titan_uranus

Want to know what Tom Morris thinks? No? Fair enough. But anyway: Tom Morris’ massive trade update on 25 AFL players — SEN “Similarly, significant change is coming at Melbourne on and off the field. “Clayton Oliver’s huge salary works against him now if he wants to leave, which I believe he still does. There’s Bayley Fritsch and even Jake Lever there too. They’re two players to keep an eye on.”

I don’t watch Geelong as closely as us, obviously, but I’ve never thought Danger is a good set shot, or kick in general. If the data backs you up, fair enough, but I still think Trac can be an elite forward if we made a few really important list and coaching changes.

Ralphy (FWIW…) says no interest in Clarry:

Some tidbits here: https://www.theage.com.au/sport/afl/all-our-talk-is-there-and-then-we-don-t-do-it-gawn-delivers-damning-assessment-of-demons-20250728-p5mibh.html “Melbourne’s board has resolved to make whatever changes are necessary to return the club to the top of the ladder after the Demons’ stunning capitulation to St Kilda on Sunday... Football manager Alan Richardson did not attend Monday’s board meeting as he attended the club’s ultimately unsuccessful appeal against the three-game suspension handed to defender Steven May last week. The Demons have been expected to make significant changes to their football department at the end of this season. Goodwin is contracted for next season... As well as Goodwin, the board also heard from Darren Shand, the ex-All Blacks general manager who reviewed at Melbourne at the end of last year and has been consulting the club on culture and leadership since then.“

My current view is that Trac is good enough to help us with our next finals tilt. His age doesn’t bother me, he trains well and if Dangerfield can be an elite forward well into his 30s, Trac can too. Oliver is the one who IMO the club needs to consider moving on. I’m not confident he can get back to his best as he ages, his worst is worse than Trac, he takes a lot of off field effort to manage and keep in line, and he is taking more of the salary cap. So if we are to move on from one, IMO it should be Oliver and not Trac.

And this is not new. This has persisted for years. The best example is the Carlton semi final. Viney, again, panicked in that fateful final play with his hacked kick forward which landed with Weitering. Our leaders are terrible at sensing how to win and knowing what to do. That is a shared failure between themselves and the coaches. The longer it has persisted, the more of a coaching failure it has become.

When was our prior 6-6-6 infringement? We must have already had the warning. And what precisely was the final infringement?

I'd agree, if I felt like this would spark a response from Goodwin, the FD or the senior players. I'm just not at all confident it will.

Since the Sydney win, when we clawed our way back to 5-6, we're 1-7. Scarily, only three of those 8 games have been against top 8 sides (Collingwood, GC and Adelaide). And they would all be in our four best performances in that 8 week period. The other 5 games were the North win, and then losses to St Kilda twice, Port Adelaide and Carlton. Our fixture this year gave us 10 games against the other 7 members of the bottom 8. We are currently 3-6 in those games, with West Coast to come again next week. Even assuming we beat West Coast, we'll finish 4-6 against the bottom 8. Appalling.

Green bristled in those early-season interviews where he was called an interim president. Well, if he disagrees with that title, he can demonstrate it in the next few weeks.

Hardly the reason we lost though. Whoever the sub was, they weren't going to fix the catastrophic failure through the midfield and across our "leaders" to arrest the momentum or take ownership of the game. FWIW there's no world in which Spargo should ever be the sub, and IMO he shouldn't be anywhere near the 23 anyway, but focusing on the sub selection today is really not at all important.

Gawn should know better, I agree. But he's been coached this way. When the going gets tough, Goodwin has always wanted us to take territory. It's been ingrained in us since at least 2020. So when under pressure, Gawn does what's been coached into him to the point of instinct - he belts it/hacks it/moves it forward. It's not the right play. He should know better. But his coaches should be helping him, and the rest of the side, realise this.

This might all be true but we never should have been in a position where we could have lost. The way we fell apart from 46 points up is a far more significant embarrassment than the final minute, as bad as it was. And not that any of this really matters, but this is another loss where: we "won" on expected score; we had more scoring shots; we had more inside 50s; we lost by under 10 points (that's 0-3 in such games this year, after 3-4 last year and 4-6 the year before. A combined 7-13 since 2023); inaccuracy plagued us (6.2 in the first quarter, then 7.10 for the rest)

The fourth quarter was all between the ears. But we faded late in the other quarters too. We were older and more experienced than St Kilda today. We haven't had our fitness right all year.

