At the break of Gawn

Looks like a 10-1 ratio here. Pretty poor for a replacement game, but can’t expect much from our supporters after a season like this.

When rating our on-field performance from a rating of 0 (extremely disappointed) to 10 (extremely satisfied) I can’t see many people going above the 1 watermark.

Members should have received an email today from the club requesting you to participate in a membership survey. It's a good thing they did it today compared to if they sent it on Monday (and following a loss to Carlton if it occurs). Would love yo know what @Sir Why You Little put down for the top 5 words that come to mind when you think about the Melbourne Football club!

Hearing Jordan Lewis speak on AFL 360, one of the disappointing things about the Brisbane game was an attitude issue, in that some players were off their usual behavioural standards (e.g deciding not to chase/defend). It’s behaviours like this that keep me worried. The only acceptable excuse for this is the reason they decided not to chase/defend because they’re too tired/not fit enough due to the aforementioned pre-season.

Wayne Carey said on Talking footy it looked like we were there for a Sunday picnic. No pressure at all applied to Brisbane. 2 tackles in a qtr. Called it our worst performance of the year.

Carlton are playing a no nonsense style of footy and it’s working for them. We’ll lose by 4 goals.

Zorko killed us. Needed a hard tag today. Holistically speaking, we have not had the right balance all year.

Also, the GABBA is a [censored] venue at 3:20 time slot. You have to deal with the sun in the first half and then it was almost a wet weather slip fest in the second half.

Came down to a few things: Gawn getting injured Getting smashed in the middle/Clearances Hipwood’s 15 minutes of fame.

Hipwood has gone from a horrible game to a blinder. Only against us.

Just wait for Lethal to be surprised that Tmac starts forward.

Not sure why the Dees hired an investigative journalist to do a media role in the first place? It’s not like any other club has Mitch Cleary or Tom Browne employed. Pure conflict of interest to how they do the two jobs.

Jeff Farmer was at Freo training today doing trick shots if that’s any indication.

Goody looking a bit more relaxed which is great to see. Love that the boys are doing hard and contested training. I’m pretty confident we’ll do ok against the Lions.

Joel Smith - from a 4 week injury in mid March to gone for the whole season. FMD.

Would love Hill but crazy he never opts to kick with his opposite foot ever. His disposal efficiency is a bit off as well. 31 disposals and only 80 something ranking points is rare.

Think he had the highest SC score for a qtr this year. 86 pts in the last qtr - unbelievable.

Knowing our luck, we’ll play them after the bye next year and they’ll break that hoodoo against us.

Also have a gut feeling we’ll win. Not much logic involved, just a feeling.

Still looking like he's a bit nervous at the start (like he has the past couple of weeks). He's clearly worried about the scrutiny. Makes a world of difference when you're winning and these sort of press conferences are just fluff like they were last year.

The problem with “free style set shot kicking” is that it doesn’t recreate a real-game situation. As all scientists know, in order to prove something you have to recreate the conditions as much as possible. What’s severely lacking with their goal kicking practice is the “social pressure”. That is, when a player misses a shot he feels the social shame from the crowd, his team, his opponents. With free style goal kicking practice, there’s no one really watching them if they miss. A good exercise to do would be to allow only one person kicking for a goal at any particular time, with one person on the mark, and the rest of his team mates watching him. Also, some form of consequence needs to occur if they miss. Making everyone do push-ups won’t work as the sports scientists will go nuts, but I’m sure they could think of something internally. Utilising the above steps would emulate the social pressure more and allow them to get used to the feeling and feel much more conditioned in real-match situations.

Somehow we’re actually favourites for this game according to Sportsbet. I’m not worried about Hogan. His goal kicking issues are just as bad and he’ll be too much inside his head to play well against us. Walters is a very good player but I feel Hibberd might be ok for him. I’m more worried about Fyfe and Hill. This game will be a real slog. It’ll be low scoring and if we win it’ll be less than 20pts.

I went to the Essendon game last night with a couple of Essendon supporter mates . I surprisingly had a good time watching it. It was a nice change to watch a game of footy where you’re not overly stressed and too emotionally invested. Despite our season being done, hopefully there is still some form of entertainment for us “neutrals” in the finals series such as GWS knocking over the Pies in the GF, or Geelong failing to win a final at the MCG. A cherry on top would be for us to beat the Pies in rnd 21 and kill off Collingwood’s hope of top 4 (or I’ll even settle with top 2)

Weid was our best forward. Tmac should go back to Casey against Freo - he’s not going to find the form at this level. He’s had 12 weeks. I’m not 100% convinced he’s injured. Has not once alluded to it in interviews and has continuously talked about his form issues and ways to try and get out of his slump.

Jones is on the couch now. I know his on-field has dropped off, but he speaks very well and articulates our deficiencies very well (and always has). Gawn matches him with this; if not more.