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Well done Woey.

The AFL have asked me to compile the best teams of all time from these two zones. Which do you think is superior? Compare the pair ... Could any other State produce such strong sides? VIC METRO B: Ash Burton William Stown Glen Roy H/B: Campbell Field Mel Tonsouth Ken Sington C: Ivan Hoe Donny Brook Heath Mont H/F: Chad Stone Beau Maris Carl Tonnorth F: Al Tona Thomas Town Don Caster R: Hugh Esdale Mordi Alloc Mick Leham I/C: Syd Enham Cam Berwell Glen Huntly Dan Denong SUB: Frank Ston COACH: Mel Bourne VIC COUNTRY B: Leon Gatha Ben Digo Glen Thompson H/B: Alfred Ton Peter Borough Heath Cote C: Alex Andra Mal Lacoota Col Eraine H/F: Robin Vale Mort Lake Leo Pold F: Heath Mere Seb Astopol Trent Ham R: Beau Fort Kirk Stall Col Binabbin I/C: Stan Hope Mil Dura Wallace Dale Mal Don SUB: Den Nington COACH: Tim Boon

They must have seriously cut back on funding for comms. We have two players playing huge milestone games in two days, including our skipper, and one of the greatest dees of all time playing his 200th, and unless i can't see them on the MFC website, there are no videos celebrating Nibblas or maxy's career and milestones. Maybe they will come out today, but really it's not good enough. Both deserve more. As do fans. And whilst of course members buymemberships to support the club, part of the value proposition is decent content, not to mention some level of clarrrity about injuries and the like.

any chance of hearing about trade rumours on this thread?

Think it's fair to say we won't see Grundy again this year unless injury to Gawn. Forward experiment hasn't and won't work but I think for he's sake he'd be silly not to seek further opportunities elsewhere.

Agree he is a whipping boy and I admit whipping him too and that is uncomfortable for me, as he is a really lovely guy and did something for my grand daughter’s birthday, which all of us really appreciated. I congratulate him for sticking it up everyone like me and being a MFC premiership player and now playing his 150th. Have a great game and a big win. Keep it up Nibbler and keep sticking it to those who knock you.

#ETthetradewhisperer is hearing some early rumours.. he may let the cat out of the handbag soon. Stay tuned. #HowDoesHeDoIt? #ETDoesItAgain #WhisperMeThis.

Part of my point is that they’re never all assumed goal kickers at the same time. ANB and Spargs are not ‘small forwards’. Nibbler’s game against North in Tassie was the perfect example of how his role gets confused. He kicked 3 goals, but he was everywhere on the day (as he is every week, an endurance freak), not predominantly up forward. Other weeks he’ll score donuts, yet play his role to a tee as prescribed. As to his landmark, what an extraordinary achievement. 150 games of sheer determination, dedicated team work and on field ethic (and all for a whipping boy!). He’s a special player. Well done Alex Neal Bullen. 👏🏻

Finishing 2nd opens up our preferred run through the finals: home qualifying final against interstate team (likely win), home preliminary final possibly against another interstate team (another likely win) and GF against Collingwood (who’ve shown no signs they can best out game plan from KB). If we win our next two, there’s a reasonable chance of Brisbane & Port each dropping a game and we better their %. Thus, while I’ve been all for ‘experimenting with personnel’, ‘squad mentality’, ‘horses for courses’ and ‘resting/managing players’, the time has come for best 23. Gawn can go solo for 5 games in 7 weeks. Play Tomlinson for the season. Accept his flaws in the interest of supporting his confidence and boosting defensive cohesion. Play Smith forward and keep him at least in the 23 when Fritsch returns.

Ch7 commentary box quite flat, during that last qtr. Collingwood loosing games has them rattled

Tomlinson should come in. The Lever/May/Tomlinson defensive combination is undefeated since our win against GWS in round 17 2020 at the GABBA. The combination works effectively and I have no idea why the club deviates from it. Tomlinson is statistically one of the best one of one defenders in the AFL according to Champion Data, which enables Lever to have an intercept picnic.

Speak for yourself.

Laurie is in because of consistant good form in the VFL, it is exactly what we should be doing in selection. reward these players.

I'm a big Spargo fan given he does one thing really well that many of our players don't - kick But the guy can't find the pill consistently enough I like giving Laurie a crack, in hope he pretty much becomes a version of Spargo that finds a bit more of the footy Not sure about the 4 smalls all in the same side though

It’s the gif that keeps on giffing.

