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One of the most important things to do to beat Richmond in the last few years is to work out how to score against their defensive zone. It used to be Rance and then became Grimes who would almost always be the deepest defender and would read the play to drop back a good kick behind to stop teams getting out the back. They'd then rely on Broad, Astbury, Vlastuin etc to compete on the wings/half back. With excellent pressure up the ground they'd force long kicks to Grimes often standing by himself for easy marks or letting him come forward and have easy one on one wins due to better positioning. The Hawks did a great job of combating this when they played a couple of weeks ago. I thought I'd present a few examples of how they worked him around. 1. Burgoyne was playing full forward and he positioned himself perfectly to play off Grimes and get used in the play. In this first instance from a stoppage just back of the wing he pushes up and wide away from Grimes whilst the rest of the Hawks forwards and up the ground and towards the corridor. Grimes attempts to stay deep a good kick from the play as he likes to be. Wingard takes the short kick and Burgoyne can then run the ball and kick long away from Grimes - with an assist from a hard charging Scully - to Gunston who draws a free and goals. 2. From a centre bounce that is hacked forward Burgoyne comes up to get involved in play, but as soon as he gets the ball he thinks Grimes will be back where he left him and looks boundary side. The Tigers defender makes a good spoil and surprisingly the Hawks actually had a good lead from the square as Grimes was caught in no mans land, but more often than not the smart play of instinctively ignoring the long bomb will be the right move. 3. In this next example after the Tigers win a centre clearance but turn it over the Hawks forwards push hard to the wing. The Hawks rebound breaks the lines so the Tigers defenders then leave their opponents to press up much like our defenders do. Burgoyne realises this and this time instead of coming up he drops back away from Grimes in to clear space (see second image), then it's an easy kick to the pocket for a shot on goal. The other thing the Hawks did very well was both Burgoyne and later in the quarter Gunston drag Grimes up to forward line stoppages leaving other Tigers as the deeper defenders. That helped create goals because other defenders were unable to intercept mark or clean spoil and the Hawks beat out Stack in a one on one and forced a holding the ball from him. Adjusting our game plan to take away Grimes' influence and beat the Tigers zone will be crucial to winning. I'd suggest Melksham with a dose of Fritsch as the right match ups. Clever forwards who can get to the right spaces and then use the ball once they get it. The other forwards need to be aware of how to position around the match ups and how to take advantage of how the Tigers play.

Goodwin: Harley, you are playing instinctive and natural football mate. Love the enthusiasm, but we won't have it

What a relief Spargo has been included. His speed, height, skills and long kicking are exactly what we have been missing.

Sportsbet goes wack ...

I don’t mind the inclusion of Spargo, we need some more bad boys in the team.

I can only assume the things they want him to work on are defensive intent. Which I would be fine with, except half of our team gets a game regularly despite being horrible at two way running and defending.

Not enough storming towards the 50 and kicking it like he's got a wooden leg.

Plough get its. Its amazing some on here are still putting blind faith in Goodwin. We actually have the list to play finals this year, but it is him that's ruining every ounce of that happening.

Spargo over Bennell. I’m done.

Wow. All the whiners queue up. There has been HEAPS of commentary from inside the club that, if the complainers were to listen, might give a few hints about selection. Goodwin - looking for consistency and small changes on a role by role basis. Bennell now third in the line and has to work. Plapp - Weids working on his game and Will be ready when needed. Brayshaw - the team know what goodie wants and are all aligned around delivering it. Omac best on last weekend. Spargo great in his role. Jones body nearly back to full fitness. Jetta - playing more like old Nev, but still a bit to do. Brown - kicked goals on the WE. Anyone remember Spargo at his best? Without track watchers to help us, we are further away from seeing who is in our out based upon training. If your cognitive frame is the MFCSS, then you are not gonna like it. But honestly? There are really few surprises here if you tune in to what the club have said across the week.

Bennell isn't fully fit. Not complicated.

"Your kicking looks poised and balanced, and usually goes right to one of our blokes. Check out our former captain over there, you could learn a lot from him."

Needs to stop kicking goals and learn 'Melbourne football'...

Interesting I watched the game again to look at our ball movement and we do seem to have a problem seeing the best loose man option down back and obviously up forward. I thought one of our problems for years is players who don’t present as an option forward of the ball carrier and I believe it is still not perfect. However watching the replay we often had players running into space but were ignored by the ball carrier who then kicked down the line. I noticed Lockhart repeatedly running into space to be an option only to be ignored by the carriers. Is it that hard to see free options at ground level? It’s too long since I played and back then you just kicked it forward so I can’t remember. Reminds me of when we used to see Jack Watts alone on the half forward line yelling out for the ball only to see Maloney or Jones bomb it long to a contest. Things don’t change much.

If Omac comes in and goes to Lynch or Jack and gets manhandled like a 5 year old I will spew up.

Usual happy campers in here.

Let's hope he worked on those areas last week because we need someone who knows how to find the ball and use it to advantage. I'm not sure we have another player in the team with his skill set, in fact I'm pretty sure we don't.

Has anyone seen 'Sat' & 'drysdale demon' in the same room?

It would help if he actually directed his taps to teammates.

Don't listen to him Goody, just bang it in long and see what happens! ?

This is great @DeeSpencer! So much work has gone into this, it's a pleasure to read. Worries me a bit if we're pinning our hopes on two out of form players like Melksham and Fritsch, but guess we need to hope they can turn it around. What's your thoughts on us picking 2 tall forwards for a change this week, especially given Astbury is out? Also, anyone know how to tag @SimonGoodwin in this post?

