The main take away from last night was an example of two teams being at either ends of the confidence spectrum.

If you asked any coach/player/informed follower about which list has more talent, majority would lean towards Melbourne. However, Richmond play with unwavering confidence and belief in their abilities... Whereas Melbourne play with disbelief in their abilities and then “try too hard” to execute and lose their natural footballing instincts and talents. Confidence allows freedom and dare.. but more importantly resilience to adversity.

How does a team and a group of individuals get confidence and belief back?  Is it the leadership groups responsibility? Or Goodwins?

Without an answer, Melbourne will quickly fall away from the race and reside in all familiar mediocrity again in 2018.

 

 

I agree that the Dees appear to have lost all confidence. Goodwin continually talks about building resilience in the team psyche. That is the ability to bounce back and regain confidence after a knock. They don't seem to have this. Yet at the same time they have a number of players who seem to "over celebrate" goals and run of the mill wins. This particularly worries me and has been part of the team culture throughout the bad times. I also get very annoyed with certain players who appear to exhibit a bravado which is not backed up by their ability or their actions. Confidence is what enables teams in their prime to believe that they can win even when they are behind. Geelong, hawthorn, Brisbane, Swans all had this. The Tigers have it in spades at the moment. We just don't. It will take a string of really good performances to acquire it. We seem to go from a couple of good performances to an unexpected loss. This pattern will take another couple of seasons of consistent performance to eradicate. I'm not sure that this particular list has that in them.

Whenever Richmond players had the ball in close they looked to take a few quick steps or a shimmy to create space before disposing.

Whenever we had the ball in close we simply looked to throw the ball on the boot or just handpass straight away without first creating space.

When tackled, Richmond retained the ball and managed to almost always get their hands free to pass the ball off, especially over their heads to a teammate.

When we are trackled we just let the ball fall out or cough it up to the opposition without first trying to get our hands free.

 

I think that TMac and Viney are huge outs at the moment. Both are in our best 10 players and both leaders on the field. Out of necessity, we have too many of the ANB/Harmes/Stretch/Hannan- type players in the team at the moment, when really only 2 of those guys should be making up numbers 21 and 22 in the team.

 

I'll be interested to see how things change once we have a fit TMac and (hopefully) Viney out there, flying the flag.