At the break of Gawn

No way. Beating someone up after they know they've had a poor shot on goal just drives more fear and anxiety into the next time it happens. 

Gawn, Smith, Garlett also missed easy shots. 

Gawn's miss against Geelong in round 1 was considerably worse. It was closer in, dry ball. Just a shank kick. 

If he gets the ruck AA, just watch all the Collingwood ferals lose it. They all think Brodie Grundy is head and shoulders above the rest and they're still bitter about Gawn getting the first ruck choice in the AA team last year.

Remember when we did the Gabba deals in the late 90s early 2000s? 

That actually would have been a heap better the last 5 years with Brisbane being poor (not so much this year).

1 hour ago, ding said:

We know the club is almost rock bottom when posters like @Wiseblood have given up telling everyone to be positive after a loss.

Where has he and @ProDee disappeared to i wonder......

Our season has taken its toll on plenty already and it will only get worse after the Collingwood game.

Guess we have the cricket to follow for a while.

"Go the cheaters"!!!

I think ProDee stopped posting after the Saints game. He read the writing on the wall for this season.

Serious question, but is there a compelling reason to go to this game? Collingwood home game, any general admin tickets go to their coffers. We’re also likely to lose. 

I feel this could be an 80-20 crowd split this game.

Big clubs don’t sell their home games.

Collingwood doesn’t. Richmond doesn’t. Essendon doesn’t. Even Carlton doesn’t!

End the contract.

2 minutes ago, Sorry kids said:

Simon Goodwin Comment- " I do not want to take anything away from Adelaide, Adelaide were good'  I am not interested in hearing my coach say that about other teams. Just adds to the narrative that melbourne are too nice.

I wanted to hear him say, Professional forwards are paid to kick goals. OK they missed, it happens, but they need to work harder at goalkicking and we will give them that opportunity. First up. Sam and Smithy take  kicks from the same distance first thing Monday morning  and they do not stop until they get 8 out of 10, maybe 10 out of 10 thereby reinforcing their confidence.

That is an insult from Goody - Adelaide were horrible. We completely dominated them. They only really had two players stand up; Lynch and Crouch.

The misses were terrible, but they kicked 16.4 which means they had a lot of chances deep into the 50 which points to poor defence.

I agree our kicking for goal cost us the game - but we shouldn’t have let them kick 5 in a row - and a lot of those being from players like oMac losing a 1 on 1.

Who was playing on Lynch by the way?

That’s two times in a row he’s come back from injury and was BoG against us. If we had nullified him we would have been 50pts up in the 3rd qtr.

I don’t like player bashing but he is the definition of a liability.

Some of his defensive efforts on Jenkins were woeful.

At least Weid took the contested mark. It was just lucky he marked it. It was a kick in hope from Wagner.

Games of football are made up of 1000s of moments, that miss didn’t cost us the game. It was all those other misses put together that cost us the game. Bad set shots on goal cost you games as so evident tonight. 

Im so glad I’ll probably never see Oscar McDonald in a Melbourne jumper though. Can’t wait to welcome back May and Lever.

Also, oMac should have never been on Jenkins - Frost should have. 

At least Weid took the contested mark. It was just lucky he marked it. It was a kick in hope from Wagner.

Games of football are made up of 1000s of moments, that miss didn’t cost us the game. It was all those other misses put together that cost us the game. Bad set shots on goal cost you games as so evident tonight. 

Im so glad I’ll probably never see Oscar McDonald in a Melbourne jumper though. Can’t wait to welcome back May and Lever.

Also, oMac should have never been on Jenkins - Frost should have. 

Jones looking good at half back apart from that Galluci moment where he just pointed instead of going to defend him himself.

Crows have applied basically no pressure so far. Our midfield is dominating.

Game would be over if Tom Lynch wasn’t playing. He’s been there only really good player. 

Sloane out is big - need to take advantage of this and put it beyond doubt this 3rd qtr.

1 minute ago, Jaded said:

Now Salem out for Weid. What the [censored]?!

Gastro confirmed by Goody.

MMM confirmed Tom Lynch will play tonight.

48 minutes ago, Redleg said:

We seem to come up against sides that are reasonably close to full strength while we are still losing players each week to injury.

For example,  would we have beaten the Bombers without Shiel, Smith and Stringer, their best 3 against us?

Also true of Port (although it was round 1 so you’d expect a healthy list) who have been hit by injuries.

And also the Saints who’s injury curse got a lot worse after playing us.

Have not played one team with close to the amount of key outs as us.

Great seeing the Tigers lose.

Say what you will about Ben Brown, but his elbow has more forward craft than Tmac. 

