titan_uranus

Yep, seems so.

Confirmed here: The emergencies were Bedford, Rivers, Melksham and Brown. Looks like Brown is either the sub or taking TMac's spot. Which of the other emergencies are playing right now for Casey?

Don't get me wrong, the weather would never stop me personally going. I'll be there tonight, even if it's wet and/or sub-zero. But I know there are plenty who make a decision on the day/evening and if it's cold and wet and it's a long trip home, compared with a warm house and a couch, some will choose to stay home.

IIRC it was rather nice weather last year. Tonight is going to be showery, windy and cold. Whether we like it or not, when coupled with the hassle many people seem to feel at going to the footy this year, the weather is going to turn people off.

I love this quote. Great stuff from Laurie and Goodwin.

Franklin's a huge loss but Kennedy not so much. Far more importantly for them than Kennedy, Hickey's out. Means they are rucking Ladhams as their first ruck and Sam Reid as his back up. Gawn had his toughest opponent yet last week in Darcy. He shouldn't find the going as tough this week against Ladhams. That, coupled with a fit Trac, the return of Langdon and the return of Harmes, should mean our midfield doesn't get blown apart like it did last week.

Sydney's best is good but they have been inconsistent with games all year. They're not as good as they were last year, either. Since Round 2 their only win of substance was last week, a 6 point win over Richmond where they conceded 100 points. Having said that, we're not in our best form either, and we're working 5 players back into the 22, which is a huge amount of change for us. We know that when we bring our A-game in the middle we make it hard for any side to compete. Last week we didn't get near our best, with Oliver tagged out of it and Petracca sick. The hope is with Trac back to fitness, Oliver will have more support if tagged, and with Langdon on a wing we won't be trying to support our mids with Spargo and Melksham. I'm really hoping for us to return to some of our prime form tonight, but I'm not at all expecting it. I'm predicting a win, but a tight one.

What's with that VIctorian team? Dusty's played like 4 games this year and not all of them have been great. Lever's nowhere near his 2021 form. Weitering's missing.

Calm down picket, OIiver's amazing but there's nothing at all unreasonable about someone putting Cripps above him right now. Whether we like it or not, Cripps has reached incredible levels so far this season. I'm more miffed at May only being 14.

I should always defer to Webber on injury-related issues. Makes me feel silly for being so surprised he's coming straight back.

I'm stunned Salem is in. I trust the FD, but I fully expected Salem to have a run at Casey to get his legs back. The other changes are all as expected. It's tough for Bedford but we had one too many small forwards and whilst he kicked two goals last week, he disappeared after that. Hunt deserved to hold his spot over Rivers, whose form just hasn't been great all year IMO. No excuses this week. We're really now only one player off our best 22 (May). As an aside - we're so close to making history. If Rivers is the sub, then we're only two players off fielding the Grand Final side, which has never been done before. May replacing Tomlinson brings it down to just one. Would have to find a reason to get Hibberd in over Hunt, which likely won't happen barring an injury to Hunt, but still, so close.

Good post, but like others I don't agree that Sparrow should be dropped. Hasn't been bad enough for long enough to warrant it, yet. As harsh as it is, I think it has to be Bedford who makes way instead of Sparrow. The balance of the side is out of whack if we bring back Langdon and Harmes and then keep Bedford along with Spargo, ANB and Pickett. With Bedford, we pushed Spargo up onto a wing. That wing spot won't be available, so what do we do with the excess small forward?

What world are you living in where Mitch Brown has "proven he can play back"? He's a depth forward, that's all he's ever trained as with us. TMac also isn't a defender, and we don't select him as a defender any more. We throw him back in games where we have injuries we need to cover, which is different.

Correct decision. Disappointing, as I'd prefer to watch Buddy on Saturday night at the G.

I didn't say he'd be worse than Weideman. What I said was that Werridee seems to think he's capable of almost anything, when in reality he is a fringe forward. That isn't necessarily true, and doesn't mean he'd be any good in defence. We put Weideman down there and he failed. Brown likely would too, given he hasn't trained in defence for years. So when you say "he gives us flexibility", you're just making that up because you like him. He's as inflexible as Weideman - the two of them are depth forwards. He also doesn't "play small". You can argue that he's a better option for Weideman's spot, fine, but that's not because he's flexible or because he can be put into defence or play small. It's solely because he's a tall forward, Weideman's a tall forward, Weideman's out of form and Brown's possibly capable of doing better as a tall forward.