Did I just hear BT proclaim "And the crowd roars!" following a Carlton goal? It's artificial crowd noise in an empty stadium. ?‍♂️

Spargo

to be honest, i understand why they keep persisting with spargo - the amount of goal chains he was involved with in the 2018 season is what they're looking for with the mid-sized and small forwards he showed in 2018 that he's a smart footballer who can actually see the short kick and attempt to hit that target unfortunately he's also a midget who our mids persist with kicking it on the top of his head and more often than not seems to duck his head and when he does get it he miss easy targets, so.....

Spargo ahead of Bennell? You've [censored] lost the plot Goodwin.

Crikey, Goodwin virtually said Harley was given his first game because Hannan, Kozzie and AvB weren't available. Vastly different from the praise and excitement when Harley was first selected. Not sure which set of comments to believe. Would imagine the latest comment would be rather deflating for Harley as it sounds like he hadn't earnt his selection in round 2.

Can we ease up on the Gawn bashing? I agree he hasn't been dominating in the ruck so far this year but before we all jump on him, two of our three opponents have been West Coast and Geelong, two of the best midfields in the comp. Maybe that's part of the reason his hit out to advantage stat is lower? Gawn's midfield/repeat effort work vs Geelong was exceptional. He leads by example in training and on the field. He's not perfect (he's a repeat offender when it comes to poor kicks inside 50) but he's not even close to one of our biggest problems right now. Edit: and of course, our best football this year was the first half vs Carlton when Gawn was utterly dominant.

We had a defensive plan already. Roos nailed it, despite having a terrible backline compared to now. Goodwin wanted to add attack, which was the right decision. But somehow we ended up being crap at both. It's a real talent to ruin everything.

We need to complete his transition into an inside mid who can't hit a target. Or an undersized KPF. Then his transformation will be complete

Team has worst forward line in history.... bloke kicks 4 goals in reserves... "Yeah look Harley we need you to tackle more and worry less about scoring goals. Try to take on four opposition players at once and create more congestion, that's what we really want to see. Goals aren't the aim of the game, we need congestion and repeated entries into 50 amounting to nothing" Great coach we've got...

Can they please pick Weideman this week? T Mac will play better with only 1 bloke contesting with him and Fristch can play as more of a small forward rather than being our full forward which didn't work on the weekend. (in fact nothing about our forward line worked last week)

I love both of them but they are both poor decision makers. I know Gawny may be trying to lead by example but he has got to stop going to ground to win the contested ball when Clarrie, Viney, Harmes or Brayshaw are right beside him. Jack is an inside bull and you never die wondering but needs to know his limitations

Just as I thought the bloody Dees can never find a player in the hot spot!!!!

The only bloke we have who could consistently deliver to the advantage of leading forwards is stuck in the goal square wrestling

Howe Wells Sidebottom Dunn!

Thanks for organising the interview- great to hear progress on site near the G

Obviously it's unusual circumstances with so little team training so it's hard to judge too much right now, but I thought our mids and in particular Viney did a decent job knowing when and how to safely kick forward from a stoppage and when to take on a man and release a handball. (Apart from the times he slipped over which is probably due to wearing the softer boots on his feet which I fully endorse). It doesn't always look pretty but I like that Viney is willing to attack from the contest, I wish Oliver would do it more rather than the hot potato stuff. The most perplexing thing is our players don't know when they've got time and space away from the packs and free team mates to give easy handballs or short kicks too. I'm hoping it's a lack of talk and cohesion that can be quickly fixed and not all down to ingrained poor decision making. Unfortunately 9 haven't uploaded the grab from footy classified. It really was an eye opener on how our forwards and runners were finding space. It didn't look like last year when there was no options - until the kicks went exactly where they shouldn't have!

Jack is a serial offender. Max needs to learn the role of Captain is to bring others into the game, not try and win it on his own.

Havent seen the segment but I am getting flashbacks to when Paul Roos was analyzing our list in the media before the jungle drums started beating about him coming to the Demons. I know a lot of people may not want Ross Lyon as coach for whatever reasons, but I would take him any day of the week.. We have the talent we just need the coach.

Tigers must be licking their lips at coming up against us. I hate saying stuff like this as I feeling I'm turning into the prototype MFCSS fan but I feel like we've become the confidence building team, we push teams just enough to give them a run but don't get the job done. Anyway, to the point. One thing that successful teams build is consistency with line up, I don't see them doing major changes to the team or structure. Personally, as a fan not as an expert, I think our forward line looks small. I think the plan almost revolved around it looking small but playing tall, this isn't happening so I think we need a taller player to take the oppositions number one defender to provide a foil for Fritta and co. What that means is that one of Hannan, Melksham, or Hunt has to go. Personally I'd be dropping Melksham, and moving Fritta into the HFF role the Melksham has been doing and bringing in one of Brown or Weiderman. I thought Hannan was solid without being outstanding in his first game back, I think he's deserved another crack. Hunt was very quiet but has been solid in the other two games. He also has pace to him which needs to be used more. Down back I am not a fan of Smith, but he was better against the cats and in fact I thought aside from those 3rd quarter brainfarts that cost us the game, the defence held up quite well. OMac was BOG in the scratch match, does that earn him a recall at Smith's expense? Finally the enigma of Bennell. Supremely skilful but how do we fit him in? AvB was quiet but I think he's best 22. Do we drop Lockhart and move Harmes back into defence? Give Brayshaw more time on the ball in Harmes' place. I've said it before, I think the pieces of the puzzle are there for a successful team. I just don't know how they fit together, and I'm not sure the match committee know either.

because we're three games into a season

Can someone ask him if he thinks Goodwin and Mahoney are the right guys?