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This site is almost unreadable after a loss

I stress this is only ***speculation*** But rumours are emerging of Petracca being an out due to planking related exhaustion

I've been Vineys biggest critic and was gobsmacked we signed him for 5 years. But, his first couple of games this year was some of the best footy I'd seen him play for a long time. I'm not ready to write him off just yet, as he has come back from a significant foot injury. It's taken Patrick Dangerfield 4 weeks to get back up to scratch and on the weekend he was back to his powerful best once again. Have faith that Hopefully Viney gets back to his best form that he showed early on this year.

This is a joke, right?

I think enough people have hit upon the correct answer. Not only are the players' surnames the same as movie stars, they are all female actors. Mazer Rackham, maximum bob and Fanatique Demon all share this week's prize which is my AFLX All Nations team (liberties may have been taken with some names!). The Players: Peter German, Ben Holland, Heath Scotland, Andrew Ireland, Barnaby French, Andrew Welsh, Des English and Ray Finn. The Coach: Wayne Brittain The Reserves: "Turkey" Tom Carroll, "Aussie" Jones, Mark "Russian" Jamar, Kevin "Hungary" Bartlett, Charlie Cameroon.

Hello all, apologies for dragging this thread up for another plug, but the book is scheduled to be in bookstores tomorrow. Make a scene if yours doesn't carry it. I spoke to Radio TAB about it this morning. Fortunately they didn't ask for my views on the Globe Derby quaddie.

That’s Stewie Dew.

Now that’s a haircut you can set your watch to.

Just seen him in the lobby of the hotel I am staying at having a pretty chilled conversation with his manager. Off topic also walked past the entire west coast squad coping a bit of a talking to from Adam Simpson in the same lobby, a few of the players gave me a funny look as I walked past with my demons mask on.

Reasons are not excuses. Our bottom 4-6 is every bit as good as that of the tigers in their premiership seasons. As is our top 10. They won those flags becuase of their system. And complete buy in to the system and preparedness by every player to play their assigned role. It is worth noting that in 2017, 2019 and 2020, at the end of the home and away the tigers finished 3rd (15-7), 3rd (16-6) and 3rd (12-4-1). Which is unsurprising given their ballistic model, like ours, is all but impossible to keep at the level week in week out. Which by the by is something they never tied to do. Their run to he flags started each year from about now We absolutely have the team to win the flag this year.

No, but kids add energy to the mix and we have been lacking energy recently. That fact that he is an excellent decision maker and kick won't go astray.

