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Couldn’t be bothered

People can say the there was no heart, no desire, not trying, etc. but I disagree. There was plenty of effort in the first half. The problem was the usual structural issues - we were absolutely slaughtered by a far better structured side forward and behind the ball. St Kilda absolutely schooled us in game style / structure. So despite dominating most of the game, we were only 3 points up midway through the second quarter. The combined effect of not being able to translate midfield dominance into scores and the leaking of easy goals down the other end absolutely drained the confidence and belief of the players. Then you get what you get in the third quarter. Time to make changes, especially behind the ball. The free players for the opposition inside 50 week-after-week is just disheartening and deflating for the supporters and obviously the players. Unfortunately our style of defence is very high risk, super aggressive and only works when you're absolutely on top of your inside game, your forward 50 ground balls and your forward pressure. Clearly the players aren't at the level of last year at the moment and therefore we're getting completely exposed by our aggressive defensive structures. Surely we need some structural changes to help us defend better and stay in games when we're not producing the levels required.

Long time reader - rare poster. I go to every game in Melbourne (except Geelong because f that). I've been there through the all the highs and lows, I sat through every week of the Neeld years (god help us all). I'm almost as disappointed with where we are now as I was then. At least in those years you expected to lose every week because our list was a shambles. How does a team go from a PF to third bottom after 5 rounds? I've been a massive critic of Oscar McDonald (and to a lesser extent Frost). It doesn't matter what defenders you have back there at the moment, the mid-field is diabolically lazy and slow and makes their job impossible. There is no outside run. They are one dimensional plodders. There is no plan B. The ball comes out of our forward line in waves and stays in our backline like we are moving in quicksand. What the hell has happened to Hibberd? His run and carry is non-existent or on the odd occasion he decides to take off, he looks like he's running on the spot and bombs it to the wrong option. I don't mind the Hunt up forward experiment, but he struggled today and doesn't chase hard enough when he doesn't have the ball. The lack of support from our mid-field to help the defence is embarrassing as is the forward line pressure (don't even get me started on T Mac. It's not worth it, he's just horribly out of form). But if the purpose of playing Spargo and C Wagner is their forward pressure (which is presumably the point, otherwise i'm not sure) then Goodwin is kidding himself. Delivery into the forward line is a disgrace and has been since round 1. It is beyond me how Spargo kept his spot - even though we won last week. Corey Wagner isn't AFL standard, and instead of playing Garlett for one of these two or even Lockhart, we go with Spargo and C Wagner. It's like Goodwin has stamped Garlett's papers, and don't get me wrong, he doesn't win us today's game, but regardless he makes the opposition nervous because of his pace. Spargo looks lost. You could add another 10 paragraphs slamming the players but what's the point? We're all shaking our heads about how we can go backwards so far. Does it seem to anyone else that as a team we are just terribly unfit? What does that say about a) the preseason and the application of the players, particularly those not on modified programs and b) our fitness staff? Goodwin has just said in his press conference we have players in form in the VFL...who are they? They got beaten by a team of under 18's today. My final note - gees the recruiting of May & KK is looking like a massive error at this stage. Injuries are unfortunate, but when May turns up to training out of shape, builds his load too quickly, injures himself, comes back, get suspended, comes back again and injures his groin and is out for how long...it's gone from a 2-3 weeks injury to still another 2-4 according to the MFC website. If it is worst case another 4 weeks he will have missed 7 games with a groin injury. How do we pay pick 5 for a bloke whose level of professionalism is to turn up in that state, and why was the club not clear on expectations? And if the club was clear on expectations why wasn't there a club imposed sanction for his lack of condition. It's all good for Goodwin, Lewis etc to come out in the media and say it's unacceptable, but where's the accountability? KK has concussion issues, gets a late knock in the Essendon game and what we're fed from the club varies depending on the week. Ok, maybe a week to week proposition, it just seems odd. When he did play he seemed unfit and out of touch. I am genuinely unsure if he was in the team for the GC Suns at the end of 2018 or not, so apologies if he hasn't played for an extended period of time and I've missed it. But, gees, it looks a massive fail at this stage. Did the club not sit down with May and make the expectations clear about what shape he was to come back in? Again, sorry if I've missed this on another thread. We will get beaten by 100 points next week. Reiwoldt will be back and probably Cotchin. Can you imagine Lynch and Reiwoldt working in a forward line with the lack of defensive pressure we apply. God help us.

