Boots and all

Clear prior and took the player on. What a joke, i'd be fuming if that were a dees player tackling.

McDonald looks injured and inflexible, and seems to lack the strength to hold his position in the contest. He struggled last year and things haven't improved for him this year.

I just hope Goody is scouring the records for examples where teams lose their star player, but win against the odds. I'm sure there are many examples over the years. It's a team game, if everyone lifts one percent it can make a huge difference.

Grundy is clearly a very different ruckman and our mids need to understand and play to his strengths.

All of the above??

Not looking good, gee we look hopeless without Maxy.

Might want to start building his Melbourne property portfolio 😉

We do still need another ruck though if Max were to go down for an extended time with injury.

I wish the dees could have a perpetual premiership window like the Cats seem to have...that would be nice!!

I'm not enamoured with Max playing even more time forward. Yes he will take contested marks etc., but he also sprays it all over the place. I assume Max, Goody and the rest of the coaching team have faith that they can correct his goal kicking technique and improve his goal percentage from set shots.

Absolutely Mono, we have asked for two top 10's, which is fair compensation. I guess we will work the anchors to achieve that. Whether they have the capital to deliver, is a different matter.

...unless they trade out 20 and a player for another top 10 pick, but yeah, the Dees will try to get Jacko to his preferred destination.

I reckon the Dees would be happy to relieve the dogs of this glut of forwards.

Sounds as though they've lowballed a few players on salary. Not only are the expectations on Dogga massive due to his salary, but he may need to win a few team mates over. [censored] that's a lot of pressure on a young bloke.

Yes, the low ball into F50 caused so many issues for us! Obviously this reduced intercept marks and we weren't then able to transition as quickly as a result. Despite the low entries, I think our tall defenders still did a great job getting the ball to ground, Petty, May and to a lesser extent Lever did this really well. I thought the clean clearance and hitting targets when exiting defensive 50 was our biggest issue. We were 'Out Melbourned' so often with teams getting repeat entries, particularly in second halves. I'm not sure if that is a system or personnel issue, but I agree, we need to clean this up for next year.

Yeah, maybe this is the issue. Unfortunately, Brodie seems to have similar issues. Ultimately we all end up speculating with imperfect information in these matters.

...or having one of our forwards ruck and having Gawn and/or Grundy marking outside 50 for repeat entries.

Given SG has stated a couple of times that he likes Max as a forward, this may be the future for us. Max playing forward and Grundy rucking around the ground. I don't particularly like it but we need to bring in another ruck should Max goes down with injury. We couldn't have Weid rucking full time week in, week out for too long.

Yep, I far prefer Max staying outside the 50 and mopping up any exit kicks from the opposition rather than being the target inside 50.

Yep, exactly...so the method of entry and general forward strategy needs to change. We're not playing to his [censored] strengths or the small classy forwards that could benefit from more space in the forward line.

Yeah great. My issue isn't with BBB, it's having a method of forward entries that doesn't allow our key forward to play to his strengths. I hope he gets plenty more kicks and we allow him to play to his potential, otherwise nothing will have changed.

...I don't understand why we recruited him then. If his forward craft is unsuited to our style, then why didn't we seek a player with the right attributes? Maybe with TMc in the side his role changes.

Yep, wouldn't necessarily change the result but it would hopefully build depth and experience in the footy club overall which is equally important.

I would prefer a top-shelf kpf than a ruck, but they seem to be in short supply.

Like others, I'm devastated by this result but I didn't hold high hopes of progressing. We looked like world beaters after the first 10 games but either didn't play top sides or played decent sides that were out of form (Dogs, Suns, Bombers, Port, Giants, Tigers, Hawks, Saints, Eagles, North). After this we really struggled and it's no coincidence that we started playing the better sides.