12-3 15 rounds played…..12 wins….. 48 points in the premiership bank and dropped to second on the ladder after a not-so-forgettable loss to the Great Waste of space. Defence under pressure…. Midfield looking flat and devoid of ideas and imagination …… forward structure non-existent….. or at least still dysfunctional after 15 games this season. Goody thinks that is a good thing. It is not as if we were playing world beaters in GWS. They are a good competent side that has a number of quality players but it is not a team that we should have lost too. Rubbish first half and a better second half with no one able to take the chances on offer. Midfield could not deliver with confidence to a forward structure that would not allow them to identify proper targets. Very disappointing and worrying performance. And so, to Round 17 and we play the Port Power this Thursday night at Adelaide Oval. 2nd vs 3rd and there is every chance that if we lose this one, we could find ourselves in 5th place come Monday morning…… And who would be surprised when the much lauded coaching panel still have no idea of the best forward setup? So much for adding Yze and Choco. They looked good when we were winning but are scratching their heads at the moment. The facts: We are coming off a grinding loss – Advantage them The game is at Adelaide Oval – Advantage them We have been rubbish the last few weeks – Advantage them They are coming off a win last week against the Hawks – Advantage them Not looking good, is it? Problem areas of the game for us. Still the bloody forwards…. And now you can add the midfield that looks flat and disinterested. Defenders did their job with very little support from other sectors of the ground. Goodwin swung Hunt forward in the last to remind us why he was moved back. Running out of defence the way he does is good when there are players forward of him, so he does not have to make too many decisions. Stick him in the front half and he runs out of players to pass forward to and he has forgotten that there are four sticks at the end of the ground you can have a ping at. Go back to the structure that works for the defenders and sort out the rest of the players. A bit of midfield pressure goes a long way toward winning a game of footy as can be seen by the difference between our play in the first half as opposed to the second where we remembered to apply pressure. Made a world of difference. We are rubbish at sorting out onfield problems during the game. Our clearances in the first half were less than acceptable and yet I did not see anyone changing things onfield to sort it out. If something is not working…. Fix it then and there. Try something different. Jackson to ruck with Max roving at the center bounce as a mid…Anything….. Anything at all. It has to be better than doing SFA. Max and Luke will win the taps at the ruck contest but so what? Oh dear……. Now for the forwards……. I hate to keep picking on them every week but a score of 7-13 from 56 inside 50s with 10 marks in the 50 arc leave them open, once again, to bear the brunt of criticism. The good; Fritsch kicked a few and Tmac is in good form but not getting the ball near to goal The bad; Wow. Where to start? No forward targets…. (left over from last week) The ugly; Selection stubbornness in not giving BBB a run. Another week, another win without a recognisable structure to the forward line. We took 10marks inside our forward 50…. 10. We scored 7 goals 13. Please, please….fix this…. Brown to come in? if so, will that make it any better? Could not be any worse. (Paraphrased last week) Shaking my head here…. No idea what could fix it but then again, I am not paid the big bucks by the MFC to come up with answers to problems, and the people that are, are not providing answers. Any thoughts on the subject Yze? Choco? Goody???? You guys have been around a lot ya gotta have some idea….. (repeat from last week) Selection….. make some changes don’t just nibble the chesses and have a friendly chat about the weather and leave the team to wallow without a forward structure that they can play too. I heard a few loud clunks last week and The Bathwater Express ground to a halt as the wheels had fallen off. To be honest they did not so much ‘fall off’ more like that jumped off and ran away into the bush as they did not want to be associated with TBE. Understandable. It will take a lot to get them back on the hubs. Last week I predicted a 6 goal win….. got it wrong…. Very wrong….. I would Love to predict a win here but, after a long bull run, the bears are in ascendancy and I have to predict a loss….. not even an honourable one…. 30pts and 5th after the round. Go Dees!!! ( I still love the team but they make it so damn hard)

Rivers and May are definitely run and gun type players if given the opportunity. They've had to defend hard recent games because of the mids being down a bit... My question is when do we look at Bowey and does he come into the back half at the expense Hunt who either goes forward or out of the team?

Line in the sand game, we will belt them off the park in front of their home fans sending a message to the rest of the competition on a big stage. dees by 43

I’m not going to lie, I really don’t like him.

Ok, here goes…. I wish more grown adults were trained better to cope with adversity - so they didn’t go jumping at shadows when their football team gets beaten on the weekend.

Have you ever done a long plank? For someone of Trac’s size it’d be torture. No one likes doing Planks… or Burpees for that matter.

Saw Viney push the trainer too. I get that he's competitive, but that was as disrespectful as it gets as far as I'm concerned. She is a member or staff who's job is to look after the well being of the players. And he physically pushed her away? Extremely poor. All across the ground in the weekend I saw infighting amongst our group. It was an embarrassing mess of a game all over the ground. The mistakes were extraordinary and the selfishness at times was unbelievable. This isnt the thread but I completely disagree with those that think this was lost at selection. We've been at our best this year without Ben Brown. Do supporters understand that or not? We were something like 6 or 7 and 0 without BB or Weideman. Supporters have no idea. We losg the game due to our atrocious ball use going inside 50 all game. We were also comprehensively beaten up around the ball for three quarters. There's nothing else to it. Hopper came out and said that they had lined this game up as a 'final' for them and they played like it was a final all game. And we finally decided to give full effort in the last. But unforced errors still cost us even when we could have snatched it on the line. Not having Ben Brown out there was not the problem for one second. Between the ears again, completely. Petracca, Oliver, Harmes, May, Gawn, McDonald, Rivers, Viney, ANB etc. The mistakes they made all day killed us.

