Just now, binman said:

Is it?

I would say so. Most demanding spot on the ground is CHF. 

If ever a first year player is going to do what Bowey did - it would be off a HBF.

1 minute ago, one_demon said:

Yes

Why?

1 minute ago, binman said:

Why?

Because key positions are more difficult to play in than positions like inside-mid or half back flank and so it takes a lot more time.

Just now, one_demon said:

Because key positions are more difficult to play in than positions like inside-mid or half back flank and so it takes a lot more time.

Ok

1 hour ago, Deespicable said:

Sydney Demon: Why do posters keep talking about moving Petty forward? We have the best defence in the league with Petty in the side in defence.  So you keep Tomlinson in the side and push Petty forwards? That weakens our defence and Petty hasn't been training in attack so why experiment? If you want to go tall you bring a forward in from Casey, not play a backman in attack!

Petty played up front in 2019 and looked quite capable before injury and we all know he has a little more mobility than Ben Brown and Weid, so is an enticing prospect as our lead-up forward. Given our reluctance to play Weid, the youth of JVR and T-Mac's injury, there is sound logic in the move - although whether Tomlinson has the pace to replace him down back on a permanent basis is the big question. That is why when Joel Smith comes back, the option becomes a little more appealing and in the event of injury to a big during a game, reverting to the three-tall forward option enables us the flexibility of sending Petty back just as we had to with T-Mac a couple of times last year.

It's a discussion Demonlanders are all having and I'm sure our selectors are also pondering. 

I know Petty played up forward in 2019, although I'm not quite sure what you can take from that season given we finished 5-17. I don't think it was a considered move. Basically he was the last man standing and since the middle of last year he has been a key part of a Premiership-winning defence. I take your point about having a backman playing forwards providing the benefit of providing cover in case a key defender gets injured during the game, and we have been unluckily caught out a couple of times this year in TMac's absence. Certainly, it's proved that Weideman can't play defence. JVR is a swing man and played as a key defender before he was drafted. I still think he's a better option than weakening our defence to basically experiment when we have alternatives. I'm not sure I understand your point about Joel Smith. Surely you're not suggesting him as a  replacement for Petty down back?

I'm happy for others to disagree with me. I have no idea what our selectors are considering and I'm surprised you're sure they're pondering this move. I'm not saying they're not. If they were, I would have thought this was the week to make the move rather than drop Tomlinson.
 

9 minutes ago, dazzledavey36 said:

Well then they shouldn't haven't offered him a 2 year deal last year because they're stuck with him for another year.

I don't think it's remotely as simple a decision as you present. It comes down to how much the contract was worth. It could well have been a case of contract smoothing, like it reportedly was with TMac. Depending on contract value you can still trade players mid-season but I do agree if his form totally craters and he becomes an untradable liabiity then we're stuck with him. Players form is  a bit of a moveable feast and it's not like we did a Grundy and offered a long-term high-value contract which I assume can only be moved on on the basis of Collingwood continuing to pay a significant part of his salary.

35 minutes ago, binman said:

Do you mean the fella Goody has selected two weeks in a row at a critical point in the season?

Yes I do.

While I might be wrong and I acknowledge Goody knows far more about footy than me Bin, we are still entitled to have our own opinions.

I don’t subscribe to the theory that Coaches and even Premiership ones, are always right and protected from criticism. 

Otherwise we should close DL down today and all agree that everything is perfect.

Btw I have nothing against Melksham, who has been a great pickup for us, but IMO he is not our future and I don’t think his form justifies his selection. TBH, Chandler deserves that position on form, if we are playing a Melksham type.

Anyway I hope he plays well, given he is the one selected.

Well after a few disruptions, we have our best 22 on the park aside from T Mac.

A quality premiership defence - Petty/May/Lever/Salem/Hibbo/Gus/Rivers

A quality Midfield - Clarry, Trac, Gawn, Viney, LJ, Langdon, Harmes, Jordon, Swallow

A forward line - Fritsch, Brown, Melksham, Kozzi, Spargo, ANB

Not hard to see what our weakness is but if we can win defence and midfield, we will score enough to beat the inconsistent dogs. 

22 minutes ago, D4Life said:

If by strange side you mean line up, it would be surprising if we line up like what was printed.

Otherwise Melksham in for TMac and Jordan for Bowser are only changes, plus medi sub from last years GF team.

Demons had a good win last week, so did Dogs but they are front runners, don’t put pressure on them and away they go.

Dogs injured in Caleb D & Duryea are major outs, Daniels has hurt Demons big time in a number of matches and Duryea is very good and Dogs best at minimising small forwards influence. Bruce just back and not in form only helps their structure, but he has a way to go!

Their defence is still ordinary, forward line not much better than last year and midfield the same.

I’m confident Demons winning margin closer to 35 points!

