Scoop Junior

He was instrumental in three key plays late in the third term that established our 32 point lead. First, he sprinted after Gunston who was running into an open goal. That little bit of pressure was enough for Gunston to look back just before kicking, which seemed to affect his easy shot. A goal there and the margin was 9. We then get a goal at the other end and at the next centre bounce, Worpel was about to walk out of the centre and deliver deep inside 50m but Viney dived in the air and caught him in a tackle, affecting the kick and preventing an inside 50 for Hawthorn. We then kick the next goal. Then, he wins the hard ball at half forward, dances through traffic and throw it onto his boot. Brayshaw marks and the lead is beyond 5 goals at 3/4 time. And I thought in the first half he was the one midfielder really keeping us in the game when Hawthorn were on top. He was absolutely phenomenal tonight.

More than 2 minutes left and only 11 points up...maybe I'm scarred from too many painful losses but even at this stage I was still thinking the Eagles could easily kick two and win by a point. But when Petracca hit up Melksham 15 metres out, with 1:30 to go, then it was party time!

Yeah I saw that at the ground - was absolutely pathetic. The bloke is a champion footballer and I've always liked watching him (except against us) as he's just so powerful and skilful. But recently I've lost a lot of respect for him as a sportsman. In recent games I've seen him repeatedly hold an opponent's arm after they apply a tackle on him to make it look like he is being held after getting rid of the ball. He milked the ruck free kick last night and then his dive over the boundary was another blatant act of staging. I suppose he has learnt the art of milking frees off his captain, who I noticed time and again whinging to the umpires about not receiving a free. And all Ablett has to do is throw his arms in the air and he gets an immediate free for holding. Then you have Chris Scott carrying on like a pork chop when one decision doesn't go his team's way, only to then act all sanctimonious the next day in his media interviews. I never minded Geelong in the past but recently I've begun to really dislike this mob.

I don't think I'll be able to fall asleep soon so I might as well write something. I went down to Geelong for the game and I can't remember being that shattered after a H&A game. Even though I fully expected Geelong to come back and probably even snatch it near the end (we've seen this script too many times before), nothing could have prepared me for losing like that. Lead the whole second half, 5 goals up in the last, missed shots, unfavourable umpiring, Cats not missing a shot at goal, ball in our forward line with 40 seconds left, we can't hold up their final surge and then let them have a one-on-one inside 50...it's just the most heartbreaking way to lose a game of footy (and with so much on the line). 3 seconds away from what could have shaped our season, being 2 games plus % ahead of Geelong and sitting in 4th spot. 3 seconds the difference between final 8 consolidation and now being at risk of missing out. And from a selfish point of view, 3 seconds away from what would have been one of my great footy memories - going down to Geelong on a Saturday night, without key players, sitting amongst the Melbourne fans right near the players' race and holding on to win a thriller - I can imagine the scenes would have been incredible after the game and it would have been one of the great walk backs to the car and drive home. 3 bloody seconds. Instead, I don't want to watch the replay, I don't want to see the paper, I don't want to see a footy show, I don't want to hear the radio. What a fine line between one of the great footy nights and gut-wrenching emptiness. It was probably as close as I've got to shedding a tear at the end of the game (as an adult). I was only 4 when we lost the 87 prelim but my parents always spoke of the pain Melbourne fans felt after that game. This wasn't a prelim, but I think I now understand what that feels like.

Yep I think you make a really good point ProDee about what we're doing right, which is often overlooked when we have such a disappointing loss. Our ability to win the inside ball and get enough supply is up there with the best in the competition. So we're clearly being well developed in that part of the game. But definitely some tinkering needs to be made in how we set up defensively when the opposition gain possession in and around our forward 50m, especially on wide grounds like the MCG. St Kilda's ability to move the ball up the ground time and time again without pressure and isolate 1v1s or 2v2s in its forward 50 was an absolute joke. And it has happened enough times over the last two years to be cause for concern. In my view we would have comfortably beaten Geelong and St Kilda if we could've defended their rebound better. Geelong went at 66% for scores per inside 50 (off the charts) and St Kilda at 58% (ridiculous for a bottom three side). Win those games and we would be sitting second at 10-4, with the footy public lauding what we're doing. Arguably we should've also beaten Port taking us equal top. It shows two things - 1) this is a game of really fine margins and 2) we are doing a lot of things right. Even as we stand here at Round 15, we are effectively only improved defensive transition off being a top 4 side.

Conceding so many goals and being so easy to score against has a double effect - the obvious one being it's harder to win the more goals you concede, but the less obvious one being the effect it's having on our opponent's confidence. Nothing gets a team going more than kicking goals - they celebrate goals with their teammates, the players can see their ball movement paying off, the crowd get involved and most importantly they start believing they can score regularly and win the game. You could just see St Kilda's confidence rising as they kept on banging through easy goal after easy goal. This from a team that has regularly struggled to score more than 7 goals this year. At the moment it's not surprising that teams are delivering their best against us because of our shambolic defending.

