Given the amount of Daniher criticism and the opinionated views of us all, i'm curious to hear people's views on melbourne's best structure and gameplan, how would we like to see us play.

over the past few years we've had many various types of wins, from the fast, free-running wins that the media perceive our team to be, against the tigers, hawks saints and cats. however we have also battled out many victories, often winning more than we lose. two in 05 against the premiers, sydney, and the 05 home and away champions, adelaide, in tough, wet games, with a lot of close in contact.

i have often believed us to be a small, fast moving team, however the way this falls apart in the colder months i wonder if this is indeed the way you can win a premiership.

do you guys reckon it can be done, or do you simply need a perfect mix of both?

i feel having tough, good close in players around the ball at all times is necessary for first use and tempo, and guys like bruce and trav, when their skills are up, should play as wingers who can play link play between the backline and forwardline, which is possibly the biggest problem in football.

i reckon the next step in the game will be midfield goals, as i believe midfielders should be able to kick around half of the goals kicked in matches with their abillity to run, break lines, and kick from outside 50. i like neitz at about 30, with green leading out from the goalsquare.

thinking this way makes me realise that being a coach must be the hardest damn thing to do, but i think we have the ability to win most contests around the ground, and have a proper mix of ball winners and ball users, but i must say i feel the close in contact game is a game easier to use in the long-term factor of the season, with the fast running game as plan b to break open matches.

(and pre-emptively, i am not an idiot for these statements, so don't bother)

well firstly we need to move it quickly (especially from kick ins) and not handball it too much, we need to move it as direct as possible and to keep the F50 open

so pretty much do the opposite of what we do

when we look good is when we are moving it quickly into our forward 50, but as seen on sunday in the first quarter, long bombs into the 50 aren't any good if the forwards aren't awake. we need to make sure our forwards have space to work with, to lead into, inside the 50. in the 1st on sunday, miller was leading too far up the ground and neitz was at home in the sqaure, we had no one in the gap. i don't mind miller leading up but someone else needs to lead back into the hole if neitz is going to stay home. perhaps their defence dropped into space well.

through the midfield we look good when we run forward. we can only run forward when there is space to run into. again our half forwards can create space by leading and not standing still. the worst thing melbourne does is stand flat footed. this results in the half backs and the midfield handballing to each other, with each player having no more options than the previous. the idea of the 'run and carry' is a rugby style run and handpass across to a free man who then kicks, with no pressure, deep into the forward line. if there is nowhere to run to the 'run and carry' becomes 'handball in circles' which we've seen this year a few times.

i think we often look good when we switch the ball to the other side. it often opens up the field a bit for us, especially when everyone is flat footed, but for this to work we really need to have everyone running hard to present.

Hard accountable football.

We all know ND copies gameplans but he should've stuck with Brisbane/Sydney's gameplan. Weagles gameplan doesn't suit our players at all and most importantly we don't have Judd or Kerr.

I love it when we beat Sydney at their own game. At the SCG as well.

So it was a massive mistake 4 ND to get all our players to slim down and play a game that doesn't suit them. He should be judged for that (and the ten years) rather then the win/loss ratio this year.

jacey, a lot of last year though ppl were saying we were too slow and needed more pace! i do agree however that we are better off playing how our players best play. we have hard bodies who bulldozz packs (brock, pickett, jones, sylvia) and we have classy outside players (TJ, bruce). i think we should stick to playing to our strengths. let the insiders go in and get the thing and let the others finish off with it.

At the start of the year I read how a Melb player (cant remember who) was talking about how during pre-season they were focusing on playing more footbal like "WCE". Clearly that hasnt worked, I think they should go back to last year and remember the hard tackling, more kicking less handballing and faster movement of the ball. Tackling this year has been poor, our players tend to run straight past who they are tackling rather than make the tackle

One thing that drives me crazy at the moment are our kick ins. It is a little bit difficult with Whelan and Weatley out but surely we can do something a little more creative than wait for Trav to trot back to the goal square while the other team have all the time in the world to get their zone right. When Trav gets the footy most of the time he chips it 15m to the pocket. If we’re going to chip it 15m to an intentionally unmarked man couldn’t anybody kick it?

Trav hasn’t played great footy this year but I think we’re at our best when he’s getting possessions up the ground and doing some damage with them. He’s really creative when he’s running up the wing or guts because he could spear a pass at any angle and hit one of our blokes on the chest. At the moment he’s always in the back half taking kick outs or chipping it around. His man is more likely and willing to run off him and kick goals when he’s in our defensive half because he is less likely to do any damage.

Green Should play in the forward line, we’ve got kids coming through that are harder than him (I’m not one that thinks Green is soft) and naturally better and getting the pill. He’s got a clean pair of hands and is a great kick for goal, surely we should be playing to his strengths. It cannot be hard for the forward coach to come up with a plan that isolates one of Neitz, Robbo or Green each time the ball comes down.

Davey shouldn’t play in the midfield. He looses his explosiveness when he runs around all day and he often runs to the wrong spots. In the forward line he runs in bursts and is as fast as they come. He creates pressure on the opposition when they’re taking it out of our backline and often prevents them from setting up the play as the please. He’s normally good for 1 or 2 goals as well.

spot on wrecker

agreed, top constructive advice. also is it just me that feels that davey has lost some toe a bit this year? i hope it's just an injury or something, but maybe focusing his attention on durability has hurt his sprinting capacity. also i saw we kicked 3 goals from port kick ins on the weekend, which is good to see as we used to kick a point then allow a goal.

but yeah, don't see the point in bell leaving a target to wait on his own while trav gets it. i really think if wheels was there the backline would have a better fit about it, although we're coping better than the last few years.

centre half forward line is so often the problem. i think davey and green as leading forward with sylvia, neitz and another tall in various marking contests would work well, though i think it's an impossible science!