I'm not that shocked you went here as your first reaction, but it's still rather striking. Presumably, as you almost always do, you think that our loss today is down in part to our inexperience, and/or our younger players fading? That certainly seems implicit in this post, noting the struggles of two younger players whilst bemoaning the absence of two older/experienced players. Yet the reality is, St Kilda today was on average younger and less experienced than us. So whilst we didn't have Lever or May, we did have in our backline TMac (245 games) and Salem (195 games), whilst in our midfield (where almost all of our losses stem from) we had Gawn (243), Viney (233), Trac (208), Oliver (201) and Langdon (198). Also remember that other than TMac, who was dropped but has nevertheless been fit and available all season, the rest of those 7 players I've just mentioned have missed a combined 6 games all year (Viney's missed 5 and Oliver 1). Turning straight to our two missing defenders to attempt to explain what happened today is really not it.

I want Goodwin and our players to be embarrassed by this. I just don’t have any confidence they will be.

The enormity of what we “achieved” today must not be minimised. Of course we yet again [censored] up a close finish. The final 2 minutes are a checklist of how to embarrass yourself in losing a close game from in front. But to be in that situation at all, or even anything close to it, took such a unique and rarely seen level of disgrace that it has to be properly acknowledged. When it comes as the 27th loss out of our last 44 games, with membership spiralling, with formerly elite players floundering, with no leadership on the field, it cannot be tolerated.

Somehow, despite everything in this club’s history, this is the lowest point. The stench around the club that we tried to mask with the scent of “love” in the pre-season is stronger than ever. I’m [censored] sick of being embarrassed. I’m [censored] sick of being angry. Sticking fat with the same coach, and same players, doing the same things week after week, has ground this club into the irrelevant dirt. We are a laughable embarrassment, and I’m so [censored] sick of it.

Grundy's in great form now, but was pretty poor pre-bye. Only half a season of good football. Gawn's had the better season, IMO by far.

Trac's got a game high 8 inside 50s and 7 score involvements, and 2nd most metres gained (only NWM has more).

I see you haven't met @bluey yet. For the record, he/she is both.

Yeah their list is IMO incomparable with our 2012-13 list. We had guys like Terlich and Matt Jones at the top of our B&F. They have an AA full forward, an AA-quality ruckman, a future AA player in Sheezel, and good enough talent in Curtis, Zurhaar, LDU, Simpkin, O'Sullivan, McKercher and Powell. They've had an odd season. Started 1-5 with some horrible losses. Then had an 8-game stretch where they won three games, drew with Brisbane, pushed Collingwood for 3 quarters and lost to Port, Essendon and Fremantle by under 10 points. Then have lost their last 5 games by no fewer than 31 points, including losses by 85 and 101.

Just wanted to find somewhere to post this. In our 41 games since Opening Round last year, we are a combined 13-28 in first quarters. We are behind at quarter time in more than two-thirds of our games. Surely there's a link between constantly having to play catch-up footy and our poor forward half connection - harder to be composed, or calm, or confident, when we're always giving opponents a scoreboard head start. We've only had two matches this year where we've kicked more than 3 goals in the first quarter - Round 3 v North (4.5) and Round 7 v Fremantle (6.1) By contrast, we've had 7 matches this year where we've kicked 2 or fewer goals in the first quarter. The only one of them we've won was v West Coast (2.2 to their 0.5) We only had 6 matches in 2024 where we kicked more than 3 goals in the first quarter. We won all bar one of them (GWS, where we kicked 5.5 to their 1.2) We had 13 matches in 2024 where we kicked 2 or fewer goals in the first quarter. We only won two of them (Adelaide in Round 5 and Richmond in Round 8 - both bottom 4 sides last year)

"Likely in heavy training blocks". Crows "ran all over us and we could not stop them". FFS the revisionism on here is so tiresome. Can't we just acknowledge that at times this year we've actually played good footy? Do we have to try to downplay anything that went well this year just to suit a broader anti-Goodwin or pro-major change narrative? There's nothing at all wrong with saying "yep, we played great in those games, but the inconsistency which has seen us also lose to St Kilda, North, Essendon and Carlton more than outweighs those good games, and means it's dangerous to assume we're close to being good again"? FWIW, Adelaide has one loss at home all year, which was to Geelong in Round 5. The closest anyone else has come is Brisbane (5 point loss). We're second closest, with a 13 point loss. Their score of 90 against us was their only score in the last month which is less than 100 (which includes games vs the Dogs at Marvel and Gold Coast, who themselves are in form). And they only outscored us in the second half by 3 scoring shots and 3 goals (8.4 to our 5.4).

Our loss to North was bad, but it was also four months ago now. We beat them two months ago. The relevance of tonight's game is zero.