Scoop Junior

Agree - all it does it show how stupid the AFL is for allowing Richmond to adopt a clash jumper that fails to satisfy the SOLE purpose of requiring teams to wear clash jumpers: avoiding a clash! If they actually required Richmond to design a clash jumper that doesn't clash with other teams then this wouldn't happen. But that's the AFL - they think it's fine for a team that wears yellow and black to have a clash jumper of yellow and black.

Of course. I'm just saying that as a proportion of the 22 players named we have too many talls. Whether Fitz, Pedersen, etc. play forward or elsewhere or rest on the bench, we are still robbed of overall run.

You can't ignore talent in making that comparison. Of course I'd be more willing to accomodate a tall forward line containing Buddy, Roughead and Gunston than Dawes, Pedo and Fitzy!! In any case Buddy and Roughy are quick and agile, Dawes and Pedo are not. Of course the match committee knows much more than Demonlanders. But that doesn't mean they always get it right and should never be questioned. Case in point being the Collingwood game when they admitted we went in too tall after the game (a fact which some on Demonland mentioned pre-match).

I was almost thinking of going with a smaller forward line this week. The Eagles have Mackenzie who has been superb this year. Then they've also got Brown, McGovern and Schofield in defence. Pretty solid aerial combination. I think one area they can be exposed in defence is the mid-sized forward or small forward. They were all over Essendon in the first half last week but when Thompson swung Winderlich forward and got him leading out of the square with his pace, the Eagles struggled to match him up. I can understand the need for an extra tall against the Eagles as you need four tall defenders to combat Darling, Kennedy, Lycett and one of Naitanui/Cox. But to have a forward line potentially comprising Gawn, Dawes, Fitzy and Pedersen (and maybe even Watts) just looks too tall and cumbersome for me and will play into the Eagles' hands of getting the ball to ground and rebounding.

Agree - I cannot understand the changes at all. To go with that many talls is bizarre. To do so at Subiaco, a ground that requires run, is crazy! It's going to be a field day for Hurn and co. across half back (that's if we actually get the ball forward).

Yeah I hate this notion of "begging" that is being peddled by Barrett and other simpletons / haters of the MFC. I would have thought it is incumbent on the administration of a footy club to actively do everything it can within the rules of the game to improve the club. Seeking a PP is doing no more than that. Rather than "begging", I would almost take the opposite view and claim that failure to seek the PP in our position could even be viewed as a breach of the board's duties to act in the best interests of its members. These journos are the same ones who publicly advocated tanking to get a PP back in the mid to late 2000s, yet now it is "begging" and "weak" for the MFC to simply ask for a PP that it is entitled to under the rules.

Exactly right. Barrett calls Melbourne embarrassing, yet I reckon his failure to understand the situation is embarrassing. As soon as someone says 'doesn't deserve a priority pick' I instantly think they have completely failed to grasp what is a relatively easy concept. It's not about 'deserving' at all. It's not a prize given out to a good performer. It's simply about 'need' - the question is simply whether the club needs assistance. It gets even more embrrassing when these journos state the reasons why we have been on the bottom for 8 years. Do they seriously fail to comprehend that THE reason why we have been on the bottom for 8 years is because we have stuffed up? Based on their reasoning, the corollary is that clubs should only get a priority pick when they draft well, develop well and make other good decisions (in which case you'd be sitting pretty in the finals). So on Barrett and others' logic we should give priority picks to successful teams. The other inherent failure in the argument that Melbourne has wasted draft picks before so a PP won't help is that why are you then so concerned about giving Melbourne a PP? If it hasn't helped before and won't help now, why bleat about it and get so uptight about it? That they bring up tanking is also a joke - firstly we have already been punished for that and secondly the conduct only occurred in one season, we have still been rubbish for the other 7 years. Then Barrett really raises his lack of intelligence to unprecedented heights by saying that we will already be getting a first round pick for Frawley. That has about as much relevance to the PP issue as the current fuel price. What Barrett is telling us is that because we are losing our fourth player to free agency and are getting compensated for that under a completely separate regime, we should not get a PP based on 8 years of poor performance. Again, the corollary is that if Frawley stays, we are more deserving of a PP. It is genuinely baffling how these people can just completely fail to grasp the concept. If they had half a brain what they would do is state the criteria for a PP and apply the criteria - because that's simply all that matters. Patrick Smith has done this and on SEN this morning he was of the view that we should get a PP. Even Caro on Footy Classified said there is a good case for one. Also good to see Evans has pre-judged the situation by commenting on it generally without assessing the merits of a particular case.