That may well be the end of Gawndy. If we win the flag this year no one will care. If we don't win it, there will be so much said and written about how much time we put into Gawndy when it didn't work. That's all for another time. For now, I think the Tomlinson-Smith-Grundy shuffle is the right call. I think dropping Jordon was the right call (although is he really the best option for sub?). But I'm not at all sure Laurie is the right call for that spot. Hope he proves me flatly wrong.

Of the games Spargo didn’t play, 5 are against the bottom 6 and only 1 against a top 8 team. Of the games he played in, 4 were top 4, another 4 top 8, then also Geelong in Geelong. The record when he plays versus doesn’t is totally meaningless and tells us nothing.

Old i know you disagree, and i don't want to get into a back and forth on it. Happy for you to disagree, and rebut too of course but i'll post this response and leave it here if that is ok. I'm trying to get better at not feeling like i have to prove i'm right all the time (on DL and elsewhere)! The high half forward role is a thing. It is an increasingly critical role because all team defence depends on having multiple players who can cover huge ground, at pace, and gut run all game to track the ball from deep into the oppo defence and half forward flank (inside 50 sometimes too of course, but not like the traditional small forwards). They are critical roles because without them all team defence doesn't work as holes open up everywhere that the oppo use to tic tac the ball to free players on transition. And on offence they provide an outlet, tic tac offensive transition option. Forever and a day the game has been about getting the pill - and players are judged on the ability to do so (good players juts know how to get the pill, good players get to where the ball is etc etc). (By the by, this started to shift at club land because when Craig was at the Crows he paid someone to time how often Ricciuto, who was regularly getting 35 plus possessions a game, actually had the ball in his hand during a game. I can't recall the exact number, but over the course of a 2 hour game they realized that Roo, their most prolific ball winner, only had the ball in his hands on the ball something like 3.5 minutes per game. Arguably this changed footy because it shifted the thinking about the contribution of players when they don't have the ball in hand - something that has always been a big part of say basketball). A challenge for the role is that involves a huge amount of unrewarded running and often low possession numbers because they often gut run to spots that result in the ball actually not going near them. For example they gut run to cover a clear switch. If they make it, the ball doesn't get switched, and instead might get kicked down the line 70 metres away from them. Or they sprint to the open space to provide a switch option. The ball is not kicked to them but it drags their opponent with them (gassing that player in the process) to create a hole for a teammate to run into and provide the tic tac option and support transition. The impact is measurable in scores from turnover - just about the most critical stat in footy now (eg stopping the oppo scoring on transition, for example gut running to spoil or running to cover space and forcing a kick down the line to a contest. And scoring on transition when after creating turnover or winning it in the back half of the ground). Or put another way - being involved in scoring chains AND stopping oppo scoring chains (another 'unrewarded' act in terms of accruing a stat - well at least by the media and fans, but not by clubs and teammates). If they do their job they don't get a disposal. Hard to appreciate something that has not occurred, ie everyone can see when a player who gets kick. Every player has to gut run at times and all have to contribute to all team defence. The difference is the unique combination of attributes the high half forward role requires - football skill, football iq, discipline (for instance to not chase the pill to fatten their stats sheet when fans are calling for them to be dropped), elite endurance and elite athletic skills - most notably a high cruising speed akin to a 400 metre runner. Teams need several such players. Langers and Hunter have a similar function - and athletic attributes to Nibbla and Spargo. With no Spargo, another players has to play role (eg Woey) and/or other players have to cover the clicks at speed we miss when Spargo is not in the team (eg chandler playing a hybrid role). I really like Chandler, but he is does not have the athletic attributes required for the role. And i would argue he has been playing a hybrid role, and we saw the issue with that against the blues. He was ineffective as a small forward, in part i would argue because he spent too much time outside 50 and of course was also more gassed than he would have bene if he stayed inside 50 more of the time. And i would argue, as evidenced by the fact they were well ahead on scores from turnover (which almost NEVER happens to us) until late in the third, we also struggled with our all team defence because Chandler cant play that high half forward role to the level Spargo can (and that is not a criticism, just diff types of athletes). And in any case we want Chandler close to goal, as fresh as possible (eg not gassed because he has to sprint from the half back to the forward pocket), applying pressure inside 50, crumbing packs and kicking goals. On Gryan Miers, i thought i made clear that i was comparing roles not performance. I did after all note that Myers averages almost twice as many possessions and that he was chance of AA selection. I chose Myers as a comparison because he is a forward and the conversation is how can a forward get into he AA team having only kicked six goals. Stengel made AA becuase he kicked goals, for instance. Sure, people will say that he in the frame for AA selection because of his goal assists, but although he is miles ahead of every other player (trac is second), he still only provides 1.9 goal assists per game. Curiously though, Spargs, despite being playing 8 fewer games, has kicked almost twice as many goals as Myers (11) and whilst behind on score involvements, not as much as might be imagined (Myers averages 7 per game, Charlie 3.9). As for evidence for the different roles Spargo and Chandler play, it's hard to find specific evidence. The heat maps of both players when both in the team would provide a visual of their diff roles, but i couldn't' find them online. And the other good evidence is total kms covered in a game, defensive kms covered (which is when the oppo have the ball), and ks covered at speed. Again i cant find that data online, but it is on telstra tracker during games and i always look at it at quarter breaks. Nibbla, Langers and Hunter are always at the top of the above measures for us. As for evidence about the high half forward role existence and importance, Daniel Hoyne from Champion data explains it really well here: Go to this link: https://www.sen.com.au/programs/sportsday/ Scroll down to the 'Round 20 Full On Footy Analysis with Daniel Hoyne in the studio - Tuesday August 01 file And listen from 6 mins 24 secs to the 8 mins 34 second mark Summary: The transition game is the most important part of football now (something he has talked about all season) He defines the high half forward role Talks about the importance of the role Argues that bringing players in to play that role, eg Cunningham and Cotteral, is the key reason for the blues revival because it has allowed them them to sort out their transition game He also goes on to argue that without such players, teams can not win a flag and that is why he thinks the dogs are going nowhere (because they lack such players) It is not in this clip, but on another night Hoyne mentioned the Giants recruited Toby Bedford to play the high half forward role, which was an important factor in their improvement too There is also a podcast Tmac did pre season that talks about the high half forward role. There is a thread on DL about it with with the link, and i have written about it somewhere too. I had quick search and can't find either. But in short, Tmac argues the high half forward role Nibbla and Spargo play (so making a clear distinction between that and other roles, eg small forward) is 'the hardest role in football, by far'. He also talks about why that is the case - for example the gut running and 'high striding speed' required for the role and the need, all game, to push deep into defence and get behind the ball, and then on turnover, sprint to get ahead of the ball to provide a transition option. And like i have heard so many ex players say, like Jonesy about Nibbla a few weeks back, Tmac also said that whilst fans may not appreciate players who play the high half forward role, everyone within footy clubs do because they know what is involved and how critical it is to a teams' fortunes.

