Forest Demon

Not since the great Juice Newton have the Melbourne faithful called for a debut like this. Let's hope the long term outcome is a little more positive than what Juice provided.

People need to realise that if we do pass on him, which is unlikely in itself, he will not be returning to the club any time soon. And if he was to return to the club, it would have to be done via a trade which would end up being just as costly.

But he did brace for contact and did take his eyes off the ball and took advantage of a player in a very vulnerable position. There are numerous opportunities for hits like this every single game, but if you are not going to genuinely attempt to mark the ball, you simply have to pull up, everyone else seems to be able to. Would open pandora's box for huge cheap shots if they opened the door to that.

I agree it was a [censored] weak hit, but couldn't see him getting anymore than 3 or 4. I hate it when players have no intent to make high contact with a legitimate bump or tackle and for whatever reason there is contact to the head and gets the same suspension to someone who throws a deliberate elbow or in Wellingham's case attacks a player who is in a compromised position where his intention is clearly to flatten him.

BTW, just bought a membership. Got some great use out of Demonland for the last 5 or 6 years and happy to give a bit back. Thanks to all who put in work behind the scenes who go unnoticed, I will try not to take you for granted in the future.

Happy to admit saw a bit in Spencer yesterday that I hadn't seen before. Still has a long way to go but he looks like the sort of bloke that will leave no stone unturned in getting the best out of himself. Hopefully he keeps improving.

Magner's first season has been admirable thus far, but he has struggled the last few weeks. Ended today being subbed out and looks in need of a rest for a week or two. Time for Couch to get a run for a couple of weeks in the seniors.

Not sure why you would quote the post where Hardnut was responding to my comment and talk about being 'shouted down' and 'insulted'. I thought it was a healthy debate in good spirits. Seems you are a little touchy Macca, light some inscents and find a happy place.

For the record, I would barely say I am a person with too much faith. I have no idea whether Neeld will make it or not, but all I am doing is refusing to blame him for past errors and am willing to give him time to do his job. And that earlier comment was not meant to infer that you were comparing Neeld to Bailey.

I understand what you are saying Hardnut, that being that Neeld should have come in and worked with the existing list and style, and tweaked it and put his own stamp on it, rather than radically changing the way we play, and looking to turn the list over massively at the end of the year. And while I can see where you are coming from, I think the decision was made that the attacking, unaccountable style of play under Bailey wasn't going to get us anywhere and we needed someone to come in and instill the basics of defensive footy and dramatically change the way things were done at the club. Time will tell I guess, but I firmly believe that Neeld needs to be given the length of his contract to do what he was employed to do, otherwise we are back where we started again, and probably even further back.

I may not agree with 1 or 2 names on your list, but I agree with the general idea of your thread.

No I am not. But I would love to hear from anyone who gets to training, and whether it differs from how the likes of Collingwood are doing things nearby. And let's not let Dean Bailey or the Pre-2012 Football Department's ineptitude be a reason to be overly skeptical and critical of Mark Neeld, and let's not forget that this is primarily Dean Bailey's list this season. We just have to sit back and let Neeld put the permanent marker through a few names, and as Jumbo says, bring in a few hardened bodies, and implement the game style he was employed to implement. Although some may be skeptical, unfortunately we have no other option but to have faith that Schwab and the boys have selected the right bloke and let his 3 year contract run at least, because if we don't we will be employing untried coach after untried coach each year, who are failing to get the most out of an already inept list.

I agree with most of what you say, especially the last bit. But do you honestly expect them to line up like Auskickers at training for 3 hours and play kick to kick. I'm sure they practise their skills in various forms of drills at training each week, but at the end of the day at this level, players either have the required skills to hit targets or they don't. Unfortunately, there are far too many on our list who don't. Turn them over.

I would of thought it was pretty obvious why this was happening.