My priorities would be (in order): 1) Class midfielders who can run 2) Running rebounding defenders who use the ball well 3) Tall forward (unless Clark manages to return) Clearly more class in the midfield is a priority. We have matched it with some of the top teams this year in terms of clearances and contested footy but we have been shown up by a lack of class and talent in there. The top teams have 6-7 really good midfielders who deliver week in week out as well as a few out and out stars. We have improved our midfield significantly since last year but we still come up short against most teams in terms of pure midfield talent. I think we are okay for tall backs. Pedersen has played good footy as a tall defender at VFL level and could provide depth for McDonald, Dunn and Garland. While Pederson has improved dramatically this year I still don't see him as a best 22 tall forward. If Clark doesn't come back then I still think we are light on in the tall forward department. Gawn you'd hope will end up our number one ruckman in a few years and while Dawes is a good ordinary player I think we'd look far more dangerous with Hogan and another good tall forward with Dawes as your third tall. Ideally you'd love Watts to develop into this role but he hasn't really shown any signs of it.

Expectation is a funny thing as a footy fan. On face value, you would think that you’d be far happier after a game in which you lead a side by 14 points in the last quarter than another game that was effectively over at half time and in truth you were never really in. But I was extremely disappointed after last week’s loss to Brisbane, whereas I felt reasonably content with the performance yesterday. It all comes down to expectation really – last week I thought we should have comfortably defeated an inferior opposition at home, whereas this week I was expecting a 60-70 point loss. I know it’s not accurate to break a game down like this, but take out the 20 minute burst of five goals from Hawthorn in the second term and the score is 12 goals to 9. So for a bit over three quarters we were reasonably competitive against the top side, a side who have routinely belted us over the years. That five goal burst was started by a terrible Matt Jones error – the kind of mistake the top teams just don’t make. Now I know it would be fair to say that Hawthorn weren’t at their best and were probably just cruising through the majority of the game, but I have seen this mob systematically destroy us over the last seven years. I was even at Casey for the practice match this season, when they beat us by 100-odd points in what was just one-way traffic all game. It was absolutely terrible. Let’s be honest here, on talent alone they are miles ahead of us and it’s no surprise that they are going to beat us. They are simply better. But there’s a huge difference between getting beaten by a better team and going down fighting hard as opposed to dropping your bundle and getting hammered. Thankfully yesterday was the former and that’s really all you can ask for from your footy team. I think the other thing to emerge from the game is that it really highlighted the areas we have improved in and the areas we need to get better in. Apart from that five goal burst our defensive intent was reasonably good, we matched them in the clearances and the contested ball and we didn’t lack for effort. All areas they would have smashed us in last year. But while we have improved markedly inside the contest, we really struggle outside the contest. We got beaten in uncontested ball and for me the key difference between the sides was Hawthorn’s ability to run, spread, hit targets and move the ball with speed and accuracy on the outside, whereas we struggled to move the ball with the same speed and fluency. It’s not that we don’t want to move the ball that way, it’s just that we don’t have the run, speed and skill level in our line up to execute it. It really highlighted once again the our focus for recruiting should be on class midfielders who are good ball users and who can run. Salem and Toumpas will hopefully develop into these types of players which would be of enormous help, but we still need more. The other positives came in the form of inclusions Michie, Gawn and Barry who all showed a bit, and Pig Dog was very effective coming on as the sub. He lacks pace and is a little messy, but he tackles to hurt and is as hard as his nick name suggests. He needs to work on his running but hopefully that will come with another pre-season as he overcomes his broken leg last year. So, all in all, another loss to the Hawks, but a really honest performance that showed the gains we have made this year and highlighted the areas we need to improve.

