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There's plenty to think about and cause for concern, but not for most of the reasons people are suggesting in here. If you're potting the backline, you're focusing on the wrong thing. What did they score from turnover tonight? I don't know the number but i know it was far too much. If you're potting our lack of forward half pressure, you're focusing on the wrong thing. We can't pressure them if they're marking it, and they marked it far too much. We lost this game in two areas - belted in the middle in the second quarter, and a horrendous lack of connection in the forward half in the second half. We held them to two scoring shots in the third quarter, they barely had a look at goal. We had 16 inside 50s. But we scored 1 goal. Then in the fourth quarter we still generated opportunities but whether it was Fritsch not scoring from 30m out, Gawn missing from 5m out, Gawn then missing his pass, Sparrow missing his handball, Spargo centring when he should have had a shot, Viney turning at least one inside 50 kick over - this is why we lost. Ben Brown's either injured or out of form. Regardless of the reason, he's ineffectual right now. It doesn't help that he has no foil when TMac doesn't play, and it doesn't help when we continually miss him when he's on a lead, but when he has the chance to impact he's failing to do so. Mitch Brown's not up to it. It's sad that Weideman hasn't been able to cement his spot in the side because we are crying out for a key forward right now. Jackson, Sparrow, ANB, Spargo and Hunt are all out of form. Last year the first four were key reasons for our flag. This year, they're not able to lift when we need. Our poor form is compounded by Sydney, like Fremantle, playing probably their best game for the year. But that's something we have to expect now. Opposition sides set themselves for us. They plan for us, and because we're out of form, it's working. That's all then further compounded by some critical umpiring decisions that hurt us. The late Gulden and Papley goals were from soft free kicks. The early Reid goal was not a mark. And in the third, ANB and Oliver were both denied 50 metre penalties that were there (in ANB's case would have led to a certain goal). But the umpiring compounds the poor form, it doesn't cause it. It's hardly time to throw babies out with bathwater, because the first quarter is a reminder that our best is still the best, but we need to fix our forward half connection very soon, or we're not going to make the most of this season.

I’m not sure I understand the issue. If you want the cheer squad to be bigger and louder, then join the cheer squad. They’re not there to provide us with a service, they’re there to enjoy the football and support the team in their own way. Not sure where anyone gets off telling them how to cheer.

That’s absurd

As supporters there’s not a lot we can do - but there is one thing we can always do, and we don’t do it. This is the best Melbourne team 90% of us have ever seen, and for 2 weeks in a row we’ve been out cheered at our home ground by interstate supporters. Had we as supporters brought even the same intensity as North did against us at Docklands there’s no way umpires pay those contentious free kicks against us, and not pay us at least one of the 50’s in the third quarter to kick certain goals. That’s the game folks. We are far too nice, far too quick to make an excuse not to attend a game, and clearly en masse far too complacent thinking that memberships this year are for ‘grand final guaranteed’ tickets. Where’s the fans that brought the heat and noise in 2018? It’s really embarrassing, as it’s literally the only thing we can control. I bet the club internally is livid.

I threw up at the end.

Hate to sound like our old mate Satyricon but the amount of people potting some of the lads after 2 losses is a bit on the nose.

I don’t know who our ‘forward captain’ is but in that last term we had 3 times where we had someone outside 50, waiting for an option to kick into our forward line and literally the entire forward line was standing still, no leads, nothing. This is under 12’s stuff. I remember earlier in the year, a broadcaster was showing our forward line where everyone was moving and they used it as an example of how hard this is to defend against. That went completely missing in the last qtr tonight and I have no idea how an AFL standard team, let alone a premiership defending one, could allow this to happen especially when the game was on the line. Our forward connection has never been the best, but it’s worrying seeing this level of ZERO EFFORT from our forwards.

OK, I have an evening, brekkie and lunch behind me during which I was able to reflect and ponder our 12 point loss to the Swans. And now I sit to read the torrent of opinion, hyperbole and ranting otherwise known as the Demonland postgame thread. I think many of us (including myself last night) need to take valium, take rectal valium, medicinal cannabis, non-medicinal cannabis or some such other, and calm the &*$# down. We played poorly and have 3 main areas to fix - 1) decision making with ball in hand 2)basic skills under pressure but most importantly 3) forward 50 cohesion. We are coming towards the bye and it appears we have a few tired, sore players. The sky hasn't fallen. And please, for the love of everything Melbourne supporters consider sacred STOP BLAMING THE UMPIRES!!!! Yes, they make lots of mistakes every week but we rarely lose games because of them. Yes, there were some howlers last night but they are not against us, they didn't plan for the Swans to win, and no we don't always get the wort of it. We lost by playing poorly and the Swans played well.