I don't think Duryea or Crosier for that matter are still in the Bulldogs Best 22. Ed Richards is ahead of both of them. Daniel is a big out though. Interesting the Doggies didn't bring in Schache or Hunter this week off H&S Protocols. 6 players out last week (only 1 omitted) but have only brought back Naughton.

This ground should suit our smaller fwd set up to be honest. This will be a game that is won from clearances. At the moment we are awful. If that does not improve its going to be hard to win. If It does, we should win.

We have 20+ premiership players?

Half their side are also rans.  

We are equal top. They are 50/50 record outside the eight. 

If we dont [censored] them by 8 goals we have no business winning a flag this year. The draw and competition only gets harder from here. 

The only loss i could remotely understand is at Marvel it sometimes just becomes a ping pong type game back and forth quickly. 

On paper we have a strong side yet we are struggling to kick winning scores. B.Brown  would have to be counted as a failure to date however we don't seem to have anyone to replace him  as far as Goody concern. Many other players that are also below par. Perhaps Jackson not signing has an affect on him and the rest of the team .  I think the doggies will thrash us.

1 hour ago, dazzledavey36 said:

Well then they shouldn't haven't offered him a 2 year deal last year because they're stuck with him for another year.

Not necessarily. If he wants to leave and we don't want to keep him, a trade can be organised. However, I suspect the two year deal suit us better than him. We're desperately short of ruckmen and if Jackson leaves, Weideman is our only real option to support Gawn unless we recruit an experienced ruckman during the off season.

Think it'll be a game of momentum shifts as always with the dogs but I think we can get up, should be able to put a winning score on the board at Marvel 

1 minute ago, COOLX said:

 B.Brown  would have to be counted as a failure to date 

 

That ‘ship says otherwise.

54 minutes ago, Redleg said:

Yes I do.

While I might be wrong and I acknowledge Goody knows far more about footy than me Bin, we are still entitled to have our own opinions.

I don’t subscribe to the theory that Coaches and even Premiership ones, are always right and protected from criticism. 

Otherwise we should close DL down today and all agree that everything is perfect.

Btw I have nothing against Melksham, who has been a great pickup for us, but IMO he is not our future and I don’t think his form justifies his selection. TBH, Chandler deserves that position on form, if we are playing a Melksham type.

Anyway I hope he plays well, given he is the one selected.

Yep, fair enough.

I also don’t subscribe to the theory that Coaches and even Premiership ones, are always right and protected from criticism. 

We have long been conditioned as fans to use a player's raw stats as the key measure of their performance.

So BB gets bagged over the last few weeks for his low possession numbers, low mark numbers and lack of goals. And Melksham gets bagged because he  only had six possessions against Port. 

But i I have heard Goody say that they don't assess performance on stats so many times it's not funny - for example when asked about Kossie not scoring goals and/or getting very few possessions, or why BB or Tmac are not hitting the scoreboard etc etc. 

Ever since he became the senior coach, Goody has been crystal clear that every player has a specific role and that he judges their performance on how well they execute that role. 

The challenge for us as fans is we often don't know what their role is, or fully understand the nuance of what Goody has asked them to execute. Which can make it hard to work out why a player continues to be selected, despite, say super low possessions numbers or few direct involvements in the game.

But i think it is reasonable to assume that in most circumstances where a player continues to get selected, particularly one who is not an automatic best 22 selection,  that player will have executed his designated role to Goody's satisfaction

10 minutes ago, binman said:

Yep, fair enough.

I also don’t subscribe to the theory that Coaches and even Premiership ones, are always right and protected from criticism. 

We have long been conditioned as fans to use a player's raw stats as the key measure of their performance.

So BB gets bagged over the last few weeks for his low possession numbers, low mark numbers and lack of goals. And Melksham gets bagged because he  only had six possessions against Port. 

But i I have heard Goody say that they don't assess performance on stats so many times it's not funny - for example when asked about Kossie not scoring goals and/or getting very few possessions, or why BB or Tmac are not hitting the scoreboard etc etc. 

Ever since he became the senior coach, Goody has been crystal clear that every player has a specific role and that he judges their performance on how well they execute that role. 

The challenge for us as fans is we often don't know what their role is, or fully understand the nuance of what Goody has asked them to execute. Which can make it hard to work out why a player continues to be selected, despite, say super low possessions numbers or few direct involvements in the game.

But i think it is reasonable to assume that in most circumstances where a player continues to get selected, particularly one who is not an automatic best 22 selection,  that player will have executed his designated role to Goody's satisfaction

Fair enough.

My opinion was not just stats based.  I think he is slow. He fumbled two handpass receives at critical stages last week. He is not tall and able to play key forward, doesn't take contested marks, nor bring the ball to the ground. He is short term at best now. He is a very good kick, yet butchered a simple pass to Fritta in the 3rd quarter. These are the main reasons for my opinion, which I accept could be wrong.