I think what happened in 2011 was that after Collingwood's success in 2010 with a game style based on a relentless forward press (I don't give credit to Malthouse for this tactic though, as it was based on St Kilda's forward press in 2009 under Lyon), teams started copying it and introducing it into their game plan. This is a typical occurence - the premier's game style from the year before is analysed and teams try to mimic it. The problem for us was that Bailey's game plan was heavily based on counter attack out of defence. We would get numbers back, soak up a bit of pressure, force a turnover and then break with pace and good ball movement. It was almost a type of sling shot footy, before the phrase was coined in regards to the Swans of 2012. While the game plan worked well mostly in 2010, once teams started to implement the forward press (being the buzz tactic in footy at the time), all of a sudden we really struggled to clear the ball out of defence with the amount of opposition players crowding the area and putting pressure on. I remember one game early in the year at Subiaco when we hardly got the ball outside defensive 50 in the first quarter. There were also some games at Etihad where the smaller ground and intense forward pressure resulted in us really struggling to move the ball from defence. The other key issue was that I thought we were also a little bit soft mentally and physically (physically mainly because we were young and the game style was built on lean athletic outside players). We looked great when teams didn't apply much pressure as our game style allowed us to slice them up. But when teams brought the heat in 2011 we wilted. Anyway while it is arguable that that game plan would not have stood up in the heat of finals footy, and while there's no doubt we were 'found out' a bit in 2011, the chaos that enveloped the club later that year and the awful series of decisions leading up to the 2012 season just caused a problem to snowball into a crisis and that 2010 team never really recovered.

That's exactly right - it is unnecessary to bring it up again and especially so when it's not the cause of our current issues. It is interesting regarding his motivation for the comments - I suspect frustration had a fair bit to do with it. Roos was clearly appalled by the skill level on Sunday and I'm sure he well and truly knows there are too many on the list who are not up to it. But the problem is he can't publicly say the truth (i.e. that we've recruited too many ordinary players and that's why we've been struggling for the last seven years). So he is probably just trying to find another reason that protects the players from criticism, which is commendable. The problem is though that in mentioning tanking it unnecessarily brings the topic back to life and makes it sound like we're looking for excuses.

What doesn't seem to be mentioned is that Carlton made the finals three years in a row from 2009 to 2011, only two years after their tank in 2007. In one of those years they were less than a kick away from a preliminary final. So tanking killed our club but helped propel Carlton to within a kick of a prelim? No, the difference was Carlton picked up Judd and had previously drafted some talented players in Murphy, Gibbs, etc, whereas we completely stuffed up our draft selections. Had we nailed those early picks we would currently have a fairly strong team. That's simply what it comes down to. It is also hardly mentioned that in 2010 we were a team on the rise, posting 8.5 wins and producing some great efforts against the top teams. I didn't see any effects of tanking in that team. To me, it was more what happened in 2011 (the split in the footy department) that started our cultural demise and culminated in 186, the knee-jerk and poorly handled sacking of Bailey, the reinstatement of Schwab and the hiring of Neeld. From the outside, as a passionate supporter, this appeared to me to create that 'toxic' culture in the club - not what happened in 2009. Funny then how we recovered from 2009 in 2010 but have not won more than four games in a season since 2011. It just frustrates me when only half the story is covered, eg. Caro failing to mention how Carlton nearly made a prelim on the back of tanking. I think Roos' view that our current predicament is due to tanking is far too simplistic and narrow - if he wants to bring up the past then he should mention the real reasons why we are where we are. For such a fantastic coach and media performer it was a really poor comment.

Disappointing comments from Roos I reckon. The ironic thing is if you are trying to lose, and the players know that, then losing isn't really going to affect their confidence. You walk off the ground knowing you've lost because you / the club tried to lose, not because you don't think you're good enough. So I don't at all see how tanking can affect your confidence or your belief to win. I can see how it can affect club culture, but not confidence and belief. Where you actually lose confidence and belief is when you try your best and you still get beaten. You think your best is not good enough and that the opposition are too good and will always end up winning. This is what happens natrually to a poor team - they try hard, but keep on losing because they are not good enough. When this happens over and over again you forget how to win, you lose the belief that you can win and your confidence drops away. Blaming it all on tanking is an easy out. It's an out for the players, for coaches, for past recruiters, for player development, etc. And IMO it's plainly wrong. Abysmal recruiting, poor coaching, poor player development, sacking Bailey after 186 instead of Schwab, hiring Neeld, etc. are the key reasons why we keep on losing. The tanking effect would be insignificant compared to these other factors.