It's the pressure that's missing. Sure we miss May and Petty on one leg is not helping but it's up the ground. We would normally have 15/20 more inside 50s and the ball would come to ground and stay there. Now it's straight back out and that puts extra pressure on the back line. Number of times the Swans marked unopposed was concerning as was the number of times we choose the wrong option going forward.

I don't know why we would be loading yet. We are coming off a shorter preseason, and didn't start loading til the bye last year. We are only half way through the season. I'm not sports scientist but it seems far too early, especially with the injuries we've had. The more obvious reason is we just aren't playing at our best.

Sydney may have had a slight edge in the umpiring but we can't blame the umpires for losing the tackle count 75 to 58? Maybe if we had tackled more or better we would have had more frees... Simply put the tackle count is work rate and effort. No skill or system required to tackle. We were outworked. And really, the scoreboard flattered us 23 scoring shots to 16 for the same number of i50's.

Interesting comments by Goody.. maybe it's not as simple as Brown out for Weideman? Seems like Weideman has been given things to work. These comments were especially after seeing his VFL performance. I highlighted some key points that stood out the most for me. https://www.afl.com.au/news/774791/-he-ll-be-sorely-missed-foot-injury-fears-for-big-demon Ben Brown struggled through his third-straight match goalless but Goodwin is backing the premiership hero to return to his best. In a bold move, Melbourne preferred to recall veteran utility Mitch Brown over promising tall forward Sam Weideman when McDonald was ruled out. "I don't think anyone's guaranteed a run in the AFL, everyone earns their position," Goodwin said. "There's no doubt it's competitive with our key forwards for spots. "Ben's not at his best at the moment but he's a very good player. Our challenge as a coaching group is to get him back into form. "(Weideman's) got to keep working hard on his game, continually be working on playing a big man's type of footy. "He'll have a good look at opportunities throughout the year but at the moment Mitch Brown is just playing better."

Why not? Just this century alone, Brisbane, Geelong, Hawthorn and Richmond have had "dynasties". The suggestion that the umpires are deliberately influencing matches by favouring our opponents and are doing so at the direction of the corrupt AFL is just self-pitying, pathetic nonsense.

I said last year at this point of the season that the footy world seems to have collective amnesia, in that every season we reset and forget what had happened in previous years. Teams have been loading for years. It is standard football practice. You could write a thesis on why it is people want to ignore that fact. The thesis would have a chapter on why current players and coaches reflexively deny loading happens (it is apparently a great evil to offer up any reason for poor performance, lest you be accused of the greatest sin - making excuses). And another chapter on why ex player who know loading happens don't talk about it. Everyone could save some time and repost all the comments about our fumbles, lethargy, forward line connection, we are just not that good, fans getting ahead of themselves etc etc from this stage last year.

Aside from personnel changes, also think we'd benefit from Gus getting back to the wing (Rivers or Hibberd in), and Kozzy attending a few centre bounces again. Reckon we need to shake up the clearance setup a bit.

We'll lose next week. Finish up the training loading during the bye. Then we'll get better every week from then out until we romp home in another Grand Final.

We dominated the 3rd quarter and kicked 1 goal. Should've put the game to bed then and there but shot ourselves in the foot.

Makes sense to me; BBB is a proven player who has established himself. Sam has played 5 good games. Selection integrity is important. I hope M Brown gets a few more opportunities.

There's no evidence of this "loading" thing. There is inside mail on here all the time, but not one post from someone professing to know for sure that the training loads have increased. I suppose we may never know for sure, and if we get better as the year goes on we may look back and confirm the suspicion now, but in the absence of good evidence/mail on it, I'm hardly inclined to accept it just because we happen to look a bit tired right now. I mean, we had a few ill players last week and this week brought in five new players, three of whom were coming back from injury and three of whom hadn't played at the top level for a long time (M Brown, Salem, Tomlinson). Coupled with a physically intense match, perhaps that explains the perceived slowdown?

This is our window. It’s here and now for the dees. We need a mature forward. The only thing stopping us from winning another flag or 2 or 3 over the next 3-4 years is a power forward. We can’t start next year with Brown, Brown, Weid and Tmac and expect it will all work out.