Hopefully. Selection mail is normally pretty close.

In 2023 we are 6 wins & 5 losses when we have 3 midget forwards (Kossie, Spargo and Chandler) and 8 wins & 2 losses (both by less than a goal) when we play just 2 midget forwards. The balance of our side is out with too many small players, particularly forward of the ball where players need to compete in the air in outnumbered situations.. We are already playing 2 small wingers and Bowey in defence.

Yes. Fritta will be ready next week and based on form it's a direct swap for me.

With one more pre-season, I can see him starting 22, or at least in our best 25. Great signing - well done Taj, and well done Dees.

Huge relief that Tomlinson is in, probably means Smith forward. I know Tomlinson has a big turning circle but he does his job and is a really good kick. Smith is a natural forward and his athleticism can worry defences. Very surprised about Laurie, not sure what he adds. I would have given Taj another go. I feel very, very sad for Grundy but it is the right selection.

Rapt to see Tomlinson back

Happy my boy Laurie is getting a run. Been calling/hoping he gets into the team for a while now. Been ultra consistent at Casey and possesses some much needed polish with disposal.

Could Bill Laurie be this years Jake Bowey? A well timed run to finals!!

That's great. Well, lets be frank, not great, just ok. A bunch of tweets and photos, one of with a link to buy some Maxy merch But i haven't received an email, i'm not on twitter and the only video above is the standard electrifying performance 90 second vid they do every week from the blues game. Just checked - still no celebration vids on the website. Maybe they will still come - i hope so. By way of contrast there were two vids celebrating Langer's 150th last month: The first with highlights of his career (replete with the who hoo man), the second an interview with him:

Yes it’s pretty poor. Someone posted that they’d got an email with the merch for Maxy’s 200th, well between 4 memberships I didn’t get any email.. who knows what else im missing out on My other gripe is the Ticketmaster mobile membership system is a nightmare but I think that’s forced on the clubs by HQ

Any new bird related rumors from The Riddler?

Who do you replace him with? A forward line of Fritsch, Melksham, JVR, and Smith is agile, strong, and plays taller than it is.

Big white fluffy things old men yell at .... ( doesn't work though.... )

Some PA you are 😛

Every remote should come with a mute for BT button.

