Just as I am sure many of us here are...I am still in a blind rage after losing to the Brisbane Lions.

What an absolutely disgraceful waste of a season!

Especially after winning the first 10 games of the season and hoping to go back to back as Premiers.

What a pathetic end to the finals too.

Dumb turnovers and decision-making and dumb coaching.

I spent over $500+ on a Melbourne Demons reserve seat Redlegs memberships and also bought finals tickets. Only to be served up a big steaming pile of excrement by the players and coaches.

To go out in straight sets is a utter humiliation.

The players and coaches should be ashamed on themselves for that.

No more pats on the back for a "good effort" by the players. We cannot accept such a disappointing end to the season.

We as Melbourne members and supporters should not tolerate this if we want to be a serious AFL Club that demands success. Clubs like Hawthorn, Geelong, Sydney and Collingwood wouldn't accept this.

The Melbourne Football Club needs to know that we as supporters and members won't put up with this type of garbage.

From now on anything less than a Premiership is a failure.

It is going to take me an extremely long time to cool down after this gigantic embarassment!

I demand a Flag next season!

Rant over.

5 minutes ago, Supreme_Demon said:

Just as I am sure many of us here are...I am still in a blind rage after losing to the Brisbane Lions.

What an absolutely disgraceful waste of a season!

Especially after winning the first 10 games of the season and hoping to go back to back as Premiers.

What a pathetic end to the finals too.

Dumb turnovers and decision-making and dumb coaching.

I spent over $500+ on a Melbourne Demons reserve seat Redlegs memberships and also bought finals tickets. Only to be served up a big steaming pile of excrement by the players and coaches.

To go out in straight sets is a utter humiliation.

The players and coaches should be ashamed on themselves for that.

No more pats on the back for a "good effort" by the players. We cannot accept such a disappointing end to the season.

We as Melbourne members and supporters should not tolerate this if we want to be a serious AFL Club that demands success. Clubs like Hawthorn, Geelong, Sydney and Collingwood wouldn't accept this.

The Melbourne Football Club needs to know that we as supporters and members won't put up with this type of garbage.

From now on anything less than a Premiership is a failure.

It is going to take me an extremely long time to cool down after this gigantic embarassment!

I demand a Flag next season!

Rant over.

Understand your anger, but what is the point of this post? We won the flag last year and broke the drought. Every club studied our game plan. We became the hunted. We finished in 2nd place. Yep, we were out of form second half of the year and we bowed out of finals in a disappointing manner. We still had some good wins along the way. It just wasn’t to be this year. It’s a failure for me too, but I’ll take this over talking about draft picks in July anyway. We must reset and get some players in to fill some gaps. We also need to see some more of the players in the 2s given opportunities. Too many players were rewarded with games when out of form

We looked busted after half time again.

What has happened to our footy club in the space of 3 months.

Complete and utter failure.

Players obviously not the same after injuries this year, did we go too hard in our prep?

Players looked completely burnt out.

Or not hard enough? Questions must be ask.

 

Guess what, we found out going back to back is extremely hard and our players faded out. What an incredibly obnoxious, entitled topic to post. You support a team which won a premiership last season breaking a massive drought, and finished top 2, despite huge adversity. Cry me a river.

This was such a Melbourne to end the season and completely blow it.

We seemed so distant as a playing group and you could see it on the field in the 2 finals. It was a shame as some of the old 'Melbourne of old' habits came back.

They need to get it right in the off season. Get all of the youngsters in early and [censored] it, bring back more of the attacking kind of gamestyle of 2018, I think that kind of game suits us more and can compete with the upcoming contenders. We also need to get the fitness program right, Goody can say all he wants about that not being a problem but I'm convinced Griffith failed to prepare them properly. Let's hope going out in straight sets doesn't send us into a spiral, although I think we are stronger than that and can use this to motivate us for next season. We have built a solid environment.

