That was a good gutsy win without Clarry

Port were playing for their season 

I will take that win happily 

16 minutes ago, layzie said:

The performance was average, but the win was brilliant! We go up to this beautiful ground without our best player. our extractor, our fire starter, they may as well have been playing with a handycap against us Port. Disagree? Let's take Wines or Boak out and see how that goes for ya?

I'm not going to bullfart around, we were not good and we have some issues but a win like this gives us a fighting chance to get it right the next week, or the the week after, or the week after. As long as we are banking the wins I couldn't give a rat's toss. These guys are dealing with all sorts of spanners and wrenches being thrown at them right now and let's not forget that only two years ago this team would have folded in a game like this. It is time to stand up, say you're not happy with the performance, but be happy with the result, we have given ourselves a great fighting chance to go up against the dudes from Grand Final week last year and that is all that one can ask for.

Kozzie Pickett played a game for the ages. I think it's fair to say we don't win without his efforts today. We made our own luck at times and these are the moments that separate the best from the rest. I think had we played Port in the Grand Final last year we would have pulverized them into oblivion like Jens Pulver. There is absolutely no question in the world about it and if you want to take me on about it I'll see you in the car park. Anyway back to the game, Petracca was good, Viney was encouraging even without getting as much hard ball, I also think that Jack is moving as well as he ever has. Positive Lingers gave us the usual width, thought Spargo kept going and going, Sparrow did his bit. I think their were a lot of below par performance, I thought there were a lot of poor skill errors. Who cares.

Melksham made an excellent chase late in the game, he did play a role. I would love to get a little bit more out of him possession wise just because he's so good with it! We'll see what happens at selection. We seriously need Clarry back, I hope he never misses a game ever again and I hope Jack Crisp gets a corky next week. 

Counting down the days till loading ends, I'd like each and everyone of you to think about what flavour potato chips and chocolates you'll be brining along. In the meantime there's gonna be a few 'grinders' to come and that's what this team can do better than most in my view. 

We'd like to hear your views, answers in a postcard! 

Man, was this a journey

17 minutes ago, dazzledavey36 said:

Rivers was good.

Said in another thread that with his size and strength he doesn't get pushed off the ball due to body size unlike Bowey.

This is no criticism of Bowey BTW who I think has been exceptional, but Geelongs body strength last week just got to overwhelming for him. Another pre season and he'll be fine.

For me Rivers stays in the team for the rest of the year. When he's up and about he gives us good drive and hardness off half back.

I agree Trent was hard at it today and deserves to maintain his spot. Bowey will come back better and stronger either in a few weeks (form/injuries) or later. Another off season in the jym will help him immensely.

4 minutes ago, Hardley Benial said:

I agree Trent was hard at it today and deserves to maintain his spot. Bowey will come back better and stronger either in a few weeks (form/injuries) or later. Another off season in the jym will help him immensely.

I think Rivers takes D6/7 with Brayshaw in the defence. Bowey lacks physical presence for now plus is only a 2nd year player so his body isn’t up to sustained footy at this intensity.

 

1 hour ago, adonski said:

Thought Sparrow was admirable in effort and reasonably good today in patches but his fundamentals are non AFL standard. 

A-hem! Lad is already an AFL Premiership player, who is playing well enough to retain his place in a top two team! What is non AFL standard about that?

30 minutes ago, Sydney_Demon said:

 

 

 

Complete BS IMV. You only need to look at last year's Grand Final to see how good his fundamentals are!

Great post all round, but particularly regarding Sparrow, I completely agree. 
 

Folks who think Sparrow has gone from the form he displayed in last year’s finals to basically not knowing how to play footy anymore are totally weirding me out with their theories. I’m not going to say he’s been brilliant of late. He needs to regain some form. But ”regain” is the operative word here. 

Edited July 17, 20222 yr by Mel Bourne

Just now, waynewussell said:

A-hem! Lad is already an AFL Premiership player, who is playing well enough to retain his place in a top two team! What is non AFL standard about that?

