titan_uranus

2 hours ago, beelzebub said:

Phewwww... was worried about this game. All good , we've not a worry , what with being a top 8 team and all 🤔🙄

Let's not get too carried away having only accounted for the Toiges and the West.

Good to see us playing better. Very good to see us stay awake in the 4th !!

A fraud!! Lofty suspicions there.... and we're ridgy didge ???

Hopefully account for ourselves competently. Hopefully Milky is on the park.

Crossed fingers and toes 🤞

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.

16 minutes ago, whatwhat say what said:

22,500 ish

very similar to what we get against flagmantle

aints are a remarkably similar-sized club to our own, albeit with significant more $$s coming their way from head office

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.

8 hours ago, PaulRB said:

Saints playing an impressive version of the gamestyle Goody is trying to instill in us.

We play the Saints twice on way home, huge games to come.

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.

1 hour ago, William said:

In his first year at Casey, JVR was considered the next big thing for MFC. Like many players who do well at that level, he has failed in the next two seasons (and 45 senior games) to replicate that reserves form. So it is no surprise that he kicked a few last week - Richmond's reserves defense are so far below AFL standard that one should not extrapolate that performance into likely AFL outcomes. You will be disappointed if you do.

I am glad JVR is (currently) not playing tomorrow. He clogs the forward line with his poor running patterns, dropped marks, and slow ground level movements.

I know that is not a popular view but the data over many games bears it out.

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:

1. Round 8 - West Coast in Perth

2. Round 9 - Hawthorn at the MCG

3. Round 10 - Brisbane at the Gabba

4. Round 11 - Sydney at the MCG

5. Round 12 - St Kilda at Alice Springs

6. Round 13 - Collingwood at the MCG

7. Round 14 - Port Adelaide in Adelaide (6-day break vs Port on an 8-day break)

8. Round 15 - bye

9. Round 16 - Gold Coast on the Gold Coast

10. 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.

7 hours ago, KozzyCan said:

I really enjoy First Crack but not sure why Jay Clark is on it. It's supposed to be a post round game analysis show. Surely there are enough footy shows where journos give us their hot takes already.

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.

2 hours ago, Bring-Back-Powell said:

A massive danger game this weekend. West Coast have been alright the last fortnight and lead Essendon by 5 goals at home at one stage. They showed in 3 games last year in Perth (Vs Freo, Melbourne and Richmond) that when they click they can be quite unstoppable with their attacking style of footy and Jake Waterman dominating up front.

We essentially need to be 3 goals in front at 3 qtr time due to our inability to score in 4th quarters. We've kicked a total of 7 goals across all of our last quarters which is seriously concerning and the trend disappointingly continued last Thursday night when we had Richmond on toast early in the last quarter and looked to have killed their spirit.

A loss would be disappointing but from from surprising.

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.

6 hours ago, M_9 said:

Including the pre-season match v Freo and his round one game AJ has kicked 2.4. (1.2 each game). They're the figures I went with.

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

34 minutes ago, Lucifers Hero said:

Did we really take our foot off the pedal in the 4th?

We kicked 1.4 and they kicked 4.1. So we had our chances even without Gawn and May. We didn't kick straight, they did.

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.

13 minutes ago, JJJ said:

As Chin’s ultimate fanboy, the lack of recognition for that effort annoyed me.

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.

50 minutes ago, Macca said:

We played one really good quarter and 3 bog average quarters. Obviously needed a rev up at half time, which is a concern

Bowey & Salem kept us in the game until our stars decided to lift their intensity

We're going to have to do better than that to defeat the Eagles

I'm not sure we would have beaten too many teams last night

We can play so much better but it's a 4 quarter game. So we need to bring our best from the get-go

It's a win but unimpressive

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…

1 minute ago, Roost it far said:

Next test is Hawthorn in a fortnight. Need a good win against WC. Tempting to take Campbell across and rest Max as much as possible to have him cherry ripe for Meek. No VFL game again is poor timing. Fritsch is miles off it and I’d be trading him on current output. JVR or AJ, Turner and Melksham back in, Fullerton, Sharp and Fritsch out.

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.

Just now, Abyssal said:

Whilst there’s NO doubt Fullarton has had very little of the ball there’s also NO denying the following fact.

Van Rooyen Played 5 Lost 5

Fullarton Played 2 Won 2

Are you familiar with correlation vs causation?

8 hours ago, BLWNBA said:

Out: Tholstrup, Fullerton

In: Melksham (if fit), AJ

If Melksham isn’t available, Tholstrup gets another week.

*Obviously JVR ended the game with 5.2, but AJ’s five tackles along with his 3.5. I wouldn’t be totally opposed to the JVR selection, but I’m a big fan of the physicality that AJ has brought since going back to the VFL.

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.

7 hours ago, bing181 said:

Turner in releases Rivers to the midfield?

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.

9 hours ago, BLWNBA said:

Tholstrup - Pick not justified

Windsor - Disposals increasingly concerning

MFC - One good quarter

That’s the spirit!

8 hours ago, binman said:

No, I don't think so.

We won after all. And apparently our pressure rating in the third quarter was 237. That's nuts.

After that we were never going to lose that game in the last quarter.

How many games have we all seen where a team where has the game wrapped up with 20 minutes on the clock only to give up easy goals late

As a punter who often backs the over 39 Line ne for value I can tell you it happens ALOT - for me most recently the port hawks game (I backed port for the win and over 39)

Could we have gone up a gear in the last if needed - I think so.

Did we need to?

That's another discussion - but as frustrating as it was I understand why we might have put the cue in the rack.

Taking Gawn off was the right thing to doing my opinion.

And besides but for some inaccuracy and poor decisions we would have equalled their score in the last.

And whilst I take your point about young players its not as if we didn't have our fair share of first and second year players too (four).

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.

8 hours ago, Abyssal said:

As I have already ask you, does resting players justify the those remaining on the ground to 1. Put the que in the rack and 2. Butcher the ball and hitting their opponents on the chest with 25m kicks?

Also, what example does it set Lindsay, Langford, Windsor, Tholstrup ?

BTW, Richmond had less of a break than we did.

What we served up in the last quarter was no better than that in our 4 straight losses this year and numerous losses late last year.

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.

36 minutes ago, dazzledavey36 said:

Yeah I thought this was pretty telling. I still don't think that was the correct option by Langdon and he's lucky it came off.

Fritsch had a pretty decent gap between the defender behind him and the fact it would have suited his left side as well was why I thought it was a strange decision. They are the perfect lead up targets we've been screaming for.

Interestingly I thought Goodwin was a bit guarded in his response to Fritta in his press conference. It's pretty evident that simply kicking goals isn't the only thing that will keep him in the side.

Someone mentioned before the 0 tackles and 4 pressure acts. Think I heard May and Bower get interested after the game and they emphasised that pre game the biggest thing coming into last night's game was that our pressure had to be right up it certainly showed from a team perspective, but unfortunately for Fritsch, his lack of pressure is pretty concerning.

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.

Just now, binman said:

Spot on - though of course they were off a 5 day break too.

Big difference between us and them though is we had had a season high pressure rating in our last quarter and they completely stopped to a walk in their last quarter.

Big reason for resting maxy too no doubt.

In 2025 do people still not understand the impact of factors such as 5 day breaks and the playing in hot and/or humid conditions (not saying we played in the heat last week - though if you weren't there it was really hot tonight)?

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.