At the break of Gawn

He could always step down as co-captain. Just like how Hannebery stepped down from the leadership team to work on his recovery. Jones could do the same to just focus on his game.

Just finished watching ‘on the couch’. My god our defence is a shambles. The footage was laughable. Some of the decisions made by Froscar, Fritsch etc on when to leave your man and go is just horrific. It’s just too complicated I feel. Lets just go back to a much more simpler structure and the only time you need to leave your man is if your team mate has basically lost the contest and the opposition is running towards you.

Perhaps the “Gold Coast standards” was just an easy excuse for a player that just has a bad attitude around keeping in shape over the off season.

Can we do a straight swap for Gold Coast’s defence or employ their defensive coach?

Pretty interesting stat regarding Lewis.

Watched the second qtr replay on Fox. The only reason we got back in the game and looked better at repelling our defence was due to Essendon’s poor entry from stoppages purely from skill level (mainly from Dylan Shiel). They weren’t even pressured kicks. After the poor entries we were good at transitioning back (we kicked 6 goals straight from the back half). We’re a forward half team so it wasn’t even our brand, but we were just fortunate Shiel can’t kick. Hence, our defence was just as diabolical as ever in that second qtr but it was masked by unforced error entries from Essendon. The defensive positioning of our midfielders at stoppages and even in general play is a complete shambles.

Goody is chatting to SEN at 12.

I still recall PJ’s strong comments on ‘inside Melbourne ‘ after we lost to Hawthorn. It was clear that he knew exactly that it was unacceptable and not what we stood for. We’ve heard nothing from Pert so far.

Brisbane are currently the same odds as us to win the flag this year now.

Who was our defensive coach under Roos?

In: Rawlings out: Chaplin

This absolutely nails it.

https://www.foxsports.com.au/afl/afl-2019-premiership-kryptonite-afl-greats-bake-for-dees-duo/news-story/ac8f64114d748d9834cabc82fdca69b5 David King has nailed it with this term. Surely just have to reset the key pillars and drop them.

Our attack was ok tonight. Tmac hindered it at times, just can’t take a grab anymore and looks as slow as Ben Holland. Worst defence in the league right now. It’s just a numbers game for the opposition. Just get it in 50 times and you’ll have about 30 shots on goal. Pretty much will always win a game of footy.

Out Omac and Frost. I don’t care who else. Season is cooked anyway.

We have the worst defence in the league. Every other team defends better than us. Even Carlton’s look much better. All of Paul Roos’ defensive work has pretty much become undone. Serious problems with the personnel. Omac and Frost have got to go.

I reckon Essendon will be more focused on fixing their own game plan than to watch the opposition. That's what I'm hoping for anyway. It'll make for a very average weekend if we lose tonight.

I'm tipping a similar match to last year. Scrappy early but then the Dees will get on top in the second half and we'll win by about 5 goals. Gawn to be BoG.

How can you possibly come to this conclusion? He died of lung cancer, not of a stress-related heart attack.

According to Mark Stevens, Stringer has a sore foot (didn’t partake in the “captain’s run” today) and Zaharakis didn’t partake either. Although some would argue Zaharakis hasn’t partaken in the season full stop.

Been ruled out according to Twitter https://twitter.com/aaronfetter3/status/1112995724956905474?s=21

Last time at the MCG was that disastrous rnd 2 game in 2016 where we lost to their VFL side. But our last actual home game against them was 2010 rnd 15 (beat them by 19 points).

Just watched On the Couch, and Tommy Morris said that May came back “unfit” at the start of the pre-season and finished last in the time trials. I had heard he had a habit of doing that at the GC but didn’t realise it happened again with us. Was this mentioned on DL late last year/early this year?

He looks miserable because, like Hogan, he is very hard on himself as a player as I think he does have high expectations on himself and what he can do. As per what Rooey said, he probably dominated in the juniors and expected the AFL to be the same. Didn’t he once say he was going to be an ‘All of famer’ in an interview and he wanted to be the no.1 pick? I just feel he’s trying too hard to be some flashy player and not enough as just a hard working half forward. He’s not going to be a De Goey as he’s not fast enough off the mark and lacks some of the skills so I wouldn’t even bother to try and emulate that. He doesn’t have a great tank (so he can’t be a midfielder). He just needs to be a strong contributing half forward. He’s a similar height to Breust (albeit not as skillful) maybe that could be a player he should be aiming to be.

Sure, lose the first 6 and you can still get 16 wins and probably finish top 4. The issue is that the further behind you fall, the less margin for error later. Having said all that, I’ll reserve my judgment until after round 6. If we’re 3-3 I think we’ll be ok.