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I wandered by at around 10:40 and stayed for maybe an hour until they were wrapping up. Looked mostly a craft session as Saty would say, lots of smaller group drills focusing on particular skills. Gathering the ball, quick hands up, hit up a kick, get a handball, kick inside 50 was one drill and there were plenty similar. Lever was doing some jogging. Apart from Hannan, Garlett, Neitschke, Tim Smith (not expecting good news there) everyone else was on deck. KK was in a t shirt but was involved in some of the drills. I had a good look at one of the craft drills and to be honest I wasn't all that impressed with the overall skill level. Jones missed a few easy handballs in a row, other players dished it off on the deck or too high, the kicks were sloppy. Petty and Chandler were 2 who impressed me with reliable skills. Interestingly it seemed a guy like Austin Bradtke was fresh and hitting his targets where some of those who played on the weekend looked fatigued. They split in to forwards/backs/mids and I wandered over to observe some clearance stuff and was bluntly told by Ben Matthews to move at least 30m away which seemed particularly odd given I was wearing headphones and couldn't hear whatever wise secrets he was imparting. Anyway, maybe our clearance structures will evolve to something more than Gawn hits it to Oliver/Gus/Viney/Harmes/Petracca who make something good happen. The general plan seemed to be to get the ball to someone running forward ideally in to the corridor. Most of the guys who played on Sunday (I think maybe all apart from Harmes) started to filter out to the sidelines or do some goal kicking whilst the others did some match simulation at the end. Melksham and May both impressed me. Viney involved, got cleaned up by Preuss at one stage and enjoyed a wrestle.

The Grand Final is in fine shape. The AFL needs fixing

Who knows how much it will help the MFC and, while it isn’t mentioned in the article below, the new MCC president is a passionate Melbourne supporter and comes from a family of passionate Melbourne supporters. If there was ever a time to quietly cement the MFC/MCC relationship now would opportune. Mike is the perfect replacement for the current president, Steve Smith, of the MCC who played over 200 games for us https://mcc.org.au/whats-on/latest-news/2019/march/new-mcc-president-elected (Probably not worth it’s own thread but I couldn’t find anywhere else to put this)

Yeah they don't want the midfield setup broadcasted. I'm OK with that as I want them to win games with their innovation. Moonshadow, that is hilarious! Saty, didn't see you this morning. I was there early and left when it rained. I'm made of paper. Saw a bit of most of them. Lever running laps, Hannan walked a lap, not much more. Jones looks good. Preuss looked a bit tired from the run on Sunday. Jetta looked sharp. AVB is going to hurt a few this year. I wish Stretch had the size of Maynard, he is super fit, his accuracy was good today and he looks the part of a winger. Good luck chasing him all game. Tom Sparrow is the one to look for. He'll play this year. Just like the Man From Snowy River, the horse is 3 parts thoroughbred and a little undersized. He is young and will bulk up. He did a low jump, great scoop and handball off his feet to the running player. Followed it up by a beautiful long kick into the 50 for a mark. Good decision making as there were options and he hit his target unopposed. McCartney said hello over the fence and said something about the weather, very friendly. There were only 15 non MFC on the sidelines. OMac was running sprints with AVB there for a while. The new No1 May, had a lovely receive and kick into the F50. He'll get there, just needs a little longer for the preseason. Trac was switched on today, he was good. Fast, clean and accurate. Jones took a mark in F50 and Clarry came over and started pushing him around. Jones then slotted it. Saying both are comfortable at this level. Watch for Joel MacDonald in the F50 this year, with his size and speed, he is going to be tough to tag. He'll get the third tall defender and will roast them.

The Grand Final isn't broken.. It's doesn't need fixing.... Leave it alone

About as likely as seeing him in the ASX200...

Fugazi

I never played with one, but then again, I never played football.

In a bad way. I saw every player you mentioned and there's not one great of the game other than Flower. There are greats of the MFC, but not greats of the VFL/AFL competition. There were great stories, like Stynes, who was a champion of the MFC, but wasn't a great of the game. Simon Madden and Dean Cox are greats of the game, but Stynes falls short of their lofty status. By the end of his career, if not now, Gawn will go down as a better player than Stynes. For me he's already better. In the midfield group you've listed there is not a single champion midfielder in the Voss, Black, Judd, Ablett, Riccuito, Williams, Buckley, Fyfe mould. There's no Matthews, Bartlett, Skilton. There's no Lockett, Dunstall, Carey, Lloyd, Riewoldt, Brown, Quinlan. Or Blight, Jezza, or Hudson. And I've missed many. In fact, I don't recall a single club with as little star power as Melbourne in the last 50 years. We're simply bereft of the ''greats''. In my opinion our best ''collective'' would be the worst in the league among the established clubs. I could not disagree with you more.

