Leaderboard

Jesus wept. I think our wins are fantastic. Have you forgotten all those god awful seasons we had

I was having a pre game drink at the Pullman and saw Lingers cycle past in his training gear at around 5pm. He had to stop first in line at a red light at the corner of Clarendon St and Wellington Parade to the delight of a little girl and her dad who were crossing at the time.

I can't stand reading the number of posts in here along the lines of "it was ugly" or "we need to play four quarters" or similar. If you were at the game last night you'd have seen that Richmond dropped extra numbers behind the ball. As did GWS. As did Port. This is the approach of teams who don't think they can beat us. Last night Richmond added pretty ferocious pressure early, backed by the loudest crowd against us we've faced in a year, if not more. Despite that, we are still wrestling games onto our terms. We absorbed their hits, limited damage from their momentum, and ended up with the ball camped in our forward half. The game would have looked very different had we nailed the easy shots in the 2nd quarter that we missed, the two main ones being ANB's set shot and Pickett's snap. We kept the door open and with the crowd, they got a look late in the 2nd and capitalised. But the game was played almost entirely otherwise the way we wanted and we know that when we play the way we want, we almost always win. It's April. Salem's played one quarter, Lever's missed four games, Petty's missed three, Rivers looks like he's not fully fit, Brown's missed three games, Petracca's not 100% fit and being tagged relentlessly. And we're 6-0.

0% of those things are gonna happen

I’m still dirty about losing to Carlton in the preseason.

Yep. Watching Richmond last night for me was a reminder though that dominant eras come to an end eventually. Gotta make the most of this while it lasts.

I'm not fussed what the W/L column says as long we finish top 2 and secure home finals

Speaking of hits to hurt, how good was it seeing Bowey with that tackle on Parker and that attempted hip and shoulder at speed. Kids not afraid of throwing his 40kg frame around.

We are playing 4 qtrs of defensive minded strangulation of teams as they slow the game down in a misguided attempt to bore us into making a positional mistake. It rarely comes and when we pounce it is only our execution and decision making that stops us slinging the ball through middle and deep into the forward line. Sometimes we are pure and sometimes we get away with it and sometimes the other team loses patience. And sometimes all three things happen in 6 minutes and we have kicked 5 and the game is over.

I love that we’ve completely stolen the Anzac Day tradition and made it much, much better. The night game is much more symbolic on camera - and so it’s the lasting media image of the round. It also doesn’t hurt that both Collingwood and Essendon are irrelevant. The pregame was amazing last night. I love that the teams sneak on to the crowd in the cover of darkness. It was all so well done. Great acoustics at the G too.

He is a star. Easy to forget he's super young for a key position defende. Agree he's gone up a level. He's stronger and even though he was always hard at, is even more so now. He hits to hurt.

Mick Malthouse has just tipped MySpace to make a comeback.

Gus is having a very good year.

This is a sign of how cocky I’ve become: I get annoyed when other teams try against us. Just roll over and cop it please.

Make no mistake, that was an annihilation. Unbelievably frustrating to watch though. Moving on.

Hunt was definitely the hard luck story last year, a lot seem to forget he was part of our best backline last year until injury. His disposal gets brought up often and even though he’s sprayed a few kicks I can’t recall him directly costing us many goals this year. His role has been refined somewhat this year and from what I’ve seen at the ground he has been excellent defensively.

Tbh I thought they were pretty consistent across the 4 qtrs. Kick even half straight and the game would have felt v diffferent

The only enjoyable part of the night was Private Hettie Adams belting out the New Zealand national anthem. What a voice!

I love Harry Petty...

is there any chance we could play Smith on the wing, and Hawks play Frost on him, that entertainment alone would be worth the price of a ticket :) :)

Fair dinkum, its tiresome the posters who make a point of Weid not kicking enough goals as a key forward, next week some claim he's not doing enough despite being the leading goal scorer on the night He may not be BOG every week, but he's improving and a better option than Tmac atm according to the match committee. I note that 2 match reports I read this morning had him amongst our best Some people have to look for a negative amongst the positives

In the calm of the next day I am surprised at the amount of comment about players who were not great last night. Clearly kicking all those points is not good. However the tigers were flooding our forward line. Yes Smith made a couple of costly errors. All players make errors no player is perfect but as a unit we still won and as my wife said after quarter time the result was not in doubt. We are now 6 and zero if we had kicked any thing near reasonable it would have been a walk over. At 6 and zero with flag in our pocket a lot on here are majoring in minors. We are a very good team.

Petty has been outstanding in his first two games back. Loved his progression last year but he's gone to a new level so far this season. Easy to see why he's so highly rated internally.