On the positive side, we now get a longer break and the amount of 19 and 20 year olds in the 2's could really lift us next year. We have a very strong team, that was proven all year that even with our dysfunctional gameplan at times we still weren't easy to beat and teams really needed to hustle to get over us.

I see more upside than downside.

Edited September 9, 20222 yr by Deenooos_

Biggest waste is not experimenting with options. For my mind, Milkshake, Hibberd and Ben Brown won't be a part of our future. Already borderline. Need to make some tough calls.

2 hours ago, Supreme_Demon said:

Just as I am sure many of us here are...I am still in a blind rage after losing to the Brisbane Lions.

What an absolutely disgraceful waste of a season!

Especially after winning the first 10 games of the season and hoping to go back to back as Premiers.

What a pathetic end to the finals too.

Dumb turnovers and decision-making and dumb coaching.

I spent over $500+ on a Melbourne Demons reserve seat Redlegs memberships and also bought finals tickets. Only to be served up a big steaming pile of excrement by the players and coaches.

To go out in straight sets is a utter humiliation.

The players and coaches should be ashamed on themselves for that.

No more pats on the back for a "good effort" by the players. We cannot accept such a disappointing end to the season.

We as Melbourne members and supporters should not tolerate this if we want to be a serious AFL Club that demands success. Clubs like Hawthorn, Geelong, Sydney and Collingwood wouldn't accept this.

The Melbourne Football Club needs to know that we as supporters and members won't put up with this type of garbage.

From now on anything less than a Premiership is a failure.

It is going to take me an extremely long time to cool down after this gigantic embarassment!

I demand a Flag next season!

Rant over.

Are these the same fickle members and supporters who didn't even bother turning up to the game last night?

The ones who in not being there made it feel like a Brisbane home game and amongst other things allowed Harrison [censored] petty of all people to get booed and Zorko applauded?

Those ones?

Don't think the club or players would give two [censored] about them mate. I sure don't. They can all hand in their memberships and [censored] right off as far as I'm concerned.

3 hours ago, YesitwasaWin4theAges said:

We looked busted after half time again.

What has happened to our footy club in the space of 3 months.

Complete and utter failure.

Players obviously not the same after injuries this year, did we go too hard in our prep?

Players looked completely burnt out.

Or not hard enough? Questions must be ask.

 

During the season I called out that we didn’t use enough players and the nuffies here said “well it worked in 2021”.

The result we saw this year was a team of burnt out players, not a surprise at all.

And this was with a relatively healthy list.

Our forward line in the past month would have looked far more dynamic with the likes of JVR and Joel Smith (the hill I will die on) instead of Brown, ANB, Spargo and Melksham.

3 minutes ago, Clint Bizkit said:

During the season I called out that we didn’t use enough players and the nuffies here said “well it worked in 2021”.

The result we saw this year was a team of burnt out players, not a surprise at all.

And this was with a relatively healthy list.

Our forward line in the past month would have looked far more dynamic with the likes of JVR and Joel Smith (the hill I will die on) instead of Brown, ANB, Spargo and Melksham.

Our best players weren’t healthy. Your larger point is correct though IMO, we actively avoided using our squad in favour of players limping with tape supporting their knees…

To lose 2 home finals is totally unacceptable and reflects a poor performance from both players and coaches. Mistakes kept repeating themselves and there was no attempt to make the necessary changes to personnel and game plan. The high number of out on the fulls, down the field frees and 50 metre penalties were responsible for a lot of goals and probably the difference between winning and losing. A disciplined and focused side would not have made those mistakes. All the talk about wanting to perform well in front of a home crowd now seems like empty rhetoric because it was not backed up by action on the field. Everyone at the Club needs to have a long hard look at themselves.

1 hour ago, JTR said:

Are these the same fickle members and supporters who didn't even bother turning up to the game last night?

The ones who in not being there made it feel like a Brisbane home game and amongst other things allowed Harrison [censored] petty of all people to get booed and Zorko applauded?

