At the break of Gawn

With top 4 now up for grabs, I have an even stronger doubt that we’ll win this game as every time it’s happened, we’ve dropped one. Surely we can’t lose to the GC. Even if some of our “leaders” don’t stand up, the competitiveness of someone like an Oliver and Brayshaw won’t let this slip.

I’ve just had a quick look at the Suns injury list and with S May also not playing, if we were to lose this it’d be our worst defeat since the 186pt game.

I’m going to assume it was a rush of blood to the head and that he’ll never do that again.

I’m o/s at the moment so I didn’t see the game (just highlights and the last 2 minutes), so I just have two comments. 1. Petracca’s barrel was one of the dumbest pieces of clock mgmt football I’ve ever seen. Ever. I reckon he got scolded pretty bad for that, thus the tears. He had plenty of opportunities to go sideways. All in all it was a horrible last 2 minutes but by god that was awful. 2. Any team that lets the opposition double its goals kicked for the game in the last qtr doesn’t deserve to win. The fact that Geelong kicked 8 goals in 3 qtrs of footy and then 8 in the last is simply disgusting.

Has been in a purple patch of form of late. Bit of a worry for us in a fortnight.

Agree. Viney’s quiet first half was due to Goodwin’s bright idea of tagging Jack Steven - which was clearly a mistake. He did this when he used Jones to tag Mitchell (against Hawks) and it failed then as well. Viney, Gawn, TMac, Jetta and Lever should be the 2019 leadership.

Doedee has been fine for them. Their problems stemmed from A graders missing through injury (plus a terrible camp) Our problems are with our game plan.

Agree on pretty much everything.

No more debutants this year. Every game is a must win. Out: Lewis, Hannan, Petty, Weid In: Vince, Garlett, Frost, Stretch

Has any club had as many false dawns as Melbourne? This year is done even if we are still in the 8. We’ve been found out. Just run and run and you’ll win the game against our slow plodders.

That was our rnd 23. Onto next year. Worst tall defenders in the league. terrible pressure for most of the game Please stop talking about our i50 entries. We let a team that beat the total average game score in a half and then go onto score 120+ pts. The blame is squarely on the defensive running of the midfield and the bog ordinary defenders in our side. Omac lost without Lever Petty debuts in one of our most important games of the year? Disgusting decisions from the coaching staff with the selections this year.

Disgusting half of football. Maybe 2019 will be finals?

Vince has been named on the bench quite a lot the last few weeks. Wouldn’t read too much into that. I think he needs to go though.

Gives us supporters a good excuse not to go to the game...

Just awesome for Melbourne... after we lose, every other team in the 8 or challenging has a win. Could be 2017 all over again.

I was at the Dogs game 3 weeks ago and watched Hogan mark absolutely everything and just dominate. Chris Judd said on the following Monday he was the best player in the competition at the present moment. What has happened in 2 games of football?

What is hogan doing? Looks like he is roving.

Port Adelaide is the number 1 Clearance side, we are 10th. If that’s anything to go by, we will lose tonight. Need to see a dramatic improvement in our clearances plus connection between Gawn and Brayshaw/Viney/Oliver.

No surprise. He was invisible last week. Dixon hasn’t been any better though and has kicked less goals. Their only performing forward is Robbie Gray. I’ll be very annoyed if we lose to them next week. Their ball movement is dreadfully slow.

An important lesson; Never get too excited about this football club, it'll end in disappointment (for now anyway). In all seriousness though, I don't know why people are suggesting Tyson - he's another inside mid who's also one paced. As many of the other posters have noted, the game was lost due to Collingwood's excellent balance at the clearances with the right number of players in the contest and outside the contest. If we won it, their outside players would pressure us quickly and we would end up coughing it up. If they won it, their outside players would run and spread to get the disposal and kick it to their forwards without pressure on the kicker. The other reasons: 1) Cox had his best game ever 2) The field kicking and disposal was basically flawless on the day. We kicked all our 2nd qtr goals from their turn overs, and they barely made a mistake in the second half. Pederson started well with some contested marks on the wing, but I found he got in the way of Hogan inside 50 and didn't bring it to ground well enough. Also, for what it's worth, Hogan's contested marking work has been unbelievable lately, rarely had a genuine one-on-one against Dunn I felt. I'm not completely sold on J Smith but I thought he was pretty solid today, having said that, the pace and height of Frost would be handy and Goody has to make his mind up because we don't have time to keep getting our defensive 6 to gel. Hunt and Garlett both need to come in for pace. Garlett rotated through the midfield at times last year and had great effect.

Can’t see him surviving by the time we play them. Has gone backwards this year.

Richmond can’t win outside of the MCG Not worried about playing Port in 2 weeks. Watts at 2013 levels

I think Hibbo will take De Goey - De Goey is 191 cm, and is too tall for Jetta. So the match ups will likely be: Omac - Cox Hibbo - De Goey Vince - Mayne Salem - Thomas Not sure who comes in for Lever - But i'll be betting on Frost given he's quick (so can match up on someone like Hoskin-Elliot) but also tall so he can match up on Cox if he gets a hold of Omac.

I can't understand why commentators are saying this is some sort of competition between the two. Ben Brown had 1 game without a goal and he's probably on track to win the Coleman (but here's hoping Jesse will beat him) - I don't think a player kicking a goal in every game in a season is some sort of big achievement.

First Melbourne game I went to he kicked 8 and led us to an upset win over the blues in 1996. Was probably my favourite player before that as a kid but that day just cemented it for another 12 years. Champion player.