Umpire Margetts started his illustrious AFL umpiring career in 2002. In the twenty years he has adorned the stage he has umpired 29 MFC games. We have won 8 of them! I think we should pay more attention to his appointments when tipping!

Just a little nod to the great man. 20 years ago today... Was due diligence done on his back before he signed for us ?

On the weekend across a number of matches I watched, I saw players being rude and downright disrespectful towards trainers. One case is hand is when Viney was sore and the trainer came over to assist only for him to push her away. It is a regular occurrence in the game and one I always hate seeing. It’s always a bad look and I have absolutely no idea why players would treat trainers in such a way.

For what it is worth, wasn’t MarkWilliams quoted as saying he is not interested in a head coaching gig again?

Scary to think with good kicking we could be 15-0

Yeah, I'm with you here 'bin'...it's not mental exhaustion. We've hit a brick wall and that points to heavy training loads. You could see it with Max going back to the Pies game on...he's just not covering the same ground. I'm not talking about a skinny kid or ageing veteran, I'm talking about a player in his prime. We could be way off the mark 'bin' but as I said to old mate 'Kent' of the sack Goodwin brigade, the next few weeks will tell the story.

Viney seems to have lost his burst of speed. He’s never been quick but he was ok over the first few steps. Having had yet another foot injury and limited pre season, he seems to be missing that yard of pace that helped him. Without this he’s a liability in both defense and attack. I am sure he will get better when he regains fitness and he’s still someone I want in the team come finals. He’s a beast and a competitor and he will put his body on the line every week. He’s a perfect finals player. Just don’t agree with bringing him into the side to gain fitness when we have 18 fit guys in the VFL busting a gut. Not to mention we don’t exactly lack inside mid options.

Completely agree. We needed to handball and break lines to break open the zone, but didn't. To your point about our foot skills being poor in our losses, I'd say our goal kicking in all of those games has been woeful and is the key reason we haven't snatched those games when the rest of our game has otherwise been off. The Adelaide game Fritsch missed two from essentially the square and the Collingwood and GWS losses saw us miss regulation shots we were getting earlier in the year. I remember many of us, myself include, saying earlier in the season that our goalkicking would eventually cost us games this year. IMO, it's now cost us three wins and almost cost us the Essendon game too. That said, there's no doubt that Geelong and particularly the Bulldogs are wonderful kicking sides. Not sure Port are though. Brisbane have some wonderful kickers like McLuggage for example, but also have some pretty ho hums distributors by foot that are no better or worse than our mids like Zorko, Neale and Robinson. I hope you're right about the training loads, rather than it merely being just TOG management. There's no doubt we've struggled physically and intensity wise since the Brisbane game. I don't think it's a case of being the hunted, although maybe that's a mental and even physical toll that we're not giving enough weight to here. I think it was Salem who mentioned in his post match interview that it's good being a team at the top, because we need to experience this as a group. I feel like Goodwin has said similar things, so perhaps the mental has bogged us down too?

And TBH Jack Reiwoldts mark this year was one of the best I've seen I reckon.

Isn't it time they raised the crowd numbers

It's a long way from the best mark ever.

He is not that good.