This push for change makes me sick. I suspect someone at the AFL is obsessed with the idea of fireworks at the Grand Final. They can't even get the entertainment right. IMO if you can't get Lady Gaga, Bruce Springsteen or Metallica, don't have anybody. This desire for a night final reminds me of hot cross buns on Boxing Day. "The public demands them!" NO. No they don't. Stop telling us, the football loving public, who buy our memberships and pay for your wages, AFL, want we need, or want. Daytime for me.

You will. But that answer will be that ice is small change and the impact of the ice 'epidemic' is blown way out of proportion, that the crazy ice head going ballistic in ER is largely a myth (though can happen) and that far and away the biggest drain on their resources and the most dangerous drug in terms of people going ballistic is alcohol.

Love this ❤️?

Or lose $160 Million in a week

They don't want 'tactical' talk reported on here or other forums, somebody quoted the calls used last year on another forum So it is not a visual move on but an aural So they move everybody away, so it wasn't personal I was told to stay away from the midfield drills, and they know my training reports are more colour than movement

He'd be easier to understand if he wore one.

Myth. Anyone interested in taking any drug will already be doing so as it so easy to obtain if you want it. Would you start taking ice or heroin just because it was legal? I sure as hell wouldn't go near them myself.

This type of conservative thinking paves the way to a hyper-nanny state which is terrifying to imagine. To suggest conducting drug testing in jobs beyond those that would benefit from performance-enhancing drugs or pose serious physical safety issues is as invasive as it is downright stupid. What on earth would a positive drug test from a office staffer prove (other than potentially ruining someones livelihood because they prefer some ecstasy on the weekends instead of a bottle of scotch)? Come on, its almost 2020 - can we please consider moving away from this ridiculous hard line approach to the war on drugs that that puts trillions of dollars in the hands of criminal groups globally, poisons our children with substances they never intended on taking and criminalizes addicts for life instead of treating the addiction with medical/psychological intervention? Switzerland made heroin completely legal and free to obtain in clinics and the stats are in - heroin use is significantly down in that country. Instead of criminalizing users with endless litigation and police resources, they diverted that money into mental health initiatives for addicts, which in turn uncovered the underlying cause of their use and saw an overall drop in usage, despite its open availability. Modern problems require modern solutions - prohibition didn't work for alcohol and your a fool to think it will work for other drugs (I saw other drugs because alcohol is no different, other than being legal and socially acceptable). There are other examples of effective progressive thinking like in Portugal or The Netherlands, but I digress ... The main focus should be to catch players using performance enhancing substances, which I'm all for as no-one wants to see a game played by people with unfair advantages. Recreational testing should be for impairment on game day only, not for the presence of substances in the system outside of game day. Instead of teaching kids that adults, including their footy idols, take drugs - let them figure it out the natural way; in a seedy nightclub after their 18th birthday surrounded by friends and questionable loud music (unless you live in NSW as I don't think you guys are allowed out after midnight anymore thanks to your "liberal" government)

yes, the drop off is quite large, macca one definite reason would be the reduction of games broadcast on fta (large shift percentage wise) another reason would be the terrible selection of teams/timeslot for fta. the carlton debacle turned many away beyond that i could only guess

Say it LOUDER Ding! Gil obviously has a hearing problem.

Every year they wheel out the 'we will be making a decision about this' story. Every year they 'respond to feedback' and keep the day grand final 'for now'. The whole thing is an exercise in undermining the perceived continuity and legitimacy of the day grand final, by creating a sense that it is a year-by-year decision. Put this together with enough cherry-picking of daft online polls, and soon enough it'll feel normal that this is a debatable topic rather than the open-and-shut 'everyone who really cares either way, prefers day' reality. They have already made their decision, they are just working on the tactics to out-maneuver public opinion. It's a lot like the rigged 'pilot programs' and railroaded 'consultation processes' that governments keep using for thought-bubble projects they long ago decided they wanted no matter what the evidence tells them. Odious scumbags.