I’m 56. He’s better than Chris Judd.

A win is a win....🤷🏼‍♂️ After going through many years of embarrassment and ineptitude I will take winning ugly over losing pretty every time. The Demons definitely need to look at getting a specialist goal kicking coach though. Kicking 22 behinds was awful! We don't want to be inaccurate like that again. It was incredibly frustrating! Lastly, I have to say that Clayton Oliver is one of the greatest Melbourne Demons players I have ever seen in my lifetime. He is an absolute bull who is unbelievably tough and competitive and is still only 24 years old! What a gun!

Out: Dunstan, Smith In: Viney, Lever

The Mongrel Review

If no injuries, it's really simple: Lever and Viney come in, Smith and Dunstan go out. Harmes finished the game on the bench with a jacket on. If he's injured, and if Dunstan isn't concussed, he might make way for Viney. If both Harmes and Dunstan are unavailable, then we have to get a bit more creative and it might be Bedford who gets a game. But some of the other changes suggested in this thread just aren't going to happen. ANB's not going to be dropped (IMO he wasn't anywhere near as bad as some have said). Jordon's not going to be dropped (those who query Jordon's role in the side are maybe not going to the games because his role is vital). Weideman's not going to be dropped (did enough right to get another game over TMac).

It has become a special night, it’s the kids’ favourite event at the footy these days and they were fortunate enough to soak it all in from up close last night.

In what way is 27 possessions with 13 contested a shocker? Pretty bewildered that 4 people liked this comment too.

Rides to work then breaks the 17km barrier for distance covered during the game. Langdon has changed the whole dynamic of this team.

While he kicked 3, that's all he did. 1 mark, no tackles He was behind a lot, and could barely jump at the ball, hardly impacted a contest I think he'll be lucky to keep his spot

It’s because teams are [censored] scared of losing so they go into ultra defensive mode, making games a total bore fest. We aren’t challenged so we just put on a clinic for 10 minutes and carry on with the win. GWS are lazy and gave up after halftime so that was fun. I bet that when we play the Saints in 2 weeks it’ll be a totally different game. Good sides will back their system in. We haven’t played a side yet who would have gone into the game backing themselves to win it with their own game. Also who cares how we play in April if we keep winning. Last year we also won by small margins but winning was a novelty so you went back and watched that 25 point win and was like “wow a win”. Now you’re like “I watched us kick 3 goals in 46 seconds once. I’m bored”

I swear when Jake Bowey has the footy, my heart rate drops 12 BPM. Extraordinary user of the ball, and showed ample guts tonight. Might even be Christian Salem’s equal by the time he’s back. One on each flank. As Bruce would say…. delicious!

I think Lever for Smith is a no brainer

And his comeback is still 3-4 weeks off according to the AFL app. You’d play Tommo before resorting to an L plater anyway.

Agree, it was predominantly where we took the shots from and a lack of settling and rushing some kicks. We seemed obsessed with kicking to contests deep and tight in the pocket. Particularly first half too many times where our forwards did not separate and therefore the only space was deep and wide or no one leading at the kicker for an easier set shot. Part of that is the way the Richmond backs set up and block you centrally but most of it was just not thinking it through.

absolutely no way a player should make their 'debut' as a sub hate that when other clubs do it and wouldn't want to see us do it either

I feel like reporting this post. Everyone is entitled to their opinion but if Oliver was 2nd best on ground - I know nothing about football.

It's fun if you like contest and defence. I find watching teams struggling to kick scores against us particularly entertaining.

A few errant handballs cost goals, #44 wasn’t home alone there. Numero uno coughed up one too. The Goodwin mantra of not dwelling on mistakes applies. Reset and push go.

Exactly 12 months ago we won this game by 34 points with 22 scoring shots to Richmond’s 18 and the lid was off. We were over the moon. 12 months on we won by 22, but had 31 scoring shots to 14. My we have gotten spoilt.

I thought Jayden competed harder and ran harder the whole night

I hate the 3 teams that start with the letter “c” Carlton Collingwood Essendon

Jayden is really building this season, perhaps his best game.

The bad goal kicking was mainly through bad decision making and not properly thinking things through.

Correct. Smith was not bad but he’s not and never will be Lever. Open to making Dunstan the sub. Bedford didn’t play today so they probably want to get game time into him.

Well .. I guess it was a crushing win .............without the crushing score

It’s very hard to keep winning, even though we didn’t finish our good work from the back often enough, it’s very obvious we are extremely hard to beat. Shout out to Hunty, thought he was very good on Bolton. Petty will be a star if he’s not already.