1 hour ago, GM11 said:

Remember K Pickett V B Smith. Pickett was pilloried (including here) for that.

Differences -

-Pickett didn't tuck up.

-Pickett didn't knock Smith into next week.

-Pickett wasn't wearing black & white.

-Maynard is a bog ordinary footballer and a one trick serial offender.

What do you meannnnnn. 

Pickett bumped Smith. His intention was to bump?!

Maynard's action was to smother! 

This place is crazy. 

1 hour ago, dazzledavey36 said:

So then going off this, JVR should have actually have gotten suspended for his hit on Ballard right?

JVR went in to spoil the marking contest, not (supposedly) smother a kick as Maynard did

The circumstances were vastly different.  In terms of deliberate hits, the JVR one was correctly argued that he was making a genuine attempt to play the ball and spoil

Where as the Maynard hit was a poorly disguised smother which was in effect, trying to stretch a ruling that most will see as an outright lie

In my view he went at Brayshaw to take him out and in the process of doing that he threw his arms up to make it look like a smother

It's a con, pure and simple

Melbourne 7.11 and EIGHT total misses. 7 majors from 26 shots at goal. Collingwood 9.6 and a single miss. Astounding inaccuracy from the Demons. Shot themselves in the foot 

Ralphy in the herald Sun !! 

8 hours ago, Go Lordie said:

So wrong, VC. Pies were faster to the ball, created more pressure. They also were better at ground level, while we two-grabbed ball pick-ups and marks. And still we were in with a chance in Q4. When we had the chance to win, we fluffed it in front of goal in Q4. I don't think choking was the issue. Skills were.

I guess it depend on your definition of choke.  Failing to execute skills you have generally executed all season at a high level because of finals pressure is a choke for mine.

Just now, Vipercrunch said:

I guess it depend on your definition of choke.  Failing to execute skills you have generally executed all season at a high level because of finals pressure is a choke for mine.

I don’t know if we’ve executed them at a high level all season, lost before with massive inside 50 numbers. But it’s still a choke. Blew the start, then got it back on our terms and kicked ourselves out of it. 

14 minutes ago, jnrmac said:

Selfish Bayley re-appeared last night. Burnt players. Jumped on packs with no chance of getting the ball,  spoiled our own players

Bad habit

He knows he's our only forward. He tries too hard when he has no support around him.

The pressure got to him IMO.

1 minute ago, Fromgotowoewodin said:

I don’t know if we’ve executed them at a high level all season, lost before with massive inside 50 numbers. But it’s still a choke. Blew the start, then got it back on our terms and kicked ourselves out of it. 

Maybe not all season, but in games when we have been humming, we are far less fumbly, make far better decisions and are far more accurate in front of goal.

5 minutes ago, Vipercrunch said:

I guess it depend on your definition of choke.  Failing to execute skills you have generally executed all season at a high level because of finals pressure is a choke for mine.

Fair enough. It was out of character, certainly.

Typical MFC choke.

Only got ourselves to blame for that one. Had the run of the game for the most part and did nothing with it and Collingwood would so often just make it look easy in the fwd line which was deflating. Good fight back, but we never should’ve been in that position to begin with. 

11 minutes ago, Macca said:

JVR went in to spoil the marking contest, not (supposedly) smother a kick as Maynard did

The circumstances were vastly different.  In terms of deliberate hits, the JVR one was correctly argued that he was making a genuine attempt to play the ball and spoil

Where as the Maynard hit was a poorly disguised smother which was in effect, trying to stretch a ruling that most will see as an outright lie

In my view he went at Brayshaw to take him out and in the process of doing that he threw his arms up to make it look like a smother

It's a con, pure and simple

I'm seething at Maynard but I don't think you've interpreted what happened correctly. 

In my view he made a genuine attempt to smother, but with the ball gone, also made a split second, barely conscious decision to turn and lead with the hip and shoulder while Gus was vulnerable, if nothing else, then to make him 'earn it'.