We have the players to run off half back, that's not an issue. But our lack of overlap run and dare was super evident on Saturday. I know Goody said we are doing any extra training loads but frankly I don't believe him. We are not running out our games the way we were in the first 10 games or so, we are not playing with anywhere near the same intensity, our defensive running has been off for 3 weeks and we have lost our overlap run. All that points to a team that is physically tired. And perhaps mentally tired too, but i reckon that's less the issue. An issue for us is how many young players we have in the team and it is totally normally for young players to be flagging at this stage of the season. So that's part of it no doubt. But you make an excellent point about the TOG percentages, with the young'uns getting a lot of bench time and the senior players conversely up around the 90% plus range. But any extra loads on top will impact the senior players and younger players. Our game, like Richmond. is super taxing - physically and mentally. The system is completely dependent on huge physical effort. And when that drops off, for whatever reason, we come well and truly back to he pack. And we have major Achilles heel that is exposed when drop off our physical aspect - our kicking is woeful. We are mid table at best in terms of kicking skills across the board. It is important to put our losses into perspective. We have kept oppositions to low enough scores and our average losing margin is only 9 points. But in each of those losses, our terrible foot skills has been a huge factors. The obvious ones are missed shots on goal, but more frustrating is the terrible missed passes inside 50. So many wasted chances where all that was required was a basic 30 meter kick to a free target. And tracc has been worst offender All teams have to bring their effort and will pay if they don't. But the dogs, cats and lions sneak wins because even when off they an rely on a handful of key players to kick difficult shots and nail both easy and hard passes inside 50. The Cats stayed in their game against ess in the first quarter becuase of their elite kicks. The dogs were just paddling agianst the roos but players like MCrae, Bont and Bailey Dale did both the basics and difficult well So, we have poor kicks. And i reckon we are fatigued. And nothing exacerbates poor technique like fatigue. We won't win the flag unless we are physically ready to go and cheery ripe come finals. And it would make sense to build that base now, even if that risks losing some games we might otherwise win. I'm increasingly convinced that is what is going on.

She's probably thinking "I could do that"

When we look our best, we definitely have Rivers, Hunt and even Hibberd running off half back, but we can afford to hold those guys deeper if we can use our wingers quick enough, particularly Langdon. I'd love to know if the opposition are playing closer attention to Langdon. It's felt like it the last two weeks in particular. When we don't have his run, we don't tend to move the ball quickly. I agree with Leppitsch though. This was a big problem on Saturday. We constantly needed to handball to break the zone open. The few times that we did, we scored or got easy entries. If we're on against Port, you'll see us use handball a lot more to break open the zone.

Was a good stalwart for the Dees in his 3 games for the club.

Perhaps there should be more heat on our goal kicking coach too? Is it still Stafford?

Agree our best and worst is still too far apart, but we've been sitting on top of the ladder for almost half the season and still sit second. We are literally a top 2 team right now. Speculate all you want about how the season will end but lets just deal with the reality as it is right now.

Wow some of the chat in this thread is...different Tracc is immature and a little bit of a pest around the club (heard many players say that he's always stirring players and even coaches up). In fact, I remember a few years ago there was a short clip of him joking that he's been eating Maltesers every night to the dietician because he knew he still had a bit of puppy fat on him But so what? You need someone like this around. After games he's always laughing, hugging, having fun and enjoying himself Sad that people think players have be one dimensional in order to be successful. Michael Jordon, LeBron James, David Beckham, Steph Curry, Roger Federer, Magic Johnson are all players who can have a laugh/joke but flick the switch when needed. Not saying he will get to their level of greatness but this is who he is Let him be him and enjoy his life

I wouldn’t be dropping Brayshaw. Viney can go before Gus

Wouldn’t be surprised if Viney was managed this week. He looked way off the pace theses 2 matches and off 5 days break could be more of a liability Thursday night than he was the past 2. A fit Viney is critical for finals. With his injury history I would not risk him off 5 day break.

After 15 seasons it's hard to tell if Demonland has finally jumped the shark or is delivering the sharpest satire around.

I agree, the reason our small guys were effective earlier in the year is we had contests inside 50. Fritsch doesn't provide that when he is standing under a high ball and T-mac seems to be operating much further up the ground. In the last few weeks I feel as though we are giving up a lot of uncontested marks inside our 50. Don't recall this happening nearly as much earlier in the year.

I think he’s effing amazing and these are just pot shots while he is coming back from injury. He has always had this talk of being one dimensional. Pretty good dimension.

West Coasts #1 ticket holder isn't he? ?

I think it will. Early in the year theball was being brought to ground allowing our crumbers and pressure players to hold it in there. That doesn't seem to be happening as we look to hit targets more

Our winning record since 2002 probably isn't much greater than 8 wins per 29 games...

You must be an absolute physical specimen, kev.

Thought Viney's attitude looked poor all day tbh. Gave Harmes a spray when he went for the torp on the half time siren, but in the first quarter he completely burnt Trac.

Well, we’ve certainly proven that true.

Except you, of course