At the break of Gawn

I think he’ll get 3 unfortunately. He doesn’t deserve 3, he should get off, but we all know the AFL too well. Great opportunity for McAdam to have a really strong pre-season and play his role for the first few weeks.

Letting them score 70pts off turnover and only scoring 24 ourselves is emblematic of our entire season. Poor at scoring from turnover and poor at defending turnover.

The Pies turnover game makes us look slower than we are. We actually looked really fit against the Suns last week. That’s because their midfield is full of butchers who don’t punish off turnover.

I’m really not a fan of him playing so high up the ground. It really makes us look impotent when the ball goes quickly into the 50. This guy is our best natural forward and had a stellar start playing deep this year. I’m not sure if it’s because of Petracca’s injury but we need him deeper next year.

This is an open ended question, but do you think we are starting to value the wrong things at this footy club? We bring in competitors who will play our contest and defence mantra, but what about valuing the skills of the game? When was the last time this club recruited an absolute elite field kicker? I’m talking a Gulden, Blakey, Daicos level. I see so many guys come through the door who are just average or maybe above average kicks. If we’re ever going to improve our turnover game we’ll need some sort of drastic improvement in kicking skills and decision making under pressure.

Surely no one turns the ball over as much as we do. Need some serious focus on skill execution over the summer. We won 2021 off scores from stoppages, however scores from turnover is the new norm. We’ll never become a good scores from turnover side unless we seriously improve our skill execution.

They are an elite turnover team, apply excellent frontal pressure, swarm at the contest and they have a very solid back 6. Nothing to do with psychology. Goodwin and the coaches need to seriously work on our turnover game, kicking skills and pressure game.

Wow the weather forecast has really turned. A few days ago it looked like a clear night. Typical Melbourne weather. If it’s a wet weather game I think we’ll lose. Of all the times we’ve played fast and attractive footy it’s been dry conditions (West Coast, Gold Coast, Saints). I was hoping a repeat of the Gold Coast game but with this weather, I think it will be a very dour affair.

I feel the media is just pushing 5 articles a day on this when they’ve had no new info apart from the original disgruntled report. Goodwin again said today that Trac is staying and will be here for 5 more years but that wasn’t reported anywhere. Instead, more rubbish hypothetical trade articles on him leaving.

They’re just grabbing on the fact Petracca hasn’t spoken yet publicly

Hopefully the club publishes the full presser because this is heavily edited

The Morris segment didn’t shed any new light really. I’m still very confident Trac will not be traded. When the head coach says “I can guarantee you, Christian and Clayton will both be in the red and blue next year” and the club puts out a statement saying Christian will not be traded I think it’s pretty safe otherwide lots of people will have egg on their faces. I wouldn’t be surprised if the conversations with the club and Christian are a lot more advanced in the repair of the relationship based on those statements.

Since how it’s not in the media I won’t post as it’s against the site’s rules, but Stevienic23 on the postgame thread did a pretty good job on the broad strokes.

The inside mail from posters have started filtering in which wasn’t happening earlier in the week. Some of the messages I’ve got from who I’d consider reliable sources is pretty damning on where his priorities lie.

Darcy is giving Xerri a bath when he’s going in the ruck and then drifting forward. Hopefully this damages Xerri’s chances of AA.

If Kolt can fix up his kicking, he’ll become our best young player very quickly. Runs to the right spots, has pace and loves the contest.

I hope this is the case. As long as him and the club are on the same page. I really feel the club is left doing all of the work on the damage control at the minute, but maybe that’s the agreed plan.

As per my previous post, I’m as disappointed as much as anyone that he chose not to travel, however is it conceivable that traveling would have opened him up to being door stopped on multiple occasions or is that nonsense?

Anyone else confused how Viney can play some games at 110% and go full beast mode while some games he just goes at about 80%? If he played with that intensity every week he’d probably be a top 3 player in the comp. Just incredible.

What are you talking about? He was at the game last week at the MCG. He’s been in Noosa for weeks prior to that. It’s well reported now that senior players were unhappy with him being in Noosa instead of being involved at the club. This week, the club flew everyone up. May didn’t go because of his rib injury, but once again, Petracca has let this group down again by not getting involved. As far as I can tell, and what I’ve been told, for Christian it’s all “me me me” at the moment.

Surely one of Petty or Turner will have to go back though eventually? I’m a massive Turner fan and I think his attack on the football and his kicking for goal means he’s the better forward.

Stolen from a post on Twitter, but this a great pick up. “Trac spent months in Queensland then conveniently avoided this away trip when so many of the injured players travelled, and our twos were up here too. Today was a very ‘whole club’ vibe. None of this is reflecting very well on him. This is a direction, and he’s not in on it.”

Hope you enjoyed that one, Christian and the “direction” of the club. The only non QLD team to win at HBS this year.

Rivers has got to get those dinky flashy kicks out of his game.

All the off-field stuff has taken the focus off this week’s game. I think we’ll be competitive but ultimately I think the Suns will win by 5 goals. Also predicting the first question from the post match presser to be about the game with the rest to be about Trac and the off-field stuff.