titan_uranus

Huge opportunity this week with Fremantle and Carlton both losing. But also major pressure with Brisbane, Collingwood and Sydney all winning. Which is going to be the case each week for the rest of the year. I disagree. They’ve heavily relied on luck to go 7-1 in close games. 5 of those close games have been bottom six sides. That luck, history tells us, cannot last, and to win the flag they’re going to have to beat 3-4 top 8 sides in a row. Takes much more than luck.

There are few guarantees in life, but I reckon it's a dead set certainty that if it was us winning these close games against bottom six sides, you would be writing us off entirely as fluking it. Yet Collingwood does it and they are a chance to win the flag.

Sigh. They're 7-1 now in games decided by under two goals. I would love to know if there has ever been a side sit this high on the ladder this late into a season with a percentage of 106.2%.

I let myself get too excited by North last week, I'm not letting that happen again today with Adelaide. Fully assuming Collingwood pull yet another close win out of their rear ends. Winning close games is a bit of a skill, no doubt, but it's also a lot of luck. They're already 6-1 in close games this year, and IMO are in the conversation for having the least impressive "best" football for a top 4 contender I've ever seen. Their best football doesn't get close to us, Geelong, Fremantle, Carlton, Brisbane, or even Sydney, Richmond or the Dogs. But they keep games close with effort and they hold their nerve late.

And then the following week we get a second consecutive 6 day break, whilst Fremantle get 7.

But is this the right move? Without picking another tall forward, can we afford to not play Trac predominantly forward?

In: Melksham, Tomlinson, Rivers Out: Oliver, Petty, Bowey Cue outrage.

Duplicate.

To be fair, Lycett is pretty much the only player missing from their best side (I'm not sure Fantasia is best 22 these days). Against the current top 8 they are 1-6, but their most recent games were an 8 point loss to Fremantle in Perth, a win over Sydney, and a 12 point loss to Richmond at the G. Post-bye they have been better than they were pre-bye. Having said that, they are 2-5 in games out of Adelaide, with the two wins being a 1 point win over St Kilda in Cairns (in the scrappiest, low skilled game of the season) and a win over North. 6 of their 8 wins have been at the Adelaide Oval.

I don't get all the complaining, with the sole exception of Melksham being included. Tomlinson has to replace Petty. We don't have anyone else, with Smith injured, and we can't not take a third tall given they have Dixon, Marshall and (if he holds his spot) Georgiades. It's not exactly a shock that Dunstan's on the extended bench. The odds were always in favour of a like-for-like replacement for Oliver as opposed to moving Brayshaw up into his spot. Nevertheless, that's still an option, given both Rivers and Hunt are in the squad too. And it's not exactly a shock that Bowey's been dropped given his poor form. That's three changes. I personally would like to see a second tall forward and given the bench, that has to mean Weid comes in at the expense of Bedford. But given we already have three changes it may well be that the FD don't want a fourth. They've named Gawn at CHF and Pickett in the middle so maybe they are going to make some changes with the other members of the best 22.

This is a more pertinent topic. Post-bye we only play consecutive games in the same STATE, let alone venue, once (Rounds 21-22 at the G). Geelong, meanwhile, play more games in Geelong in the last 8 games than they do in their first 14. It feels like this happens every year. Our back half/third is loaded with travel and movement, whilst other clubs seem to get runs of games at home.

Seriously, a loss really brings out the worst in Demonland. Wearing the jumper in Sir Doug Nicholls Round, NAIDOC week and a game in the NT all make sense. If you want to complain, complain about our NT game not being scheduled in Sir Doug Nicholls Round or NAIDOC week. But remember of course that the jumper we wear has literally zero impact on our performance. Literally zero.

It's clearly both. We know Brown's failing to mark the ball too much (of those 8, I reckon 4 of them were vs Harris Andrews alone), and whether it's B Brown, M Brown, Weideman or Fritsch (pretty much everyone except TMac this year), our forwards are often in the wrong spot or, when in the right spot, get beaten. But we also know the kicking is poor. Everyone sees it every game. On Fox they've been showing from the Geelong game the footage of Fritsch streaming into the left-hand forward 50 (2nd quarter I think?), missing/ignoring a wide open Petracca and going longer and deeper to a non-advantageous contest. Then later, going to the right of screen, Petracca picks it up and kicks to a loose Geelong player when he had time to steady and at least target the one-on-one. How many times does our kick inside 50 go to the advantage of our opponent? i.e. into space beautifully, but the space on the opponents' side of the contest, not our forward's? I suspect more often than not that's the kicker's fault, but the entire process of moving the ball from the back half into our forward 50 is in need of work.

