grazman

There's a lot to be said for supporters as well as players only taking it one game at a time. I had expectations for the team to win about 9 matches at the start of the year, our draw in the second half of the year is more forgiving than the first half, but there are still some significant hurdles for us to negotiate - starting with the ability to win back to back matches. I'm not sure as Melbourne supporters we should be arrogant enough to assume that any game can be regarded as a gimme. The match against the Eagles will be a tough one in tough conditions, which we haven't traditionally backed up well from. Hopefully like the players the coaching staff are at the top of their game and look at a way to quell the influence of Nic Nat, Priddis, McGovern, Kennedy, Le Cras, Darling, Hurn etc.

No we won't - GWS they'll need it for one of their academy players. I'm not sure their offer wasn't just a spoiler for our sniffing around.

Sort of ... I think they still rely heavily on Riewoldt, I think they will actually go backwards when he retires... similarly from the W/E Montagna 32, Ray 29, Gilbert 29 and even Armitage 27 have limited game time left compared to our 22... but for the moment yes a bit like us in terms of performance, but maybe not upside (I hope).

1. I agree. Whether the Saints win more games than us this year is neither here nor there. Would have been nice for us to win, but we still have too many poor decision makers. 2. This I disagree with - he's the coach he would know, we're simply assuming/conjecturing reasons that it must be the coaching that we're stilll scheizen. Is it an excuse or explanation - he's been consistent with it - are we simply shooting the messenger? If you have recruited and developed as poorly as we have over the years then it must leave some tell-tale scars -for example Grimes in perfect position at CHB switches wide to HO rather than move the ball in the V. There's some very poor traits in some of our players (that new guys like Hogan, Bradshaw, ANB etc don't display). I think Roos is doing very well, he's trying to teach the players to win for now although this is subordinate to playing the style that he wants them to play. David King made the observation at half time that we are very good at scoring from structured sequences. The fast pace frenetic style doesn't suit our game plan. I think Roos can see what's coming - the abolition of the sub and a reduction of the interchange cap to 100 - which will result in more stoppages/structure. I think he's doing alright - maybe not in what we can see now, but in 2-3 years time. Saints Best players were: Montagna, Riewoldt, Newnes, Armitage, Weller. and ours were Hogan, Jones, Vince, Viney, Toumpas so in 3 years time tell me who the winner will be?

Should have bought one four years ago in that case. Haven't won at Etihad the last 20 games.

Under contract. Even if he does want out (and GC will fight damn hard to keep him) the asking price would be very high. Treloar still obtainable time to up the offer.

This is why I think we should seriously look at Yarran. A) he has speed, B) he has sublime skills, C) he's gettable given Carlton are going into rebuild mode and he'll be one of the few players that actually have currency. Normally I'm reticent to take on other clubs problems, but I actually think he'd be a good fit.

Maybe I'm just getting old, but the rule hasn't changed since I was playing, you were taught to close your fist and punch the ball and you can never be called for a throw.

He does this automatically. Jimmy T needs to take a leaf out of Gus's book, don't drop your head when you make a mistake, win the ball back. Very RDB - "If it's going to be, then it's got to be me"

Pretty sure Daniel Cross played on Sidebottom until the last quarter when Buckley sent him to Jones.

I thought we were an outside chance of beating the Pies, because I don't think their list is that good (though Pendles, Sidebottom, Elliott and Cloke are all A graders and Swan can still be handy).... but they are extremely well drilled and disciplined and we are not. Reference Paul Roos post match comments. He even went into extraordinary detail to emphasise the job of getting some of these blokes to understand some pretty basic footy structures. As Grand New Flag pointed out Jimmy T was very poor in positioning himself yesterday.

Well they won a premiership, so they might have suffered in comparison to previous Melbourne sides, but they probably were a bit better than 'fairly ordinary' and benefited from a decade or more of very clear structures and expectations. In 2015 on the other hand...

One of the problems in any decision making process is the bias (recognised or unconscious) that people bring to the table. Because these things are open to interpretation, what one person may provide as evidence another will dismiss as irrelevant or ambiguous - particularly if it doesn't fit with their concept of what's happening. As a starting point I took it on faith that what Roos is saying is what is happening, some think he's simply making excuses to cover for his own poor performances. I disagree. Firstly he wouldn't have taken on the job if he was worried about win loss ratios because we were very, very bad when he came (i.e. he doesn't need to resort to excuses, just identify the problem). Secondly he's only here to put the train back on the tracks, it will be Goodwin's job to get it moving and finally because I think the principle of occams razor applies here. There's no conspiracy - what isn't fitting is the expectation that many supporters have of how the script should be playing out. Simply because you identify a problem doesn't mean it can be fixed immediately, it can be a slow complex process. As for a demonstration of the good versus the poor, I think someone who attends games could probably provide a better oversight because it's hard to pick up structures on T.V. (I live in Canberra - so only see about 1 match a season live), but let me provide a couple of examples. When Watts marks the ball you can see him scanning to see if players are replicating the training structures, the fact that he's has to motion with his hands for someone to lead into space is often an indicator that they're not. For whatever faults Jack may have he's a clever footballer and you can see at various stages players aren't doing what they're supposed to. Why? Have the players stopped working or are they too frightened to get separation on their opponent waiting for the inevitable turnover, are they simply scared and waiting for someone else to make a mistake rather than themselves? I suspect it's probably a combination of those things, but rarely do you see good teams when they have the ball have to wait and wait for options to present themselves. I was unfortunate enough to be at the GWS game and we were lucky in that GWS were poor in the first quarter which helped us. They turned this around in the second quarter, but we were able to at least stick to some of our structures and put on scoreboard pressure, where we lost it completely in the third was because we simply couldn't win the ball- Jones (unsighted& probably injured) Viney (injured) Tyson(poor game) and Vince (underdone) didn't get their hands on it and when they did you could visibly see that players had gone into their shells, they were unwilling to run into space to create options. When the opposition had the ball they did what they regularly did before Roos arrived, trailed 2 meters behind their direct opponent and seemed surprised when their opponent got the ball. They failed to close down space (though keep in mind GWS kicked some really arsey goals which I think mentally reinforced amongst our players that we couldn't beat them). Teams like Hawthorn (Port game) and Freo (Richmond) might have the opposition jump them, but they stick to their structures and work their way back into the game because they know they work (they also have the skill set to back it up). It's a bit of a catch 22 because I still think we lack some core skill sets to ensure that we can build confidence in the structures, but we are much better placed in this regard than we were 18 months ago.