 

I’d like to know why, with an all Australian midfield, we cannot constantly win clearances? In only 8 out of 17 games this year have we won total stoppage clearance - and worse, in only 5 games have we won the centre clearance battle. Yet every time we have won the stoppage clearance, we have won the game - 8 from 8 - which I don’t think is any sort of coincidence. We have obviously won 5 of the remaining 9 matches without winning clearances, so we set ourselves up well enough to overcome this lose about 55% of the time. (I don’t know the stats from last year  but I don’t remember us being so poor at these stoppages). We only have to look at the GF last year to know what damage we can do if we win the centre clearances, but there have been very, very few signs of this happening this year. 3 out of our 4 centre bounce players are All Australian, and we continually lose clearance? That’s a really big problem in my eyes. Don’t tell me about defensive pressure on opposition clearance means we can win the ball back, etc, because so far this year if we win clearance, we win the game. If we lose clearances, we win 55% of the games. I’d much prefer to win the clearances thank you.

5 minutes ago, Redleg said:

Fair enough.

My opinion was not just stats based.  I think he is slow. He fumbled two handpass receives at critical stages last week. He is not tall and able to play key forward, doesn't take contested marks, nor bring the ball to the ground. He is short term at best now. He is a very good kick, yet butchered a simple pass to Fritta in the 3rd quarter. These are the main reasons for my opinion, which I accept could be wrong.

 

I wasn't suggesting you only went on stats, apologies for the inference.

I agrre with your observations. Id add he is now painfully slow.

I also agree he is short term- and will likely go out this week, almost regardless of well he plays. 

He no doubt has been given a specific job in the dogs game. I suspect it will be negating Dale. And perhaps also doing his best to impact aeriel contests and prevent oppo intercept marks.

 

11 minutes ago, Neil Crompton said:

I’d like to know why, with an all Australian midfield, we cannot constantly win clearances? In only 8 out of 17 games this year have we won total stoppage clearance - and worse, in only 5 games have we won the centre clearance battle. Yet every time we have won the stoppage clearance, we have won the game - 8 from 8 - which I don’t think is any sort of coincidence. We have obviously won 5 of the remaining 9 matches without winning clearances, so we set ourselves up well enough to overcome this lose about 55% of the time. (I don’t know the stats from last year  but I don’t remember us being so poor at these stoppages). We only have to look at the GF last year to know what damage we can do if we win the centre clearances, but there have been very, very few signs of this happening this year. 3 out of our 4 centre bounce players are All Australian, and we continually lose clearance? That’s a really big problem in my eyes. Don’t tell me about defensive pressure on opposition clearance means we can win the ball back, etc, because so far this year if we win clearance, we win the game. If we lose clearances, we win 55% of the games. I’d much prefer to win the clearances thank you.

I think it's because we concentrate on coming out the front of the clearance.  A lot of teams are happy to go out the back and wide, but when we come out the front it invariably leads to a score.

2 hours ago, Clayton spirit said:

I think Weid is fine, without Brown, just don't think Weid/Brown works at all, the 2 traditional tall setup is not very successful nowadays and I think Goody sees this. Neither is particularly quick or good at ground level. You look at Cameron/Hawkins and Curnow/McKay and you have the more traditional big and then the very agile one who is a threat when the ball hits the ground 

Surely you jest the weid is a poor man's ruckman end of story.

Tomlinson in, Petty forward? (If Brown doesn't play that is)

 

23 minutes ago, binman said:

I wasn't suggesting you only went on stats, apologies for the inference.

I agrre with your observations. Id add he is now painfully slow.

I also agree he is short term- and will likely go out this week, almost regardless of well he plays. 

He no doubt has been given a specific job in the dogs game. I suspect it will be negating Dale. And perhaps also doing his best to impact aeriel contests and prevent oppo intercept marks.

 

No need to apologize.

Looks like the Dogs have loaded up on tall forwards this week. 

3 hours ago, Clayton spirit said:

I think Weid is fine, without Brown, just don't think Weid/Brown works at all, the 2 traditional tall setup is not very successful nowadays and I think Goody sees this. Neither is particularly quick or good at ground level. You look at Cameron/Hawkins and Curnow/McKay and you have the more traditional big and then the very agile one who is a threat when the ball hits the ground 

Well then Bevo clearly has no idea, as he has gone for the three tall forwards, Naughton, Bruce and JUH.

7 minutes ago, Redleg said:

Well then Bevo clearly has no idea, as he has gone for the three tall forwards, Naughton, Bruce and JUH.

With English as the lone ruck, though 

10 minutes ago, Clayton spirit said:

With English as the lone ruck, though 

Yes but you were saying two key forwards is today not the best way and Bevo has 3 in this week.   

You posted   ( the 2 traditional tall setup is not very successful nowadays and I think Goody sees this. )