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tbh we haven't looked to flash lately even with clarry playing lot of players need to extract the digit and show some resolve

Sparrow was badly missed on Friday night. He does a lot of work off the ball to help Trac and Clarry. His absence meant that Port could shut down Viney, which they said was a tactic post match, and it left us very vulnerable in the middle. People underestimate his role. I’m glad he’s back this week. Just sucks that Dunstan is injured! Rubbish timing.

ok ... i watched it and pretended i was rozee's mother. i thought he was a very silly boy and he'll get an earful when he gets home

He's so used to oppo players grabbing him off the ball, he thought he'd grab himself just to feel like he was involved.

season 2023

Is it just me or do others think Friday was an inept coaching performance. I get all the commentary in this thread about having one less at a stoppage and relying on intercept, but wouldn’t you think that in Fridays conditions it was a night for territory. But no, Goody stuck with -1 at stoppage and it was so frustrating. We lost non centre clearances 30-20. It’s why i50s were 61-48 and that was the game (imagine the commentary on here if Ports 32 shots on goal ended up as 18 goals). The problem is apparent in 2 stoppages in the last 4 minutes. In the first on our 50m arc, Port have a spare which I can live with But the ball goes down the other end, and Port have a stoppage on their 50m arc, shown. We had even numbers and put someone goal side which makes sense. But we leave Port with a spare on the other side. Max can’t safely tap goal side so all night he tapped forward or more often straight to Ports spare. It’s just insanity. They had several shots on goal or goal assists from these types of stoppages. It make no sense why Goody would not push an extra to the stoppage like Port do, as Gawns tap is never going back toward goal so we are effectively outnumbered every time. This happened all night and imo cost us the game. We need to beat Collingwood this year who will be +2 at stoppages.

The 4 point loss - away, to a good team in red hot form - was far less depressing than the weepy, hysterical response on this site. Now the news that Oliver has apparently been decapitated has fuelled the agonising. Its bloody embarrassing.

No. I'm not accepting the season is over one bit. Dangerfield missed 6 games last year and that did not stop them going on a full blown winning streak without him. Accept it at your own peril, cool. I won't.

every team gets injuries. we need to toughen TF up and deal with it i actually don’t mind the group going through some adversity mid season.

Rankine and Hayward nothing. Rankine hip straight into guys face. MFC APPEAL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! This guy is a moron who is targeting us clearly. Enough is enough. Gawn smashed in the face trying to mark and nothing. Fogarty a couple of weeks ago. This system is stuffed and Christian is hopeless. Appeal and show every incident he has let off.

The sooner this bloke gets relieved of his position the better it will be. He has lost all objectivity. He is out of his league and jumping at shadows.

The AFL has to be the only sport in the world where a player gets a penalty awarded to them on field, and then gets suspended for the same action after the game is over. Don’t ask why you get so much umpire abuse AFL. You undermine them publicly every week.

You can see the spin at work. Tim Michell reports in todays Herald Sun, that Langdon got him in the head, with a hip and shoulder. Go back and see the twitter in this thread and my photo a few posts back and you can see contact is with bum to chest. No shoulder and no head. Hunter actually gets to the ball about same time , stops and turns as Rozee comes in down low. As the ex players have said, he did it perfectly, to protect Rozee who comes in low and second and what else could he do after he stopped moving. The whole problem is MRO is picking and choosing who to penalise and worse incidents are being ignored. Maybe we challenge, just to get Tribunal to tell us what he did wrong in the above scenario. If you are going for the ball and stop and player coming in contacts you, what should you have done. Also importantly it is not the head and no injury.

This sums up the state of poor umpiring (four umpires is a disaster) and a wildly inconsistent MRO perfectly.

The game is cooked Hunter was running at the ball and turned his body, Rozee ran into him - what else do they expect him to do, not contest the ball? Meanwhile Jonas cops a suspension for something that earnt him a free kick when we were pushing forward with momentum - so either the suspension is wrong or the free kick was. Which is it? AFL has jumped the shark, if Melbourne weren't competing for flags I don't think I'd bother watching anymore and when our window closes that is probably me done as anything more than a casual supporter.

Well, all this does is create opportunity for someone like Tom Sparrow. I've been hard on him of recent because I haven't felt he has taken the next step as I thought he would. If there was an opportunity and chance to really take the next step and show everyone what he's got then it's now. There's some big midfield minutes there for the taking and it's up to Sparrow to grab it with both hands now.

I think for consistency sake the MRO should start every possible suspension with the supposition, “Would this be a suspension if it was Bont or Daicos?” Then go from there.

I'm not going to get into this specific incident, but if he should have done what you said : "had plenty of time to put his head down and contest", then I don't quite see how that instruction is likely to lessen head injuries. Seems to me that is asking for players to collide heads which isn't that much safer than your hip running into my head or my head running into your hip. Surely there must be a moment when it is safer for one player to pull back. If a player does that and gets both stick from the coach and supporters for being a whimp AND gets rubbed out for high contact, I don't know where we are heading.

Given that Jonas was rewarded for his dangerous tackle can we please give the umpire at least a week off as well.

If we accept Hunters 1 week suspension I’ll be checking out from the 2023 H&A season. I’ve never been so disheartened by the direction of the game and its management. It’s just too infuriating.

