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But are they a necessary contribution to the sport? They seem generally peripheral to the game and designed to destabilise.

Amongst a sea of utter nonsense perhaps she’s ok. The standards of the afl media are the lowest of low. There is no genuine football analysis anywhere, just inflamed opinion, high horse editorialising, cheap, shallow points on the game disguised as analysis. She hates Melbourne, refuses to ever bash Richmond and she really doesn’t report on the game. Just the “saucy” stuff outside the actual game. Which I wish the afl media would stop. It is they who create endless problems for players. Most afl “stories” aren’t really stories. They are the media yapping at each other. The industry doesn’t need half of it. Oh and she absolutely wreaks of entitlement, but a lot of the industry does.

Or are we just undermanned and haven’t really had our backline together all year?

They weren’t lost to injuries related to preparation. Joints and knocks, hits etc can’t be prepared for. Tears, strains etc can

If they were soft tissue injuries you would look at your performance team. These are inevitable but random injuries that fitness and prep cannot control

Oh look now dunstall and Buckley are discussing it.

Selwood just spoke of loading live on television. Case closed. We will win the flag after all

They didn’t get anywhere near us at the time we played them

Go and watch Collingwood and Adelaide stream through the middle on the turnover with lethargic Melbourne not able to cover it. So identical it’s amazing how short sighted the media are. If you disagree, how do you think teams beat us last year?

The “teams have worked us out, this is the blue print” media narrative is utter crap. Teams beat us the same way last year. It happened because we were off and couldn’t cover as well. When teams try that against us when we are on it blows up in their face.

Burgo had the luxury of a largely uninterrupted injury run. Makes all the difference. The injuries we are getting aren’t the fitness guys fault. They are joints and knocks etc. They are the law of averages coming back around. I was hoping the great law of averages man in the sky would give us a few extra years before coming for us.

It’s not the max injury in isolation but the trend of injuries coming through consistently and it’s effect on our ability to play out games on top of coming into loading. Max is the icing on the cake hopefully. Hard to get everything lined up for a strong run home from here I think. All good. We have a five year window with this squad and lots can and will happen.

Oh well. It was good being reigning premiers. A good pre season and I go the next and we will be every chance again

That may be spot on.

Probably not. We had a shorter pre season so we’d be somewhat behind. We would plan to be where we need to be come finals though.

So then who comes in and how much more do we lose by?

Yes, that’s it. Only the negative truly care. Perspective is for snobs.

You seem to be having a bad night…

Loading is still a factor. Our midfield broke tackles with ease early in the season. Now they get done every time. We also can’t hold a tackle to save ourselves. That’s fatigue and fatigue alone. the bigger concern for me is injuries. We need a chance to get some team continuity to build form. We have injured players playing, we have injured players in and out. We have idiots suspending themselves. The comp is too close to overcome that if it continues. Long time to go though. aside from fitness and injury our predictability when we are off is a liability and makes us look really stupid. I don’t think changing it is the answer. We looked so dumb today. the Sydney and pies games were eerily similar at the contest. The ball landed in their laps time and time again. Some of that is game plan. Some of it luck. It’s hard to watch though. the ease with which they walked through the middle was also really hard to watch. Made us look like a bottom side. what’s also really hard to listen to is the Collingwood supporters thinking they were hard done by with the umpires. God they are insufferable. Perhaps we will run over the league at the end of the year with a super loading mid season. I know we aren’t as bad as we look. The positive is we were in winning positions every loss despite looking genuinely awful.

Injuries mainly

Our predictability while an asset when we are up and running just makes us easy to play against when we are a bit off. We just make it look so easy for them.

No one

This games not over and we may win it but I can’t help but think injuries are going to take our shot at back to back. If we get a clear run at it at some point maybe not but we have had no luck. The football gods want it to go elsewhere perhaps this year. We will never look like the team we were last year without continuity. The great unspoken truth of the industry is fitness wins flags and we just can’t get it going. I’ve been team loading for the last two weeks but it becomes irrelevant if you can’t stay on the park.

We’re the dumbest team in the land

This five minutes is important