Yeah, whatever Princess! 🏆Probably time to put u on ignore! Bye bye

Edited June 5, 2024Jun 5 by picket fence

44 minutes ago, WalkingCivilWar said:

It’s one thing to b!ttcch and moan about the subsequent years but to call our premiership a fluke is disgusting.

it's absolutely disgusting.  We were all so desperate for a Premiership and the club finally delivered.  For a so called "supporter" to then try to diminish that achievement is treating everyone at the club with contempt.  

5 minutes ago, greenwaves said:

it's absolutely disgusting.  We were all so desperate for a Premiership and the club finally delivered.  For a so called "supporter" to then try to diminish that achievement is treating everyone at the club with contempt.  

I am sure the players themselves must feel flat about not achieving their dreams/objectives.

Just have a look at all the celebrations and post premiership interviews, what did all the leaders say? "We want to win one in front of the faithful". 

I remember Gary Lyon talking about a potential Deenasty, and I think it was something tangible/reasonable the way we dominated in 2021.

Of course the players don't owe us anything. They are professional players and all these accolades and achievements, primarily, they do it for themselves.

It's just maybe that we, as supporters,are going through the mourning stage of potentially the end of an era.

In any case, we are never jumping off this red and blue boat. 

8 minutes ago, ElDiablo14 said:

I am sure the players themselves must feel flat about not achieving their dreams/objectives.

Did the players call the premiership a fluke?

1 minute ago, greenwaves said:

Did the players call the premiership a fluke?

Don't think so, and I certainly did not.

1 hour ago, picket fence said:

Yeah, whatever Princess! 🏆Probably time to put u on ignore! Bye bye

And a few others Neal

4 hours ago, beelzebub said:

I take umbridge at even the smallest possibility youre slighting my desire to see us win. Desire and expectation are not the same word.

I dare say I've followed this team a lot longer than you.  Not all of us see it the same. Our perspectives can be different. I'm very much a pragmatist and realist. So we may differ. 

But my blood runs two colours.......guess !!

Go Dees

Well said.

You don’t have to be a member of the Cheer Squad to be a die hard loyal supporter, nor a prolific poster on Demonland.

Go Dees

34 minutes ago, greenwaves said:

it's absolutely disgusting.  We were all so desperate for a Premiership and the club finally delivered.  For a so called "supporter" to then try to diminish that achievement is treating everyone at the club with contempt.  

See ya greenwaves!

I've heard you call our flag a flute @WalkingCivilWar dont deny it!

3 hours ago, BW511 said:

It is quite intriguing that skill has been our downfall for many, many years and yet we doubled down with a new gameplan which is outrageously reliant on skill.

We have grunt bulls (that are very good at it although Clayton is off his best for known reasons) but silky skilled mids and wingers we fall well short. Even Salem is miles off his laser like kicking. May is inconsistent especially with short passes. Bowey lost his radar a little too. McVee is excellent but our game plan seems to need need about 6 silky players. Bring back the bomb to the pocket lol.  

Ah, how refreshing not to put up with the postings of 4 posters tonight and forever! The ignored button is a great thing!😇

3 minutes ago, John Demonic said:

I've heard you call our flag a flute @WalkingCivilWar dont deny it!

Im pumped now, Let's go dees! Smash the Pies    

On 03/06/2024 at 13:33, spirit of norm smith said:

Actually our game style over the last few games is resembling the 1993 Neil Balme model.  Handball handball handball.  First and second instinct. Handball. Handball.  Run through the middle free. Handball to a stationary player.  Try not to kick it.  Flick it around. But it comes unstuck with poor disposal or is too eased to read or you handball to a player under more pressure than you.  Dees 177 handballs (49% handball/possessions). Freo 35% as they used kick mark run style of play to destroy the Dees “guarding grass” zone.  
 

Balme's persistence with a strategic, high-possession, low-impact game plan earned both praise and ridicule. When the style succeeded it was attractive and hard to counter. However, when broken down by intense tackling, the players (and the coach) could look foolish and inept.

What makes it seem stranger is last year on Kings Bday we dismantled the Collingwood gameplan by applying pressure on the ball carrier and putting on frontal pressure across the midfield/owning the corridor. Now we seem to have (partially?) adopted a style we already curtailed ourselves last year. Collingwood got out the back far too easily and too often in the QF but had we kicked straight (nailing shots we usually kick) we would've had a home Prelim.

We need a reset to focus on our pressure and contest around the ground, become the hunter again. It is our DNA.

3 hours ago, Engorged Onion said:

Welcome to the curve of equilibrium, by design.

Welcome to the sport that neutered the influence of cash to have a 'relatively' equal competition,  rather than purchased success, where over a period of half a decade, any team can win a premiership, in effect.

