Just now, rpfc said:

Mate, that is essentially what the FD wanted to do when they recruited Grundy last year. Max hasn’t shown the desire or ability to get it going.

Having said that - it’s what we should do.

Max is the most dominant ruckman in the comp, why would you take this away?

2 minutes ago, Demons11 said:

Max is the most dominant ruckman in the comp, why would you take this away?

Don’t ask me; ask the Footy Department. I didn’t want this trade and said as much at the time. They want to prolong Max’s career by making him progressively ruck less and become a fed who rucks. They shouldn’t have bothered.

But we have to work with what we have got in 2023 and Gawn being deep may be our best chance to kick a winning score.

36 minutes ago, Roost it far said:

I’m going to follow you and others and run around flapping my arms 👍

No, come on, Beelzebub asked a legitimate question, what is your answer to our forward inefficiency? Don’t just brush it off with a throwaway BS line

3 hours ago, Demonsterative said:

It’s ridiculous!! Too many extreme views riding the week to week emotional wave (=wrist slashers). 

For example;

Petty is not a forward, to drop him, he is out of form as a backman, to he is our most important Fwd and with him would playing in a Prelim. 

Smith is useless, always injured, to our most important swing man. 
 
Milkshake is past it, too old, to our second most important Fwd. 

Jefferson showing good signs with Casey (on the back of kicking a couple to a few goals), to his a twig, not going to make and a wasted 1 st round pick. 
 

I could go on. 
 
 

 

3 hours ago, old dee said:

Then again the same people could say they are tired of the overly optimistic. We were going to beat the pies with no quality KPF's

I will remain the sometimes wrong optimist, rather than the always right pessimist.

2 hours ago, dees189227 said:

Jack Martin got 2 matches

Lawyers, and brown paper Visy bags yet to appear.🙄

2 minutes ago, monoccular said:

 

I will remain the sometimes wrong optimist, rather than the always right pessimist.

Lawyers, and brown paper Visy bags yet to appear.🙄

And I see no problem with your view mono. 

51 minutes ago, Dr. Gonzo said:

Pick 9 Weideman

Pick 10 H McKay

Pick 12 C Curnow

Pick 14 Hipwood

Pick 16 H Himmelberg

Oh what might have been 😔

Couldn’t have been more wrong 

5 hours ago, praha said:

If we lose Friday we'll be the first team ever to go out in straight sets in consecutive years. Hawthorn went out in straight sets in 2016 and 2018 but missed finals in 2017.

Brisbane lost in straight sets in 2019, lost a home prelim in 2020 in a year in which they didn't have to leave their home state, and then went out in straight sets in 2021.

Geelong made top 4 how many times from 2012-2021. made how many prelims, but failed to win a flag?

If we do lose next week, at least we can look back on a three-year period of top 4 finishes and see a flag for our efforts.

5 hours ago, praha said:

I said this prior to the ladder being set and I was ridiculed. We are on the toughest path to the GF now. 

In an earlier post in this thread you said we'd been gifted a run to the GF.

Now you're saying we had the hard road and we should have finished 3rd instead.

Which one is it? They can't both be true.

You have reached full praha doom spiral, again. 

5 hours ago, Superunknown said:

What?

After reading what the Pies fans were like, and seeing the first 1/4 effort , and what happened to Gus, people are deflated. 

You might not like it or agree with it but it doesn’t mean they’re not real supporters. 

To them I say HTFU

The players deserve our support, win or lose they have tried their guts out all year, the Essendon game being the anomaly.

Anyone else see a few similarities between 2018 Melbourne and 2023 Carlton?

In 2018 we were coming off a year in which we choked at the end of the H&A season to miss finals by a bee's proverbial. We ended up finishing 5th, ending a 12-year finals drought. We drew a modern-day finals stalwart (Geelong) in our EF, with a crowd over 90,000 predominantly in our favour. We started well, got a healthy lead, then got nervous as they closed the gap before we settled and won. Our SF opponent was a recent premier and, playing with little to lose and heaps of freedom, we knocked them out in straight sets.

In 2023 Carlton were coming off a year in which they choked at the end of the H&A season to miss finals by a bee's proverbial. They ended up finishing 5th, ending a 10-year finals drought. They drew a modern-day finals stalwart (Sydney) in their EF, with a crowd over 90,000 predominantly in their favour. They started well, got a healthy lead, then got nervous as they closed the gap before they settled and won. Their SF opponent is a recent premier and I expect they will approach next week with little to lose and heaps of freedom...

1 hour ago, Dr. Gonzo said:

Pick 9 Weideman

Pick 10 H McKay

Pick 12 C Curnow

Pick 14 Hipwood

Pick 16 H Himmelberg

Oh what might have been 😔

Weren’t Hipwood and Himmelberg NGA/zone picks?

Curnow had some kind of run in from memory shortly before the draft that may have given us some doubts. 
It remains a bit stuff up though.

3 minutes ago, titan_uranus said:

Anyone else see a few similarities between 2018 Melbourne and 2023 Carlton?

In 2018 we were coming off a year in which we choked at the end of the H&A season to miss finals by a bee's proverbial. We ended up finishing 5th, ending a 12-year finals drought. We drew a modern-day finals stalwart (Geelong) in our EF, with a crowd over 90,000 predominantly in our favour. We started well, got a healthy lead, then got nervous as they closed the gap before we settled and won. Our SF opponent was a recent premier and, playing with little to lose and heaps of freedom, we knocked them out in straight sets.

