deanox

i think there are two stats we have to look at here. the first is the 'games lost due to injury' stats, which puts us right up there with adelaide and i think st kilda. then you can probably take that further and have 'games missed from best players due to injury' and again melbourne and adelaide are up there. but where we differ from adelaide (in fact we are at the bottom and they are at the top) is players who have played every game. we have had 8. adelaide have had in the high teens i believe, maybe 18. we have had injuries in games that have limited our run ad disrupted our plans. our players havnt been playing with the same group of 22 each week so they are formulating no team work. mclean and jones arent building a great partnership. the relationship between the rucks and the midfielders isnt being developed (the instinctive tap to position). the mids arent learning where to kick for the forwards, and vice versa the forwards arent entirely sure where to lead. the backs havnt had a chance to settle. ususally rivers is helping everyone out. usually wheelan has the best small back. these rolls are being performed by other players, the synergy that exists between co-defenders isnt evident, and hasnt been allowed to form because the team has been unsettled. we havnt played good footy. no one is arguing we have. but to say that injuries havnt been one of the major contributing factors is ignorant at best.

deano wolves have been out sinc round 3. we might scrap some wins but the boys are going to take a while to bounce back from this one...im not sure we'd even have the customary 'new coach' win if ND got sacked...

ive been very impressed with him the last two weeks. enough to even start a thread about him last week... i think he will be good. if he can get 10-20 touches and kick 1-4 goals a week i will be pretty happy with him long term. i think that it is telling that he has put a couple of performances together in a row and we suddenly start to see him acting like a leader. i tell you what, if i wasnt getting a kick i wouldnt want to be bouncing up to senior players, patting them on the head and saying 'good try mate, we'll just get em next week', thats a sure fire way to get your head smacked in i reckon. if he is performing on the field it will go a long way towards him finding his role within the club, and that could very well be a leadership role - he hasnt had a chance to show that just yet but as he gets fitter and gets his own performances perhaps it will shine through...

no wonder soft loose backmen look so good in those rankings, stand in the backline as a loose player, get 5-10 marks uncontested from opposition players bombing it long, kick the ball back up the field 15 metres to a teammate and you get 8 points for each mark and kick. thats 80 points for 10 marks and kicks, easy pickings for the loose man in defence. i spose it is a way of ranking payers, and no system will be perfect, but i think it could do with some improvement, especially when you consider how football fans really rate the game: to them the best players are the hard at it, contested types, most people are sick of watching loose backmen rack up possessions.

newton is 193cm and 90 kg according to the mfc site. miller - 194cm 96kg dunn 192cm 90kg carrol 191cm 91kg bate 192cm 90 ok so he is slightly on the smaller side, but he is not tiny. garland is listed at 191cm and 84 kg fwiw the big interest for me is from the essendon website. lloyd is listed as 192cm and 91kg, does anyone think he is too small?

two weeks? good prediction. i think that was about right...

jones has a hard body. he is solid, chunky if you will, even if he is only little. davey is slight, jonesy has bulk, there is a difference...

that would of made great reading pre season...

how do you know an umpire was gay? and are you willing to name which one it was?

to anyone out there who has the audacity to bag out jeff white have a think about what made jeff white the premier ruckman in the afl a few years ago. it was his ability to jump over the top of all, alloqing him to get first hands to the footy and guide it down the throat of our awaiting midfield (one of whom won a brownlow, surely helped by the amount of clean ball he was getting). then stop and have a look at what has changed. the afl brought in the 'jeff white rule', which means all ruckman need to be within 5 metres of the bounce. what chance does jeff now have to compete against opposition rucks who are 5-15cm taller than him? the afl changed the rules, stripping him off his run and jump effectively ending his reign as the dominant ruckman. yes he has been out of form this year but to anyone who thinks he does less than try his best, and to anyone who thinks he is not a great ruckman because of lack of ability have a good hard think about this first...

i'd stick with miller before i bothered wasting my time on cloke...

he better go. the afl have said that this is no go, you cannot ump a player who had his head over the ball. personally however i dont think it was as bad as some other incidents. he didnt try and clean him up, i think he wanted to make body contact to contest the footy. it looked like he tried to twist out of the way a bit, and propped a little so that he didnt run right through him. it was more of a hip to the shoulder than the head... personally i think this example should get a couple of weeks tops. if the afl have any resolve or balls it should be 4-8 weeks based on how they have treated pickett and others... i dont understand why they need a special rule about bumps to the head. it was already covered by the rules: you can hip and shoulder a player to the side or front, as long as its not to their back, and as long as no contact is made to the head. he got the head so he'll go for a week or too, but it wasnt the worst ive seen.

are you talking about a head high contact, or a bowel movement? lol

i would love to see him in there...however, i think we will see miller our for robbo this week, miller just hasnt performed the last 3 weeks and robbo is a better forward option - dunn has looked capable playing elsewhere on the ground, whereas i think miller struggles when he goes back just as much as when he is forward, so i think he'll head back to sandy this week. i dont think two debuts would be a problem- didnt petterd and garland play in the same match first up a couple of weeks ago? newton seems to have strung more good games together in a row than previously which is a promising sign, given many of the queries around him are not based on ability. im not sure who it matters is up forward for us at the moment, i think our problem is that the midfield is under too much pressure to execute any game plans. they just through footy to boot and our players arent in the right positions. it is too easy for opposition players to plug the holes in our forward 50. against west coast it looked like they had extra players around the place.

yeah it bugs me alot. there is nothing in the rules that says a 'tagger' or a 'backman' is any different than a player who gets the ball. as long as the negating player doesnt hold, scrag, pull, push in the back or use body contact to shepard (while the ball is more than 5 metres away) then he has every right to stop the other player from getting the ball and deserve equal protection from the umpires. if a tagger is sheparded out or held by an opposition player to break the tag, he should get the free kick just as the ball player would get it if it was him who is held. what gieshen is saying is that the umpires have identified certain players who will be protected. how many melbourne players has he identified? has he identified the same amount from each team?

i like how you laugh at the commentators saying robinson, but have no problem typing newtown

if any of the forwards dont perform this week its gonna be hard to keep robo out with 4 goals...and with newton kicking a couple and sounding like he has been getting a bit of it he is getting closer every day...if he can kick a couple with robbo and sautner in and kicking goals he can kick a few for the mfc with neitz and robbo as well...actually interesting that this is the first real time newton has played with robbo up forward... any word on brock?

ive been out for a walk and havnt been listening... any chance we can get a score update? and have i got this right, robbo has 4, newton has 2 (how many behinds has newton kicked?)? and what are we in now, the 3rd quarter?

was only joking! honest!

might have to visit over there and correct it myself?

im not gonna slag this off. its obviously not worth anyone paying attention too.

as soon as mclean steps on the park he will be getting that tag in preference to TJ. no doubt at all.

not sure, but prob can get fixtures at sandys website. either sandringham.com.au or in the links section of demonland if im wrong...

i think i'll be doing homework, so i'll have to tune in...thanks for letting us know...

just a point out of interest, sylvia and moloney have both suffered from OP for 2-3 years now. have players at other clubs had this problem (OP) for this amount of time? has our management of it been effective? they both seem to have had pretty severe cases...