Wiseblood

I thought you might. How could you not love ding?

Hey Steve. Serious question here. Does it annoy you that, when you post, your name is so long at the 'n' ends up on it's own line? Feel like for someone like you it would be extremely frustrating.

I love you too, ding. And I wouldn't call it retirement. I'd classify it as a self imposed holiday. Done wonders for the mental state of supporting the side. You should try it sometime.

Keep on keeping on, Demonland.

Harry Petty > Tony Lockett. Fair effort given the form the Dogs are in and the outs that we have. You can see the potential in our side, we just need to get the cattle on the park at the same time. It will happen. Someday. Watch us roll the Weagles up in Alice next week when Petty kicks 9 on McGovern.

Ha ha, I wouldn't go that far my friend. It's nice to pop back in, and nice to know I've been missed, but a quick scan of this thread is all the evidence I need as to why I didn't log in for a month. I'll be around, though. Hope you, and everyone else, is well. ?

I love footy. I still love all of you. I'll be back another day, but don't be a [censored] - just enjoy a win. No matter how bad it is. I'd rather a W than an L. Cheers.

Why waste my time? I've found that I've enjoyed the football far more from week to week, regardless of the outcome, since I stepped away from here. Best decision I've made in a long time. Cheers.

Probably. But I don't give a stuff.

Of course we can still make it. Until we can't mathematically do so, then I'll continue to give us a chance. And anything can happen in finals. I would still expect the club to be thinking long term around what has happened in the first six rounds, how we fix it, what players we might need to draft/trade for and beyond, but I still believe we have a side that can get a run on and sneak in. There are no standout sides, and clubs like St. Kilda and Gold Coast won't keep winning games and sticking around the pack. We can overtake those sides.

Sorry to get this thread going again, but I thought it was the most appropriate place to put it. I got the opportunity yesterday to speak with the friend of mine within the McCartney family. It's the only contact I have in terms of knowing anything from within the club, so I tread carefully in asking a few questions. The main thing I got out of it was that the McCartney/Goodwin 'feud' is rubbish. They are pretty disappointed and annoyed at Tom Morris, who is either making the stuff up or has horrible contacts. The day that story broke Goody and Macca had already spoken numerous times during the day, and that has occurred for the entire pre-season and the first six rounds of this season. Both of them are on the same page, as are the coaches. There is absolutely nothing to those rumours. The second thing I asked was around our start to the year. I didn't get anything hugely specific, but it's been a heap of mitigating factors that we have discussed on here - the off season surgeries, a few players not coming back fit enough (I got no names, nor did I press for them, but I was also given the impression that these players did not come back 'unfit', they just could have done more over their break) and teams adjusting to our game style and us not making changes quick enough. So plenty for the club to work on, no doubt about it, and we're learning it the hard way. But one thing is for certain - Tom Morris is an A grade [censored].

Yeah. Nah.

I thought Lewis was pretty good on the weekend. Played on Caddy for most of it and kept him pretty quiet. He still has a role to play this year. No doubt he will probably retire at season's end, but it won't happen this weekend. Happy for him to move in to an assistant coaches role for 2020 and beyond.

I think a few days away from the club might not be a bad thing at all.

It was - in Round 1! Classic Melbourne.

He sure did. Completely missed it. Cheers!

I'll be interested to see if anything happens to Riewoldt and his 'chicken wing' on Fritsch.

He's next on my ignore list. Happy for people to have differing views when they take a few minutes to present it in a constructive manner. This bloke just badgers you like a five year old. Not worth your time.

The difference between 06 and now is that we were incredibly 'top heavy' with our best players - they were all beginning to head for the twilight of their careers and we didn't have a whole lot of quality waiting in the wings. We have the opposite here. Our best players have all pretty much played around or under 100 games, so there is still plenty of improvement to come.

Two of the players mentioned - Stack and Gibbons - were not taken in either the AFL Draft or the Rookie Draft. They were supplementary selections. If they were taken not long after our picks in the Draft, then you have a point. We aren't taking blokes that high, or even that late, in the draft. Gibbons is lucky to even be on a list to be honest. Parker is a medium forward, Hind can't even get a run in the seniors and Ross, who has shown a bit, plays a relatively similar game to Sparrow. So we didn't 'miss out' on anyone.

