matthew Knights is sacked by Essendon. I got the feeling he wasn't the man to rebuild Essendon but if has been viewed that part of his dismissal came about thanks to his relationships with supporter coteries and a view amongst Essendon supporters that he wasn't 'Essendon enough'. It was felt that only a regular from Sheeds glory days could bring the club back.

And so the push to make James Hird coach gained legs.

Let's not go over the whole saga of his era here as we all know what happened. One thing I will bring up is that after his suspension in 2013 (when he should have been fired), he was allowed to continue on based on the wishes of loud mouthed malcontent fans who to this day insist he did nothing wrong.

It wasn't until Little, Hird and the rest of that merry band were completely discredited that actual professionals were allowed to make football decisions regardless of the wishes of the 'snaky' fans.

You asked me why I didn't raise any other clubs in my analysis on the futility of your proposed approach. I might ask you to rate Geelong and Hawthorn's strike rate over the last 20 years. Have they jumped at the first sign of complaint from media s@!; stirrers and angry fans?

The funny thing is that Richmond finally emerged from the muck when the board stopped listening to the vocal yet clueless. Focus on Football was summarily dismissed as a farce. Despite a poor year, the club took a deep breath and reshuffled the support around Dimma. New recruits addressing particular needs were bought in but there was no major surgery preformed on the list. 

In short, the Tiges saw out the plan they set themselves at the end of 2009. And they did it by being particularly un-Richmond like.

Finally got to watch the game.

They got back into it in the third quarter through a couple of silly errors from us but also through three or four key free kicks at the wrong place/time for us. Then we started Q4 limply and by the time we worked out what was going wrong (too many behind the ball and outworked on the spread from stoppages) they had slammed 4 on. We fixed those up, and coupled with being fitter/stronger than the younger Lions, and we turned the game back in our favour.

Having read this thread beforehand, I expected Lever to stink - he was much better than this thread suggests. It seems we are trying to get him to learn to be the second key defender, and at times last night he was no good in that role, but he had a lot more opportunities to zone off and break up Brisbane chains last night and he did it a lot better than last week.

Oliver, Hogan and Garlett were all outstanding. Gawn's first half was part of the reason we were on top - Martin improved as the game went on and Gawn's influenced lessened.

We're carrying a stack of underperforming/out of form players: Bugg, Jetta, Hunt, Harmes, ANB, Melksham, Lewis and Pedersen were all either ineffectual or just OK last night. ANB disappeared after HT, Harmes wasn't sighted.

Tyson was a major improvement on Maynard through the middle but he has an infuriating tendency to handpass to someone under extreme pressure. Has to stop doing that or he'll never become the player we need him to become.

Well ahead on the ladder of all the traditional clubs - that is the pre-1925 VFL clubs. Have to get your pleasure where you can. 

3 hours ago, Brownie said:

just watched the replay.

our defence seems to really panic when we started to fall apart.

That grub Berry that pushed Jetta in the back straight into that pack should be cited.

We were really lucky not to lose Jetta for a heap of time with a bad injury.

Really dangerous play

To be fair Brownie there were 4 umpires watching that contest and they were all blind sided! 

Edited April 1, 20187 yr by Rusty Nails

3 hours ago, Rodney (Balls) Grinter said:

I'm on the same page as you on this.

My great hope in this regard is that Goodwin steels the club with the work ethos and never say die attitude that he had as a player.  Though I thought it was a bit bloody minded at the time, I think the way Jack Watts was dealt with last year was part if that culture change.  I think Roos also set these sort of higher expectations and desire to build hardened team and game style capable of competing in finals in motion too.

Alot of it all seems a bit like hot air when we have some of the inconsistentcy and loose games we think we shouldn't along the way, to some degree I have a fair bit of faith in current coaching/club administration group for the turn around they have acheved to date and what Roos achieved and put in place at Sydney which has been an enduring winning culture.

Jack watts was the piece of rotten fruit.  He was lazyish, and maybe just a bit too much his own man. For whatever reason. If he didn't feel like chasing, he wouldn't. simple as that.  tackling etc.

To me that's selfish, in a team game.

 

We just left behind that era of players not wanting to go in for the ball head down, or to tackle, or chase, or do any heavy things.  Time trials. etc, etc.

We could not have a senior player continuing to only put in when they felt like it.

He had to go. talent or not.

 

Last years trade period.

Its just a pity we gave up so much last trade period, for Lever.