But wouldn't that mean 'they' are going in too tall? It always seems on here that no matter what WE do, the opponent will have the upper hand,. as WE have gone to tall or small, not them... 😀

Max is the latest in line of Melbourne’s premiership captains and he sits on the same high pedestal on my vision as the one who skippered the club to its previous two flags in 1964 and in 1960 — the great Ronald Dale Barassi who also played in four others before that in 1959, 1957, 1956 and 1955. On Sunday, Max reaches game 200 and I salute him for that but what I’m looking forward to and I reckon Max is aiming for is to play game 204 on the MCG in just over a month’s time in a winning grand final against Collingwood. The achievement of 204 games on that day will make him equal in the number of games played for Melbourne and premiership cups held aloft as skipper of this great club with Barassi. A coincidence, but one worth looking forward to over the next 40 plus days to come. Take it to the Max!

I know it's incidental, but Hibberd is on 196 games, it's getting tight to reach his goal of 200.

Hibbo isn't named emergency. Smith will go forward, Tommo down back and Laurie as a midfield/forward. Jordon will be sub

I'm not disputing that there is a "high half forward" role. I am disputing that there is any evidence that Spargo plays it more effectively than Chandler. Again there is no available evidence AFAIK that Spargo has superior athletic attributes to Chandler. I looked at the Tracker on the AFL App which records the top 5 performers in the match across a range of running attributes. Here's the total number of times Chandler and Spargo have appeared in the top 5 in those categories this season. Total Sprints: Chandler 7, Spargo 0 Repeat Sprints: Chandler 5, Spargo 2 Distance at High Speed: Chandler 3, Spargo 1 Average Speed: Chandler 1, Spargo 1 Average Speed in Attack: Chandler 0, Spargo 3 Average Speed in Defence: Chandler 9, Spargo 1 Maximum Speed: Chandler 10, Spargo 1 I think it's very clear that Chandler is quicker than Spargo and there's some evidence in Repeat Sprints and Average Speed in Defence that he has good endurance and covers the ground defensively. You were critical of Chandler vs Carlton last week, but he was top 5 in Maximum Speed, Total Sprints, Repeat Sprints and Average Speed in Defence.

He didn't play in the midfield. It might of looked like it because he ran up and down the ground all day, spent a lot of time in the defensive 50 and often was where the ball was at, so to speak. First half, he was on the wing. Second half he played his normal high half high forward role. Did a power of work all game. In terms of role, a good comparison is Gryan Miers for the cats. High half forward (ie not a crumbing small forward like chandler), get back and help out in defence, provide an outlet option on transition and spot up forwards with good kicks inside 50. Like miers (who is a chance of being an AA forward despite having only kicked 6 goals this season) offensively his kpis are goal assists and score involvements not goals. I suspect spargs comes in tgis week and plays that role. By the by, miers is averaging almost twice as many possessions as spargs. I suspect spargs has been in the twos to get his tank up so he can get to more contests.

So you're thinking Grundy for Tomlinson and Smith forward...? RE the May, Lever and Tomlinson record, I had to go back and double check this as I thought they'd dropped a game together last year or even this year, but spot on. That's a crazy record. It might partly be a result of the MC picking Tomlinson for very specific roles where he doesn't get exposed and allows the other two to intercept/win their roles, this could equally be wholly unfair to Tomlinson. But it is interesting we're clearly concerned about something there. He definitely held up, as did the May/Lever/Tomlinson partnership on King's Birthday. In fact, the entire team from the KB game will be available as of next week via Fritta (Petty didn't play), and I had thought for the majority of the season that minus Smith up forward, we'd basically go with that set up for the finals. However, with Petty's injury, it's opened up Smith as his replacement. I think there's definitely room for Grundy, but I reckon the MC have put a line through him now. That means, I think the forwardline we'll go with for finals (assuming TMac and BB are done - this seems likely) is JVR, Fritta, Smith, ANB, Kozzy, Chandler and Spargo. While the defensive set up could well be the same as KB (with Bowey missing out) - May, Lever, Tomlinson, Salem, McVee, Rivers and Hibbo (except Hibbo was tactical sub that day). This means Clarry would replace JJ from that KB team, leaving Max, Clarry, Trac, Viney, Brayshaw, Sparrow, plus Langdon and Hunter. The tactical sub choice could then come from either Grundy (as strange as that sounds), JJ, Harmes or Bowey. I know @old55 wouldn't have Spargo, so if you left Charlie out, you could play an extra mid or fit Bowey at the back. Equally, if you left Hibbo out, you could fit Bowey at the back. Here is the team as above. To me, it's a little short in the front half, but as we saw with the ball movement on KB, this isn't such a problem if we move it quickly and turn the ball over/intercept in the middle of the ground. McVee May Hibbo Lever Tomlinson Salem Langdon Oliver Hunter Petracca Smith ANB Fritta JVR Kozzy Gawn Viney Brayshaw Rivers Sparrow Spargo Chandler There's also a chance they could pretty much play this team against Hawthorn minus Fritta for the extra mid in JJ.

