At the break of Gawn

Just have to win today. If we lose we’re pretty much back to the rest of the pack and top 4 is in real danger. Genuinely nervous someone like Rozee or Boak will run riot.

Those who blame the jumper are just being ridiculous and superstitious. Wouldn’t have mattered what jumper we wore last week, we still would have lost.

3 hours ago, von said:

We could have taken the lead 2/3rds of the way through the Geelong game despite looking sluggish and fumbly. We were under more physical duress than they were. Geelong said they are running on top of the ground now and felt good. They built their season around this game it seems. It will be interesting to see how the two programs play out come season end. They look good now. 

If you look at last year, Geelong were absolutely flying at this point in time too. They had won 10 of their past 11 but it was around early August things started to turn awry for them. 

They struggled to get over North Melbourne, then they lost to the GWS at home, almost lost to a really lowly Saints side and then got overrun by us at home. By the time finals had started they were cooked and Port destroyed them and they never really recovered.

With them going so well at the minute it wouldn’t surprise me that they’ve mistimed their training loads again and stumble in September.

I think if our game is in good shape as Goodwin has said, we’ll bounce back against Port and also account for the Dogs the week after.

Freo onwards and we’re pretty much playing a finals series before the finals series and we’ll really get to know if we’re any chance of going b2b.

FWIW I having a sneaky feeling we’ll beat Freo. They’ve struggled to move the ball at times and score. I can’t see them doing what they did to us again earlier in the season. 

Listening to Jordan Lewis on this last night and I have doubts Jacko will ever fulfill his potential. He’s a very laidback sort of person and not someone who’s a competitive beast like Max or Oliver. 

Similar to how we turned the Hogan trade into securing the missing piece of our premiership backline, we need to use this Jackson trade as an angle to secure an elite key contested marking forward.

Just like we did last year with BB, we need to commit to Weid. Why sign him up if we’re not going to play him? Give him the rest of the season to show us what he’s capable of.

2 minutes ago, willmoy said:

I would drop May. There is some problem there.

Settle down. Hawkins didn’t kick a goal on him (his one goal was on Gawn). May’s intercept game relies on our territory game and we got smashed in that.

If you want to point the finger, point it at Gawn/Jackson and the mids. 

Game was won and lost in the clearances. Cats went to homework on our clearance game and smashed us. Also, we just over-possessed the ball at the stoppage and ended up inviting the pressure. Players like Atkins loves a tackle more than anything. 

Interesting Selwood said they feel like they were running on top of the ground. Sounds like they’ve timed their loading well. Better than us, anyway…

Doing pretty well to be only 4pts behind. We haven’t had momentum all night. Get some control and I reckon we can power away.

This anonymous Twitter account which I think is run by a former AFL umpire rates every game from an umpiring perspective and also comments on controversial decisions.

This was his take on Saturday’s game.

Oliver likely to win b2b coaches awards is rare air. I think Ablett Jnr was the last player to do so.

I just can’t see them matching Oliver, Petracca and Viney. Our dynamic and more powerful midfield was the reason in the PF and it’ll be the difference once again. Thank god, all 3 of them are in ripping form. 
 

Biggest threat is Jeremy Cameron. If Petty can tighten up on him we’ll be golden. 

Worst umpiring I’ve seen in years. None of our tackles rewarded, Adelaide paid marks over the boundary line, Tex Walker basically cheating the ruck system, high tackles not paid etc. 

[censored], I loved it when we kicked those two quick goals in the last qtr and shut up those stupid Crom supporters and said a big F you to the umpires trying to steal it from us.

Also, blessed that we get to watch Oliver, Trac and Viney at their absolute best.

Petty was actually pretty good. 
 

Brayshaw’s kicking is consistently letting us down no matter how good his intercept game is.

19 hours ago, DubDee said:

And a 6 day break Vs our 9 day break

thats their entire fwd line!

Walker will get up to play us. He hates Melbourne and would love nothing more to knock us off again at home.

Thought Trac was really dynamic. Just need his set shots sorted. 

Best qtr all year. Viney absolutely huge.

As long as Richmond don’t win. Their nuffy supporters will say that Melbourne only won in 2021 because of all the injuries Richmond had.

Montagna had some fantastic vision on AFL360 of Melbourne’s forwards against Collingwood. It seemed that when we generated a turn over in the middle, our forwards were too far up the ground and were just generally disorganised. He hypothesised that our forwards were overcompensating for our defence. Most of the vision was in the 3rd qtr when our defence was short so it’ll be interesting to see if our forwards hold their structure tomorrow better with May back.

Have to say, a 10 day break isn’t really a bye. We’ve really been screwed over by the AFL here. I hope the boys have freshened up.

25 minutes ago, monoccular said:

Dropping M Brown means we  still have Frittata who plays taller than he is .... and maybe, just maybe, debuting JVR for Mitch.  

I got the sense that Weideman will come in based off Goody’s presser. The fact that he elaborated on him either doing ruck or as a tall forward is a good sign.

Out: Gawn, Turner

In: Weideman, May.

Genuinely surprised we are favourites for this game. I predict one of two things are going to happen on Thursday:

1) We get off to a good start and then get overrun again to further confirm we are still way off it and our season is in real danger

2) We play a sustained brand of footy and beat them and it actually looks like we’re back (despite missing Max)

I’ll be happy with 15 wins to be honest.

Just a couple of observations from me:

1) We have lost contested marks the last 3 weeks (and badly). You’d be hard pressed to find a game last year where we lost that stat and from rounds 1-10 we won contested marks every match. Anyone have any thoughts on this?

2) Opposition efficiency inside 50. Most of 2021 teams would average around 20-30% against us. In rounds 1-10 it was still mainly 30% with an occasional 40% and one 50%. The last 3 weeks the opposition is scoring >50% of the time for each entry which is just unsustainable. Is this from Steven May not being there or is it more related to our poor pressure on the ball carrier?