 

It's already showing how valuable that P10 was from 2017.   Let alone next years 2018 1st Rnd pick.

 

I hope it doesn't come back to bite us hard, on the you know what.

3 hours ago, Redleg said:

We have sub AFL skilled players like Bugg getting a game. 

.

 

I don't understand how he got a game ahead of Hannan. I know he wasn't great against Geelong but he was good last year he should have been persisted with. People are calling for Salem to be persisted with but they didn't do it with Hannan. 

Bugg shouldn't get a game ahead of anyone he is a complete spud while Bugg and Wagner are in the side we are always a chance to lose.

Seeing the first two games I’m wondering what the long term plan is with Lever. He is at his best when he is able to play as an interception marker not a one on one stance style defender. 

I’m confident he will come into his own as a player at Melbourne but we have got to play him to his strengths. 

I’m certainly less confident about us beating North Melbourne than I was before the season started. But we have to get this monkey off our backs. 

4 hours ago, DV8 said:

Last years trade period.

Its just a pity we gave up so much last trade period, for Lever.

 

It's already showing how valuable that P10 was from 2017.   Let alone next years 2018 1st Rnd pick.

I hope it doesn't come back to bite us hard, on the you know what.

What goes around comes around. Maybe weed comes in and plays some good footy with flashes of brilliance before TMac returns, but wants a trade at end of year. Desperate for a forward? Two first round picks or your top 5 pick and 2nd round please collingwood.

Or maybe another club wants to throw the farm at one of our players in the next few years, we can play hardball.

Edited April 1, 20187 yr by Doodle Dee

6 hours ago, WERRIDEE said:

I don't understand how he got a game ahead of Hannan. I know he wasn't great against Geelong but he was good last year he should have been persisted with. People are calling for Salem to be persisted with but they didn't do it with Hannan. 

Bugg shouldn't get a game ahead of anyone he is a complete spud while Bugg and Wagner are in the side we are always a chance to lose.

Hannan plays one good game in five or six, two average games and three games where he hardly touches the ball.

Bugg puts some forward pressure on, but agree his disposal is poor.

10 hours ago, Older demon said:

Who on our list can add speed and class around the packs. We have the strong contested ball players in Clarrie & Trac but Bris have a fleet of small quick players. We have Garlett, Harmes who is prepared to run and Jayden is way down on form. So who generates run and carry?

North beat St Kilda with Hrovat, Sympkin, Turner, Atley & Hartung running and carrying. Structure alone will not stop their run

St Kilda were disgraceful and didn’t chase or even break into a gallop all day, it’s easy to look quick when nobody is chasing you!

We will see how good North is next week, they lost the week before.

At some point we will beat North it should have been last year, hopefully it is next week.

11 hours ago, Wiseblood said:

Yes, they were poor, but we still had to play well to put the score on the board.  If we were playing badly as well then it would have been 2 goals each at half time.  We played much better footy in the first half and we got the reward for it.

I agree, our tackling and pressure in the first half was really good. Had we converted some more relatively easy opportunities especially early in the game it would have been all over at half time.

20 hours ago, Demon77 said:

 Cass, please read my post properly. I didn’t say Lewis is the only one with finals experience. I said just about the only one.

Yeah Jones played two games 12 years ago and more recently Lever.

Ok De. I see the troll has liked your post

I know this is a generic reply, as I am being lazy and can't be bothered re reading and finding the people who have written the comments such as "we need to demand more" and "we should expect more" etc. 

I really find these comments amusing!!

How do we demand more???? What affect does that really have??

do you think the people involved at the club, such as the players and coaching group, don't want more and aren't working hard to improve and be better??? Of course they demand better from each other.

i am sure after a poor game that the coaches go back and say, good effort, we are really happy with that close win, let's keep going like that and we will be fine!!!

just as I am sure all the better performed teams play better because their fans demand and want more and don't accept mediocrity.

these sort of statements mean nothing unless you actually have a way of doing something about it.

Edited April 1, 20187 yr by Yokozuna

45 minutes ago, Cassiew said:

Ok De. I see the troll has liked your post

Too early to bite!

Yeah if anyone disagrees with me can always count on him liking the post. Without fail

Edited April 1, 20187 yr by Cassiew

9 hours ago, Rusty Nails said:

To be fair Brownie there were 4 umpires watching that contest and they were all blind sided! 

and 4 commentators Rusty.

I think the mrp should be citing him.

It would be good to see the club do a medical report. Doesn't seem to be our style though.