titan_uranus

I have no sympathy for the select North supporters who belittled us for 12 years. But overall this is not a good situation. it doesn't benefit anyone to have one of the 18 clubs fall apart, and it feels like North is falling apart right now. Moving the club to Tasmania runs a significant risk of leading to the Tasmanian venture failing. Tasmanians want and deserve their own team, not the remnants of a broken Victorian club. So North needs to be "fixed". If 2013 Melbourne can be fixed, I suspect 2022 North Melbourne can be fixed.

Their last two games were terrible. But their performances vs Carlton and Geelong are enough to worry any side, including us. We will, as we always do, be planning for their best, because their best remains top 4 quality, albeit it's disappeared in the last fortnight.

Most footy pundits think we don't blow teams away or score a lot. But I also think most footy pundits don't appreciate that our percentage is 161%, with only one other club in the comp within 35% of us. And I also think most footy pundits don't appreciate that we've scored the third most points of all clubs.

I agree with the general premise of your post. I tend to view this and other issues (e.g. our low inside 50 retention rate) as positives - room for improvement despite us being 10-0 and 161%. On the bolded bit, Petracca really does stand out for inaccuracy, but as you say, he's not on his own. This is a list of all of our players who have kicked more behinds than goals, ranked by accuracy: Oliver: 1.5 (16.6%) ANB: 2.7 (22.2%) Sparrow: 2.4 (33.3%) Melksham: 1.2 (33.3%) Petracca: 9.17 (34.6%) Spargo: 5.7 (41.6%) Melksham's only played two games so taking him out and focusing on the best 22, Petracca's only our 4th worst shot on goal so far this year. But obviously his volume of shots makes him stand out above everyone else.

Weitering deserves to be in the conversation with May for the league's best key defender currently. The media unfortunately seem to have forgotten about May in the discussion.

I actually think now is the time to focus heavily on umpiring. Not to have a crack at the umpires themselves, but to put the issue as squarely in the AFL's focus as possible., Umpiring is becoming increasingly inconsistent. Fans and players are increasingly unsure as to why decisions are paid. Rules are being interpreted and applied differently from week to week. Like the MRO/Tribunal process, the AFL needs a proper review of its rules and how they are applied. Umpiring needs to be reviewed and overhauled, the standard needs to be lifted, and certain rules need to either be dispensed with or modified to make the game cleaner and easier to umpire.

Six weeks? Source?

Couldn't agree more. All this provides is a description of what we can see in the footage and then "it was the view of the Match Review Officer that [player's] actions did not constitute a reportable offence".

Will you keep yourself accountable for being wrong about us losing to St Kilda? Will you come back on here and keep yourself accountable if we don't lose 7-8 of the last 12 games, as you've said we will? I felt like I said this far too often from 2014-19: being negative/pessimistic is easy. Most clubs don't win the flag, so you can set the bar there and most of the time, you'll be able to say you were "right" all along. But of course, if we do well, no one cares about you, and like Dr D and olisik and others before you, you'll disappear. And just on the fixture point, two of the sides you keep banging on about as likely to get the better of us are Brisbane and Carlton. Brisbane's played two top 8 sides for a 1-1 record, Carlton's played three top 8 sides for a 2-1 record, and as you've pointed out we've played two top 8 sides (but of course you omitted to mention that we're 2-0 and not seriously challenged in either game).

Yeah nah not sure about this bump and these posts. Viney does that to an opposition player and we'd be celebrating it.

I doubt Salem is ready this week. I'm fairly confident he's been tracking at the "lower" end of the club's estimates for the last month and I'm pretty sure he'll need at least one more week.

I hope you realise now, having seen Brisbane lose to Hawthorn and Fremantle lose to Collingwood, just how ridiculous this post was. But if not, here are some more reasons: GWS beat West Coast by 52. We beat them by 74. GWS played them home. We played them at Optus GWS conceded 86 points to them. We conceded 38 If "miles off" means being 10-0 with a percentage of 161%, two games clear of second, three games and 35% clear of fourth, and with just one side within 35% of us, then your expectations are horridly skewed.