A lot of times you need to look at the differentials as game style skews overall rankings. ie For 1, we were ranked number 1 in contested mark differential, so it is the complete opposite of what you had assumed. We just don't chip the ball around like other teams in the back half which is mostly a positive, as we were first for scoring from defensive 50. For 3, we are 13th on tackle differential. Magpies were 1st. Our tackling can tend to go missing at times. We know Goody would hate this stat, hence why not much patience with those who don't tackle. More interesting stats that we have to be better at this year are: 1. Ranked 14th for disposal efficiency and 12th for disposal efficiency differential. For a side that was 4th for most handballs and 11th for kicks that is pretty poor. 2. Ranked 9th from scores conceded from D50 entries. 9th flatters us, as we are 1% from being 16th but 6% from being top 4. 3. We rank 1st for centre clearance differential but 12th for stoppage clearance differential. My view is we are at our worst in the forward half of the ground, especially when Max dropped a kick behind and we pinch hit. Probably why Goody wants Max and Pruess to spend time in the forward half. We ranked 5th for inside 50 scoring efficiency which surprised me. Against top 8 teams this dropped to 39% which would have ranked us 17th. We definitely need to improve our scoring efficiency against good teams. I suspect some of this is we bomb, and are pretty good at creating stoppages, but we are lousy at defending stoppages in the F50. I think our terrible F50 stoppage work is directly related to our leaking goals at the other end. Most but not all of the issues above were fixed up in the last 5 weeks (save for the prelim). But they are far more significant than the stats that we are 17th and 18th in.

Don't sell yourself short.

Of course Ernest, but we all know it will never happen, because: a) it makes too much sense for the AFL to cope with; b) the polls would tell them that club members would vote overwhelmingly for the status quo, and they couldn't cope with that either; c) 'democracy' (or anything approaching it), is not a word in the AFL lexicon.

I was surprised that Collingwood was only rated 2-5. I said it last night on the podcast that never in my life have we had so much hype surrounding us. Never have 9 out of 22 herald sun "expert" had us for premiers. Almost all had us as Top 4. That is unheard of. Dare to dream.

The Podcast Chat is working again. Turns out the chat app just needed to be upgraded. I was on version 1.3.4 and now it is version 4.0.0. I was a little bit behind.

It was strange and I was tempted to stand my ground. There was a camera guy and a journalist all of 50m away the other way so fair to say they weren't implementing some kind of secret weapon play. At the end of the day the coaches and players are there to work and improve and I'm not so I moved but I must say I prefer the way Brendan McCartney engages in the occasional banter over the fence. I did make Robert Harvey run around me up the tan hill though, I'm not prepared to move for the enemy.

Send an email to Goodwin and cc the selectors.

Agree Smokey, some really good points. Drug taking in all its forms does not discriminate on grounds of gender, age or social class. I have lived in country towns and cities and it is destroying the fabric of both. As time goes on and nothing changes in terms of government policy, more and more criminals are encouraged to get involved in sourcing, making and distributing drugs, with violence and reprisals a daily reality. I know of one country town where locals are afraid to walk the streets after dark and where farmers in the region cannot sell their farms or pass them on to their sons because many of the sons have become addicts. This occurring after the crims moved in to town and started distributing to the teenagers. Until we treat it first and foremost as a health issue and decriminalise its use, we will never win the war or begin to reduce the users and the suppliers. It will continue to grow and create ever increasing social problems. There are problems in the short-term in decriminalising its use, but unless societies make radical changes rather than piecemeal changes, we are in for a very bleak future.

The noise was a bit annoying but great show as always.

I'd like to add: Angus Brayshaw to hit a target by (either) foot ANB without the fumbles Kielty with a little more game time. Viney unscathed in particular.

I wouldn't think too much into this. Playing footy in 40 degree weather doesn't tell us much other than it's too bloody hot to be playing footy.

You may be right having watched him closely at Shepp. However, I think my expectations of him were unreasonable. I expected or hoped to see a big guy that could make an immediate impact. Unfortunately, you can't help but compare him to Max and the difference is huge. But one's an All Australian and the other, a bloke who has been playing in the twos for North. Preuss is still young and we know that big guys can take years to mature and find their feet in the big time. So we need to lower our expectations and give him time. He has had little experience at a senior level and was almost forgotten at North. After a period in the wilderness, he has come to a new club and new environment. If he is going to develop and improve, the club will need to give him adequate game time, and not have him languishing at Casey. I still think his recruitment was a good one and that he will play a role this season, and, as you say, at least be a solid backup to Max when required. And Max and the club will need a backup.

I think we know that like all politicians, Gil has selective hearing. Like many who hold the reins of power, acting for or in the public good is not a priority and sometimes not even a consideration. For people like Gil, acting in the interests of those that support his own position of power is paramount. Unfortunately, those that support him are those vested interests who gain financially from the cash cow created by media rights and advertising. Those vested interests include the clubs and players on which the game is dependant. Here's an idea. If the AFL wanted to show that public opinion matters to their deliberations, why not take a poll of the membership of all AFL clubs, the poll commissioned by the AFL but run by an independent body that could verify the process and the accuracy of the result.