In 2023 Carlton were coming off a year in which they choked at the end of the H&A season to miss finals by a bee's proverbial. They ended up finishing 5th, ending a 10-year finals drought. They drew a modern-day finals stalwart (Sydney) in their EF, with a crowd over 90,000 predominantly in their favour. They started well, got a healthy lead, then got nervous as they closed the gap before they settled and won. Their SF opponent is a recent premier and I expect they will approach next week with little to lose and heaps of freedom...

Thanks for that...

No, we'll masacre Carlton on Friday and head to Brisvegas

3 hours ago, old dee said:

Then again the same people could say they are tired of the overly optimistic. We were going to beat the pies with no quality KPF's

We should have

21 hours ago, Doug Reemer said:

Here me out..
 

If this kid Turner can take an intercept mark down back. Why couldn’t he play up forward? 

Hey that's interesting...

1 hour ago, Roost it far said:

You’re a drama queen. Yes, we’d all love Petty and Melksham playing but they’re not. We lost because of literally 2 poor shots on goal, that’s it. 

If Fritsch converts the shots he usually does are we even talking about this? The loss was bloody infuriating but things are never as bad as they seem. You can guarantee we will be focussing on f50 entries this week and lowering the eyes. Should be another belter of a game.

2 hours ago, Dr. Gonzo said:

I would love that

Would love that too, why not??  Does Tmac stay in?  I don't even care if JVR gets suspended or not I'd rather see Turner come in for him at this stage and I want Grundy in there too.  Grundy is a quality unit, he needs to be in there, just don't ask Max to change his game and tell Grundy to just be better!!

I know Tmac only had the one game, but bugger it:

Out Tmac, JVR, Brayshaw, Chandler

In Grundy, Turner, Jordan, Spargo

Chandler sub

It’s funny how we all these issues all of sudden that no one was talking about over the past two months where we barely lost a game 

IF Gus wasn’t KOd

IF we kicked a little straighter and won

are these issues still as big or are we all saying we are favourites for the flag?

my point - put it in perspective. we’ve had time rant and complain. we are still a shot at the flag, stop the whinging and bring it on

Edited September 9, 20231 yr by DubDee

1 hour ago, rpfc said:

Don’t ask me; ask the Footy Department. I didn’t want this trade and said as much at the time. They want to prolong Max’s career by making him progressively ruck less and become a fed who rucks. They shouldn’t have bothered.

But we have to work with what we have got in 2023 and Gawn being deep may be our best chance to kick a winning score.

Only if he's used as a decoy or get out of jail long kick. Otherwise we're relying on his set shots which would be nerve wracking.

52 minutes ago, bobby1554 said:

No, come on, Beelzebub asked a legitimate question, what is your answer to our forward inefficiency? Don’t just brush it off with a throwaway BS line

Convert the chances we get. We got enough chances on Thursday we just did not convert them. And they weren't all low percentage shots as evidenced by the expected score.

Btw so sick of the continuous long bombs and looking so slow, not to mention bad kicking.

It was just one of those nights where nothing went Melbourne's way and everything went Collingwood's...they're very good, but we had a terrible night and nothing fell out way.  

We are way better than that and I hope we turn it on against Carlton or I'll be very cross.

Watching Brisbane v Port, it’s really dawning on me how badly we’ve stuffed up on Thursday night. Port or GWS in a home prelim? What an outcome that would’ve been, straight through to the granny in my opinion. Now we have to play Carlton AND Brisbane at the Gabba, that is really rough. I cannot see us beating Brisbane up there, down here in a grand final? Quite possible 

16 minutes ago, godees said:

Weren’t Hipwood and Himmelberg NGA/zone picks?

Curnow had some kind of run in from memory shortly before the draft that may have given us some doubts. 
It remains a bit stuff up though.

Yep you're correct, both academy picks my bad

3 minutes ago, Lewis said:

Watching Brisbane v Port, it’s really dawning on me how badly we’ve stuffed up on Thursday night. Port or GWS in a home prelim? What an outcome that would’ve been, straight through to the granny in my opinion. Now we have to play Carlton AND Brisbane at the Gabba, that is really rough. I cannot see us beating Brisbane up there, down here in a grand final? Quite possible 

Yep Collingwood are going to waltz into the GF. Let's hope it's another Colliwobbles Classic.

18 minutes ago, godees said:

Weren’t Hipwood and Himmelberg NGA/zone picks?

Curnow had some kind of run in from memory shortly before the draft that may have given us some doubts. 
It remains a bit stuff up though.

A bit? I’d be having nightmares for the rest of my life if I was the recruitment team. 
 

Having Trac, Oliver, Gawn, Curnow, May in the same team… would be a thing of beauty. 

We can beat Brisbane up there, yes they're having a party up there right now but we can take them...we just need to get our house in order, we have the tools.

15 minutes ago, Dr. Gonzo said:

Only if he's used as a decoy or get out of jail long kick. Otherwise we're relying on his set shots which would be nerve wracking.

We must be in jail a lot the way we kick it down there… 

But yes, preferably he is deep on slow plays and on the wing providing hands on quick plays.

The more I think about this - our forward line, the way we move the ball, I think we should refresh the assistant coaches especially if Yze is off to Richmond. We are so stale with the footy.