After a stunning victory over the Saints in the first round of the Season the Demons head over to Perth to take on the Dockers who choked in their first match against the Cats. Who comes in and who goes out?

Lever to whichever country footy club wants him

Get Xavier Taylor in, even if he's not ready. Backline needs bolstering. St Kilda had 15 goals and 32 scoring shots - that would win most games.

19 minutes ago, adonski said:

Lever to whichever country footy club wants him

The issue with Lever is he's having to play as a 1 on 1 defender because we hardly have any. Lever's strength is as a free agent and interceptor, he's never been good - or even OK - as a lock down defender.

16 minutes ago, bing181 said:

The issue with Lever is he's having to play as a 1 on 1 defender because we hardly have any. Lever's strength is as a free agent and interceptor, he's never been good - or even OK - as a lock down defender.

The Saints did everything they could to ensure he was playing more in a one on one role rather than intercepting. That's good tactics. By all reports he's had a good pre-season so he's not going anywhere.

No change, although we might want to consider Moose in as a second ruck. That would be the only change I'd consider.

32 minutes ago, bing181 said:

Get Xavier Taylor in, even if he's not ready. Backline needs bolstering. St Kilda had 15 goals and 32 scoring shots - that would win most games.

Or AMW ...

Ask any Hawthorn supporter and they'll tell you that Jiath is a lemon. He was very poor today, ran around defending ghosts and did nothing to hurt the Saints offensively.

I'd be happy to go with no change but I would prefer McDonald.

Whilst I would love to say no change. We need to combat Jackson and Darcy in the ruck as well as Treacy, Voss, Amiss forward.

However today should be about basking in the job done not the job to do.

Sparrow looked lost today in the middle, Lever looked like a player who hasn't played in a while.

Not going to be overly harsh because we are a week behind in game prep and we have just won a game first up.

Prepared to give Rick a bit more time to find his feet, but can't be producing games like that going forward.

But the ease at which the ball was going in our defence from ball ups was a massive worry to come out of today.

All in all very encouraging signs from our young brigade.

Great to see the twos putting pressure on our best 23 and they can honestly think the are a realistic chance of playing in the AFL week to week.

Players can go into games without fearing the coaches favourites will stay in regardless.

26 minutes ago, YesitwasaWin4theAges said:

Sparrow looked lost today in the middle, Lever looked like a player who hasn't played in a while.

Not going to be overly harsh because we are a week behind in game prep and we have just won a game first up.

Prepared to give Rick a bit more time to find his feet, but can't be producing games like that going forward.

But the ease at which the ball was going in our defence from ball ups was a massive worry to come out of today.

All in all very encouraging signs from our young brigade.

Great to see the twos putting pressure on our best 23 and they can honestly think the are a realistic chance of playing in the AFL week to week.

Players can go into games without fearing the coaches favourites will stay in regardless.

Sparrow for AMW?

We’ll stick with Jake. But geez he has to stop making so many disposal mistakes and he had probably 5 more chances to mark and 5 more chances to punch in contests where he did neither.

I suspect we stick with CJ too. It’s a new zone that will take even our smarter defenders time to sort out.

I actually think our problems were more with midfield transition, midfield defensive pressure and despite the improvements still a heap of room with forward cohesion/ball movement.

Kolt tagging took CBA’s from Sparrow who’s been our best defensive mid.

Culley played the second half as the 3rd tall forward tagging Wilkie.

Culley, Langford, Sparrow, Rivers all looked a step off the pace. As did Sharp before his crazy last quarter.

There’s a reasonable argument to just play Melk as the 3rd tall forward given that’s what he does best then trimming a spare mid. Although I’m not sure we do that off a win.

I would like to see TMac included, in order to release Lever for the intercept game at which he is adept.

But I fear King may be a bit jaundiced about picking veterans, Max excepted.

The defence certainly needs some tweaking, because we conceded far too many scoring opportunities today and always looked vulnerable in the corridor.

1 hour ago, seventyfour said:

Ask any Hawthorn supporter and they'll tell you that Jiath is a lemon. He was very poor today, ran around defending ghosts and did nothing to hurt the Saints offensively.

I'd be happy to go with no change but I would prefer McDonald.

Totally agree, also thought he got found out a couple of times with his hardness at the footy

2 hours ago, seventyfour said:

Ask any Hawthorn supporter and they'll tell you that Jiath is a lemon. He was very poor today, ran around defending ghosts and did nothing to hurt the Saints offensively.

I'd be happy to go with no change but I would prefer McDonald.

I have to disagree. His game was far from perfect, but I reckon he breaks even. He hit a few targets today, and kicked to the right option most times.

Gawn is going to need some help vs Jackson and Darcy, double so since he ran himself into the ground today, as exciting as Latrelles debut was he probably needs to spend some time in the 2nds building up his game. Sparrow could also be in trouble and for a player in his 8th year he needs to be doing more. Whatever the case someone needs to make way for Moose at a minimum.

I am very worried about how we will defend against the Dockers tall forward line.

I'm also worried about Max playing solo against Darcy and Jackson.

I have faith that King is on the ball with the way to combat these two rucks.

10 minutes ago, Maldonboy38 said:

I have to disagree. His game was far from perfect, but I reckon he breaks even. He hit a few targets today, and kicked to the right option most times.

