Yesterday was so demoralising, I actually found myself apologizing to my 12 year old son for converting him into a Melbourne supporter when he was about 5. Told him follow whoever you like from now on, I won't hold it against you. Last thing I want is for him is to have disappointment and embarrassment as the default emotions associated with a sport that he loves. I'm afraid the damage is already done though, the poor kid is probably a dee for life, and he'll likely always resent my interference in his choice of club to support. 

Nice to know that Harmes did an Instagram post asking if there were any good tattoo artists on the Gold Coast. I think they're coping just fine. 

1 hour ago, Scoop Junior said:

This is reading far too much into a piece of vision that shows maybe 1% of what happened in the rooms post-game.

You simply don't know what had occurred previously nor what occurred after it. For all we know one of the blokes could've sat down and had a chat with Rivers for 15 minutes at some stage. Just because they're not around him in this small sample of vision doesn't mean it didn't happen and it's dangerous to make these kinds of assumptions off such limited footage.

The same when people say Goodwin in the box doesn't do A, B and C when the cameras probably pick up maybe 30 seconds to 1 minute's footage of the coach's box each quarter. You just can't make those assumptions.

By the same token I could probably make a highlights video showing Dean Terlich to be a gun rebounding defender.

This.

4 minutes ago, layzie said:

Nice to know that Harmes did an Instagram post asking if there were any good tattoo artists on the Gold Coast. I think they're coping just fine. 

I saw that... disbelief was my reaction..

51 minutes ago, godees said:

Apparently had a full contact session the day before Sydney...

Thanks. Must of been very humid.

Melbourne making their run towards finals:

2 hours ago, Half forward flank said:

Learn to speak in clear English language. It is rule 101 in any teaching textbook. You are embaressing yourself and the Club with such jibberish. 

Alanis says hi

Edited September 8, 20204 yr by binman

Was Richardson at the freo game? I don't recall seeing him.

1 hour ago, Clintosaurus said:

Exactly. We have played at 9 different grounds this year, and no more than 2 at any of those grounds. What a joke. Crows, Port and West Coast have only played at 3 grounds the whole season.

Irrelevant and looking for excuses.

The ground you play at doesn't disguise the effort last night 

203 Uncontested posessions to 98

Our boys don't like to run, chase, cover their man or get back to help the defenders. But gee we're great at guarding grass.

Lazy and dumb. getting back from the man on the mark, not being on the goal line when someone is having a shot. Stupid 50m penalties, falling into the back of someone on the ground. 1m handballs to stationary players, 4 players flying for a mark.

But its the ground we play at thats the problem.

The supporter base should demand more from these pea hearts.

 

 

4 hours ago, SFebes said:

Does anyone remember Tom Hawkins back injury at a guess 5 or so years ago, couldn't jump, bend down or move. This is what I think TMAC has got, I could be wrong but considering he's one of the fittest going around, doesn't make sense. Unless he's had a barney with the coach?

I believe his foot injury hasn’t recovered fully. Like he’s barefoot running on broken walnut shells during games. 

Edited September 8, 20204 yr by america de cali

7 hours ago, Wiseblood said:

The one thing that is keeping me going is that core group of players.  This isn't a joke of a list, which it was under Neeld when Roos took over - there is plenty of talent there to work with.

The issue, of course, is in utilising that talent, and we need a coach who can bring the best out of them on a consistent basis.  Skills can be hidden a little at times with the right game plan.

I've banged on about this twice now, what has happened with our player development? In 2018 we had a young exciting list but the bottom 10 or so still needed more work to realise their potential. Well not only have they not improved but I can easily name you 9 players that have gone backwards. Granted Jones, Jetta (age) TMac, AVB (injury) have reasons but then we have brought in May , Lever and Tomlinson ( obviously a defender by the way). None of our lower ranked players have come on at all, in fact the only player that has significantly improved is Trac. We all know if you stand still in this game you are going backwards. Who is responsible for player Development because just recycling the ANB's of the side sure isn't working.

Example why is Lockhart not being played?

Edited September 8, 20204 yr by loges
Extra content

4 minutes ago, jnrmac said:

Irrelevant and looking for excuses.

The ground you play at doesn't disguise the effort last night 

203 Uncontested posessions to 98

Our boys don't like to run, chase, cover their man or get back to help the defenders. But gee we're great at guarding grass.

Lazy and dumb. getting back from the man on the mark, not being on the goal line when someone is having a shot. Stupid 50m penalties, falling into the back of someone on the ground. 1m handballs to stationary players, 4 players flying for a mark.

But its the ground we play at thats the problem.

The supporter base should demand more from these pea hearts.

 

 

Covered a few of our problems there. A disgraceful exhibition of sloppiness over ridden by some stupid idea of chaos football.

We cannot even exhibit a semblance of Team Football. The only time i saw a shepherd was from the youngest player on the ground. The only time i saw i confident mark was from the second youngest player on the ground. They appear of all the AFL teams in the competition to have given up. Chaos is right, with our Team, both in the backline and the forward line. I reckon i could drop a few names here, players that are on big money contracts. But i hope the draft committee get some bal## 

23 minutes ago, binman said:

Was Richardson at the freo game? I don't recall seeing him.

Goodwin does not appear to listen to him on match days binman so I doubt it made any difference if He wasn’t there. 

7 minutes ago, america de cali said:

I believe his foot injury hasn’t recovered fully. Like he’s barefoot running on broken walnut shells during games. 

I thought of this however I don’t think it explains not being able to bend down, I’m no doctor though, just an observation.

2 hours ago, Wiseblood said:

And this stat has some merit.  We certainly can't hide behind it or blame it too much, but how many sides have played 9 games in 43 days in so many different places?  It has to take it's toll to a degree at some point.

