titan_uranus

We’re clearly not as good as Hawthorn. Doubt anyone is silly enough to suggest otherwise. But we do have a win over Fremantle, who have been good enough to beat the Dogs and Adelaide. That’s about the same level of quality as Hawthorn’s best win, which was vs GWS. FWIW I think we lose on Saturday, but if we bring our best pressure and contest work I’m confident we can stay in this game to the end.

A simple reminder of how far back we’re coming from: We have the equal best win streak in the competition (3 straight wins), but are still in the bottom 4.

So many on here thought we’d lose. I assume similar vibes were on the Gameday thread at half time. I hope those posters are happy. 15 minutes in the second aside, a strong performance in the areas we care about. And we won a last quarter! Obviously West Coast are historically bad, so that must be remembered, but from where we were three games ago, a 32 point win tonight is solid. Also, Max Gawn is the GOAT.

Crowd apparently was 20,522. We've only drawn a lower crowd at a Melbourne home game against Fremantle once in the last 12 years, and that was in 2019, when we got 20,211 (so just a few hundred less). None of our home games have been a prime time slot though.

Impressive? They played against a side who turned in one of the all time awful performances. Says more about Fremantle than St Kilda IMO. They lost their last two games by a combined 116 points.

It’s ok to have an opinion that JVR hasn’t developed well, but go ahead and show us the “data” you speak of.

Is May out confirmed?

I’m far from sold on the changes. Yet another different look forward of the ball. The worst second-ruck option yet, whoever it is. Have we all forgotten how awful Petty was at that last year? And why would we subject him to that when he seems to be building form as a forward? Meanwhile Turner plays back, right? Given his form down there against Freo was good? Or does he get put forward, where he’s been as underwhelming this year as JVR but JVR at least kicked 5 last week. And yeah I don’t know if our forward half really needs both Fritsch and Melksham in it. Fully support the Clarry decision though. It’s a sign of maturity from both the club and Clarry, IMO.

Nothing given away by Goodwin in his presser

The debate around resting Max and some of the kids late on Thursday was valid (although a few other sides seemed to get good leads and ease off, including the Dogs and Fremantle). But it's worth remembering how brutal our next 10 weeks is, as until recently I'd forgotten just how tough this stretch is: Round 8 - West Coast in Perth Round 9 - Hawthorn at the MCG Round 10 - Brisbane at the Gabba Round 11 - Sydney at the MCG Round 12 - St Kilda at Alice Springs Round 13 - Collingwood at the MCG Round 14 - Port Adelaide in Adelaide (6-day break vs Port on an 8-day break) Round 15 - bye Round 16 - Gold Coast on the Gold Coast Round 17 - Adelaide in Adelaide That's 6 out of 10 weeks on the road, with travel at least every second week. It also features games against the sides currently sitting 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th on the ladder (plus Sydney, who are 14th but we never play well against them). Of course, the trade off is that our first 7 games featured just a trip down the highway and a neutral Gather Round game, whilst our final 7 games are all in Melbourne. And yes, non-Victorian clubs do this for all 24 weeks, not just 10. Regardless, if we want to achieve anything in 2025, we have to navigate this 10 week block well. So it doesn't surprise me that we looked to give Gawn a break, nor will it surprise me if we see Campbell getting games as soon as this week.

Yeah he really brings the show down a few notches. It’s supposed to be analysis, which he doesn’t offer. Instead, he chimes in with “that’s damning footage” every time they show any footage of anyone stuffing anything up in an attempt to make it sound like a massive story. It of course then gets a run on the Fox or Herald Sun website the next day, so it works, but it annoys me.

They’ve won 2 quarters in 7 matches. It’s an equal record low. Your definition of “alright” is a loose one and I dare say no one on Demonland would use that word to describe us if we had won 2 of 28 quarters. We need to be switched on, because we’re nowhere near good enough to just bank a routine win, but West Coast are really not a good side so it will be close enough to disastrous if we lose, IMO.

He played Round 3 vs Gold Coast too though, so isn’t his average less than a goal a game?

I think we did, but only late. For the first 20 mins of the last, the sting was out of the game but it was still played more or less on our terms. We should have kicked 3-4 goals, not just 1.

I think it came afterwards. Trac, probably rightly, went to Gawn for releasing the handball to someone with more time and space rather than kicking it himself under pressure. Consistent with what I’m sure we’ve been drilling into the players the last 2 weeks. I’m confident I saw them then get around Chandler, although I might be mistaken.

I’m not sure about that, which is no real disagreement with the overall point that we’re still an average side. When we were 0-5, West Coast were statistically worse than us pretty much everywhere that matters. IIRC they’ve only won 2 of 3 quarters in their 6 matches. We can’t get complacent at all but even last night’s football should be enough. West Coast have so far this year been incredibly bad. Beyond that though…

Nope. Next test is next week vs West Coast. This team needs to play consistent pressure football to avoid flaming out to a bottom 4 finish. We don’t get to skip a week. If we lose to West Coast, the commentary on here during the 0-5 run will look tame by comparison to what we see next week.

Are you familiar with correlation vs causation?

One benefit of AJ over JVR is the ruckwork. A lot of what ifs for AJ if he had kicked better than 3.5 yesterdsy. As @dazzledavey36 has said, West Coast have a tall forward line so we may have no choice, but I reckon Rivers has found serious form the last two weeks in the backline so I’m not sure we now want to mess with that too much.

That’s the spirit!

I agree with most of this, having already posted to this effect. I was more taking issue with the significance you’ve attributed to our load management and 5 day break given Richmond had the same (even shorter) break with a younger squad. The last para is utter rubbish. The fourth quarter was frustrating but not even close to the tripe we served up in rounds 2-5. I reckon this was more about Langdon doing what he thought was the right thing (centring it), rather than ignoring the lead because it waa Fritsch. Langdon does it a lot. But yeah, the 0 tackles and 4 pressure acts can’t be good for Fritsch.

Isn't this overplaying things a bit given the respective breaks, and noting that they are playing a bunch of kids and we're playing a comparatively older/more seasoned team?

6 - Gawn 5 - Bowey 4 - Petracca 3 - Rivers 2 - Chandler 1 - Langdon

I'm far from a Spargo fan but he's been pretty good the last two games. Sharp offers very little other than pace and an aerobic tank, but the latter is redundant if he's only playing a quarter as sub. His skills are too poor to do much else. I like Culley and if we continue to struggle in the middle when we start playing better sides, I'd like to see him get a crack.