Leaderboard

He has been named in the squad for Sunday. If he plays he will be the first 4th generation of a family with the same surname to play VFL/AFL football. His great grandfather played for the Demons.

Does Conor McKenna have an alibi?

How the FK do Harmes and Nibbler keep their spots!?

I blame Goodwin.

Sorry to be the barer of bad (maybe long term good) news here but the more I kept thinking about our performances this year, this kept coming into my head - are we still incredibly young and we are expecting a top 4 side from a bottom 4 experience? Rd 5 - 80.5 Games, 24yr 6m, 16 players under 100 games v 104.2, 25y 11m, 13 players Rd 4 - 91.5, 25y 1m, 15 players v 107, 26y 1m, 10 players Rd 3 - 93.1, 25y 2m, 15 players v 94, 25y 4m, 14 players Rd 2 - 92.4, 25y 5m, 15 players v 77.1, 24y 1m, 15 players Rd 1 - 84.1, 25y 5m, 15 players v 92.6, 25y 3m, 13 players We were younger and more inexperienced that every side bar Brisbane we have played this year. This round, Carlton and WB played 17 players under 100 games to our 16. Round 4 WB and Carl (17) v 15. If you look at the experience each week we are putting out, we are more similar to Collingwood, St Kilda, Brisbane, than we are to GWS, Rich, Haw. But these are some of the names who are our under 100 game players who are also under 25: Hogan, Salem, Tyson, Hunt, Trac, Brayshaw, OMac, Lever, ANB, Frost, Oliver, Weiderman, Harmes, Stretch, Hannan and of course Viney when he comes back. These are players who many of them will play 10 years for the red and the blue and that average games will go to 100 by the end of the year and if (when) we make finals, we should have a team much closer to competing than the one that has dished out the last 2 efforts. 15 games is a long time in football. What pleases me about all of this is that for most of the top 8 teams, players are going to come in and out and the average games doesnt move much between Rd 1 and Rd 22 as they bring in debutant etc. Last year Round 1 - 74.6 games, 23y 10 months, 11 players under 50, 3 50-100 v Round 23 - 97.9, 25y 1m, 2 players under 50, 10 50-100. 19 players who played in Round 1 played in Round 23. 16 from round 1 2017 played on Tuesday and Viney, McDonald, Lewis, and Hannan are all a good chance to come back in (who played in that game). Watts is gone and Joel Smith is still developing. We have a stable team who have shown they can match it with the best, we just need to give them the time to develop that we gave our last guard. I know its been a long time coming, but for this group it hasnt. It's only been 4 years. They are allowed to still grow this year.

I think the one big change we need to make is in ATTITUDE ...and I don't mean the glib type "show some ticker" attitude. I mean don't close up shop, have trust in your teammate, get out and take some chances...in the last 2 games after starting well we've gone into our shells. A couple of mistakes and we're done, any semblance of working as a team goes out the window. I think this from Cameron Smith applies to us... “When we had a few errors in those first couple of matches, I think everyone just got a little bit tight,” he told Fox Sports. “All we were thinking was ‘don’t drop the ball, don’t drop the ball’. People were coming in from out of their position. We were crowding each other. We weren’t giving each other room or time with the footy. “We were playing with a little bit of confusion and a bit of frustration. “Three weeks ago, we just said ‘boys, let’s get back to the way we know we can play. Let’s get out there and enjoy our footy’. The results have spoken for themselves.

Really? He probably just thought it was a trivial thing he could manage himself and didn’t need to waste the doc’s time with it. I probably wouldn’t have either. Maybe he did get it looked at at the earliest opportunity. Is it not possible for us to just be able to say “s*** happens” and not get outraged or feel the need to blame someone?

Pedo not being named may be a clue that T Mac will line up.

The AFL was going to make this game a first to 5 goals but realised that may take longer than the normal four quarters the rest of the comp play.

stretch was shithouse

This might be because the guys who played on Tuesday probably didnt train, and they wanted to get a full session into him

It's a bummer, but his influence has waned. His first 3 weeks were very good, but his last couple not as much. Have a week off, freshen up, and come back fit and firing off a longer break.

Sook.

With missions record he is out for the season...

