Leoncelli_36

I fully expect Gawn to dominate the ruck in the first quarter and then get ahead of himself and start deft flicking balls over his head, despite no midfielder being aware of what he is doing. Often the trend with his ‘ruck craft‘.

Goodwin has a midfield of blokes who are incapable of lowering eyes and hitting targets on a lead on rebound. That’s the alarming thing. Couple this with his reluctance to play a tall out of the goal square and it’s a recipe for disaster. You get a team who wins plenty of contested ball, but cannot use it well enough to impact the scoreboard. We rely on a mosquito forward line to work hard for every goal. look at the current best team in the league, Port. A dominant forward booting six. McDonald won’t play anywhere near the goals and we will be leaving it up to Fritsch and Melksham to produce a winning score. All well and good to play Kozzie, but who is going to bring it to ground for him? Goodwin has a flawed game plan that is tired and does not suit the cattle he has at his disposal. he is too strong headed to try something new. We saw some gradual improvements in one quarter against Carlton and then the old habits returned. At no point did he ever look to play a tall deep to give us a chance.

Don’t like the mosquito forward line and no back up Ruck for Max. Cant understand it

Omitted or managed ? Has the club explained it?

The Club has launched its fundraising campaign to help overcome the shortfall in revenue as a result of COVID. https://www.melbournefc.com.au/give https://www.melbournefc.com.au/news/732995/launching-proud-to-belong-proud-to-give

On our first home fixture for 2020, does anyone know if the club has anything special planned for this week’s match? I notice many teams have gone with cardboard cutouts of fans. The Doggies adding advertising into the stands for Pal Dog Food. Are we up to speed with this? Or are we being inactive as usual?

There are 7 blokes I’d delist at year’s end, he’d be middle of the list. I’d chase another KPF in the fringes at another club or state league

Delist both. And the Wagners. All replaceable. We need to go after a forward next year. Jones will retire and some money will open up. Petty seems to be a good mark, but I’ve rarely seen him finish off his good work with goals. This includes watching him at Casey.

Delist.

The taurine and caffeine is being administered by a club health professional...I don’t think anyone would recommend having Red Bull every day. The can itself warns you about this. the original ‘red bull’ started in Thailand and is essentially a medicinal drink for sleepiness. The Westerners bought the rights and carbonated it. if taken properly, it can improve mood and energy. If you go mix it with Thai Whiskey in a bucket, as is common place in Thailand amongst westerners, you’ll have an epic night and a horrible horrible hangover and a buttload of anxiety. I think AFL players taking it is fine as it is regulated by the sports scientist. I don’t think it sends a message to kids to take it.

Meanwhile ‘superstar‘ Harrison Petty is set to undergo surgery. There goes our hopes of finals

The AFL will be loving this. Another leg up last year for the Suns, who have enjoyed 10 years of draft concessions. The talent was already there and a few other clubs had better claims to priority picks, but they could not risk their babies failing. I hate the expansion sides

Ch 7 just had a live post match. Sounds like Max and the players we’re frustrated by what has happened but enjoyed a competitive hit out today and everyone got through

Lol. Rofl. What a laugh. Harry Petty is a star... based on what exactly? Good average player at best.

aren’t we playing indoors at Marvel?

Get on your scooter and ride on into the night......

There were no officials in the rooms. Part of the problem

Nothing in it. Normally I’d make a big deal about something like this, but honestly, the room situations are all weird, no arms around each other, it was all a bit weird and players didn’t really know what to do. I’ll excuse it this time

This ...this...and this. Spot on

Do these modern coaching contracts have any sort of KPI clause in them? Genuine question? I have no idea how modern football contracts work, but surely there would be a get out clause? Or is that not allowed in the AFL? It’s amazing that a coach, who isn’t meeting his KPI’s can survive and demand a payout if underperforming

Sounds logical to me

A few observations: The first quarter and a half were superb. We hit up players inside 50 with bullet passes and had a real ‘jump out of the blocks’ moment. Gawn may have dominated, but he seems to get too sure of himself and begins blindly deft tapping the ball over his head, despite no Melbourne mids being set up for it. He has done this for a while now and it’s not smart. It’s part of the reason they began winning the clearances. May’s decision to go 3rd man up and try to take mark of the year allowed Carlton their first goal and kept them in touch. Joel Smith followed his example in the second half. We have to address the backline cohesion. I think it is lacking as so many are new and have not spent a lot of time playing together. However, that is basic footballer awareness. May lambasted Frost in a game last year, where he (Frost), did exactly what May did last night. So, hold yourself accountable May. While on Steven May....he should never ever kick in. Some of those kick ins last night were putrid. It’s not acceptable. He is not equipped to kick in. The kick ins generally were poor. Even Salem struggled. We were too predictable. James Harmes is completely wasted at HBF. Or wherever it is that he is playing back there. We needed to switch him to the midfield last night. Would love to have seen him go and tag Cripps, so Oliver could truly get off the leash. TMAC is either a sook, who cracked it that his brother was dropped, or is a bog ordinary football. Offered nothing last night and his perpetual falling to ground after a contest is deplorable. He can barely chase and offers no pressure inside fifty. fritsch cannot be trusted in front of goal. He missed many easy shots last night. The last one was the worst of them. He can take a mark, but if he continues to butcher shots like that, we will be forced to look elsewhere. Hannan should be in the side. Jackson showed enough to suggest he will be a good player for us. I would have liked to see him rucking and Gawn going forward though. I don’t know what the thinking was there. Gawn did a lot of work in the back half, which is great, but we were on a roll and this was rarely experimented with during the game. Hunt can stay for a while. He is a smart footballer and applies great pressure when the ball is not in his hand. Persist with. Viney struggled last night and did not have the same impact as rd1. We are a midfielder short at the moment as there wasn’t great midfield rotation when guys in there were struggling. Vanders in perhaps and Harmes to go through there as well. Joel Smith either plays forward or goes and plays in the Magoos. We are not a development side. We can’t play him and hope he learns when to stay, when to go. He has no natural football smarts as a back man. It almost proved costly last night. His decision to fly for a mark, as the 3rd Melb. Player in the contest, while leaving his opponent out the back, was dumb beyond belief. carlton have made a habit of giving up big leads and then trying to fight back. So was not surprised that they did again last night. The disappointing part was that we handed them some momentum with our poor decisions and then couldn’t counter when their tails were up. We went back to bad habits. Bomb kicking inside 50. Going slow when we should have gone quick. Kicking backwards fifty metres instead of long down the line to force a boundary throw in. Really basic errors that creep into our game, very quickly.

I’m both a football club member (full) and a MCC member. If crowds return to the MCG, it’ll be interesting to see what the arrangements are for MCC members. I would expect that Full MCC members would get priority over restricted members and would doubt there will be guest tickets available

Has anyone that is teeing off about our rd1 match actually watched the replay? I’ve watched it twice and if you reckon we were putrid, you have rocks in ya head, with all due respect. we flew over at 11:30pm the night before, had no preparation on the ground as we normally would. We were dominating the game for the first twelve minutes and completely blew our chances by wasting shots on goal. That is putrid goal kicking, but not a putrid performance. the eagles had a stellar 5 minutes before quarter time, which we never recovered from. We had a moment in the 3rd, but poor inside 50 entries cost us again. Trying to use Fritta as a lead up forward was a big factor and I expect the addition of Jackson will allow us to compete. the main offenders of the poor entries and costly turnovers have been omitted - Hibberd and Spargo. cool ya jets and see what unfolds on Saturday

Can we can the Travis Johnstone chat. Start a new thread. We are discussing Bennell