I agree that we have not improved in this area, but that is effectively what I am trying to say. In that, players not hitting targets from 10 metres away is not Neeld's fault, and we need to let him have his way with our list at the end of the year.

That is simply not true that we are worse than Round 1. Seriously, watch a tape of the game. The first 5 or 6 games, every time we got the ball, we stopped, propped and went long down the line to where we were outnumbered, literally every time that the opposition just loaded up numbers there and destroyed us. Now, we are spreading a bit better, and taking the game on a bit more, but unfortunately our skills are still absolutely woeful.

When did I say we weren't smashed today. We are missing plenty also and playing players out of position (as I said in the post above), and all I am trying to say is that there is improvement and also, that this is not Neeld's fault.

We were hardly at full strength either mate, plus playing a lot of players out of position. Apart from Martin, who else of their outs were decent. There big guns were still there. And I am not kidding myself and trying to say that was even an acceptable performance, I am simply sticking up for Mark Neeld and saying to those who say we have not improved, they are wrong, and that the mess is not his fault and that he needs to be given time to make it right.

Now for those who are saying we haven't improved, here are some stats compared the Round 3 game against Richmond. I am not saying today was great by any stretch, but to say we are still as unorganised as early in the season etc is ridiculous. This includes stats that we were constantly slammed for in the early part of the season e.g. uncontested possessions, inside 50s etc. (Excuse [censored] formatting) Round 3 Today Difference Score -59 -23 +36 Scoring Shots -14 -13 +1 Possessions -159 -61 +98 Uncont' Poss' -147 -41 +106 Inside 50s -35 -21 +14 We are still [censored], but we are improving under Neeld slowly. Let the bloke have his way with our list at the end of the next 2 seasons and see where we are. There is no use replacing a coach and going half arsed and giving him the flick after half a season.

Firstly I have seen at least 2 posters call for Neeld so far in this thread, and secondly I think we are definitely more organised than the early rounds, but our skills still let us down badly.

Well, for me, the problem is our list and the lack of AFL quality footballers on it. Whether that is drafting, development, culture, I don't know, but it ain't Neeld's fault. If we are going to sack coaches who have half a bad season, we are going to be in a vicious cycle of sacking coaches every year. We have to select a man we think knows what it takes, and we back him in for the long haul.

I find it hard to fathom those calling for Neeld's head. He cannot be held responsible for a group of players who can't execute the most basic skills of the game. The game plan is impossible to implement if the majority of the team find it hard to hit a target from 20 metres away. And this is not his list, so he can't be blamed for the fact that these blokes are in the side in the first place. Whenever you replace a coach, unless you are in premiership contention and are just refreshing like Nathan Buckley, you have to be willing to give them 3 years at least to mould the list with players that suit his play and can execute his plan. Do any of you numb nuts think if Mick Malthouse was sitting in the box Rohan Bail would be all of a sudden hitting targets left, right and centre.

Spencer was definitely better today, bar that one shocker of a kick from the goal square. But that was just one of a never-ending amount of soft turnovers.

Don't know what people expect from him a quarter of football, racked up 6 touches and laid 3 tackles. Definitely not a great performance by any stretch and he is obviously out of touch, but I don't see what the aim of potting him is when in reality he didn't do too badly. He wasn't the one out there in the 1st quarter when we were being smashed in the centre and kept continually coughing it up when we had it, in fact he would helped the discrepancy in clearances. Don't necessarily disagree with a couple of weeks at Casey, but wouldn't go as far as calling him a 'dud' or a 'country footballer'.

4 quarters of good honest effort. 3 quarters of pretty average skills, and 1 quarter of shocking skills and loads of school boy turnovers. In all honesty, we should of been down by 10 goals at quarter time, but from there we battled bravely but weren't good enough. Don't think you can lay into the structures and game plan, when in reality it was the continuous stream of simple turnovers that cost us. It is hard to stick to plans and continue to run forward into the right spaces when you know the bloke with the ball is a good chance of butchering it.