Whilst I appreciate you've put a lot of thought and research into your views on this, and your broader post, I have an issue with this bit. Surely before you start knocking people for disagreeing with you this year, you need to see that you are indeed correct this year, and therefore that we improve our fitness and start running all over our opponents in the last few weeks of the H&A season? If what you're arguing doesn't eventuate, then this sentence will sound a bit silly, won't it?

Agree re: Brisbane. Their three home games are GC, Carlton and us. Their three away games are GWS, Richmond and St Kilda. As I said above, not as hard as our run but not exactly easy, either. The other thing of importance is, if we do go 3-3, who we beat. If we go 3-3 but beat Carlton, Collingwood and Brisbane, each of those sides will need to either go 5-0 in their remaining games, or go 4-1 but pass us on percentage, to finish above us. If the Lions get back to their best they could close the 9% gap between them and us, but for Carlton and Collingwood who are 17 %and 27% back respectively, that's less likely. And given Carlton plays Collingwood and Carlton plays Brisbane, there are two losses right there.

Would love to hear what he had to say after we lost to the Dogs last year. I don't bet, but if I did I'd put money on him having said the same thing. The same Essendon who beat Sydney last week and St Kilda two weeks before that? As much as we might all hate to say it, and it's actually good news for us, but Essendon is in form right now. Brisbane had 9 changes from their side last week. There are few opponents right now who you could have that level of disruption and not be affected.

There are really only a few match ups you could have that you could be really confident of: North Melbourne, West Coast, GWS and probably Adelaide away from Adelaide. Even Hawthorn at times are a dangerous opponent. Whilst our fixture is harder than everyone else's, pretty much all of the finals/top 4 contenders have tricky runs home. Take Geelong for example, described by many to have one of the easier runs home. They have Carlton, Port (away), the Dogs, St Kilda, Gold Coast (away) and West Coast. The Dogs and Saints games are in Geelong which helps, but the two road trips plus Carlton at the G are not easy games at all. IMO we're closer to going 6-0 from here than we are to stumbling through 2-4 or something. Geelong made us look poor, but they are on top of the ladder for a reason and despite being off all night we were a Pickett snap off drawing level in the fourth quarter. Port are somewhat in form but haven't won away from the Adelaide Oval since Round 9, and that was against North. The Dogs are not in form at all, 3-3 over their last six with the three wins being against weaker sides in West Coast, GWS and Hawthorn. Carlton are hot/cold, haven't won consecutive games since Rounds 9-10. Collingwood are the luckiest 11-5 side I can remember and it's not likely their luck keeps going for another six weeks. We've already belted Brisbane once this year and we led Fremantle by 20 halfway through the third of a game in which injuries wreaked havoc on us. 3-3 from here is a fair chance to be enough for top 4, too: 3-3 gets us to 15 wins. Assuming we don't shed much percentage, given we're 17% clear of Carlton and 27% clear of Collingwood, there's a fair chance they'd have to get to 16 wins to pass us, which will mean one of them has to go 5-1 from here. Or Sydney would have to go 6-0.

The only justification I can think of is that Stevic thought the ball hit the Freo player's boot. To not pay that holding the ball otherwise is incredulous. He was right to call holding the ball on Hill straight after, and then the dissent on Butler was probably there, but seriously, there's little to no chance the ball hit the Freo player's foot and 999 times out of 1000 you'd just pay holding the ball and move on.

Depends if you're optimistic about our run home or pessimistic. If you're optimistic, you want St Kilda to win. Fremantle is a top 4 rival so we want to finish above them. If you're pessimistic, and you're worried about us making finals, you want Fremantle to win. Puts St Kilda three games behind us in the run to the top 8. If you're pessimistic you also want GWS to beat Port just to rule Port out (they'd be 5 games behind us with 6 to go).