Agree - at the moment we have to absolutely dominate the midfield to have a chance of winning against decent opposition (and even with such domination we can still lose like last week). I would've actually taken the Saints scoring from every second entry - they went at 58%! I looked back at their games before GC and they were generally at about 33-39% for scores per inside 50. 58% today! In most games at the G in the last two years we've been too easy to score against. The opposition break from our forward 50 and just carry the ball uncontested into their forward line and score. There is a flaw in our system or personnel at the G. We don't need to change our whole style but we do need to make some adjustments in either the system or personnel playing the system - when a side like St Kilda can do what they did today you know there are problems.

It's a real concern. It has been happening for two years so it's not exactly a one-off occurrence. We cannot defend the opposition running the ball out of our forward line. How many times today did St Kilda just run it out with uncontested possession chains and get it into an open forward line and score? Just happened time and time again. It was the same versus Hawthorn, the same versus Collingwood and the same versus Geelong. There is a fundamental flaw - either in the system or the personnel trying to implement the system. It can no longer be put down as "a bad game" or "players not executing it properly". I've seen it too many times and for a team like St Kilda, who have only beaten GC and Brisbane this year, to kick 18 goals and score on 58% of their entries inside 50 shows there is a fundamental flaw. I'm not saying change the whole style of play, but rather it is clear that adjustments need to be made in either the system or the personnel, especially at the G. Chris Scott said a few weeks ago you need to play a little differently at the G given the width of the ground. If we can let St Kilda score as easily they did today then a good team will kick 25+ goals unless we address it and make some adjustments.

Agree - I don't think umpires often influence the overall result but in a very close game where it's extremely one-sided umpiring, clearly it does. Basically according to the umpires we infringed 1 in every 7 times the ball went inside Port's attacking 50m. On the other hand, Port's defenders did not infringe once during 68 inside 50m entries. How is that possible? Either that's the most extraordinary defending in any form of sport that I have ever seen or the umpires are too afraid to pay frees to visiting sides close to goal in Adelaide and Perth. I wonder which one is right...

That was one of, if not the best, games from a small defender at Melbourne that I've seen. He kept us in the game early when the Dogs were on top. It was a critical period as if they had kicked 5-6 goals it could've really changed the game. But time and again he was not only in the right spot but won the contest to restrict them to just 3 goals. A few late goals by us had us right in the game at quarter time despite not playing great footy early. And then, even after that, he just got better and better. Winning marking contests from every position - in front, from behind and from the side; positioning himself perfectly; winning ground ball contests; nudging his man out of position and then using the ball with poise and precision each time. It was just a magnificent display of defending - concentration, commitment and confidence. The Dogs had 51 inside 50s, more than we have faced in a while. Yes, their forward line is weak, but that shouldn't take away from his significant contribution to conceding just 7 goals from those inside 50s. An absolutely clear BOG for mine.

It's never good to lose a player of Jack's importance, but I disagree in relation to the timing. I think the timing of the injury may not be as bad as it could've been. In the next month, we have the bye, Hawks, Swans (SCG) and Pies. With the bye he misses only three games instead of four. You would also think we'd be fairly long odds to beat the Hawks and Swans even with Viney. So for me he is only missing one 50-50 game (Pies) when it could've been four. And the Pies have their fair share of injuries as well.

Yep. I think this discussion can be assisted by breaking X factor down into football X factor and athletic X factor. Sylvia has athletic X factor with his strength, power and leap but I don't think he has footy X factor. The players r jay listed - Rioli, Motlop, Ablett Snr - have footy X factor, such as vision, awareness, goal nous, etc. No doubt atheltic X factor is very important, as guys like Rioli and Motlop have that athletic X factor with their speed and lateral movement which makes them what they are. However unlike Sylvia they do seem to possess that footy X factor as well.

Sylvia is not a natural footballer. He has great skills and is a terrific athlete with his high leaping and his strength and power, but he has never really displayed the pure football instincts that the top players have. Things like awareness, peripheral vision in tight contests, the ability to deliver a handball in traffic to release a teammate. I didn't see him play in the under 18s but I wouldn't be surprised if it was his brute power and strength that regularly resulted in his high possession totals, rather than genuine footy nous. There's no doubt that recruiters would look at how a player gets his possessions at under 18s level and consider the reasons why that player is getting a lot of the ball or isn't getting a lot of the ball. This would be far more important than simple stats like how many contested possessions or clearances a particular player averaged over the year.

