sisso

Midfield non existent at the moment

how are we this bad - AGAIN!

Agree, the talent is stretched pretty thin with 18 clubs, can't believe the AFL are talking about expanding the competition further! So many state league quality players getting a game these days that wouldn't have 10-15 years ago.

Yeah why do we save a lot of our best efforts for ones where the majority of our fans arent there (finals aside last year)

Geelong arent all that good we can win this if we bring the heat

poor Omac everyone hates him one day he wont come out just stay in the changerooms sucking his thumb

One finals appearence in 11 years enough maybe...

For whatever reason our team really couldn't be ar$ed playing last weekend...it all got a bit hard. Let's hope its the exception not the norm!

With this Melbourne side I often feel more comfortable when we have the real tough games coming up (eg West Coast and Adelaide away in the last couple of years) than the so called games we “should” win....you can almost guarantee win or lose we’ll see a much harder and more committed side than last week and lament where the hell was that form against Port!

Just looked at the stats we had one of the most inexperienced sides of the round quite amazingly...average 76.1 games per player that's less experienced than Carlton's rd 1 side! Lewis being replaced with a first gamer would have contributed largely to this of course.

We haven't even played this weekend yet last time I looked we were 0-1!

Still don’t get why we didn’t use Preuss against 2 ruckman and let Max get ground into the turf, can a smarter footy head then me please explain?

agree with this 100%, we only look slow and get cut up on the outside when we are losing the contested possesion battle

Its obvious the team is well behind in conditioning prepared to some others, the boys couldn't get out of first gear after quarter time we looked absolutely gassed. Few more weeks of pain could be coming until we get match hardened...

It’s quite comical how bad we’ve been today!

+ thanks tribunal we knew Westoff would destroy us

Still don’t know why you’d recruit Preuss and not use him against a team with 2 ruckmen

This is frustrating but not a huge shock we had a hugely interrupted preseason...Port missed the 8 been training their butts off for a month longer

Don’t mind this at all, Port have a ton of youth and pace in their side, Lewis would be the slowest man on the field could get exposed badly

Reports that Ryder has been knocked around by his injury, lost weight because he hasn't been able to eat properly etc....so even if he does play he's not going to be 100% by the sound of it

Decent looking side, more experienced and bigger bodies than Port (we also don’t have kings of flakiness Watts and Motlop)...should win my main concern is Jones Melksham and Viney are a bit underdone.

If we dont play Preuss when the oppo have 2 genuine rucks, you wonder if we'll ever play him at all (injury to Max notwithstanding)

The pace will only be an issue if they play well enough to take advantage of it though. Plus they have a lot of young players in, they will get tired as the game goes on.

Port don't have anything like the depth of midfield we do especially with Wines out so hopefully we can wear them down in the contest and dominate from centre bounces. I agree it will be a worry if its a fast transition game because that's where we are most vulnerable.

Real shame for Vanders hope it is a fairly minor issue, but given his history doesn’t sound promising