ArtificialWisdom

He is the ruck/forward we desperatly need but im not sure his development is coming along as quickly as we would like. He has some tallent no doubt but he doesnt seem any bulkier than he was 2 years ago...

oh yes... not as worried as i was against the bombers but still not penciling it in

Its about giving max a rest really. If we had spencer in against the dogs would it have helped? id probably say yes in the middle but no up forward. Its a really risky move but i wouldnt be crying if they tried it. Also depends what % they want max in the middle. Assuming they want him in 80%+ then having a full time ruckman like spencer forward is not going ot help us much.

Its a legitimate option, although I'd give spencer another week or 2 at casey. My question though, is spencer a threat or a liability inside forward 50? If he can clunk a few marks a game he may well be worth it but at ground level im not sure his skills are up to scratch.

Haha not eveyone is kicking ~80% from set shots.

yeah thats what happens when you're playing against a better side. We will get better and will be able to compete against that in a couple of years. Right no we just can't, that's where we are at. We gave up 5 more goals than we kicked against arguably the best attacking side in the comp... that is not a bad result. Expecting to beat the best yet is foolish. Scream at them if they lose this week, but against the best you have to wear the loss.

You mean Roughy moved into a less dangerous position? That is exactly what they want. They want players marking the ball deep in the pockets. A long, high contested kick out of the middle allows Tom to get to most contests aside from ones deep in the pockets whicho only results in a low % shot at goal. Thats a success. The zone leaves us vaulnerable to uncontested accurate low worm burning kicks but with an extra 2 in the middle that shouldn't happen. I emphasise shouldn't because right now while we're learning and we will make mistakes. Give it time, its gonna be frustrating to watch for now, but we will get there.

Looking at other teams average accuracy i dont think its "luck" Most teams are kicking inaccuratly, we are the only team in the comp to be above 50% goal accuracy in all 8 games. That sounds more like good work on our part than it is just dumb luck. I admit missed set shots from straight infront is a bit of luck, but forcing them wide indicates we are pretty good at making opposition take difficult shots and we are good at getting in the position to take easier shots ourselves.

why? because they need to learn how to play it against a team who is playing well. Its not good only practacing against teams like gold coast,collingwood, richmond etc because it was always gonna work against them. We will have to wear some cheap goals and lots of them against better sides. If we slowly learn how to give up a cheap goal then kick 2 goals ourselves i think we will be happy.

The Diamond will work more often than not but we need to get good enough that opposition needs to follow our half backs. The dogs didnt show our half backs respect because they were beating us in the middle. We get control there and we will rip any team apart with those kinds of numbers and space. Unfortunatly as we are inexperienced we will make mistakes and its going to sting every time it happens. As we know already

jetta classified as "Intentional" i would have thought careless. intentional would be if he lined him up. looked more like a reflex

Well that was the exact opposite of what i thought would happen

If watts got a dollar for every time he was burnt by someone he could double his salary

From last weeks report: " Contact between the Gold Coast Suns’ Clay Cameron and Melbourne’s Jack Viney from the fourth quarter of Saturday’s match was assessed. The panel said Cameron was approaching the ball to collect it when the Suns’ Jesse Lonergan took possession of the ball before him. Cameron changed direction to allow his team mate to go past him and made accidental contact with Viney, who was pursuing Lonergan. It was the view of the panel that no further action was required. " Vinces looked a little uglier and I would expect him to get a week. The medical report might save him

Viney hit was deemed as incidental

I would like to see a plan B. But in reality it never really felt like the gameplan yesterday was costing us, it was just a little bit of class. Dogs never scored more than 3 goals in a row. I know it looks bad sometimes but if we had the class to finish those chances in the 3rd we would have gone into the last still in the game. That lack of class, which will come, is all that we were missing. The game against St Kilda on the other hand we needed a plan B because we were leaking so many in a row. But idk maybe they know its not working but persist just so they can learn. Education is still more important than success right now. I would assume that line will be drawn next year but we shall see. Side note: you commented on ability infront of the sticks. We are the only team in the comp who has kicked more goals than behinds every week for the year. Question the number of opportunities all we want but we have to admit they are the best at taking them when they get them. How long we keep that up who knows but im happy with what they have produced infront of goal to date.

I agree we are 2 defenders short of being able to do it really well but is it right to stagnate the rest of the team while we wait for those defenders to come? Hopefully we can trade for 1 and Omac can develop in the next year or 2 but untill then we have to work with what we have got. The point of the zone is to win the scoring shots count and back yourself to win from there. From round 3 we are +5 in scoring shots. that tells me that while we are inconsistent, we have been able to get it to work at times. We were -7 scoring shots on the weekend and that's not good enough for that 1 game but the trend has been positive. They will get better just give it time.

is the zone really abysmal? the dogs played the exact same zone with small defenders and it worked briliantly well. It is no a bad gameplan, infact its a very good one. We are hit and miss executing it and i think we need to take a step back and understand some weeks its going to work others it wont. Next year you can start jumping up and down when we get torn apart, this year give them a break.

Then having another tall would have made no difference then! A tall would have been slower and even further away from him! Contested marks mean we need more talls if they are uncontested then it doesnt matter who his man should have been. Dont get me wrong I do think Omac should play next week cos we need another tall but our setup did work last week then not this. I think that our biggest issue is that right now our press doesnt hold up against the best regardless of who is standing in our back half. Look at the dogs backline, they were short but they executed the press and zone better and won the game. As we get better at our execution of the zone we will start to win more games against better clubs, regardless of if we play tall or small.

I think we need a Jake Kolodjashnij type player for the backline, has skill, athleticism and size. Comming through at the right age, unfortunatly geelong has locked him away till end of 2017 but he is the type we need.

Very fair point but its hard to fault what we have drafted they havent missed many. Harmes has shown enough that he was a good pickup. With consistancy he will be well worth it. The other 3 however are yet to prove. I like Newton and wouldnt mind seeing him get a game in the next few weeks to see if he is worth keeping on, has good goal sense. White shows glimpses but will struggle to break in the side and JKH ditto.

This entrie thread is based on 20-20 hindsight... nobody was complaing about our lack of talls after our 73 point win. The reality is the only chance in would have been Omac and he would have struggled against the Big bulldogs anyway.

sorry that comment was made in jest but fair call.

After he got hit he stepped forward into the "protected area" was always 50 not a wrong decision, just a hot one given they had just let one go.

Vince will go because of how it looked it think, any glance of the head and your gone (would be happily wrong though) I agree jetta should get off, there wasnt much in it but we all know the MRP likes to kick a team when they are down. Nothing in that slap on jeffy was a little love tap really. The mystifying thing was the kick before our guy marked it (stretch i think) then got tackled by a bloke not in the contest, no 50, then 3 seconds later they pay one the other way. While i dont think the bulldogs got any incorrect frees its the missed ones in 1 direction then the quick whistle in the other that bothers me. Little word what is it? Consistancy! maybe we should stick that in the umpire's change rooms for every game