The 'barely conscious' aspect of it would make sense to me, as its in instinct that character emerges.

He's known to have white line fever - I think his instinct was to take a free hit and inflict pain. 

Over my sporting days I had/have white line fever, and hand on heart, I have to admit I have at times intended to inflict pain in the heat of the moment.

I don't expect everyone to understand this but I feel uniquely placed in this scenario to comment. 

How such a situation is adjudicated, I don't know. General consensus around the footy public seems to be he will walk free. 

Doesn’t his old man work for Melbourne? Maybe skip work today. 

It's always worse waking up the next morning and then realising that watching us spud it up in a final wasn't just a bad dream.

Luckily I have experience dealing with such disappointments.

We will be out in straight sets or the prelim.

that was a myopic start. 
 

I don’t want to be that guy but there were a few here who were saying “if we lose I’d hate to be thinking “what if” for not l playing Brodie”. 

9 hours ago, picket fence said:

Why??

I'm angry too.

And I really dont think it's without  reason.

We are perennial slow starters. Why?  

The club has made some poor choices with not recruiting young fwds.  I mean big fwds.

Grundy can't mark but yet some genius thought he would be a forward option.

Selection. Laurie as a sub? With. I mean hey Goody he's a kid with no experience.  And guess what tge sub sometimes has to play a whole game by the way.

Tmac. Great servant who had tge opportunity to give his all with nothing to lose and go out on a high note. Nup. Just the opposite. 

Poor kicking at goal. A problem all season that we just ignore.

Midfield that apply themselves are the game is lost.

Langdon, Lever, Salo and Hunter . Senior players who young Bowey showed them how to play.

Players like Chandler being gifted games.

Our constant talking ourselves up in the media. Seen this movie before. 

 

How many "we really should have won" games have we had this year. Time we learnt a few learning from our learnings. 

Edited September 7, 20231 yr by YearOfTheDees

On a side note, if you are a member and you offered up your priority barcode to a Pies supporter or gave your ticket away to them so they could sit amongst us, then you need to have a good hard look at yourself.

10 hours ago, GCDee said:

Really proud of the fight back. Bring on the Blues/Swans 

Was it really a fight back or a case of us not fronting up for half a game of footy. Not like it hasn't  happened before.

The game felt like 40 minutes of timid, half hearted efforts that allowed Collingwood to build a match winning lead, followed by 80 minutes of complete domination for no reward due to collective panic attacks every time we entered forward 50.

It is a shocking waste of a gold plated, diamond encrusted opportunity to host an interstate side in a preliminary final.

Unfortunately we were always going to be in trouble when we were forced into rejigging the forward line so late in the year and, equally crucially, made the bone headed decision to tinker with a winning defence. After a terrible start Hibberd played pretty well, but May and Lever weren't running around like headless chooks, losing their men and spoiling each other when they were playing alongside Tomlinson. 

Our forward entries were generally poor, but what chance do they have when the forwards simply refuse to lead or even play in front? Even then we were able to create enough decent scoring chances to win the game, but lacked the smarts and the composure to capitalise. I don't know where we go from here, but having Van Rooyen, Chandler and Laurie contribute nothing in the same forward line cannot happen again. 

As a side we are going nowhere next year if Salem, Langdon and Hunter are automatic selections every week. Their collective lack of hardness, lack of composure and lack of kicking penetration make them liabilities. Hopefully Howes and Woewodin can put in McVee level pre seasons and push hard for these positions.

Hopefully the club also reflects on the wisdom of extending coaching contracts in the middle of a sequence of demoralising finals losses. If Goodwin can't get this team up to win next week's game, this could become a mountain that is too big for this group to climb with an ageing, declining list.