Melksham

The comparison with Miers in terms of role is a very good one. I would just love to see Spargo get a bit more footy and in turn more score involvements. Averaging about 10 possessions a game this year, if he could get those few extra game then he'd bank his position in the side for me.

Me too. Every time I try and load a photo DL won’t let me. Don’t know how to find or share/load gifs. I am just an old fart.

Just getting around to the podders now, my essential weekly listening. Now, Binners, I'm gonna disagree with you on where we lost the game being in the forward 50 tackles stakes, unless you think we lost it tactically. The first half saw us playing Kozzy higher up the ground and allowed them to come at us up the ground from kick outs. It meant we were quite happy to have the ball leave our attacking 50 by design, as this would leave more space in behind for us to attack back the other way. It would also mean that forward 50 tackles would be reduced by this. At the time, I actually thought it was the right tactical play. I'm playing a similar style with a junior team I coach at the moment and it's strangling teams and leading to heavy scoring for us, because it becomes almost always about fast break away, uncontested play off the sling shot once we cause turnovers or intercept. As soon as you win possession via intercept or winning a 1v1, you go quickly. This was clearly our plan. You allude to this, but I think it was lost because they won intercept and they were better/more effective at it. Part of this was a function of their extremely aggressive forward half press that enabled them to get repeated re-entries from higher intercepts than we were. When we managed to intercept deep in defence or even off half back and in the corridor, we mucked up at least 2 or 3 opportunities on the fast break that should have been scores at the very least, if not goals on the counter. When Oliver went down earlier in the season, we started to shift away from demanding a forward half game and seemed to be more open to the idea of playing on the counter from D50, the one major advantage of this is obviously a less crowded forward half to enter. This was also the blueprint to beat Collingwood, although arguably we wanted to create turnovers slightly higher up the field than D50. We've also seen in 2023, probably more than any other season, Goody experiment with winning in different ways. Winning in shoot outs, winning in overly defensive contested matches, winning via back half intercepts, winning via forward half intercepts (relaxing or constricting the press), allowing games to open up and then deliberately playing overly contested, forward half games etc etc. And I just wonder if we treated this game (the first half at least) as a bit of an experiment again. To see if we could beat our own system with a more Collingwoodesque slingshot game. We don't take the same risks as them by foot though, which meant it was always going to be a dour affair if Carlton brought the heat. Which they did. I'd argue therefore that it was a tactical mistake (the experiment notwithstanding) to slacken the forward press and look to sit back and hit them on the counter. By half time, it was clear that Goody and co agreed with this view, because we made an adjustment in our forward half by playing Kozzy deeper, rather than higher as per the first half, and we started to lay inside 50 tackles and try to lock the ball in our forward half. At the very least, we forced them to kick to contests outside our A50. I have no idea what Chandler's role was on the night, but given he was pretty much a non entity, I think this robbed us of forward half pressure too, it can't always land on Kozzy's shoulders. And I just wonder if Chandler was playing the higher half forward role that Spargo should be playing, and as a result was too high up the ground to be applying the necessary pressure inside A50...? I said soon after the game finished that I felt our forward mix was off. It wasn't just Grundy, because he actually did a neat thing or two in the forward half (despite lacking the forward craft), and I agree with you that he was better in the ruck than Max, but the other thing that threw our balance off was, I think, the extra mid instead of the extra speed forward in Spargo. If you play Spargo alongside ANB to defend closer to D50 and through the middle of the ground, all of a sudden you can play Kozzy, Chandler and Trac deep forward, add Smith into that mix and you've got forward pressure through the roof. It means you can slacken your zone too and not lose that important ability to lock the ball in forward half and play territory. Now that Clarry has a game under his belt, I hope we revert to this forward set up this week and drop the extra mid (JJ).

With GWS rumoured to be considering a salary dump with Nick Haynes, I wonder if we could accomodate taking him and their top draft pick off their hands? (Like the Cats did with Jack Bowes last year.) If we could find the $1.2m required for the final year of his contract, we’d get an 192cm All Australian defender to free up Petty to go forward, and pick 8 to package with pick 5 for pick 1 from West Coast to get Harley Reid. This allows Patracca to play forward more. Haynes is 31 and his existing contract back-ended so his ongoing salary probably more like $600k at a guess. Surely something worth looking at if Grundy leaves and others retire.

I'd like to see them give Bailey Luaurie a go in place or James Jordon

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