titan_uranus

Depends who you ask. Some say Geelong wants all 11 home games in Geelong but the AFL doesn’t want 30,000+ missing out on tickets to games featuring Collingwood, Carlton, Essendon etc. Some say Geelong wants the two MCG home games to maximise its number of games on the G each year (ie irrespective of money). That answer (Ess/Carl playing more at the G) is not a viable one for so long as there is a minimum game requirement at Marvel per season, nor is it one I want to see. If they get more home games there, others have to fill the void with home games at Marvel. Richmond, Hawthorn and Collingwood all have them already. We’d be next.

It's not necessarily true that in 2024 Petty is a higher quality back than TMac. It's also not necessarily true that in 2024 TMac is a level above Petty as a forward. But what's clear to me is that TMac has been part of our yet-again-competition-leading elite defence for the last 6 games. It's not worth disrupting just to try to get Petty more into the game.

As to Schache, yes we can. We’ve seen enough of him at senior level to know he’s not the answer. As to Fullarton, we need to see more at VFL level. If he keeps up his recent form and Petty doesn’t improve, then sure, the pressure will come.

Port was +21 CPs, +38 disposals yet +28 tackles, +7 inside 50s and +10 scoring shots. All while having half their side play the entire 4th quarter because they had no bench. I don’t see “umpiring gifted Port”. I see Port being too good and St Kilda wasting a golden opportunity.

I can indeed do better. They’ve won 3 of the last 4 against us. But we’ve played them so much of late, that only goes back to September 2022. We won the four games in a row prior to that, including belting them in the last game of 2022 (their last loss at the Gabba until Opening Round this year). So there aren’t really “issues” over “a number of seasons”. 1-1 in 2023, 2-1 in 2022. 0-1 so far in 2024 but let’s see how we go in the return game when we’re (hopefully) not on a 5-day break straight after a fortnight interstate.

Put the umpiring to one side, Port have no one on the bench and St Kilda still couldn’t get anything going. Hate them or not, Port deserve that win.

He's not playing well but I think there are good enough reasons for it to warrant persisting longer. He is a confidence player but is at I think 1.5 from set shots. I suspect if he had nailed a few more of his set shots earlier, he'd be feeling better about himself. He also isn't fit enough but I suspect the FD think he'll get that fitness just as quickly in the seniors than anywhere else. I can't deal with the "swap TMac and Petty" stuff though. TMac's looked great in the backline so far this year and looked awful in the forward line last year. Robbing Peter to (potentially) pay Paul isn't the answer.

A bit like how I opened this thread thinking it was about the best all-in team effort we've had during a quarter of any match so far, that is precisely how your earlier post read.

Correct. All intentional strikes should be a minimum week. It is as disgraceful an aspect to the MRO box-ticking system as there is.

This probably belongs in the Stats File thread, but great find. Not only are we 1 at defending clearance, we're 2 at attacking from clearance. So, whilst our raw clearance winning numbers are down, we make the most of them without being punished the other way. We're not being outscored in the stoppage game whilst having spent the first 7 weeks of the year working hard on our turnover game (which needs more work, given we're still only 11th for scoring from intercept which puts us behind all of the better sides in it and, weirdly enough, also behind North and Hawthorn).

Let's see how that compares with the other sides who came into this round with winning records (and prior to the three games so far): Geelong has beaten St Kilda (2-4), Adelaide (1-5), Hawthorn (1-5), Bulldogs (3-3), North (0-6) and Brisbane (2-4) GWS has beaten Collingwood (3-3), North (0-6), West Coast (2-4), GC (3-3), St Kilda (2-4) and Brisbane (2-4). Lost to Carlton (5-1) Carlton has beaten Brisbane (2-4), Richmond (1-5), North (0-6), Fremantle (3-3) and GWS (5-1) but lost to Adelaide (1-5) Sydney has beaten us (4-2), Collingwood (3-3), Essendon (4-2), West Coast (2-4) and GC (3-3) but lost to Richmond (1-5) Port has beaten West Coast (2-4), Richmond (1-5), Essendon (4-2), Fremantle (3-3) but lost to us (4-2) and Collingwood (3-3) Essendon had beaten Hawthorn (1-5), St Kilda (2-4), Bulldogs (3-3) and Adelaide (1-5) but lost to Sydney (5-1) and Port (4-2) We had beaten the Bulldogs (3-3), Hawthorn (1-5), Port (4-2) and Adelaide (1-5) but lost to Sydney (5-1) and Brisbane (2-4). Of these 7 sides, three of them came into this round without a win over one of the others on this list (Geelong, GWS, Essendon). Port, us and Carlton all had one, whilst Sydney has two. So only Sydney, of these sides, had done better against the good sides than us. Travel-wise, we had played 3 interstate games. That's the same as Geelong, GWS, Sydney and Essendon, and one more road game than Port and Carlton. As for the losses, yes, people are upset that we lost to Brisbane who otherwise suck. But Carlton and Sydney have lost to sides with worse W-L records so we're not alone in dropping a game to a weaker side, either.

"They still own the MFC"? What, because of their *checks notes* one consecutive win against us? FFS, if that's an "owning" what the [censored] was what Hawthorn, Geelong and North Melbourne used to have over us? (PS do we now "own" Richmond, having won five in a row?)

I get the natural reaction to Brisbane's loss is the SWYL style "what an embarrassment". Every year we get to a point where we get the "circle of parity", whereby you can say "A beat B, but B beat C, but C beat D" and get all the way back to where you started. Last year Collingwood lost to Hawthorn a month before finals, Brisbane (2nd) lost to Hawthorn and also lost to Gold Coast (another bottom 4 side) a month before finals. Yes, we lost to Brisbane, badly, but they love playing us, they would have steeled themselves for the game, and despite their poor start to the year the talent on their list is obvious. And that's before we get to the fixture lead-in to the game, whatever that was/wasn't worth. It's frustrating, but not embarrassing.