 

I get that we want to be a contest and defence based team. But why does it take the lights to go off at the Gabba or be down in a big final at the MCG at 3/4 time for us to flick the switch and start to play with more speed on the ball and more directly giving us “better” looks at goal and momentum in the game. We are more than capable of playing attacking football we just don’t have the balance right. I understand we are missing Petty, Melksham and Brayshaw off earlier denying us Trac spending more time in the forward line but this ball movement and midfield / forward connection, forward efficiency and smalls not playing their roles, or really our forwards playing defined roles period is not a new phenomenon. And we want to put all our eggs into Harley Reid. We have a lot of issues to address with our list, Harley Reid will not solve them we need to draft a number of quality youngsters that can play outside the contest and impact the scoreboard.  

3 minutes ago, fr_ap said:

I'm seething at Maynard but I don't think you've interpreted what happened correctly. 

In my view he made a genuine attempt to smother, but with the ball gone, also made a split second, barely conscious decision to turn and lead with the hip and shoulder while Gus was vulnerable, if nothing else, then to make him 'earn it'.

The 'barely conscious' aspect of it would make sense to me, as its in instinct that character emerges.

He's known to have white line fever - I think his instinct was to take a free hit and inflict pain. 

Over my sporting days I had/have white line fever, and hand on heart, I have to admit I have at times intended to inflict pain in the heat of the moment.

I don't expect everyone to understand this but I feel uniquely placed in this scenario to comment. 

How such a situation is adjudicated, I don't know. General consensus around the footy public seems to be he will walk free. 

I saw it as a con right from the word go.  Probably a planned act as well.  Looking for a loophole that isn't there

So whilst Brayshaw is lying on the ground unconscious all Dangerfield & Richo could say was that the Maynard hit was a football act? Another pair sucked in by the outstretched arms

If it was a football act how is that we don't see that action on a constant basis ... instead of basically never

We see smothers, but never like that

It wasn't a smother, despite what Maynard has said.  He's trying to stretch a ruling

Accidents happen in football but that was no accident.  His object was to hit and the arms up in the air is serving to confuse

To me, it's best to put your mind into how dirty players go about it

So you yourself have just admitted to having while line fever so given that, you should be taking up my angle.  Put your mind into Maynard's mind

At best it was clumsy but that still means at least a 2 game suspension (at least)

By the way, it's not sour grapes on my part.  The Pies were the better team on the night and fully deserved to win

But Maynard has to go

 

Just watched goodwins press conference and he says multiple times ‘we played three good quarters’!

was I watching a different game? We were 25 points down at 3 quarter time….

I’d give us a tick for the 2nd and 4th quarters but I must’ve missed the 3rd quarter entirely 

Or maybe I’m still salty after last nights loss 😭

10 hours ago, Deeoldfart said:

I’m gutted!  We had our chances and blew them, but gee we showed some ‘ticker’ in the last.  We live to fight another day, and so does the dream!

How many games this year have we fought really hard to come back and win?

Why do we not play like this all day?

What is going on with a team tgat can't start well?

Is it a concentration or motivation issue. It's been a pattern all year and while I appreciate the never say die attitude we would do so much better if we could just simply play 4 quarters for a change. Especially our midfield.

Also the person responsible for goal  kicking skills is a complete spud and not doing their job. 

4 minutes ago, Nicko said:

Just watched goodwins press conference and he says multiple times ‘we played three good quarters’!

was I watching a different game? We were 25 points down at 3 quarter time….

I’d give us a tick for the 2nd and 4th quarters but I must’ve missed the 3rd quarter entirely 

Or maybe I’m still salty after last nights loss 😭

We dominate territory for 3 quarters. We executed that dominance like a dog's breakfast. 

They got a couple of quick breaks and unlike us, actually converted their opportunities.

We fought to constantly win the ball back, but could not do a single useful thing with it going into, or once inside 50.

And still, that pathetic first quarter effort is why we lost the game. We came out flat, and timid and we were -10 at the contest at 1/4 time. That is inexcusable. 

10 hours ago, Mickey said:

He won't get suspended for either. He's not missing a prelim for that

He wont get suspended for the bump on brayshaw. You have NFI. The guy jumped in the air, then turned his body and bump a defenceless Bradshaw. Will be lucky to only get 3 weeks