We rode the crest of the wave with a game style that won a premiership and now, as the sport, the tactics and the opposition has evolved, those warriors (and coaches) that won us a premiership are moving towards the setting sun...

Some may see it that we haven't moved with the times, or haven't drafted/recruited well enough. Or the coaches cant coach, or are outdated. Some may even be genuinely entitled in their expectations of a dynasty has been missed.

I would take the players that we had, and the coach that we had, for the one premiership of supreme joy and 4 years of quality, quality competitive football, game after game after game. Whilst acknowledging that all good things, start a decline, and it's actually no-ones fault. There is no one to blame, but we do like to do so.

Every thing in life is transitory, Everything is impermanent.

"Pursue it vigorously, and hold it lightly."

Yes and no. Some clubs like Geelong, Sydney, Collingwood seem to be perennial challengers and when they do drop, it's not for long.

I was thinking about Pendlebury's career, drafted in 2005, flag in 2010, runners up 2011 & 2018 and flag in 2023 with a couple of Prelims thrown in as well. (2007, 2012, 2022). Its not all peaches, they've been down some years but to contend regularly across his almost 20 year career is astounding. Geelong and Sydney the same since the early 2000s.

Now consider Petracca, drafted in 2014, prelim in 2018, flag in 2021 - is it likely we can rebuild to have another crack before he retires let alone do it twice?

Edited June 5, 2024Jun 5 by Dr. Gonzo

4 hours ago, BDA said:

Our old game plan was worked out by the opposition 

We don’t have the skills to execute the new game plan

its a pickle for sure. TBH I’m not sure if the brains trust can come up with something different other than revert to our contested and territory game.

will be interesting to see what we do v the pies

This is the reality

Didn't think the end would come so quickly but alas we have grounded on Goodwin Sands

8 hours ago, At the break of Gawn said:

I had a listen to Daniel Hoyne on Sportsday. He was asked what positive things he could say about Melbourne, and he said it was pretty difficult to.

To summarise, he said:

"We're not getting sucked into one game and the loss to Freo. We look at the overall trend across the '24 season.

They have have lost what made them a good footy side of the last 3 years. They were 1, 1, 1 the last 3 years on contested possession. They are now 12th

1,1,2 territory team over the last 3 years, they are now 15th.

They have wanted to be different to their previous final campaign to open up their ball movement and get more of an offensive return. But the reality is they are the 6th worst ball movement team.

So their ball movement return hasn't been there. They've lost their DNA from a contest and territory perspective, and they're not getting anything from their turnover game - Only North and West Coast are scoring less and punishing less on turnover. Lastly, defensively, they're just mid table at defending the turn-over game.

It is the first time Melbourne has been negative on contest and territory for 9 years (!!)"

He also went on to say,

"Credit to them for trying something different, especially early on in the season where you have a bit more time up your sleeves. However,  also from an individual perspective

1) Harrison Petty is the lowest rated player across the competition. 

2) Steven May is having his worst season of his career (from a ratings perspective)

3) Oliver is having his worst season of his career

All the reliance goes to Max and Trac and a little bit of AnB.

He also then added

"It's going to take a lot for this to change for them to get into premiership contention"

Healey asked, "Can they do it in a space of 10 weeks?" and Hoyne's response was "I'd be very surprised if they could make such a big change"

 

I listened to this and it’s damning. We are writing history in all the wrong ways. It’s pathetic and the whole club needs to pull their finger out.

The new game plan is done, toss it out and only look at it when we have new cattle that can kick or has speed.

we have to play to our strengths and I’m afraid this ain’t it. 
 

Petty just needs a spell. Give him some time off and get him to work on his fitness. When he’s ready, give him a few weeks at Casey then put him into the backline. We may just get him to okay 4-5 decent games which may get us a late 1st rounder. 

Spot on David King & about time Goodwin was made to answer this

https://www.facebook.com/share/v/GCkqN2RrerE8kKBF/?mibextid=WC7FNe

Edited June 5, 2024Jun 5 by Demonsone

9 hours ago, At the break of Gawn said:

I had a listen to Daniel Hoyne on Sportsday. He was asked what positive things he could say about Melbourne, and he said it was pretty difficult to.

To summarise, he said:

"We're not getting sucked into one game and the loss to Freo. We look at the overall trend across the '24 season.

They have have lost what made them a good footy side of the last 3 years. They were 1, 1, 1 the last 3 years on contested possession. They are now 12th

1,1,2 territory team over the last 3 years, they are now 15th.

They have wanted to be different to their previous final campaign to open up their ball movement and get more of an offensive return. But the reality is they are the 6th worst ball movement team.