Those ones?

Don't think the club or players would give two [censored] about them mate. I sure don't. They can all hand in their memberships and [censored] right off as far as I'm concerned.

I didn't go last night, because I couldn't afford it.

I did go last week against Sydney, oh and to 90% to our home games in the H&A , so I shouldn't say a word or complain about the way we played in this finals?

Don't be too rushed to criticise your fellow supporters.

15 minutes ago, Clint Bizkit said:

During the season I called out that we didn’t use enough players and the nuffies here said “well it worked in 2021”.

The result we saw this year was a team of burnt out players, not a surprise at all.

And this was with a relatively healthy list.

Our forward line in the past month would have looked far more dynamic with the likes of JVR and Joel Smith (the hill I will die on) instead of Brown, ANB, Spargo and Melksham.

I agree to a degree. It was hard seeing us limp through last night,  but we weren't winning more games with the players you listed.

I think we all would have loved seeing JVR get a few games this year and thank god they are finally trying Smith as a forward, but it needed to be done early in the season.

One debutant all year. Makes the best first year player an easy call.

But I would have liked to see some freshening up.

4 hours ago, Supreme_Demon said:

Just as I am sure many of us here are...I am still in a blind rage after losing to the Brisbane Lions.

What an absolutely disgraceful waste of a season!

Especially after winning the first 10 games of the season and hoping to go back to back as Premiers.

What a pathetic end to the finals too.

Dumb turnovers and decision-making and dumb coaching.

I spent over $500+ on a Melbourne Demons reserve seat Redlegs memberships and also bought finals tickets. Only to be served up a big steaming pile of excrement by the players and coaches.

To go out in straight sets is a utter humiliation.

The players and coaches should be ashamed on themselves for that.

No more pats on the back for a "good effort" by the players. We cannot accept such a disappointing end to the season.

We as Melbourne members and supporters should not tolerate this if we want to be a serious AFL Club that demands success. Clubs like Hawthorn, Geelong, Sydney and Collingwood wouldn't accept this.

The Melbourne Football Club needs to know that we as supporters and members won't put up with this type of garbage.

From now on anything less than a Premiership is a failure.

It is going to take me an extremely long time to cool down after this gigantic embarassment!

I demand a Flag next season!

Rant over.

Pathetic post.

Flags don't just happen. We've won one in 57 years. Back to back gets even harder as you become the hunted. 

All clubs demand success,  but successful clubs learn from their failures.

I’m sorry, but the “I’ve spent (enter amount here) on membership/s” really [censored] bugs me.

A lot paid up in 2020 and got absolutely nothing out if it. There’s also a lot that probably can’t afford memberships, still get them and don’t whinge about it. 

5 hours ago, YesitwasaWin4theAges said:

We looked busted after half time again.

What has happened to our footy club in the space of 3 months.

Complete and utter failure.

Players obviously not the same after injuries this year, did we go too hard in our prep?

Players looked completely burnt out.

Or not hard enough? Questions must be ask.

 

Yes to pretty much everything.

We tried EVERYTHING we did last year, without a plan B. Played injured players like last year expecting same result. Do we blame players for putting their hand up to play,

OR coaches for not freshening up when it was so obvious blokes were playing hurt AND being so damn predictable and refusing to make changes when teams picked us apart in 2nd halves .

It's the latter for me.

We looked good in nearly every first half before running out of steam

 

3 hours ago, JTR said:

Are these the same fickle members and supporters who didn't even bother turning up to the game last night?

The ones who in not being there made it feel like a Brisbane home game and amongst other things allowed Harrison [censored] petty of all people to get booed and Zorko applauded?

Those ones?

Don't think the club or players would give two [censored] about them mate. I sure don't. They can all hand in their memberships and [censored] right off as far as I'm concerned.

This narrative is absolute rubbish. 85% of the crowd last night was Melbourne. Every metric you look at shows we have the second best turn up of Members to games across the comp (second only to Freo because of their member numbers and where they play).

