May was right last year when he said we won a flag because blokes like Tomlinson and Melksham weren’t playing.

8 minutes ago, Clintosaurus said:

Genius move by the Drug Cheats to appoint someone from the AFL as coach. All the club Intel, mates with the umps and ARC...

Glad I gave my ticket away.

We'll pump Richmond next week.

Nah we'll probably play Cotchin and Riewoldt back into form. 

Worst game we have played in a long time and I was at the Gabba when we lost to the lions. 
 

Pick up ur game boys. 

Guessing we will get no Coaches votes this week. 

2 minutes ago, Doug Reemer said:

May was right last year when he said we won a flag because blokes like Tomlinson and Melksham weren’t playing.

Except he was worse than both of them 

Another [censored] weekend coming up. Bummer!

Scott showed Goodwin how to use 2 rucks to advantage. That threw us and the rest was soon history.

That's just a game you move on from.

Fun fact: Brad Scott has coached against Melbourne 14 times for 13 wins.

They should have won by 10 goals! Im not sure what Im watching. They seemed to 

have players running hard between the arcs. Couldnt get any connection/ chains.

Didn’t get to watch the game and just saw the scores. Wasn’t expecting that result. Looks like I won’t be watching the replay. 

We played like arrogant toffs. I never want to see Tomlinson or TMAC in the side again. Some players need a kick up the shizenhausen for their efforts today. We need Gawn back badly.

He’s a whiney little rodent but B Scott is a good coach, and he absolutely owns the Dees. One loss to us in a decade I think it is. And today’s performance was largely on the back of what he did with his magnets. 
 

I’m a little concerned that we’ve had two mulligans in five weeks. Last year we only got pantsed once down in Geelong and were overrun in a few other games. In 2021 we only had one or two mulligans for the entire year.

But it’s a long season, still confident we’ll be there at the pointy end. People writing off Steven May need to get off Demonland for a couple of days. 

Not sure how fair dinkum our players are. All week it was mentioned we were premiership favourites and we oblige with another stinker 

Champion team needs a champion effort.

Essendon used the blueprint that worked for Collingwood and Sydney last year. Not only were we thoroughly beaten at the contest but their transition from d50 is so effective against our backline which looks all over the ship when the ball's coming in quick as it was today. Speed on the ball through the corridor is our worst enemy and we look powerless to stop it when teams get a run on. 

The only way I can think to defend such a gameplan is immense forward half pressure, tackling etc. whilst simultaneously structuring up in such a way that cuts off the corridor. None of those things were apparent today. not sure if its being tired after another road trip or not but the endeavour was sorely lacking. 

Always a range of factors to consider after a loss especially this one, but we have to start working on a structure/system which can negate fast ball movement through the corridor or else we're really going to struggle this year. 

It's a bit like last year.   When we win, we look really good.  When we lose, there seems to be lots of problems.

 

Edited April 15, 20231 yr by Orion

55 tackles for a match in those conditions is damning.

They had 71 and clearly wanted it more.

The bombers will do absolutely nothing this year. Hope they enjoy the win, and that we learn from this. 

Nasher with the Demonland servers

Not to many players who can hold there head up after than game. 2 times in 5 games not a good sign. All we can do is hold onto the hope that it’s a long year and it’s not about what happens now but in September 

6 minutes ago, Nelo said:

Didn’t get to watch the game and just saw the scores. Wasn’t expecting that result. Looks like I won’t be watching the replay. 

Don't even bother watching a second of it. 

The problems were there for all to see. Is it fatal? No. But it sure as hell isn't an aberration.

24 minutes ago, 3183 Dee said:

A shower of sh—

Pretty much a full strength team, we thought the result was a given.

Ugh.

What? Four of the best 16 out. 

Well that wasn’t fun. Dons totally deserved the win, probably by a bigger margin.

Really not convinced TMac and Melksham have much more to offer and we need look to the future without them. Overall we just looked slow, fumbly and lacking in pressure today.

Hope Spargo is OK, free kick against him summed up the day.

I praised T'Mac last week and i think rightfully so, but his game today was just a shell of that one over in the west.

Of course difficult conditions to mark the ball in and Essendon's defence was pretty good but just didn't seem to compete as effectively as he did against the Eagles. 

Maybe i'm being too harsh as most of our talls had a shocker today.