They've had a very fortuitous season IMO. Beat Essendon by 11, Carlton by 4, Hawthorn by 4, GWS by 11, GC by 5 and now North by 7. 5-0 in that run could so easily have been 3-2 or worse, which would have them back in the pack and/or out of the 8. To their credit they held on in all of those games, but generally speaking when a side does this well in close games they eventually regress back to the "norm", which is to not win 100% of them. Could happen this year with their moderately difficult run home, or otherwise we might find that next year they drop off in ladder position as you can't expect to continually win these close games.

I have no problem with Collingwood v North being at the MCG. The MCG is Collingwood's home ground. I also have no problem with Geelong v Melbourne being at GMHBA. GMHBA is Geelong's home ground. Where I have a problem is Geelong v Richmond being at the MCG. Or Collingwood v Bulldogs being at Marvel. Both those match ups have happened this year and they are examples of sides playing "home" games at their opponent's home ground. It shouldn't happen. The Marvel tenants (including Essendon and Carlton) should play their home games at Marvel to satisfy the minimum games requirement, and Geelong should put its money where its mouth is and play all 11 home games at GMHBA, with the big Melbourne clubs being sent down there so that North and we don't have to go there every year.

Sorry, I was responding to your post in which you said Weid would be offering more than Brown in those areas, which led me to believe you were comparing the two for the same position. I agree that Weid is judged unfairly by most on here. I thought he did really well when he was asked to play ruck, particularly vs Adelaide as the first ruck. My view, though, is that Brown offers us more right now than Weid does as a permanent forward, and that contrary to your posts Brown has indeed started to show better form. Brown's starting point is unreasonably low given how poor he's been this year, but reality is what he produced in the first half on Thursday is precisely what we need for a full game. The trend is at least in the right direction. Bringing the ball to ground is far more important than you're letting on. I'm not suggesting we pick someone who does nothing other than bring the ball to ground but our gameplan relies on us not being outmarked in our forward half, so it's a critical role. Part of the reason Brown's disappointed me this year has been how often he's been outmarked. We lost to Sydney largely because we were repeatedly outmarked by their defenders. And there is significant disappointing with Spargo, ANB, Bedford and Pickett - well it's not easy for them to get involved with the way we move the ball if our taller forwards get outmarked. With all that said, I'm not necessarily opposed to JVR playing. Bowey's a great example of why we should be thinking about bringing in new blood. But we can't play him on his own and for the reasons I've covered, I think Brown holds his spot over Weideman.

A lot of this is unfair or wrong IMO. For one, he was indeed "even close" to turning his form around on Thursday night, in the first half. As I've said before, one half of footy isn't good enough, but regrettably even a half of good football from Brown is an improvement on his last six weeks. His first half had him covering the ground, clunking contested marks, hitting the scoreboard and bringing the ball to ground. All what we want from him. We didn't totally change our game in the second half but as we fell further behind, we started to rush our ball movement and our structures fell apart. Which led to us kicking the ball to 2-on-1s against us. Impacted all our forwards, not just Brown, but the longer the game went on the more out of whack our positioning became. As to stats, according to the AFL's website Brown's season average for contested marks is 1 per game, to Weideman's 1.1 That's one extra contested mark across 10 games. Meanwhile Brown's ahead for marks overall (3.6 to 2.9) and marks inside 50 (1.7 to 1.3). And as to defence, Brown's well behind in tackles per game (0.5 to Weid's 1.5) but ahead in pressure acts (6.2 to 5.9). None of these numbers are anything to write home about but given Brown's first half was probably the best key forward work we've seen from him or Weideman in months, I think the core premise of your argument falls away, particularly given Weideman's stats do not in any way warrant him taking Brown's spot.

Brown played his best football in months in the first half last night. I'm not suggesting a half of football is sufficient, but it's finally a trend in the right direction, so if we've stuck with him to now, I suspect we're going to give him another game at least after last night.

It's a disgrace. The fixture is uneven enough as it is. Refusing to send Carlton, Collingwood, Essendon, Hawthorn and Richmond to play at Geelong's true home ground is unfair on the rest of us, and clearly we and North have had to bear the brunt of that unfairness more than the others. It's time for the AFL to accept that supporters of all clubs, not just the big ones, miss out on attending games at GMHBA Stadium, and starts sending the five other Melbourne clubs down there on a routine basis (e.g. once every 2-3 years or something).