I don't even know where to start with this post. "Fremantle have no inside mid" is just horrendously inaccurate. Brayshaw, Serong, Brodie and Mundy are in the top handful of inside midfields in the competition. They answered Oliver by tagging him with Aish. It's not like putting Oliver on the bench meant he all of a sudden lost all of his form. Oliver played 90% of the game (more than his season average). And at least one time he (and others) were on the bench, the game was on the outer wing and we couldn't get the rotations through when we probably wanted. But at its core, your post in insane because you genuinely seem to think Goodwin made a "move" to "bench" Oliver. Like, you genuinely seem to think that our coach saw Oliver dominating, knew Petracca was sick and we were missing Langdon and Harmes, and thought "I should "bench" Oliver like it's 1995". Just an utterly ridiculous thing to think.

You speak of Mitch Brown like he’s Nat Fyfe. He’s Mitch Brown. He’s played solely as a forward his entire time with us. Won’t play defence, and sure as [censored] won’t play small.

Expand on this. In what way was Goodwin “terrible”? We lost to a top 4 team with 5 premiership players out, May done after 10 minutes, Petracca sick and Petty limping. You think that’s one of Goodwin’s worst performances? You remember we finished 17th in 2019, right?

Really not a huge fan of posts criticising effort or lack of fight. Fight and effort were there. What wasn't there was skill under pressure. The stats have been bandied around today: we had first possession in 5 of the 10 centre bounces in the third quarter, but only converted that to a clearance once. Fremantle brought heat and we struggled to deal with it. Without Petracca, with Darcy on top of Gawn, and with Aish tagging Oliver, we needed Sparrow, Dunstan, ANB and Jackson to stand up. Disappointingly, none of of them did. Yep. He also could have been another marking forward option, given all we had was Brown who was being double-teamed and Fritsch. No one else able to attract the ball, and it showed. Again though, it highlights the disappointing performances of Sparrow, Dunstan, ANB and Jackson, as well as the obvious poor game from Melksham. We needed lifts from the second/third string players when the A-graders were down/out. We didn't get it. Against a lesser side we might have coped, but against Fremantle no chance.

Couldn't disagree more. We've always made noise far louder than our numbers. The 2018 finals is a great example, but it's always happened. I did notice on Saturday that the Melbourne crowd overall was quieter, but I think a lot of it was shock. The crowd just wasn't prepared for us to fall apart and there wasn't enough for us to get around before it was too late. I don't know if this has anything to do with it but I couldn't agree more on it. I've said it before, the single worst thing to happen to football is "fan activations". People who are wholly disconnected from football making decisions about what fans want, almost always tied to music/video/demonstrations, rather than the actual [censored] game itself.

Fantastic summation. The Guidelines go on to give this not very helpful example: For example, a strike will be regarded as Intentional where a Player delivers a blow to an opponent with the intention of striking him. To run the intent argument, Franklin has to argue he didn't have the intention of striking Cotchin. This isn't a Hawkins on May 2021 sort of situation. It's a blatantly intentional strike, and as you say, the fact it made high contact rather than to the chest is irrelevant. If I were Sydney I'd be arguing the force was too low to constitute a reportable offence. Personally, such an argument should go in the bin. If you lash out at someone and you hit them high, you cop your time, like Brown did in the VFL earlier this year.

I'd be flabbergasted if Salem plays. For one, he's been tracking behind in his rehab for the last month. For another, he hasn't played footy at any level for 11 weeks. I'd prefer to see him get a half game at Casey first before we throw him into a block of really tough and important games. Tomlinson for May. Then Langdon, Harmes and TMac all straight back in for Melksham, Dunstan and Weideman. Bedford back to the sub role, which is harsh but we can't play all of Pickett, ANB, Spargo and Bedford. I won't lose much sleep if Brown gets dropped instead of Weideman but I don't think Weid deserves the spot any more than Brown, and Brown in my view is more likely to win us a game if he turns his form around than Weideman.

Fair dinkum does Demonland know how to jump off at the earliest opportunity. Jackson's a 20 year old tall who has already shown in his 40 games that he is capable of doing things that very few other footballers can do. It hasn't been consistent, but 20 year old talls are rarely consistent. Focusing on the current form slump and using it to water down what he's shown to date is a ridiculous way to assess him. We should be doing everything we can to re-sign him. Draft picks are great but the phrase "a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush" couldn't be more appropriate.

But let's assume all of Langdon, McDonald and Harmes are fit. Tomlinson replaces May but those three all come straight back, which would be four changes, all of which we should be 100% making.

Interesting that he was sick the day before. Maybe he woke up yesterday morning feeling better, put his hand up to play, but realised mid-game he didn't have the energy? If it's just how he's feeling, I imagine it would have been hard for Goodwin to overrule him if he's declaring himself over his sickness.