The supporters are tired of seeing the side get beaten in exactly the same way for the last 3 months. Last night we turned up and we wanted it. 

I can not stand that supporters blame other supporters. It’s factually incorrect, and an entirely useless exercise.

It seems to me that stubbornness and lack of vision, as well as not turning over the playing list at all (Disco the single exception and that for only one game in which he did very well before injury) caught us out in the end. 
Blind Freddie could see that there were players in the last 8 or so games who were not up to it physically (through injury) yet Casey went through undefeated until the final round but there good performers were not rewarded with initiation into a reigning premiership team.  

Well that’s that, a very disappointing end to the season after last year’s high. Was desperate to see us into the GF live in person. But it want meant to me. I’m absolutely gutted and sure we all feel it and ducks the weekend now. I’m just annoyed that we continued all year to keep the structure and players on the park when clearly other teams worked us out. Our second half fade outs continued all year and nothing changed we had the odd game we played well but generally this was a trend. Teams evolve that’s why they are always successful cats, hawks, swans even hate to say it pies. We didn’t all year

we rode that’s years ride 10 rounds into this year and it didn’t work. So gutted even writing this but it feels good to get it out. Love the dees but so disappointing to go out like this. Hopefully we learn / adapt and recruit aggressively to get us back to the pinnacle.

Richmond premierships 2017,2019,2020

Geelong premierships 

2007,2009,2011.

Give me hope but 2016 Bulldogs, 2018 wce have me slightly concerned 

 

 

 

For me, this is not about being bitter or angry. I love this team. They will forever be my sporting heroes. This is just my own honest assessments and views on our 2022 season.

 

I started to worry after the trade and draft period. We brought in a one player, a fringe player from St. Kilda who could potentially crack our 22. “Don’t worry. The improvement will come from within!” we were told. Teams don’t stand still. That Geelong side we beat in the prelim are an 8 goal better side this year due to changes in personnel and a tweak in their game plan. I believe that we just thought incremental improvement would happen.

 

Into the season. We were winning, but there were worrying trends. Failure to bury teams. Drop offs in games. Lack of cohesion going inside 50. Scoring was labour intensive. “That’s okay. We’ll click when it matters” we all thought.

 

Then we started to play the good teams. Teams that were ravenously hungry. Teams that had studied us intensively for 2 years and had worked us out. Teams that out-hunted us, and ran across the top of the ground a lot better than us. Teams that knew that if they stayed in games against us, they could run over the top of us. Did we have a Plan B for such occasions? I’m not sure.

 

The football world could see the issues. Lack of skill execution under pressure. Lack of cohesion going forward. Lack of reliable focal points in attack. Drop off in our pressure game. What was done about it in the second half of the year to buck these trends? Nothing. Goodwin was stubborn. He backed in his game plan. He backed in his core group of players. And by the time it got to last night, we were forced to play banged up players and players in questionable form because it was too late to bring in options from Casey.

 

I am glad the season is over. Truth be told, I didn’t enjoy the year at all. My heart was telling me we could win the thing, but my eyes and brain were telling me something different. The players said all the right things about being hungry, but Sydney showed us last week what it means to be truly hungry for 4 quarters. It is so hard to go back to back.

 

Am I excited for next year? Bloody oath! We finished 5^th in a year where our forward line was broken. We led in 7 of our 8 losses by 20 plus points. When it mattered, our important players were banged up and not at their best. I believe that with a few changes to 22 after an aggressive trade period and some adjustments to the game plan, we can challenge again in 2023.  

Black veil over world.

Agreed that it was a failed season. When it mattered most we went to water, think of all the games where at qtr time you would have been thinking this is good, 10 goal win coming up. 
 

I am thinking it’s a coaching issue rather than fitness but seeing us get rundown on the scoreboard time and time again is frustrating

At least we don’t get embarrassed by Geelong next week. They would absolutely tear us a new one.