Agree with much of your post, Jack, and a lot of what you said comes down to my first reason as to why we have been so bad in the last seven years - recruiting. I think though that is has more to do with poor recruiting over a period of time than decisions made around the 2006/2007 period when we were coming to the end of the Daniher days. Yes there were mistakes but I don't think they were as significant as the recruiting failures, particularly around the 2000-2004 period (players who would have been 22-26 years old at the start of the 2008 season. Obviously my post was just a summary, but if we have a closer look at that drafting period, we selected Scott Thompson as a first rounder in 2000 (star player but left us), then picked up Molan, Armstrong and Rogers with earlyish picks in 2001, Daniel Bell and Nick Smith as first rounders in 2002, McLean and Sylvia as top 5 picks in 2003 and Bate and Dunn as first rounders in 2004. Other than Sylvia (who really only showed glimpses of his talent to be honest) the others have not even come close to producing what would have been expected from early draft picks. This terrible recruiting period left us with an enormous hole in our list at the start of the Bailey era in 2008. I think that this, more so than decisions made towards the end of the Daniher era, was the main contributing factor to our initial rapid decline. As to my second reason, being what happened in 2011, that is obviously a factor relevant to the 'double dip' bottoming out that we experienced in 2012 and 2013 (as were further recruiting blunders in the post-Daniher era). It is very unusual for a club to bottom out, start to rise and then completely bottom out again all within the space of 5 years. I don't think recruiting alone explains why we have regressed so far from where we were at the end of the 2010 season to 2013. To me the infighting of 2011, the shambolic handling of the fallout from 186, the hiring of Neeld and some of his decisions also helped contribute to this second bottoming out. The good news is I think we are better placed to get off rock bottom this time around.

I think there are two primary reasons for what we have seen over the last seven years. The first is recruiting. I agree with others that 2007 represented the end of the era of our star players in White, Neitz, Yze, etc. While there may have been some signs of demise during 2006, the fact is we made it to a semi final that year and I do not blame Daniher for 'having a go' at a flag in 2007 rather than start a rebuilding process. Of course 2007 didn't work out due to the drop in form of our stars, injuries and other reasons, but after three years in the finals I think it was fair to try to extract one more good year out of that group. So we then come to the end of 2007 and we embark on a full rebuild of the list, one that is needed and which most supporters agree with. The same position other sides (St Kilda in the early 2000s, Hawthorn and Carlton in the mid 2000s, Collingwood in the late 90s) have been in. The difference between their successes and our failure must to a large extent come down to recruiting. Hodge, Ball, Judd, Riewoldt, Dal Santo, Lewis, Franklin, Roughead, Pendelbury, Murphy - who have we drafted that has between 2008 and 2013 performed to the levels of those players? This has severely affected us in both the Bailey and Neeld regimes – clearly our talent levels have been well below most other clubs during this period. The second reason I think is what happened to the club during 2011, which has then been exacerbated by the dismal failure of the Neeld era. Under Bailey, while we won only 7 games in his first two seasons, you could see the improvement from 2008 to 2010. 2009 was a far more competitive season than 2008 and then 2010 was an enormous improvement on the previous two seasons. We were tracking at what I would consider normal development rates for rebuilding clubs – struggle for a couple of years, show signs of improvement and then start to win some games and push stronger teams in subsequent years. This is where we were at after the 2010 season. Now I'm not for one minute suggesting that Bailey was the man to take us to the next level or that we would continue the upward trend to get in the top 4. Clearly 2011 did show that there were severe deficiencies and certain issues needed to be addressed. 2010 was slightly illusory – I think we were made to look closer than we really were and our free spirited attack only game plan was not sustainable. Nevertheless, what appeared to happen inside the club, with the reported in-fighting and divisions which were allowed to fester by senior management instead of being dealt with at the time, must have had a devastating effect on the players and this (together with our poor form) culminated in 186, a devastating loss for the footy club. I think that the in-fighting and divisions, along with the performance that day, helped to crush the spirit of the senior players (who are so imperative to the performance of the team). Then, instead of rebuilding the spirit and trust and confidence of the playing group, a series of poor decisions – the timing and handling of Bailey's sacking, the extension of Schwab's contract, the appointment of Neeld and his disastrous 18 month tenure – only served to make matters worse. So not only did we not have the cattle due to poor recruiting, but we 'lost' the senior players due to a failure to manage the divisions within the club and then, while seeking to start afresh at the end of 2011, we appointed the wrong man who made a number of terrible decisions and failed to unite and inspire confidence in the playing group which contributed to our 'double dip' bottoming out in 2012 and 2013. At the end of the day success is achieved by having great talent and extracting the most out of that talent. As we have not had the required level of talent (particularly in midfield) and have failed to extract the most out of the talent we do have, it's little wonder why we've been so horrible for much of the past seven years.

I don't regard Betts as the type of small forward we need. He is more a lead-up player and would get a fair share of his goals from marks. He can crumb, and he has pace, but I don't think he is at the same level in these two attributes as the better small forwards in the competition. I also think he lacks that element of magic and X factor that the better small forwards have. We have marking power in our forward line but a genuine lack of pace and X factor at ground level. Betts, for me, would not fulfil this role.

Bloody Arsenal!

How about Rooney breaking his foot in the first game like Brock McLean did. Then Ronaldo sent off and missing for three games. Saha and Solskjaer already injured. No firepower whatsoever, just like the Dees without Neitz, Robbo, etc. 2007 has not been a good year for my teams! I like the Spurs, they've got a good squad and they really should push for 4th this year.

Cook was a PSD pick, Powell was traded. I don't think Moorcroft even lasted 5 minutes. Craig Smoker - great start to 98, booted 4 at the Gabba in about Rd 3 and didn't do much after mid-98.