OK, so what exactly is wrong with the coolaid our coaches are serving? They want to play a high defence where our whole team pressures in the forward half. Why is this bad? Because it means there are 36 players in our forward line when we are in attack. This makes it virtually impossible to get a player in the clear for a mark or an unpressured shot on goal. It also means that there are no players in the opposition's fifty, meaning that when they bring the ball out of our forward zone they have miles of open space to work in, meaning that it is very easy for them to get in space to take a mark or have an unpressured shot on goal. They want our forward 50 entries to be in the supposedly high percentage area 20-30m our directly in front of the goals. Why is this bad? Firstly because it makes us horribly predictable, meaning that oppositions defensive units can set up around this area with players waiting for the spillage and runners ready for the handball receive allowing them to easily run the ball back out of our attacking 50 if we don't take a contested mark. Secondly, because we don't have any forwards capable of taking big contested marks. Thirdly, because our forwards lack cohesion and teamwork, and so often go for the same ball and spoil each other, saving their opponents the trouble. They want everyone to win the contested ball. Why is this bad? Because unlike when you're eight years old, in the grownup game you can't have a mob of players charging around following the ball wherever it goes. We repeatedly see our mids all diving in to try to win the ball, get in each others' way and cause fumbles. Meanwhile, the opposition have two or three in the scrum against our entire midfield who often don't even try to win the ball but just knock it around and try to punch it to the outside where we have nobody and they can get an easy takeaway. The absolute lack of anything resembling team acts by anyone in our side makes this problem worse. If our players were working for each other rather than all trying to win the ball themselves, we could use those extra numbers to create space for one or two people to get the ball. I don't remember the last time I saw a Melbourne player shepherding for a teammate, but it must have been before Goodwin took over. Yes we have some skill errors. Yes, the umpiring hurt us today. But make no mistake, it's the coaching that is causing these problems.

I don’t buy in to the emotive crap, no heart, passengers etc etc. There have no doubt been some really bad performances (Lewis, Spargo, McDonald, Jones etc), but this is so clearly coaching to me I’m astounded others don’t see it. Structure, selection and game day. It appalling and questions must be asked!!!

Here we go. People making negative comments on something they know absolutely nothing about.

FFS, there are loads of problems, but Petracca certainly ain't one of them. He's actually one of the only players in at least decent form and doing his part.

Too many vfl level players: Spargo, Frost, Hunt, Hore, C Wagner, J Wagner Old men past it: Jones, Lewis, Hibberd

Nice to read some proper, level headed analysis! Couldn’t agree more. The whole ‘win the ball at source’ philosophy is fine, but you better dominate in there. A territory game can also be fine, but you better have the players, and in our case we went in with 3 talls. And the game awareness/structure in the D50 is shocking, which fees like Chaplin. Or they relied on May and when he went down we weren’t prepared. Lewis, Jones are clearly now liabilities.. so what the hell were they doing on the wings against such a fast team? Why the hell didn’t we send TMac back? Petracca to the ball? Fritsch forward? Anything at all? I hate the rubbish about ‘not trying’, ‘no heart’, in my view this is never the reason. In this case it was coaching, all over the place. Just. Dreadful.

Great support for ANB on here as usual. He tries his guts out and is out of form. Why kick him while he is down?

I agree it's system based and almost all about our coaching. Our forwards don't lead up at the ball and we don't lower our eyes enough entering forward 50. Collingwood are showing the way a dominant midfield (which we possess too) can play control football and wipe sides off the park. I find it staggering that we still haven't worked out how to play the G or against control footy. Our aggressive press is still just as ridiculous as it was last year and must go. I love Hibbo but he's done. I don't think we've got a dumber footballer on our list. He can't win 1v1s anymore and he literally has one game: bomb it high and long. Lewis and Jones were both done last year too. The missing ingredient to this side, as has been discussed ad nauseum, is pace. We need pace off our back flanks, on our wings and in our forward half. I think we might need some fresh ideas in the coaching ranks too. Hold onto your first bloody draft pick this time because it'll be another top 5 pick. We're not getting off the foot of the ladder this year.