Well that's why we recruited them. I'll look at how it pans out long term, you can cry into your coffee about it now. Again, who should we have taken other than Sparrow? Only a handful of players picked after him have played senior footy this year, and none I would class as having 'pace'.

It's a fair point DZ, and I know @Redleg will be nodding along vigorously. But when we think about our drafting over the last couple of years, what has been the area we have been crying out to fix? Our key defensive stocks. I don't think as a supporter base that we can deny that. So we went out and fixed it with May and Lever. From there, I think we have tried to add a little pace and run (Baker and Bedford come to mind, as well as KK) with the picks we've had. I know some are already bemoaning the pick of Sparrow, which is harsh on a kid in his first year, but who are the players picked after him in the draft that we should of targeted? Not many have come into their respective sides, let alone brought blistering pace. I think we will continue to address the issue, but we went out and sorted some other areas before that, which is understandable.

I often wonder why some on here still support the club. They waffle on about putting up with it for X amount of years, like it's some sort of badge of honour. You almost expect them to be walking in the ANZAC Day parade, wearing old membership pins and beanies from the 70s so people can clap them and thank them for their efforts.

I tend to disagree on that. I think it would be much easier to plug those gaps if the players who are available were doing what is expected of them. Horror form and not being fit enough means Weid, Tom Mac, Spargo etc aren't even close to providing what we need out of them, and that hurts across the board. I would agree that Trac does need to step up a little, no doubt about that. Also, if you look at last night, we took one of our most damaging forwards in Melksham and had him run through the middle for most of the night. It was a good move in my book as I thought he gave us some real drive through the middle, but it also took another link in the chain away from the half forward line. And also, guys who might plug the gaps, like a Joel Smith or a JKH, are injured as well. Depth only goes so far, and there is a reason that some of the guys we have coming in are depth players and not best 22.

I had a chance this morning to back and flick through some of the highlights from the Geelong and Hawthorn finals, as well as our games against GWS and West Coast. It was nice to see us playing good footy, but I was more interested in how we went forward of centre. And what made us so good in those games is all out of whack so far in 2019. One of our most important players in that span was Mitch Hannan. Go back and look at the footage - he is either kicking goals for us, or he is an important link in the chain. He hasn't played a single second for us this season. What about AVB? His crunching tackles, pressure around the footy and the ability to slip into the midfield is greatly missed. He also has a knack of getting himself into good positions to win the footy and hit the scoreboard. He hasn't played a minute this season. We know where we are at with Tom McDonald and Weideman. Tom looks like a bloke who couldn't be further out of form if he tried, and having off season surgery again makes him look as though he is only 70% fit at best. In those games above he was clunking marks and kicking goals in each of them. We don't have that now. Weideman is a young kid well down on confidence and form, and he is contributing next to nothing for us at the moment due to that. He is running under the footy a bit and it feels like he is almost clunking marks, but he drops most of them. We know how good he was in both finals, but he looks a mile off it at the moment. Another one who flies under the radar in those games is Spargo. Again, footage from those games has him very much involved in a large chunk of our goals. He is either winning some 50/50 balls and dishing off to set up goals, or he is nabbing a few himself. He is another young kid way down on form. From those games, you can also make a correlation to how fit we are and how hard we are running. You can see the midfielders working hard to support each other and to run both ways. We probably sustained it for more periods last night than in any of our other games, but with off season surgeries and possibly some players not putting in the hard yards, we are still playing catch up in this regard. We just can't keep up with a quality team like Richmond. What it amounts to is a midfield that is constantly under pressure, and when we deliver the ball forward we are either missing some vital cogs or kicking it to players who have zero confidence. The outcome is very much what you saw last night and the week before. We can't hit the scoreboard and we can't connect well enough through the midfield and the forward line to fix it. For me, this will be a hugely disappointing season, but this is not the end of the world. I'm not looking at this list like I would have in 2013 and gone 'bloody hell, where is the improvement going to come from?'. I'm looking at a list that is learning some extremely harsh lessons, ones that will hopefully bruise our ego a little and get us to sit up and take notice. They crapped on last night about the Tigers having the five youngest players, but the fact still remains that we still have a young list, one that is being exposed in a big way. I am confident with the talent we have in place, and the changes that may come in the off season to the coaching and fitness staff, that this season will be the anomaly and that we can well and truly improve in the coming weeks, months and years. This just might be the season we had to have to get there.