Remember last year, when we lost to Adelaide in Round 10, and had Brisbane and the Dogs in the next fortnight, and everyone said "you'll see, we're not good enough", and then we beat them both convincingly? "Inability to play 4 qtrs of footy" - we won all four quarters today and we lead the competition for quarters won, having won 31 of the 40 we've played. Next best is Richmond on 27. Fremantle could win all four quarters tomorrow and they'd get to 28. "Fairly soft draw" - we've beaten 5th and 8th, as well as 9th and 10th. Carlton's beaten 7th and 8th, as well as 9th and 10th. Brisbane's beaten 7th...and 10th...

They certainly won't get 8,000 through the gates against GWS next week. They play St Kilda, away, not GWS.

If Viney's fit he comes straight back for Dunstan. Dunstan fills the gap at stoppages well enough but his disposal is just not good enough. Melksham shouldn't be playing but I imagine we'll give him game 200, pressing him to lift for the milestone whilst Harmes is still out. Not sure what we do if Langdon misses. I'm not interested in trying Baker again. If someone is OK to take Gus' half-back spot and we roll Gus up onto the wing, I'm OK with that, but I'd imagine the FD will prefer to leave Brayshaw in defence now that he's been there 10 weeks.

We dominated time in forward half and generated 30 scoring shots whilst conceding only 13. Inaccuracy meant the margin was 47 instead of 77. We continue to deploy the same method each week, treating each opponent equally, and assuming each one brings its best. North's only played one game as well as they played today, and that was when the led Sydney in the fourth quarter in Round 4. West Coast last week probably hasn't brought that level of application in any other game this year barring perhaps its win over Collingwood. I don't really know, or care, why that is, because we won't be playing North or West Coast in September. What I care about is that we approach games wanting to play our brand, and each week we play our brand. So on a night where we went in with four premiership players missing, lost a fifth in the first quarter, appeared to end with another one or two injured, when our opponent lifts, we turn it over too much, and we miss easy shots on goal, we still generated 30 scoring shots to 13, with 40 more inside 50s, and won by 47. I imagine if anyone had said that about one of our losses in 2013, you would have gone ballistic. As to "inaccurate as always" - tonight was the third time this year that we've scored more behinds than goals. That's 30%. Not "always".

Dogs play the same way and kicked 8 in a row against us in Round 1. (just playing devil's advocate here)

Look, I think Carlton's gameplan is flawed too, but in all our losses last year our opponents went hell for leather and took us on through the middle. Carlton will do the same and have the talent to score against our backline. The way to beat Carlton is not exactly hidden - breakeven in contested possession. They are like the Dogs and a bit like us in 2018 - their one-wood is the middle, and if they don't dominate in the middle they are capable of being opened up defensively.

Newman gets caught by Franklin at full back, doesn't bother trying to dispose of it, drops it, play on. Warner gets caught by Owies with little prior, drops it, holding the ball. Would be infuriating to be a Swans supporter seeing that. Although to be fair, they've had their chances and squandered too many of them.

Sydney choking hard here. Gone inside 50 with options to score so many times but continually kicking to Franklin or Papley when they're outnumbered.

The "game day experience" could mean about a million things and umpiring may not even be one of them. I for one cannot stand any ground which blares music after a goal, or pumps music so loud between quarters that you can't hear the person sitting next to you. Nothing has been worse for football in the modern era than the concept of "fan activation".

Yeah you'd still expect Carlton to get up from here. Still got a three goal buffer and probably only need 1 or 2 goals this quarter to seal it. Big first halves help as your opponent is playing catch up footy to get back into it.

Carlton are also a massive front-running first half side. vs the Dogs, 12 goals in the first half, 4 in the second vs Hawthorn, 9 goals in the first half, 2 in the second vs Port, 12 goals in the first half, 2 in the second now vs Sydney, 12 goals in the first half, only 2 so far in the third quarter (and having conceded 5.4 at the same time) We remember Carlton well because those four first halves have been intensely good, but they've been opened up defensively in each of those games too.

To be fair to the Dogs, Josh Bruce changes their forward line, gives Naughton a chop out. I reckon Naughton would be flying if he had McKay alongside him like Curnow does.

The funny thing about their scoring is that going into this Round, we've scored more than them. You wouldn't think that based on the narratives around us and them. The 726 points they had conceded coming into this round is worse than all other top 10 sides bar Richmond. Sydney are hugely over-rated, agreed. Their only win of merit was vs Geelong, in Buddy's 1000th game, and Geelong are also pretty mid-road this year. Remaining wins are five of the bottom 6.