I think CJ did a lot good today but I saw a few to many instances where he pulled up short rather than commit to the contest, I’m more concerned about that than if he used the ball well or the hurt factor

Out: CJ, perhaps Sparrow

In: Heath, perhaps Taylor

In all likelihood: No Change and that's fair enough although I'd take Heath to help out Max

I thought Sparrow was very poor today. I have no idea who we replace him with given we don't have any midfielders/half forwards that can replace him. Not sold on CJ. He has some nice attributes but I didn't think the effort was 100% there today. I wouldn't mind throwing Taylor into the deep end.

Max Heath needs to be considered. Jackson's athleticism is outstanding and his endurance is almost as good as Gawn's. Add Darcy to that and we have a midfield first use problem.

Between Lever, Petty and co our defenders can match their forwards, but Josh Treacy is a problem. I can't see one of our defender able to match him.

For us, I reckon Latrelle and Cully might give Freo problems.

Koltyn went ok in the end, but had a slow start.. Liked that he got more creative in the second half. He tried hard. Reckon the new gameplan will suit him. Not sure that I can see this athleticism that King and a few others have spoken about?..

Langford, Langdon, Rivers, Lindsay and Sparrow need to lift. Still veryyyy early days, so not too bad, but Langford appeared to be jogging a lot and showed very little urgency in attack or defence.
Not sure who to drop to bring in Moose. Would still like T-Mac in, but can see that they wanna get games into Howes, and CJ. T-Mac might slow us down a bit too much.

IMO the only change we should be considering is getting in another tall, which by virtue of injuries has to be Heath, to help Gawn combat Darcy/Jackson, and/or to avoid Petty having to ruck when we have to cover Treacy, Voss and Amiss.

Obviously will disrupt our balance but there's a chance we went the extra runner today because Marshall was out and we wanted to up our run as they'd played last week. We went into the Richmond game with Kentfield in the side so our plan may well have always been to have another tall.

2 hours ago, seventyfour said:

Ask any Hawthorn supporter and they'll tell you that Jiath is a lemon. He was very poor today, ran around defending ghosts and did nothing to hurt the Saints offensively.

I'd be happy to go with no change but I would prefer McDonald.

325 metres gained plus 10 defensive half pressure acts (third behind Petty and Turner).

He was gassed late but was far, far better than this.

2 hours ago, DeeSpencer said:

We’ll stick with Jake. But geez he has to stop making so many disposal mistakes and he had probably 5 more chances to mark and 5 more chances to punch in contests where he did neither.

I suspect we stick with CJ too. It’s a new zone that will take even our smarter defenders time to sort out.

I actually think our problems were more with midfield transition, midfield defensive pressure and despite the improvements still a heap of room with forward cohesion/ball movement.

Kolt tagging took CBA’s from Sparrow who’s been our best defensive mid.

Culley played the second half as the 3rd tall forward tagging Wilkie.

Culley, Langford, Sparrow, Rivers all looked a step off the pace. As did Sharp before his crazy last quarter.

There’s a reasonable argument to just play Melk as the 3rd tall forward given that’s what he does best then trimming a spare mid. Although I’m not sure we do that off a win.

Those players looking "a step off the pace" weren't all that bad though, but regardless, how much was that caused by St Kilda having played last week?

3 hours ago, seventyfour said:

Ask any Hawthorn supporter and they'll tell you that Jiath is a lemon. He was very poor today, ran around defending ghosts and did nothing to hurt the Saints offensively.

I'd be happy to go with no change but I would prefer McDonald.

I thought CJ played pretty well…

I’d also say that given that King wants us to play quicker, subbing out one of the fastest players on the list for slow, 33 year old TMac seems unlikely.

37 minutes ago, Bigfoot said:

I thought Sparrow was very poor today. I have no idea who we replace him with given we don't have any midfielders/half forwards that can replace him. Not sold on CJ. He has some nice attributes but I didn't think the effort was 100% there today. I wouldn't mind throwing Taylor into the deep end.

I really don't understand Sparrow's role and haven't for a while. Is he a tagger? A decoy? A defensive mid? He doesn't tackle much, doesn't win many contested or uncontested ball, doesn't mark, doesn't hit the scoreboard. There must be something I don't see. He doesn't turn the ball over and is fairly reliable in hand so maybe that is it but he doesn't win it much anyway to cause any damage or impact the result or scoreboard. Surely we benefit more from a Taylor or AMW playing the defensive utility role.

37 minutes ago, praha said:

I really don't understand Sparrow's role and haven't for a while. Is he a tagger? A decoy? A defensive mid? He doesn't tackle much, doesn't win many contested or uncontested ball, doesn't mark, doesn't hit the scoreboard. There must be something I don't see. He doesn't turn the ball over and is fairly reliable in hand so maybe that is it but he doesn't win it much anyway to cause any damage or impact the result or scoreboard. Surely we benefit more from a Taylor or AMW playing the defensive utility role.

Yep it’s a mystery, he seems to have the weapons to be a good player, ball in hand running into 50 you rarely see him miss, I always hoped he would become a goal scoring mid in the vein of trac, but he just never took that next step and still seems to go missing for chucks of the game and now has been replaced by Tholstrup in that defensive run with roll today. His time is running out in his 8th year still unable to lock a roll down.