19 minutes ago, titan_uranus said:

You know Gibbs and Jenkins were out of the side because they'd been dropped for poor form, don't you?

And you know that Jenkins is possibly in the top 5 most over-rated AFL players?

Well aware of that, but Gibbs is still a classy player and probably undeserving to be dropped.

Jenkins has SANFL form behind him and is more of a threat that Himmleberg.

Lynch we can both agree on is a good player. I hope he’s a bit under done.

Adelaide with the 3 best possible Ins really: Gibbs, Jenkins and Lynch.

3 hours ago, Bring-Back-Powell said:

What's the bet Adelaide's ins are as follows:

Tom Lynch, Matt Crouch, Jenkins, Gibbs,

Four match winners.

The last time we played Adelaide in Darwin (2017), Tom Lynch killed us. I recall he had some respiratory disease but he breathed back to life against us and had a night out.

I actually thought this game was going to be in Alice like last time; at least we belted them there. 

34 minutes ago, Monocology said:

Now don't break my heart here - I've been hurt before.

We've also won 3 of the last 4 games against the Crows to make you feel more optimistic.

Their best win was at home against Freo, other wins have all been against bottom 8 sides: an injury ravaged Port, Suns, Sydney and an injury ravaged St.Kilda. 

6 hours ago, DeeSpencer said:

Need more tempo build up from the backline with switching. Clearly they midfield work rate and defensive skills aren't there to encourage that style. Getting guys back from injury and hopefully some good recruits could fix a lot of that.

The Cats are playing a very controlled style from the backline but their midfield work rate has been exceptional to allow the options to continually be created and the ball to keep moving. 

Otherwise I wonder if it's because we're having too many short angle changing kicks rather than one short kick, some handballs and then a longer kick inside 50.

In general though I'd rather we play like we did against the Eagles than how we did against the Giants. Taking the game on has to be encouraged.

I agree that taking the game on looks a lot better and it’s more exciting (just like the Eagles)

The giants put in mechanisms to stop us from playing that style of football in the first 3 qtrs. They won the ball at the contest, and their pressure was very good. The Hawks disaster for them at the MCG basically made them wake up and realise how they have to play. 

10 minutes ago, Lord Travis said:

6-6-6 killed chaos and pressure footy. It rewards maintaining possession aka Hawks earlier this decade. Teams are forced to play one and one and can’t go quickly into their forward line which as much success as their forward line is now flooded... the now proven net result of the rule change. Great job AFL!

It’s also boring as batshit. As a neutral, this season has been the least enjoyable to watch in my lifetime. Scoring is down, tackling numbers are down, pressure is down, it’s proper rubbish.

But to be fair, the 6-6-6 only applies at the centre bounce. As soon as the ball is bounced, the structures become completely the same as they used to.

I feel this is more of a copy-cat thing. Hawthorn started this (they had elite ball users), then West Coast perfected it even more. Collingwood started using it as a way to beat Richmond’s pressure. 

It feels a bit like Goody is placing all his chips on this while the rest of the table is going another way. He’s either going to be a visionary (if he gets our forward line right) or he’s mad and it’s going to go down in flames.

I saw this interesting stat last night regards to “mark play-on rate” during On the Couch. It’s important to note we were also leading this stat last year, but I can’t help but notice that the best teams this year are controlling their ball movement carefully. 

Is the play-on at all costs a winning formula still? Garry Lyon did note that the both Melbourne and Carlton have horrible forward set-ups and that rectifying this would improve this style, but I’m not 100% convinced.

We’re way out in front.

3 hours ago, Lucifer's Hero said:

I've just updated the Contracts thread and posted my thoughts on possible list changes. 

It may be a bit early but given our season is done it is relevant to look at possible changes.

The Contracts thread:

 

My thoughts on list changes that I posted in that thread:

I'm guessing we will lose quite a few Rookies. 

Its hard to see a lot of the primary list players who are OOC this year getting an extension.  My thoughts:

• Baker, Frost, Weideman will get new contracts.
• J. Wagner, Garlett, J. Smith are 'maybe' depending on assessment of depth.
• Stretch, Neal Bullen, Kennedy Harris at real risk of going.  They have been on our list for 4-5 years and not able to cement a regular 22 spot.  Can only keep them for so long.
• Lewis, Maynard gone.
• Jones - not sure.  Will challenge the list management team:  Nostalgia vs value add vs keeping a younger player out of the team/out of position.

We will get some good draft picks this year: a top 10 and a high second round pick so a chance to get some high end talent and skills.  Time to refresh.

Jake Lever has only just turned 23 - he’s not 26.