I think the reality is if he had another midfielder with any form of upside in the reserves (I exclude first year players & known journeymen such as Dunstan), they'd be playing ahead of Sparrow

5 minutes ago, Mel Bourne said:

Great post all round, but particularly  regarding Sparrow, I completely agree. 
 

Folks who think Sparrow has gone from the form he displayed in last year’s finals to basically not knowing how to play footy anymore are totally weirding me out with their nonsense. I’m not going to say he’s been brilliant of late. He needs to regain some form. But ”regain” is the operative word here. 

He's effectively Weid 2.0 in that he had a couple of really good games in finals and that's about all we'll ever see from him I'd suspect

Edited July 17, 20222 yr by adonski

1 minute ago, adonski said:

He's effectively Weid 2.0 in that he had a couple of really good games in finals and that's about we'll ever see from him I'd suspect

That’s a big call. 
 

I have faith in the guy. 
 

We shall see….

The opposition marks the balls in the pocket then our defenders switch off allowing them to turn and quickly hit up a teammate in a better position. This has been creeping back into our game. The Dogs love to do this (Richmond thrived on it) so we need to remain focused.

Edited July 17, 20222 yr by Bombay Airconditioning

2 hours ago, rufus said:

Where do you source the pressure rating numbers from? Ans is there a site with past games that you know of?

There was a graphic on Fox Footy. I suspect its a paid Champion Data stat

Well below our best, we beat one of the in form teams of the comp. Without our best player.

I’d say that’s a solid victory. 

Some big games to come, let’s keep moving forward!

Finally catching up on the game.

Gee I hope the coachs speak to Fritsch about these little selfish habits of him not passing to a teammate. That should have been a sitter for Spargo except fritta kicks it out of bounds

1 hour ago, At the break of Gawn said:

Never rated us all last year until 4th qtr of the grand final. Reigning premier this year and still doesn’t rate us.

Just like a lot of demonlanders :-)

Thank god for Kozzy Pickett. He literally dragged us over the line in one of the best individual performances all year

We’re still not firing on all cylinders and got beaten in pretty much all the key stats. Got smashed around the ball again and in clearances. Had a low inside 50 count, it was really just the class of Kozzy, a bit of BB and Fritsch that got us over the line.

Also, watching first crack earlier and Montagna is convinced that we’ve decided on the 2 tall set up. 2 talls (Brown and Gawn/Jacko), 2 medium sized (Fritsch and Melksham (had 7 tackles)), and 2 smalls (Kozzy and Spargo/AnB). We had the most amount of marks inside 50 in ages and our forward pressure was good for once.

I thought Tomlinson was excellent  today. Deserves to hold his spot but may miss out for Petty. 

35 minutes ago, adonski said:

He's effectively Weid 2.0 in that he had a couple of really good games in finals and that's about all we'll ever see from him I'd suspect

WTF are you talking about??

Are you another who watches the Stat sheets and NOT THE ACTUAL GAME???

Also good to see Liam jurrah at the game. I hope he's in a good spot. He'd looked like he is.

Edited July 17, 20222 yr by dees189227

1 hour ago, Sydney_Demon said:

He only had 6 disposals, but the run-down tackle and goal he scored were important. He was brought into the side to limit Aliir's influence and he did that. Importantly, he paid 7 tackles. I'm no Melksham fan but credit to the selectors for picking him.

Well said. Frankly, I would have taken a 1-point win pre-game. Port were virtually playing for their season today. 

8-3 actually. 1 bad loss to Geelong in Geelong (35 points) . The other 2 losses were by 12 points to Richmond at the MCG, and 8 points to the Dockers at Optus.

And we've had a much tougher draw (which will continue for the rest of the season).

This has been the issue all season. Looking at the draw pre-season Western Bulldogs looked to have the toughest draw, just ahead of Melbourne, but for Melbourne the issue has been the travel and the fact the AFL inevitably give us a 9 or 10 day break following a Thursday or Friday night game.