Perhaps less than ten left after this year. Lack of leadership was identified early by Neeld. Fortunately the younger brigade of McDonald, Brayshaw, Hogan, Salem etc have it in spades... helps that they can play a bit as well. I've spent a lot of time developing training for the management of critical incidents particularly around decision making and its a very difficult area. Firstly intuition and instinct are two separate things, but you are right in that both apply equally in terms of football. Instinct can't be taught, you are born with it and in a football sense its about the relationship of the player's physical abilities in relation to their environment, so high degree of knowledge and confidence in their physical abilities, peripheral vision, spatial awareness etc are all part of that package. Having an extremely high degree of this (like a Gary Ablett Snr and Jnr) mean that regardless of the team structures you can work your way through most situations and look good. Its also handy because it happens automatically - cognition happens so quickly we can't stop it. Conversely intuition must be learnt, because intuition is recognition. This can also happen automatically, but the results are dependent on perception and like poor instinctive qualities (i.e. having no spatial awareness) can lead to 'suboptimal' results. Klein talks about this as Recognition Primed Decision-making (RPD). But it can have both good and bad results depending on your experience and 'programming'. Coaches develop training drills, based on the game plan and structures they want their players to adhere to. In this way they try to instil a certain level of automaticity into their responses. In effect they are trying to mimic instinct to a certain extent -at least in terms of successful outcomes by developing greater situational awareness than your opponent through predictability and control (execution of skill is something else altogether). Roos made a very poignant observation in his post match conference he mentioned that players weren't adhering to the structures... when we did we were 6 goals up and when one player broke from the regime to go and help a teammate in trouble and so the next player does it and so on and then you have no structure at all and you end up getting belted. He followed this up on Monday night by saying that the coaching department knew what was going wrong and why, but he wouldn't elaborate on it other than the stuff he's said before about mental scarring and list changes etc. What tends to happen in periods of stress like in the Port Adelaide & GWS games when the opposition stop playing one way and start playing another, is that the dominant heuristics (the cognitive shortcuts we develop over time) and automaticity comes to the fore (particularly if they are the easier ones to perform). I refer to this in the training environment as a form of regression - rather than people attending to the priority task that they need to (and is often complicated and hard) they will do the task that is familiar and comfortable because that offers them the greatest individual chance of success irregardless of its benefit to the team. I don't think Roos is making excuses, I think we have so many ingrained bad habits in players that they simply regress to previous form -RPD - something that was either endorsed or tolerated/ignored by previous coaching regimes. Which leads onto a debate about changing coaches...Too often its the cart before the horse in the way clubs go about this. The club should decide on a playing style, philosophy that entire club buys into, and then you find a senior coach that supports that, rather than simply changing direction every two or three years... like Richmond used to do and we have done.

Why do I need to be a preeminent authority to knock holes through your argument. Most people have heard enough stories about football clubs and their decision making to know that the only thing 'elite' about footy clubs is on the field - case in point is the Melbourne footy club for as long as I've barracked for them. Hird did mastermind the whole thing (with help and encouragement from Shane Charters). If you choose not to believe the hearsay then that's fine, but the testimony of both the club doctor (Reid) and Coaching Director (Thompson) who both tried to put a stop to the regime after they found out is ample evidence that governance was less than 'elite'. In your words (channeling Vazzini) it's 'inconceivable' that if there was good governance these two would not have had oversight of the programme. They didn't.

I am sure this has something to do with unconscious bias on behalf of the umpires, not just the better players, but the better teams seem to get more latitude than the poorer teams - but then that just might be my own bias.

Trengove has been extended to 2016 now.

I don't, and it didn't - so there you go. The problem is in your conception of how football clubs 'work'.

No.No.No. Whether an inexperienced coach or not he's got enough AFL and 'life' experience to understand right from wrong. The injection regime was at his instigation, no one else's - James Hird's. The governance failures were clearly that management were letting James run his own race. without adequate supervision.

Love it - not sure if you are taking the proverbial, but it made me smile

If he's built like his dad he'll be hard to move off the ball. Very low centre of gravity and 'low' running action, hardly lifted his feet off the ground, but always knew where the ball was going to be.

I think you're right Nasher, I'm pretty sure he was from the wild and woolly parts of the West Coast.

It did seem a bit odd that the article didn't mention him being Andy's son. Andy played for Glenorchy btw, not sure if he originated from the Huon Valley.

I remember Andy as an 18 y.o. - must have been cutting wood since he was five, because he was an absolute ball of muscle. Hopefully Kieran has inherited his ability and attitude.