I haven't a clue what to say. It's been a terrible day personally with some terrible news this morning and this has really just nailed it. I came to the game today to get a breather from all that was happening today, and the sad part is I don't regret it. Yep that's right, I would still rather get down to the g to see our beloved Dees belted just to escape from reality for a few hours Full bellies, that's the bottom line right now. Thinking the improvement comes naturally, fluffing up basic fundamentals. Looks more like 2014 than ever right now. The gameplan is fundamentally flawed and there is absolutely no point in denying it. When the first 5 of their scoring shots came from 6 inside 50s and we almost always as a result of us pressing high and caught out back? Well, it's time to strip back the BS.Troy Chaplin, I'm not one to call for a man's job but there has to be some serious scrutiny here because otherwise what metrics are we using to measure performance? We've talked about this ad nauseam. We get a million inside 50s and never score while they get like an 80 % return. Game over, we just can't compete with that. And just hold off before telling me their efficiency ended at only 55%. Watch the game. Not even gonna bother potting the poor performers. They know who they are. As for the positive contributors Salem continues to impress. I really liked Marty Gore's game I thought he showed a lot of courage at tense times. Gawn worked hard all game and Harmes was always in there. Fritsch really shows you what he has. In a backline where the pressure is on all the time he always uses it. That's it from me. I'm not going go say something stupid like I won't be back this season because it's a total lie. Stay strong people.

There is nothing complicated about Preuss’s game. See ball, mark ball, kick ball, kick goal.

ReHore was our best defender. Kudos to him, hes been Brilliant the past 2 weeks and hes proved me wrong. Hibberd and Lewis, time to retire now. We have a lot of junk footballers on our list. I have now accepted we wont make finals. Coaching needs a huge overhaul ala what Richmond did at the end of 2017. Need to be really aggressive this coming trade period.

It's clearly system based. We're poorly organised. Players and coaches out of form.

Oh man. Feels like the bad old days where you just wonder where the improvement is going to come from. It’s been the same story every week really - win the ball and kick it to a forward line that is outnumbered, talls don’t mark it, smalls don’t crumb it and sweet nobody puts any pressure between there and the opposition goals.

Goodwin’s ability to coach has to be seriously questioned. He has learnt nothing from his time with Roos This game is crucial and it is a complete fail so far.

Surprised he’s not more popular on here. His vision in traffic and passing is sublime. He always looks for a teammate in a better position and gives away a lot of goals that most small forwards would kick themselves. Such a good prospect for the future.

[censored] call. Continues to try his heart out and is creating assists for his team mates every week. Playing in our forwardline would be pretty horrible the way we bomb it in long to Preuss every time.

Normally playing for us, Kent would have pulled a hammy by half time or had some collision injury. Just our luck, he was always a potentially dangerous half forward in a dominate side, but he always got injured when he looked like hitting form.

Nearly sixty years i been addicted to this crap. Time to get myself some rehab.

Lewis and Jones were on the wings tonight . The disrespect Goodwin is showing to the wing position is astounding

Yep. I love Goody, but they've learnt nothing over summer. At least he won't be telling us that we want to be a humble football club, which I've heard ad nauseum. I wish we had something to be humble about. We're all used to this feeling. It's not like it's anything new for a Melbourne supporter. You'll all survive. 2019 is over. Alas, I'm still bullish about the future.

Hore was excellent. Frost was fine. Hunt is trying. The rest are woeful. Hibberd is destroying us atm.

Honestly thought half way through the second quarter we were about to run over them . Had all the play and just needed to tidy up inside 50 entries. But dumb decision making and poor disposal just handed the momentum back to them and it was though we just gave up.