I agree with most of this. It's precisely why I don't need to see us out in front of the competition in CP/clearance-related stats. I do, though, think the balance is out a bit and we're conceding too much territory. I'll defer to the stats, although I prefer @old55's use of turnovers as opposed to DE. I think TMac's role with ball in hand this year has been modest but as we continue to cover for Salem and Bowey's absences he's going to be part of transition more and if that's the case, I'd be quietly confident his DE stat will drop and his turnover rate will rise.

Once you acknowledge the bolded bit, I'm not quite sure I understand most of the rest of the post. Yes, we are no longer dominating CPs and clearances like we did in 2021-23. Why are you then rhetorically bemoaning this? We have spent the past two years dominating CPs, clearances and time in forward half only to go 0-4 in finals. Very few people, if any, responded to that with "it's OK, let's just do it all again in 2024". We have made concerted attempts to lower our reliance on stoppage scoring and increase our reliance on turnover scoring. It's therefore no wonder that we're down in those stats you've mentioned. Don't get me wrong, I'm not quite at the @binman opposite end of the spectrum. IMO we're conceding too much territory to our opponents and spending too much time in our back half. We're clearly still elite at our back half defence and intercept game, and we're more likely to go all the way if we are reliably good at scoring off turnover than off stoppage. But IMO in our desire to shift the balance away from stoppage and towards turnover (or away from scores from front half and towards scores from back half), we've overbalanced. As has been mentioned so far, it doesn't help that we're down Bowey and Salem (and, from pre-season planning, Brayshaw) and have found ourselves with TMac (a terrible field kick) doing so well in most other parts of the game to warrant a spot in the backline.

The one rider I’ll put on Brisbane is that they have had a relatively brutal fixture. GWS, Geelong, Carlton, Collingwood, us, Fremantle (away), North. Their next month is GC, Adel, Rich, Haw. If they can’t go 3-1 or 4-0, then I’ll be happy to say they’re done.

It’s an interesting article and no doubt right up your alley, but on the bolded bit I don’t think that is right, Richmond had the bye last week too. Plus at any rate the “away” factor for us wouldn’t apply as much in an MCG game against Richmond.

I don’t think any of this is right. Last night wasn’t a case of being switched off or lacking hunger. It was simply a case of us committing terrible turnovers by foot.

I don’t know much about Andrew Wu it his views on us but this reads like it’s laced with disrespect. Never mind that it’s Caleb, not “Jacob Windsor”, or that our ability to score in 2021 wasn’t confined to just the last two finals. He writes about Turner kicking goals as if it’s a bad thing, that it reeks of desperation. If it were Geelong who had found 3 goals from a kid, what’s the bet the commentary would be “they’ve found another one, how do they do it?!”. And the gratuitous reference to “smoking them” at the end, when the article has nothing to do with May, or Collingwood, or anything related to that story, just to me feels like disrespect. End rant.

A reminder that despite being tagged and clearly not being at his best, Trac still had a game-high 7 score involvements.

6 - Gawn 5 - May 4 - Lever 3 - Langdon 2 - Turner 1 - Rivers

The first half turnovers were awful. At one point I thought there was a jumper clash, we were kicking it straight to them. But if it wasn’t for the turnovers they otherwise barely troubled us. Fewer second half turnovers saw us blow the game open. I get the whole “play like that next week and we get destroyed” thing. It’s obviously true. But I’ll bet we won’t play like that next week. How often have we found these ANZAC Eve clashes to be tight, scrappy and contested early on? Feels like most years. The Geelong game isn’t going to look like that. Plus I’d account for us taking a bit of time to adjust after the bye. The backline is going gangbusters. Windsor’s turnovers aside, he’s doing so much right off the ball. Contrary to some on here, I liked Howes’ game and feel like he is reliably holding down a role without fuss. Turner could be a revelation. I noticed that Trac, Oliver and Viney all had around 76% TOG. Something feels up with their fitness - whether they’re injured, “loading” (shudder), or we’re deliberately resting them more in game. But it’s a bit weird. Woey was poor, sadly, and we barely gave Laurie a look. But I’m far more concerned about Petty and, to a lesser extent, Sparrow. Looking forward to how we follow this up next week.

I’m not 100% sold on Turner for Brown but I’m happy to back him and the FD in to try it. Perhaps trying for a more defensive forward sort of role, the sort we might be using Melksham in if he were available. Tholstrup out a sad but correct call IMO. Just not quite ready yet. He’ll be back. I’m very, very unsure that Laurie is now or will ever be good enough at AFL level but I understand the importance of rewarding VFL form and with Salem out, we needed another runner (whether starting 22 or as sub) so he earnt it.

This feels like recency bias. We lost our most recent game whilst sides like Carlton and Collingwood won, so it feels like we’re sliding. Go back two weeks to find Collingwood a kick off losing to Hawthorn, Carlton an umpires’ decision off losing to Fremantle (who just lost to West Coast), and Sydney losing to Richmond. We’re two games clear of Brisbane who are winless at home. We’re one game behind two sides who have looked amazing in Carlton and GWS. And we’ve done that despite having had 50% of our matches to date interstate (we’re not the only ones in that camp but it’s equally not like we’ve had some dream fixture run so far). On the first six games’ evidence I don’t think the conclusion is that we can’t match the top 5 sides. I think it’s that we’re still very much in that group.