Baker is playing a sort of wingman who rebounds from half back role, kind of hard to pin point. He has shown some great signs but still needs work Balic is doing a medium forward/midfield role. Think ANB/Kent sort of thing. Again showed good signs but still progressing. Spargo is a similar role to Balic but more forward. Crafty player but a long way off AFL Keilty and Petty are both Tall KPDs. Both had poor games on the weekend but Keilty should be able to come into form over the next few weeks, he’s been carrying a couple of niggles and a sickness, once he gets over those he SHOULD be in contention for AFL selection, hopefully. Petty is just behind Keilty in his developement buy doing okay. None are ready for AFL just yet.

There's a shortage of pigs in Estonia?

Definitely. Other ball-movement issues remain: field positioning, bombing it forward, kick outs, tempo, switching etc. In addition to good midfield spread, Richmond have a cohesive end to end ball movement chain where players immediately know where to run depending on who has the ball. It may not always work but it is there and players know their role and work hard to make it happen. As someone else said they are very well drilled on their role within their game plan. We on the other hand work very, very hard but seem less certain on where to position and what option to take when we have the ball - on Tuesday night it was like a hot potato for some players. It is sad as we are not getting the reward for all our hard work.

Probably very true. The fumbling and contested footy was over the top. Losing confidence meant too many players contesting, causing the clangers and lack of ability to spread, which we did in the JLT but not in the 5 games so far. The teams who have confidence in each other send less to the contest and then have outriders who can spread and cut you to ribbons, once the ball is flipped out to them. We need to get back to that type of footy.

Get ready for another 'awesome marquee' game tomorrow night: Carlton vs Bulldogs. I kid you not. Did they not notice that Geelong plays Sydney. Ch7 deserve crap ratings for stupidity! ...beggars belief really.

No Pedo? If we are going to continue bombing the ball into a vacant forward line surely we'd be better with him in the team?

If only that were true.

I must be missing something. Didn't we play the Tigers on Tuesday night? Are they SURE it was a DOG bite, and not a Tiger bite??!!

Not even mentioned in our official injury report video just uploaded to the club services Amateur hour!

Attention Redleg members: The club has given us back the Lindsay Hassatt room for the Queens Birthday clash. The club made this decision this morning.

Well I've put the last two weeks in the rear view mirror and am ready to smash the Druggos and get our season back on track LETS GO DEMONS

Bump. There was an interview with Tom on Ch9 on Sunday and he was asked about his contract and said his injury has delayed talks as he hasn’t been able to see (and show the club) how he goes as permanent forward. Nonetheless he has put an offer to the club and they have come back with one so talks are continuing. Last time he put off contract talks to see how much we improved. In Sunday's interview, there was no hint of him looking elsewhere or delaying contract talks. Said he expects to play forward this season unless a key back is injured or in short bursts down back if needed. As an aside he said he expects to play this weekend but not sure if VFL or AFL...we will find out in a few hours. Edit: could mods add a question mark to the title please. I can no longer edit it.

The least incompetent will win.

Daniher is the big problem. If he fires up and kicks half decently it will be hard to win. We will see if he has extracted Goddards boot from his khyber pass.

Pedersen has never kicked more than 3 goals in an AFL match. He is more likely to be a complete passenger when played as a forward than he is to kick 5 goals. His career high goals for an entire season is 18, and that was when he was with North. There is a good reason why he has never been a permanent fixture in the side. Proven performer? Massively overrated on this site IMO.

I think we need to roll the dice with Tmac for this game. His interview sounded very positive to me and his comment about getting his “conditioning out on the MCG” sounds to me as though his toe is 100%. He’s a seasoned player and extremely fit. I reckon he’ll be the key to converting more of the immense forward 50 entries into goals. Viney of last season was a completely different issue and a much more severe injury. The two are apples and oranges. Get him in.

I think we get too many players around the ball, we need to have some players hold off around the contest and not to sucked in.

I think the Bombers have just as much ability to bounce back for a win as we do.

Trac probably injured his finger giving the bird to Goody's default Plan A. Infection from sticking it up Goody's ___ when he saw Plan B. Whoever thinks we can cover a guy of his talent must be looking at another Melbourne Football Club. This hurts big time against depleted Bummers.