Perhaps Goodwin needs a run at Casey

Lever and May would make no difference at the moment, we’re so far ball side of our defenders. This is pathetic coaching/structures. The same issues for 3 years, we rectified it last year it’s happened ned again this year.

Damned if you're slow, damned if you fast.

I think you’ll find it was originally pushed by the clubs dietician/nutriotionist for the whole playing group, and then Viney decided he had noticed the benefits to the point that he continued doing it off his own bat, with their consultation. Any concerns would be coming from a position of ignorance.

You get what you deserve in football and if we can't knock off the mediocre Saints we don't deserve to be finalists. Last week St.Kilda fell over the line against Hawthorn by less than a goal. This was a Hawthorn who had no Shiel, no O'Meara, no Burgoyne, no Mitchell AND lost Frawley before half-time and Stratton in the third quarter, so their rotations were stuffed and their personnel decimated.

A must win game. Dees played themselves into a bit of form last week. With Lewis back to add experience and Ronald McDonald finally dropped (hopefully for good) and with a longer break than the Saints, this should be a comfortable Dees victory. Saints by 39

There's been a lot of commentary around Spargs on where he's best position is. Have mentioned a few pages back that i saw some of his junior years play as a genuine midfielder. And a bloody good one too. The half forward role he is currently playing is for his own physical development. He is still slight and still building up his engine. Goodwin is not going to chuck Spargo in the center and smash him to bits. I would think over this year we will start to see him push up to a wing to utilise his smarts and cleanliness with ball in hand. Over the next few years i would like to think that Goodwin will start to play him in his natural position as an on baller who rests up forward. Obviously he needs to build his frame but that will come naturally with more pre seasons under his belt. Lets not forget that this kid is still only 19 years old.

The problem with the club is that there is no club. We're nomads. We have no spiritual home to walk the halls of after training. No tangible history to embrace, forget the G . . . It's just where we play. We're like a start up club trying to create something out of nothing. The 12 flags count for nought. We have no soul. The players, staff, coaches can all change but in the end we don't stand for anything and we aren't anywhere. That's reality How do you take you're kid down to "the club"? There is no club Every other club in the league has a club, their club not a temporary share arrangement with 2 other teams [censored]

How can you possibly pinpoint which coach is directly responsible for this problem from the outside?

I’m honestly concerned signing Goodwin for 4 more years on the back of a good month will be a crippling decision.

What a gutless club Goodwin can go this week. Seriously he has no idea how to play our home ground. This will be ugly by Round 23

Fugazi

Nice weather....

I don’t buy in to the emotive crap, no heart, passengers etc etc. There have no doubt been some really bad performances (Lewis, Spargo, mcDonald etc), but this is so clearly coaching to me I’m astounded others don’t see it. Structure, selection and game day. It appalling and questions must be asked!!!

Season on the line.. third quarter.... 5goals to nil... coaching masterpiece

We are the better side. Just butchering it once we go forward. Fix that up and we win.

This is everything going wrong that you could have expected. Terrible kicking going inside 50, marking forwards who can’t take a mark and no crumbers when it hits the deck. They’re spreading the ground wide, using the wings and overlap run off half back, and our zone is breaking down completely. Neither Jones nor Lewis are suited to the wing but despite that they’re there and they’re giving us nothing. And we can’t stop them scoring when they go inside. So far, it looks like last week we benefited from the smaller SCG more so than we improved or fixed anything. Oh, and Hibberd is a shadow of his former self and makes more mistakes than anyone except maybe Spargo.

Chaplin the [censored] spud, get him out of the club.

He’s being played out of position. He needs to be played as a forward or on a wing, not in the backline.

I’m at the game and can not believe how slow Sam Weiderman is. Don’t think I have sighted Tom Mac. I think the umpiring has been pathetic. I haven’t understood most of the decisions.

watching us play is like waiting for a heart attack

Geez, for a bloke who runs a footy-based website, you sure dont know much about the players. Tony Lockhart was much bigger than this guy.. This is him. Sheesh.

We’ve had goal fasts for years

A whistle! For you & all Dees to blow! So we get some bloody free kicks!