Boots and all

I'm waiting for the impossible hanger attempts now.

Won't be better. I can guarantee. There's a reason he isn't on at the start when the heat is on. Soft as half-melted butter.

Are you up and at em, yet Dub Dee 🤣

I think it will be fine. It's not as though we always dominate clearances when Max rucks. Tackling will be critical though assuming that the baggers get first hands on the ball.

McDonald may be better for the run and has better forward craft than Grundy. It was probably a toss of the coin.

It is a conundrum and of course there is no silver bullet. The strategy worked in 2021, so it obviously has merit. But teams will inevitably adapt and you need to modify your own game to counter. I don't believe it needs a dramatic shift either, just a few select players drawing their opponent to a certain area of the F50 to create space, I'm not suggesting a reincarnation of Pagan's Paddock (for those born well before 2000 😉). Thinking further, I think it is execution that results in the strategy being less effective. The blind long bomb from the middle of a pack is fruitless and regularly ends up with an uncontested mark. Max had huge game against the Filth, but he was the primary culprit. One or two handballs and then you are at least in a position to kick to advantage. The other problem I have is players kicking long into the 50 from too far out and landing the ball 35-40 m from goal. IMV long kicks into a crowded 50 need to be deep, landing 20-25 m from goal. Most players can't snap cleanly under pressure from 35-40, especially with tired legs, and thus scoring dries up. Which leads to our other issue. The strategy is heavily reliant on small forwards working their butts off to get front and centre and then working hard defensively to keep the ball locked in. With repeat entries something has to give and if these two things don't happen our defence can get opened up on the rebound. I'm sure Goody still has a trick or two up his sleeve...at least I hope so.

I don't particularly like either approach and I'm certainly not a fan of ground balls into the 50. I maintain that we play our best footy with a more open forward line that allows us to hit targets.

Chaos ball, as the [censored], BT refers to it.

Quite frankly we have poor starts in a lot of games, not just those on the big stage.

I think our forwards need to play a bit smarter sometimes. Rather than attempting and mostly failing to clunk marks, helping the ball on its way to Kossie at the back of the pack could be just as effective.

TMac has to stay in, we do not have an alternative. Grundy has to come in too, even if he plays predominantly in the ruck and Gawn plays forward a little more. There is no way that we can go in with TMac as the only tall forward....or can we?

Yeah, it probably wouldn’t get a mention Sydee, I still think he'll get a week. I'm not saying it's right, fair or otherwise. There wasn't much in it but the elbow did rise slightly before contact.

This, with Grundy.

I was really surprised Elliot missed those shots they were absolute gimme's. We could have been down by a lot more at quarter time.

His elbow seemed to clip his jaw on the replay. I'll be surprised if he doesn't get a week.

I think it has to be Grundy too through lack of options. Schache doesn't have it in him and BBB is pretty much done.

JVR has come on in leaps and bounds this year imv. He is starting to take a few more marks. He will be ready with another pre-season.

He could easily have put his hands out in front to minimise the impact for mine and I think that would have been the better action.

It will be either get off or 3+ weeks. It should be the latter....but AFL!!

Agree. But we did that long bomb so many times to no avail. JVR and Smith awere bringing the ball to ground but we often didn't have anyone front and centre. Kossie was waiting out the back a fair bit but where was Chandler?

Could you imagine that game without Max? It would have been messy, he was huge tonight.

Jumping forward like that didn't make sense unless he was trying to make contact. I'd have to look again but I don't think he was near smothering that kick.

He jumped forward more than you usually see toward Gus and then turned his shoulder. I think others would have done that very differently.

Pretty bloody difficult coming into a final with that heat and so little experience.

It's a guess DD, it might be [censored]. All I know is that he was out cold and he's had longish periods out of the game with concussion related injury.