I completely agree with this. The bye in Round 3 instead of after Round 14 has really had an impact. Mental fatigue as well as physical fatigue.

8 minutes ago, america de cali said:

I believe his foot injury hasn’t recovered fully. Like he’s barefoot running on broken walnut shells during games. 

He’s got a degenerative foot/ankle condition that will never get better. He can’t jump.

1 hour ago, layzie said:

Nice to know that Harmes did an Instagram post asking if there were any good tattoo artists on the Gold Coast. I think they're coping just fine. 

Harmes is an extremely low IQ individual

 

Edited September 8, 20204 yr by Pickett2Jackson

28 minutes ago, jnrmac said:

Irrelevant and looking for excuses.

The ground you play at doesn't disguise the effort last night 

203 Uncontested posessions to 98

Our boys don't like to run, chase, cover their man or get back to help the defenders. But gee we're great at guarding grass.

Lazy and dumb. getting back from the man on the mark, not being on the goal line when someone is having a shot. Stupid 50m penalties, falling into the back of someone on the ground. 1m handballs to stationary players, 4 players flying for a mark.

But its the ground we play at thats the problem.

The supporter base should demand more from these pea hearts.

 

 

I wasnt wearing my lucky jumper either.

3 minutes ago, Pickett2Jackson said:

Extremely low IQ individual

He then put up another post saying ‘After the season’s finished.’

8 hours ago, rolling fog said:

I didn't say anything about the players we have. I said Geelong, Hawthorn, Sydney and maybe Richmond have been able to achieve, to varying degrees, sustainable success without consistently high picks or massive trades.

Now of course there's exceptions to everything - Dangerfield, Franklin, Lynch etc. 

But they've developed the players they have or strategically targeted players they think they can develop. 

Case in point: take the Hawthorn sides of the three-peat years, a cursory look through their squad confirms, give or take, seven players that were top 20 picks by Hawthorn, and most of those were the players from the 'super-draft' years in the mid-2000's namely Hodge, Roughead, Lewis, Rioli etc. and all developed over a period of time by Clarkson and the support structures around them. The rest are picks +30 that they've nurtured to their potential or players they've secured from other clubs and rejuvenated - McEvoy, Hale, Burgoyne, Gibson, Lake, *cough* Frawley.

That's moneyball.  

We seem unwilling and/or unable to do this.

Absolute nonsense. They had high draft picks galore and elite players galore. Players wanted to go there. Did Buddy need “development” or Ablett or Dangerfield or Selwood or Lewis or any of the other elites. Of course not. They were naturally talented and motivated. Stop taking away personal responsibility from players for their own ‘development’ and behaviours. The coaches can try and tell them what to do but they are ultimately responsible for their own actions.

Edited September 8, 20204 yr by Coq au vin

6 hours ago, Watts the matter said:

I think Tmac has hurt us more than anything else. The games changes when you have a dangerous key forward. We can't go into 2021 hoping he can turn it around, that was this year. We have so many gaps on our list, I don't know where to start.

 

Tmac is our biggest list management problem. It has been painful to watch his decline.  Weids has shown improvement this year but has reverted to type over the last few games, lazy and ineffectual. He does not have the mantle to be our no.1 forward.

If we can move TMac on and negotiate a trade for Hogan I think we should do it. I could be reading way too much into it, but when I watched the footage from the Freo dressing room last night, when Longmuir was addressing the group, Hogan was stood to side looking sheepish. The other players were seated and chatting to each other. I didn’t see Hogan speak to anyone else. He looks lost to me. Getting him for a 3^rd round pick would be a cheap solution to our biggest need imv. I think we’re as good a chance as any other club to pick him up.

Having Hogan in the forward line with Weids takes the pressure off Jackson so he can develop in his own time. The worst thing we can do for his development is put him in a forward line with just a flaky Weids for company. As a second year player he is not ready to beat the best defenders in the league and expecting him to do so would be very poor management. We have form mis-managing players careers (Tmac, Watts, Trengrove) and it would be criminal if we did the same thing to Jackson.

Bring in Hogan and manufacture a trade for Williams (package up Brayshaw, picks, multi-club if needs be) and suddenly our list will have a much better look and balance to it.

TMac needs to work on his fitness and lose weight. Whoever told him to bulk up is a fool. This is not Rugby League. Players who bulk up too much go backwards in AFL. 

4 hours ago, Scoop Junior said:

This is reading far too much into a piece of vision that shows maybe 1% of what happened in the rooms post-game.

You simply don't know what had occurred previously nor what occurred after it. For all we know one of the blokes could've sat down and had a chat with Rivers for 15 minutes at some stage. Just because they're not around him in this small sample of vision doesn't mean it didn't happen and it's dangerous to make these kinds of assumptions off such limited footage.

The same when people say Goodwin in the box doesn't do A, B and C when the cameras probably pick up maybe 30 seconds to 1 minute's footage of the coach's box each quarter. You just can't make those assumptions.

By the same token I could probably make a highlights video showing Dean Terlich to be a gun rebounding defender.

I tend to agree with you. Different players deal with disappointment in different ways. You would need to see the entire segment from once they entered the dressing room until they left to get a proper read on what happened.

3 hours ago, binman said:

Was Richardson at the freo game? I don't recall seeing him.

He was in the coaches box. 

10 hours ago, Bring-Back-Powell said:

That “bye” we and Essendon had in round 3 was always going to come back to haunt both of us.

Any coincidence that both clubs have stunk up the joint recently.

And we haven’t had the luxury that North and Bulldogs have had - playing about 15 straight games in Surfers Paradise.

Agreed, I actually think we aren’t as bad as things seem.

We are just exhausted.