Some really good points BB but one thing I disagree with is with respect to Roos' post match press conference. He didn't say the players were the worst he'd seen. He said the skill execution on the day was the worst he'd seen. There is a big difference. And in all honesty what else was he supposed to say? No one at Etihad Stadium on Sunday would have walked away thinking anything other than what they had witnessed was absolutely abysmal in terms of basic skill execution. All he did was state the obvious. Even Lepptisch intimated that the performance of the players was diabolical. He said the following: "At three-quarter time I said 'this is the worst game I think I've ever seen'". What actually annoyed me more were his comments on AFL360 that 'you can't set high standards while trying to lose at the same time'. For such a polished media performer, one of the best I've seen from a coaching perspective, this was a really poor piece of commentary in my opinion. Not only is it disrespectful to the club that employs you to allege that they deliberately tried to lose matches (regardless of whether or not this happened), but to offer it up as an excuse for what was one of the worst displays of skill execution by an AFL team just sends the wrong message IMO. All it does is draw attention back on the 'tanking' saga and results in people like Caro exaggerating the effect it had. It gives an 'out' to the players when there shouldn't be an out. McKenzie didn't miss from 10 metres out because of what happened in 2009. Jack Watts didn't choose not to go hard at the footy because of 2009. Jamar didn't miss from three metres out because of 2009. Dawes didn't miss a two metre handball because of 2009. As clint said above recruiting is the main reason we are where we are. Culture is critical, no doubt, and the 'tanking' saga may have had an effect on culture, but its effect on the players' skill execution in a match five years later would be negligible. I am fine with Roos saying post-match that the skills were horrible, because they were. It was an obvious call. But leave it there. I don't really like using 'tanking' as an excuse when it would have had very little bearing on what happened on Sunday.

Whether it's a skill error or a mental error is irrelevant. If your skills don't hold up under pressure then you're not good enough. Jordie didn't have 'game on the line' type pressure but he would've had 'fear of missing an easy shot because I'm not a greak kick' pressure. If you cannot overcome the latter type of pressure and it causes you to not only miss from 10m out but kick the ball like a bloke who has never seen a football in his life, then I don't think you are up to the required standard. It's not an isolated incident. His miss from about 20 metres out directly in front in the first quarter against Port was nearly as bad.

I agree 100% with the first paragraph. Very well said. I disagree with the last line though, I don't think it is getting ahead of yourself being absolutely appalled by what was dished up yesterday. Supporters have every right to be disgusted by the skill errors and mistakes that plagued yesterday's performance. I watched five games this weekend and ours was so far below the standard of the others it was like watching another sport. Surely at a bare minimum you should expect a reasonable level of skill to be executed by elite professional footballers against very poor opposition. We didn't even come close to being reasonable.

What happens when his opponent drags him deep and forces him to defend one-on-one close to goal? And will he peel off his man and go back with the flight of the footy to prevent an opposition forward marking on the lead (the way Jack Grimes would and Neville Jetta would)? I can see him being a good attacking weapon off half back, but he could just as easily be exposed defensively.

From 2007 to 2009 we were armed with the type of draft picks you can completely rebuild a list with. 10 top 20 draft picks in three years. Of course there are no guarantees but surely you can at least secure a few stars with that draft bounty. Out of those 10 picks 8 have been failures. One has been a success (Grimes) and the other may or may not be (Trengove). Of the others Morton, Maric, Gysberts and Scully are gone, Tapscott, Blease and Strauss may join them this year and Watts has been an enormous disappointment. How can you have a 20% (or less) success rate with so many high picks? It's absolutely baffling and it's one of the key reasons why we are where we are. Watching us yesterday handle and use the ball like it was a pineapple just makes you shake your head at what could have been had we made the right decisions back then. Instead of a clutch of talented 23-24 year olds we are left with a gaping hole and a group of battlers who are not up to it. As loyal supporters of this club we have been robbed.