So their ball movement return hasn't been there. They've lost their DNA from a contest and territory perspective, and they're not getting anything from their turnover game - Only North and West Coast are scoring less and punishing less on turnover. Lastly, defensively, they're just mid table at defending the turn-over game.

It is the first time Melbourne has been negative on contest and territory for 9 years (!!)"

He also went on to say,

"Credit to them for trying something different, especially early on in the season where you have a bit more time up your sleeves. However,  also from an individual perspective

1) Harrison Petty is the lowest rated player across the competition. 

2) Steven May is having his worst season of his career (from a ratings perspective)

3) Oliver is having his worst season of his career

All the reliance goes to Max and Trac and a little bit of AnB.

He also then added

"It's going to take a lot for this to change for them to get into premiership contention"

Healey asked, "Can they do it in a space of 10 weeks?" and Hoyne's response was "I'd be very surprised if they could make such a big change"

Hoyne is becoming increasingly difficult to listen to as he gets increasingly bogged down in the data without having due regard for what's actually happening on field. One of his major issues is blurring the line between causation and correlation - for example, is our changed game plan the reason why Oliver is having the worst season of his career, or is Oliver having the worst season of his career the reason why we can't play well?

However, the general point he's making here is valid - we've tried playing a different way this year and it isn't working. We're not a threat for the flag playing this way so something has to change. 

4 hours ago, At the break of Gawn said:

We had Carlton on the ropes in that SF. If Gawn and Pickett had kicked either of their goals we would’ve been in a prelim where anything could have happened. The old game plan won us a flag and 3 consecutive top 4 finishes.

As David King said on 360 tonight, it’s been a complete over correction.

There's too much hindsight analysis here. A perfectly valid argument for why Gawn and Pickett didn't kick their goals, nor anyone else who missed their goals, was that the players were physically exhausted from our taxing game plan which also generated too many low percentage shots on goal (Gawn may have only been 10m out but he was on the boundary). It was a major talking point through 2022, let alone 2023. 

Yes, our changes to date in 2024 aren't working, but that doesn't mean attempting change was the wrong idea.

4 hours ago, ElDiablo14 said:

I am sure the players themselves must feel flat about not achieving their dreams/objectives.

Just have a look at all the celebrations and post premiership interviews, what did all the leaders say? "We want to win one in front of the faithful". 

I remember Gary Lyon talking about a potential Deenasty, and I think it was something tangible/reasonable the way we dominated in 2021.

Of course the players don't owe us anything. They are professional players and all these accolades and achievements, primarily, they do it for themselves.

It's just maybe that we, as supporters,are going through the mourning stage of potentially the end of an era.

In any case, we are never jumping off this red and blue boat. 

It wasn’t Gary Lyon talking dynasties but our President. It was a nice thought but l cringed when she said it. 

13 hours ago, beelzebub said:

The problem in myview of it, is Fritta is an  "opportunistic" forward... Yes he can and does lead but he's not the #1 KPF as such. When someone is playing that role(kpf1) with even a minor amount of effectivelness it releases Fritta into his own world. And thats fine.. At these times he's very very hard to match up on and contain as he only needs an inch.   When we have a shambles of a Forward setup with NO ONE effectively playing a true #1 kpf  ( someone might be named....but not doing it welll ;) ) then the Oppo can tie up Fritta. This has been happening of late.  He's paid a lot more attention.  I dont put that on him..Thats fairly at the feet of the FD...

Amen to that.  But regardless he still needs to bring the heat for four quarters every week vs picking and choosing when to go.

Great player when he does go and presently our best naturaly gifted goal scoring forward.  But a bad look for him, a bad example for other forwards with less experience that need to be shown the way (McAdam, Chin, JVR & Kozzy) and a real team deflator when he doesn't imho.

Edited June 5, 2024Jun 5 by Demon Dynasty

6 hours ago, Demonsone said:

Spot on David King & about time Goodwin was made to answer this

https://www.facebook.com/share/v/GCkqN2RrerE8kKBF/?mibextid=WC7FNe

This is where we need intel that we can't access though.

We need to see our first possession winners from 2021, 2022, 2023 and this season.

That will tell the tale imho as to the role Clarry played in extractions as well as clearances. 

My gut feel was that it (the extraction role) was a combo role between him & Viney (mostly).  With occasional cameos from the likes of Maxy and Gus.  Then another level down on rarish occasions maybe Sparrow and JJ.

My gut feel is that for some reason Clarry started to move away from the first possession (extraction) focus to a slightly more outside clearance  focused role towards the end of 23.

That comtinued on this season.  Leaving it mostly to Vines.  Then Vines had to go to another level once Clarry injured his finger.

Post surgery have we seen a slight uptick from Clarry to claw this back in some games.?  But then others he has tended to revert back to a more outside clearance role (for him).