The last 2 weeks have reminded me of something I’d kinda forgot about I hate losing. Really puts a downer on the weekend

All year we have pretty much put in one good quarter and that has been enough to win most games. Obviously that’s not going to be enough against the real contenders…..but we are still in the top four! I would love for us to win the next two, but even if we just managed to snag one win, I would still hold the faith. The game plan is to be there in September and firing. Heaps of opportunities for improvement and I still have plenty of faith in our boys. If we can get it all happening we are a big chance to beat anyone. Looking forward to the hunted becoming the hunters. It’s so much more fun being positive than feeling all doom and gloom. I’m going to back the Dees, not bag them. Each to their own. GO DEES

I ran it with four good friends during the back half of the 80's and start of the 90's. We came up with the idea to have stencils for the letters and made to measure scarlet coloured sheets of paper to ensure each and every one was uniform as well as spaced and balanced evenly on the run through (nobody called them banners). I got an engineer that I used to work with to design the 30ft aluminium poles with slot in steel inserts and lugs at the top to attach ropes to. Something that nobody else had done at that time. Two of us would design the caricatures we sometimes made, I used to draw them on large squares sketched out on butcher paper whilst the other person could draw freehand. We'd then either paint in the colours or use different colours of crepe paper. Today I think they stick a large photocopied picture onto a crepe backing. We had in excess of 20 floggers made from navy and scarlet coloured plastic which made them waterproof. Even back then Coke gave us $10k in sponsorship annually, again unheard of at that time. We played cheer squad football games wearing the players training gear, slept overnight in the changing rooms at the Junction Oval on Friday run through nights then would help pack all of our gear into the property stewards truck to go to the game early on Saturday morning, usually arriving at the ground by 9am. I had Jim Stynes calling me at work and at home at one point trying to get a blown up picture of his 100th game run through. We started making the crepe paper backings (30ft x 60ft) a month before the season to get a head start. This would buy us time late in the season to start work on finals run throughs as they were usually a bit more intricate. We organised interstate travel and hotel accommodation for other supporters and followed the side to all corners of the country. We wrote what we wanted on the run throughs and ended up in the Sunday papers on many an occasion, usually ending with the club asking for an explanation on the Monday morning. It was probably the halcyon days of the cheer squad looking back and many of the kids I knew then are still good friends today. I acknowledge that things are different now and the age demographic is probably a lot higher but the amount of work and time these people give up to represent the club and it's supporters in general would easily outstrip anyone writing posts on a football forum. The one thing that I think would make for a better game day experience would have been to keep the cheer squad seats in our members area next to where our race used to be when they were offered them instead of choosing to sit behind the goals at the Punt Road end. This would have placed them front and centre with all our members and prevented them being heckled by idiots looking to cause trouble from the opposition team.

What a bizarre thread. If you want to make the Dee Army bigger and want them to listen to your suggestions, then join. Simple.

That can't be right. Pretty sure we've won it already..

I hear you, I told my boss my recent poor performance at work was due to 'loading' and he would soon see the benefits. Suffice to say I am now being performance managed

Out of curiosity I did some quick research on this point. Putting aside 2020, which was a shortened season, the Tigers did have a slump in 2019, losing rounds 11-13. In 2018 the Eagles also lost three in a row from rounds 13-15 after starting the year 10-1. The Tigers in 2017 lost 4 in a row from rounds 6-9, but not sure that counts as mid-season loading?

I’d play Petty forward before Tomlinson

Patent nonsense. Petracca received coaches votes in rounds 7, 8, 9, and 10, including the most votes in round 9 and the second most in round 10. I'm all for pointing out deficiencies in a players game, but I prefer stuff isn't made up.

Agreed, Pickett played a good game…disagree with opinion on here that he is out of form. If our talk forwards are poor then his chances to score are low. I liked his game and think he is playing well

Pickett through individual solo efforts set up at least three of our goals. Yes, crude stats underwhelming but did you see the game ?

So it's just poor old Melbourne that's being picked on, is it? Boo hoo. The AFL doesn't like us or want us to succeed. Like most conspiracy theories, yours is illogical and risible.

Lingers had massive padding on his ribs, but still didn’t shirk a contest. Not his best game, but still left many of his teammates in his wake. Love him, he brings so much to our team.

People underestimate the influence a loud supportive crowd can have on the team and result. It can lift the team and influence the umpires. The loud Swans fans played a part in that win last night

You pick on form. Weid had 3 goals and 10 marks, Brown is badly out of form. Pretty simple decision really.