Should be fine.. looks armless enough I'll see myself out..

For those asking: Squad of 26 named tonight at 6.25, final 22 tomorrow at 5pm

Gawn’s tap work will improve dramatically with Viney back at the stoppages imo. Not only from a ball-winning perspective but also from a leadership POV. We need Jack back in the team so so badly.

I think Hunt, Salem and Stretch should be our main wingers as they are the players to benefit most from the space there and are best able to hurt the opposition either with run or good delivery into the forward 50. It is a waste to put Tyson or ANB there, as they butcher the ball and are not really quick of mind or foot. They can play in the middle at the contest if they are in the side.

And how good are we for running players into form.

Incorrect... premiership sides all have very similar games and age makeup. Against tigers: 80 games, 24.5 age, 10 players under 50 and 3 over 150. premiership sides: Tigers 2017: 104 games, 25 age, 4 under 50, 8 over 150 crows R/U: 109 games, 26 years, 1 under 50, 7 over 150 The recipe to success is average over 100 games, 26 years, 3/4 of the team over 100 games. we had 6 players on the weekend over 100 games. Almost 10 short of what we need.

What a condescending post and a BS argument. No one else has to give up 'blockbuster' games, nor should we. In any case I'd be happy to give up playing Gold Coast at the G or Frem. In addition to Essendon, since 2005 we have only had: 5 homes games against Carlton 7 v Richmond 5 v Geelong And for example, Carlton haven't played at Geelong since 1997, Ess since 1993 and Coll since 1999. No wonder teams have such different gate receipts from football. We are denied access to big games against large drawing Vic clubs and its wrong. And BTW we rotate the ANZAC day Eve game with Richmond.

I'm thinking it might be worth replacing Kent with Pedersen. If we only play two tall forwards (ie, Hogan and Weiderman), that will allow Essendon to play Hooker forward. And then we'll have a problem with Essendon having three marking tall forwards (Daniher, Hooker, Stewart) and us having only two genuine tall defenders. The alternative is to pick Frost to add height to the backline. If Essendon only play two tall forwards, Frost could play on a smaller player (Stringer, perhaps?) but that's always fraught. In short, I actually have no idea, but I'm not advocating picking a side without actually contemplating who we are playing against.

what a joke of a thread. some people need to have a good look at themselves trollsville the problem is mostly game plan give me 18 jonesies every time

I think you have hit the 'secret' of their turnaround from 2016 to premiers in 2017. At the end of 2016 Richmond recruited Blake Caracella as Midfield Coach - spread and ball movement. He has been credit with transforming their game plan from hand-balling backwards and in circles to a slick forward ball moving team. It took a while in 2017 to fine tune their spread and ball movement and it really came together in September. In our coaching structure we do not have a Caracella role. I assume it falls into Plapp's role as midfield coach with buy in from other field coaches. Our overall plan is players to the contest and we don't seem to have a spread and ball-movement plan so we look stagnant and our players look uncertain. The big question is: how do they fix our ball-movement problems quickly.

Thanks for that summary. Could you please now explain why Carlton get 6 prime time Friday/Saturday night games this year?

Yet tigers bring in a young kid called Higgins who tears us apart and looks like he wasn’t troubled by us. The young card is getting too very long in the tooth.

The question is irrelevant, because we won't stay in our current 'form'. We will take care of Essendon for starters.

I was at the game and had a great aerial view. Stretch - did not take the game on enough. we gave so much effort and were our own worst enemy at times. One play he received the ball at half back with a free man at half forward. an almost certain shot on goal coming up. he decided to go sideways and gave richmond time to man up. he gets in ok position but is playing too safely and to be honest was too fumbly all night. i would give him another game though and see if he learns. ANB - doesn't look half the player of last year where he was very reliable. tough, hard runner but looks out of form to me. just looks like a VFL player at present. both not great defensively either with 2 and 1 tackles respectively. Max Gawn had 8.

What a ridiculous thread. Jones is a driver of training standards and a great lead by example captain. He has a fierce loyalty to the Melbourne Football Club and is respected by opposition players and supporters alike. Perhaps you would prefer Trengove and Grimes to captain again.