This, this, this. Thanks for calling it @Redlagged. If we are smart - Clarry's injury could be the cloud with a silver lining. We are lacking serious class on the outside and Clarry could fill that role better than anyone else in the club. In my view, we are not realising his full potential in current role of inside bull. The next four weeks will give us a serious look at inside structures without Clarry and the players best equipped to play the 'in and under' role should we have the courage to move the great man to the outside.

You put Max and Trac in there for increased minutes. You add Viney and Sparrow and rotate Brayshaw, Rivers, Pickett, Chandler and whoever else is up to it through the middle. You double down on contest and you harass the opposition like your life depends on it. Then you run to the next contest and do it all over again. We can do this. Oliver is our Dangerfield and this next month might force the coaches to think a little differently.

Injuries happen. He is so durable and he will weeks in the middle of a season. The best time if we are to be a contender. Also, can we just go and hunt the footy?

WHY ARE WE SHOUTING?

So much MFCSS in here. Chill until there is news.

Lloyd said on Sunday footy show that he deserved a week because Hunter’s attempt at winning the footy was insufficient. What a pielkop!

I just wanna see this man win a Brownlow FFS

Good grief if that is true. If they can warn you when you have 5 to go etc, why can't they tell you "No More" as well. And we wouldn't have a game decided in such a stupid way.

'Pretty clearly elected to bump in my view..had plenty of time to put his head down and contest. Chose not to, lead with the hip and the player contesting the ball in the right way was collected high as a result.' You must either have tainted vision, or you live in Fantasyland: Hunter at no time attempted to bump. He braced himself when Rozee kept his kamikaze momentum...

Too busy barracking for Port

If he elected to bump he would've followed through - he stopped and turned, he wasn't moving at the moment of impact. What duty of care does Rozee have? He expects to just be able to collect the ball unchallenged? It's a contact sport FCS.

McQueen stuck in heavy traffic among all the other disenchanted fans checking out from the AFL.

Get Angus to nullify Andrew. That will go a long way to beating Freo.

Wow. Bold.

"Could be sidelined for up to a month" says Ralph. Let's wait for something a bit more definitive from the club. It might not be the catastrophe some are fearing.

What are you on about? The tackle that TMac got caught in has just been deemed illegal by the MRO. Unless Port take it to the Tribunal and succeed, Jonas' tackle was illegal. The result should have been a free to TMac, not a free to Jonas.

BECAUSE WE ARE IN PANIC MODE

Yeah, but Carlton losing. Every cloud...

All unraveling so quickly if true. Find it so hard to believe he could run out a whole last quarter in the wet if it were that bad. If there was even the slighted tear this action would have ripped it off the bone.

Does anyone know if he is actually going to miss games or are we all just guessing??

The world’s going to sht in a hand basket. We are surrounded by violence yet we expect this not to happen. There’s a fair chunk of football followers who are total lowlife scumbags. I’m an MCC member but far from a toff. The game against Collingwood last year my family and friends were verbally abused for the entire second half. I used to love the light hearted banter between opposition supporters but lately that’s just been replaced with incoherent abusive ramblings. No fun or joy in that. It’s a game FFS, we’re supposed to be able to enjoy it. Now we rely on underpaid, poorly trained, largely immigrant security forces to maintain civility.

Fremantle is a must win. One week at a time. Breathe

That’s just incorrect and not correct technique for approaching a ground ball head-on with an opponent. If players are approaching head-on at speed it’s not just going to be a clash of arms but a clash of heads. You don’t go in at speed and clash arms and bounce off - arms reaching down for the ball are hardly strong enough to cause a bounce off between two physically strong athletes at speed. That is why players are taught to turn their bodies when approaching a ground ball head-on. The correct technique would see side-to-side contact with both going for the ball rather than head-to-head contact if leading with the head. Your suggested technique would lead to many more head injuries from head-on ground ball contests.

Just been watching The Round so far: check out at 9.10 into it: Buddy tackles, wraps the players arms and the North player's head bangs into the turf. Then again, there's one rule for the Cripps and Dangerfields and Buddies, another for Melbourne players. Then at 9.50, a Sydney player shirt fronts a north player in a marking contest. If Christian leaves this alone.... The AFL is full of the word which involves excrement.

A bump implies forward momentum. Hunter simply braced himself.

Good to see Jed Adams get his numbers up again. 7 marks seems like a good game from a defender. Had next to no pre season with the shoulder injury and is now starting to pick up form. When he was drafted it was his draft highlights out of all the draftees that impressed me the most with his strong intercept marking and neat left good. Good signs ahead.

What’s Christian’s rationale for grading it medium considering Rozee got up a second later and ended up kicking the winning goal for Port?? If we have a solid foundation in arguing this down from medium to low impact, and hence allowing Hunter to play next week, then we should take it to the tribunal.

As someone that's had hamstring issues in the past from playing, the fact that he ran out the last quarter says to me that he may have had some tightness or even maybe cramp. Even if it was a strain, there is no way he could move in the wet the way that he did that last quarter. Trying to push through a strain will only result in a pretty bad tear which is where you're looking at 6-10 weeks. Fingers crossed it's just tightness. 8 day break should hopefully be okay. Could still miss just the 1 week at worse.