In other words, has SG tipped the balance too far as Kingy is suggesting, and we've suffered accordingly.

Leaving too much to Viney.

If Clarry's no longer assisting Viney in this area (or his output is reduced sunstantially vs prior seasons), are we putting too much on the VC and effectively all our eggs into the one basket and paying the comsequences?

I've said throughout this season that getting Clarry right is one of our most important 'musts'.  The question is can we ....and can Clarry?  And in time to make a difference?

While he's improved in a few ganes post the surgery (vs prior), he's also very inconsistent and his better games are still not the tyoe of extraction / clearance style effort games we have come to know and value over many years.

Still too much NQR stuff happening it seems.

Edited June 5, 2024Jun 5 by Demon Dynasty

2 hours ago, Demon Dynasty said:

This is where we need intel that we can't access though.

We need to see our first possession winners from 2021, 2022, 2023 and this season.

That will tell the tale imho as to the role Clarry played in extractions as well as clearances. 

My gut feel was that it (the extraction role) was a combo role between him & Viney (mostly).  With occasional cameos from the likes of Maxy and Gus.  Then another level down on rarish occasions maybe Sparrow and JJ.

My gut feel is that for some reason Clarry started to move away from the first possession (extraction) focus to a slightly more outside clearance  focused role towards the end of 23.

That comtinued on this season.  Leaving it mostly to Vines.  Then Vines had to go to another level once Clarry injured his finger.

Post surgery have we seen a slight uptick from Clarry to claw this back in some games.?  But then others he has tended to revert back to a more outside clearance role (for him).

In other words, has SG tipped the balance too far as Kingy is suggesting, and we've suffered accordingly.

Leaving too much to Viney.

If Clarry's no longer assisting Viney in this area (or his output is reduced sunstantially vs prior seasons), are we putting too much on the VC and effectively all our eggs into the one basket and paying the comsequences?

I've said throughout this season that getting Clarry right is one of our most important 'musts'.  The question is can we ....and can Clarry?  And in time to make a difference?

While he's improved in a few ganes post the surgery (vs prior), he's also very inconsistent and his better games are still not the tyoe of extraction / clearance style effort games we have come to know and value over many years.

Still too much NQR stuff happening it seems.

I watched some cameo's of Oliver last night on 360 and it was damning. The guy looks disinterested, uninvested. Its hard to make a connection to fitness because to me it seems all mental. 

Have the events over the preseason that has ultimately led to him requiring to pull his head in (rightly so) also unintentionally led to an evaporation of his edge? i dont know, but many on here point to his physical conditioning, but to me it seems to be something else. 

We all heard how he has fallen back in love with MFC and we have fallen back in love with Oliver about a month or so ago. 

 

3 hours ago, Gawndy the Great said:

We all heard how he has fallen back in love with MFC and we have fallen back in love with Oliver about a month or so ago. 

The club has all the metrics and no doubt in regular discussion Gawndy.

The above may well hold true but as to whether Clarry managed to put in a pre-season like he has in prior years that saw him rise to the top, who knows?

I guess only Clarry would truly know this.

Can he build on to that base if it wasn't up to his usual?  Without a mini pre-season and time out of the game for 4 to 6 weeks probably unlikely.

I reckon what we are seeing in terms of a week up and a week down is probably about where he's at.

And unfortunately that means other mids are sort of left trying to make up the gap.  Some of them are not even proper mids as we don't have the depth to cover either.

All in all i think it's a sum of all parts.  The mid field was bound to be found out in terms of form and/or pure exhaustion through lack of depth and players off their game at times like Clarry and Vines.

This could also partly be due to a culmination of four years or so of massive grind for our mids & followers.

And possibly moving too far away from our DNA that got us to the top or thereabouts.

And the 'found out' time no doubt arrived vs the Eagles and this last round.

Does that mean we're in for an uptick this week and a solid win?

Edited June 6, 2024Jun 6 by Demon Dynasty

2 hours ago, Demonland said:

 

If you think about these video clips to see Oliver being outmuscled like that, its easy to think that he hasnt done a good enough body of work and is lacking in conditioning. I see something else. I see that there is no desire, no want, no thirst for the contest. It is completely mental for mine. Now the root cause of that can be many things: has he lost the passion, does he want out of MFC, is his ADHD meds playing around with motivation and energy levels, could it still be his finger? we wont probably ever find out. 

But something needs to be done. Watching a player of his ilk go through what he is going through, makes me thing he is being thrown to the lions without any support. Got to take the decision out of his hands. Give him a secondary role, one that he is more likely to succeed at and build from there. Casey? forward line? i dont know. But we are doing atm is not working.