The tackle issue is legitimate, but I'm less concerned about the scoring shots one. They outscored us by 7 shots, which is the result of the second quarter (they kicked 5.4 to our 2.0). And that in turn was in no small part due to Petty being off getting his shoulder fixed. In the third quarter, for example, the favour was returned, but we kicked 1.5 to their 0.2. We should have turned our third quarter dominance into 4.2 or better, and then the fourth quarter could/would have looked a lot different (going back to your earlier post on how we approach fourth quarter leads and how we play).

So from my view from level 2A dead center of the ground I noticed the following snippets of gold (or just middle aged man ramblings): - first point, for most of the night our forward forays started from defensive 50. I made particular note that at the start of those forays our entire forward line were positioned defensive side of the centerline mostly on the wings. As the ball moved forward our forwards had to turn and race for the forward 50. If the ball came down fast, instead of kicking it to the open space inside 50 (despite having 3 forward leading their men running forward) we slowed down chipped it sideways until all but 4 Sydney blokes were clogging up our 50. Or we played handball merry go round until we turned it over for a fast forward entry at the other end. Then when we eventually did kick it inside 50 we managed to find the lone syd bloke guarding space or the 3 on 1 contest with brown at the bottom being jumped all over. If the ball came in slow, and we pinpointed a leading forward, the kick was so [censored] it went over their head or to the lone syd bloke guarding space again. So my question is, if browns a leading forward, how is he supposed to sprint the 110m back to deep forward, then turn and lead out at the ball carrier. Same with Fritch. To do so they have to beat the ball which if kicked is moving twice as fast as they can run? Very little of our scores came from quality center clearance which is where our leading forward have their best chance of success. So my question is, why do we need our ENTIRE forward group playing on the wings? Why not keep 1 or 2 back a little so they have some chance at a one on one contest or don’t have to run back so far to then turn and lead out? We’re basically setting up for a quick entry inside 50 to forwards running onto the ball towards the goal but aren’t kicking it there when given the chance. - second point, we seem to be getting first hands on the ball around stoppages, but cough it up almost immediately due to handball merry go round again. Freo we’re very good with their first handball going to a guy 10-15m away rather than our tactic of handball going to a guy 3m away. Think we need to look wider than the immediate contest to avoid the constant turnovers in tight - third, our hack kicks go short and high, opposition hack kicks go low and hard (mostly). What this means is that a higher percentage of opposition hack kicks hit the chest of one of their own playing in front of their man. Most of ours go to a contest resulting in turnovers or null contests, very little result in us keeping possession. Anyway, that’s what I notice, hope the coaches have some solutions because atm we look poor. Off to watch Vermont under 10 girls playing at home today. Confident our forwards will stay in the forward line for some of the game and that there will be more kicking and less handballing that last night! stay well people

I could not disagree more. Weeds aint the answer! I would rather play Majak!

Neither Tommo or Daw are playing in the team next week. Weid is the obvious answer rather than all these wild ideas IMO.

Focusing on the positives for just a second: Gawn was phenomenal tonight, should get 3 Brownlow votes for that. Bounced back from being beaten by Darcy last week in stellar fashion. Petty was our best key defender despite a knee and a shoulder injury. Salem looked great early - not sure he ran the game out all that well though. Brayshaw's still composed as ever in the backline. And of course, most of us looked at that game and thought we were pretty poor and yet we led for most of the night. Which is the glass half full reminder that we're not as far off as the losses make you think.

You have to give big props to Petty. He was literally sticky taped together and just killed every ball coming his way. Held a fragile backline together.

The most disappointing aspect was when we were 20 points up on a good team at qtr time and no one around could muster a clap for the display. Saw one portly ginger Dees fan in the City pocket of the Ponsford Stand stroking his terrible ginger beard and looking at his phone instead of cheering for that performance. Then I stuck around long enough to see the 15k Sydney fans making all the noise thank their team for winning a hard game. So disappointing. What the eff are we doing?

Outnumbered by an interstate mob at our own home game. [censored] pathetic. And the supporters who were there sounded like they were just sitting on their hands most of the match. Make some bloody noise, it is fair dinkum embarrassing. We kicked 6 of the first 7 goals and the cheering didn't get more than some polite clapping. The Sydney cheer squad was louder than ours in the first quarter and we were up 5 goals to 0!! WT actual F.

Brown's out of form, but to be fair to him and as has been noted already, there were a number of times tonight when he was either leading and ignored, or leaving space to lead into but the kick went somewhere worse. We overcame poor mid-forward connection last year. We're going to need to do it again, because it's the dominant reason for our loss tonight.

You saw him play today? Kid would get slaughtered. He’s very promising fledgling VFL standard at the moment.