That was absolutely deplorable. A worst display of skill at an elite level of sport I have not seen. I am seething. If you said to me the team in red and blue were a bunch of blokes who had never played footy before and were having a first crack at it, I'd say 'yeah, that's about right, lots of skill errors and poor decisions, missing goals from 5 metres out, kicking over players' heads 15 metres away, they are the things they will get better at as they learn the game.' But this was a bunch of supposed professionals playing at the elite level. Some of the mistakes were absolutely baffling. I cannot comprehend how full time footballers who train three times a week all year can make such fundamental errors. You could go to a suburban footy game and pluck a bloke out of the crowd who's just had 10 beers and he still wouldn't have made some of the errors we saw today. I know we are a poorly skilled side and a battling side, but even with this in mind our performance today plummeted to levels you would hardly ever see in the AFL. It wasn't a lack of effort, just an inability to perform the most basic fundamentals with ball in hand. Jordie McKenzie how can you miss a set shot from 12 metres straight in front? Disgraceful. Aidan Riley how can you miss from the edge of the goal square? Why did you lie on the ground for 20 seconds after taking a mark instead of getting up and kicking to a teammate streaming into goal, only to then do a rubbish chip kick and turn it over? Pathetic. Chris Dawes how can you not execute a 2 metres handball to a teammate (Blease) running past? After doing bugger all all day how can you make a mistake an 8 year old kid wouldn't make? It's all very well and good to collect your $500k per season, but your performances of late are barely worth $80k. I'm just sick of it - sick of watching this bunch of second rate footballers masquerading as an AFL team, making mistake after mistake, failing to capitalise on dominant periods of play and then crumbling late when the heat is applied. They don't know how to win - as Roos said they are just waiting to lose, you can sense it sitting in the crowd. And let's not forget we were playing the Brisbane Lions - a young, bog ordinary side - away from home. Even the Lions turned it over numerous times and made poor decisions going forward. They failed to capitalise on our mistakes. Imagine what Hawthorn would have done to our turnovers today. The score would have been 30 goals to 3. Too many out there are not up to it, we are slow and lack skill, and I would be expecting big changes at year end to clear out the many sub-standard players that we are so damn good at accumulating. Hawthorn next week should be loads of fun. Can't wait.

Agree with this. We all want Roosy to stay as long as possible, but if he does leave after three years I would go very hard at Lyon. Look at the factors - good mates with Roos, has coached under him, they share a similar footy philosophy and game plan, lots of Sydney coaches at the club, Freo potentially out of their premiership window, ageing key players like McPharlin, Pavlich, Mundy, Sandilands, Dawson, Johnson, Crowley, Mzungu, Ballantyne, etc. on the way down or retired / retiring, a desire to be a career coach, potential attraction of a return to Melbourne. Make no mistake Lyon is a sensational coach - to do what he did at St Kilda and what he has done at Fremantle - turning two historically unsuccessful clubs into AFL powerhouses - is a fantastic achievement. If Roos is to go at the end of 2016 he (and Clarkson if he were available) would be my no.1 targets. The key for us is to ensure our list continues to improve and our performances continue to improve so that we are seen as an attractive proposition for these blokes.

Watching The Wizard was what footy is all about. Excitement, freakish talent, aggression, showmanship, frustration, the unexpected, huge grabs, incredible goals. He just delivered so many emotions to those watching him. The interview gave me a mixed feeling of happiness and sadness - obviously it is always enjoyable to reminisce on some of those incredible games and moments, but at the same time you feel slightly robbed that for the past seven or so years we have been starved of the incredible feeling you get from watching a winning finals-bound footy team.

I like the shield design of the current logo, but I think if we just removed a few elements from the logo it would look great. In particular I would keep the trident (but move it to the centre where the football is) and get rid of the football and the southern cross. I also would like to see the red return to an orthodox red (like the colour of the red on our jumpers). I hate the maroon-red colour that was introduced a few years ago which looks like the old Fitzroy red. That colour still lingers on current club merchandice - get rid of it.

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.

While he is currently playing an important structural role for us as that mobile marking tall forward, and clearly a KPP that can play forward and back is a really important component of the side, there are a few factors that go the other way. These factors are that one we have decent coverage in the key defender stakes (T Mac, Dunn and Garland - though if Frawley goes I would be looking at bringing in another developing key back), two that Hogan will hopefully be able to play that mobile marking role and three that Frawley undoes a lot of his good work in getting the ball with his ball use. Sunday's game was the perfect example of him playing a really important structural role as a forward yet undoing his work with two missed set shots and a failure to regularly create scoring opportunities with his delivery. If you said to me four years ago that he would leave, I would probably have rated it as a disaster for the club. I don't think it would be now for the reasons outlined above (plus the potential compensation of a top 5 draft pick).