Oliver is the best player in the comp. Obviously we haven't got someone to replace him. Rather than bring Dunstan in the Club decided to bring Melksham in to play a role (which he did). In retrospect given Bedford's lack of impact it might have been better to have played JVR/Dunstan rather than Bedford/Melksham but overall the win justifies the decision even if we did lose clearances.

It is. I'm so over Demonland posters who say we've beaten no-one yet. We've beaten Port twice, Western Bulldogs, Brisbane, St Kilda. The sides we've lost to are currently 1st, 4th, 5th & 6th. The draw this year for Melbourne is particularly tough because the teams we play twice are Port, Western Bulldogs, Brisbane, Fremantle, Collingwood (at worst all in the Top 10). We got Collingwood, Geelong got North. We play Geelong once and it's in Geelong. We get a home game against Port In Alice Springs, they get a home game against us in Adelaide. 

Not true. BBB gets up and down the ground better than nearly all KPFs in the Comp, with the exception of Jeremy Cameron. He didn't show up for 1 quarter only. 14 disposals, 8 marks, 2 goals. Could have kicked another couple easily.

Our record is 13-4 with a percentage of 132.6%. We've been off our best over the past 7 weeks, but we've lost to good sides in form. We've lost to the 1st, 4th, 5th & 6th teams. If we're playing at 70% of our best then our best will be a GF win like last year. We've beaten last year's Grand Finalist, beaten one losing Preliminary Finalist twice. Fremantle & particularly Collingwood have been much better then last year's ladder positions would have indicated. We're not going to finish with a 17-1-4 record this year because our Draw is at least 15% tougher than 2021, and as it turns out much tougher than all our rivals. We could not finish Top 4 and still have played better on average this year. People are entitled to their opinions, but it's not just those who are more positive in their opinions who need to admit it when they get it wrong!

Complete BS IMV. You only need to look at last year's Grand Final to see how good is fundamentals are!

Excellent post. 

We have lost clearances in the last 2 games by 13 and 18

We are playing one of the best clearance teams on the competition this week off a 6 day break in hot conditions.

Hopefully Oliver will be back but we are like the little boy with his finger in the dyke at the moment. Lots of holes being plugged

 

Need to lift in the middle big time

10 minutes ago, jnrmac said:

We are playing one of the best clearance teams on the competition this week off a 6 day break in hot conditions.

Low to mid-20s. Not exactly Darwin or Cairns.

Strange to see Ed in the short sleeved jumper

Good win. One thing that did worry me was Gawn’s centre square hit out when Port had a run on near the end. He easily won the hit out but hit it straight onto the chest of a port player on their defensive side who was completely on his own allowing an easy clearance into ports 50. Why. Seems like a silly error for such a good player who should have been practicing what he’d do if an opponent was in danger of winning the match 

Having watched the replay, I reckon we were nowhere near as bad as most are suggesting.

We intercepted well and our transition from D50 to forward 50 felt really solid to me. 

We were dominated in clearances, but as I said before I can understand how that might happen when we go into a game without Oliver for the first time in a long time against an opponent with a decent midfield. 

Major disappointments IMO were Gawn and Jackson failing to dominate anywhere on the ground against two part-time rucks, Fritsch burning a teammate in the first quarter (when will it stop?), and giving up those last three goals and the consequent percentage, which we need to hold onto top 2/4.

Melksham exceeded my expectations, but to be fair they were very low.

Brown's best game for a while, if not all season. Held his marks, got on the move, nailed field kicks. That's the standard we need to continue to see. We're still a tall forward short IMO. We don't need all of Pickett, Spargo, ANB, Bedford and Melksham.

Really impressed with Hibberd's game, Tomlinson was an able replacement for Petty, and I thought both Jordon and Langdon were stunning with their two-way running in the heat.