That was me but I do that every show.

and let's face it, judging by the number of tests per player per year, it's just the afl paying lip service they made the decision a few years ago in haste under outside pressure and now they are unwillingly stuck with it they don't have any hard conviction over illicit drugs, they now just employ secrecy and spin and hope that with so few tests they can keep it under the radar, but it still bubbles along and occasionally threatens to erupt it's their redheaded step daughter

Couldn't be anything to do with the standard of commentary could it?

Overall I think they paint a picture of a team that plays an effective style of contested footy but needs to add in more uncontested play without diminishing our strong suit. Eg: When we win the ball let's get it to the outside freely so we aren't tackled with it. When the quick play from half back isn't on let's play some kick/mark footy, switch and reset. Goodwin and co made a number of in season and in game adjustments to our defensive work last year and the hope is May helps there. Becoming a more efficient team with the ball probably centres around Fritsch and KK in to the side, without upgrading personnel we were always going to have a hard time fixing the issue of flooding numbers around the ball instead of finding open space and bombing it forward.

Things I'd like to see in JLT 2: Pruess to time his jumps and use his body size to impose himself in the ruck more. Feel free to hurt someone legally for my amusement also. Hunt to show us he isn't just a gifted runner and has improved decision making and disposal. If he can't get it right now then my hope for him becoming anything more than the embodiment of roadrunner will start to fade. Tmac to kick a bunch and turn around last weeks thumping so he can go into round 1 with a clear mind and no second guesses Meaningful inside 50 delivery. Please. Goody to pull out a few tricks I'm not nearly creative enough to imagine myself Zero injuries. Not even a hurt feeling.

What they decided was as he was going to get one knee done, they may as well fix both up, hopefully to end his knee issues Unfortunately the 'worse' knee had a bit of a hiccup and he had to have a small procedure post Xmas Club believes in fixing the issues completely or hope to, no matter how long that takes He has, like Vanders, been working his butt off in the gym, so core strength will be even better than ever He starts his preseason on legs next week, hence the timeframe Most of the others rehabbing were either small procedures or not leg related and were able to get the k's in Hence Oliver's performance post an 'interrupted' pre season

The GF is in reality a LIVE EVENT which is also televised. There is a difference. There is no doubt the Televisors would prefer a later time but it's not THEIRS. ITS OURS As pointed out the game doesn't need all the rubbish you glitz and sham of American rubbish. The FA cup manages just fine as a day event. So should ours.

Fancy having a crack at people for discussing the topic and not playing the man! I don't rate Lyon personally but I agree on Oliver. Having said that it's not a big call. Our lack of elite mids since 1964 is quite embarrassing really. Poor old Robbie. I always really rated him but I'll have to reconsider now. I think it's harder to play well in a rubbish side. Cripps and Robbie stand/stood out because they are/were fantastic footballers.

The GF is a television event. When is the best time to watch TV. Great post Ernest....In recent years I have been frequenting the Casey games when they are played at some of the traditional inner city venues. Try it if you have time. My favourite is probably the Coburg ground but on a nice day Port and Williamstown ovals are delightful. Last year I also discovered Frankston oval. A great day out.

The ultimate plan - a night grand final, played in Sydney, so that people are leaving the stadium as the lock-out laws come into effect. Flippant yes, but also does kind of bring up one of the problems with a night grand final. No families get to be part of the after-game celebrations, which would start at 11pm. Even watching at home, it'll be "ok, that's done, time for bed kids'. Good luck a) getting the kids to sleep and b) building intergenerational passion.

I wouldn’t bother playing Gawn this week. He was best on ground in the prac match so for mine he is in good touch. I see no benefit in running him around in a meaningless match. Give Preuss a chance to show a bit more and give Keilty another go to show he can back it up.

If we make it through this weekend's game unscathed, then we should be going in to Round 1 with a pretty much full strength side, which is really positive. I know we started the pre-season late and had numerous off season surgeries, but it seems as though the medical and fitness staff have got a lot right to put us in a good position for Round 1. Also good to hear that Garlett may only miss a few weeks, as I think he might be a chance to play against Port in a few weeks time.

When you prefer Le Miz to Phantom of the opera.

Coniglio is a serious jet. IMO was unlucky not to be named All Australian last year. One of the best rounded goal kicking midfielders in the game. I'd love to land him, but I suspect it's either GWS or a return home to WA. We should just focus on keeping our own going forward. Keep Oliver, Brayshaw, Petracca, Lever etc together and the success will come.