titan_uranus

I don't entirely know what you're on about here, but I'm still interested.

Agree on most of this. Naughton was hardly dominant in Round 19 so was that really all worth it for the Dogs? But one issue to remember is that whilst Bruce won't be there on GF day, Martin playing means English will be in that role. So if Petty goes to Naughton, May has to go to English (assuming we want to keep Lever free).

As you'll see from this Tweet, it's not clear if either of these is correct (at least, as at 2017). Generally speaking Clint Bizkit is right, the team higher on the ladder wears its home jumper, but 2015 was an exception - West Coast finished above Hawthorn on the ladder, but in the Grand Final the AFL made West Coast wear its clash jumper, so that Hawthorn could wear its home jumper (albeit with white shorts).

My guess is for this purpose - we sent our jumpers off to get the logo, so we used these old jumpers for photos/media? I don't know otherwise.

We stopped wearing it after the 2019 season. It's not needed against the Dogs (or West Coast, a side we've also worn it against). Their jumpers are royal blue and there is no clash with our much darker navy blue.

I suspect we were wearing the redback jumpers because we've sent our regular jumpers off to get the Grand Final logo heat pressed onto them. We stopped wearing the redback jumper after the 2019 season. We don't sell it any more. The AFL has already confirmed we're wearing our regular jumper, too.

Jones is the only player on our list to have played 200 games. His 200th was in late-2015. Bernie Vince played his 200th game for us in 2017, but obviously they weren't all with us. I think, prior to Jones, the last MFC player to get to 200 games for the club was Brad Green in 2010.

There's nothing about this I don't like.

Patriots, 49ers, Chiefs

The interesting thing about this is I recall Montagna on Fox Footy arguing that we tried this sort of thing in Round 23. In the first half we were sending a player up to the contest, and being beaten and then having no spare in defence. In the second half, we reverted back to having a spare behind the ball. If he's right, we tried it then and we didn't like it. The test will come in the GF if/when the Dogs send that extra man to the contest.

I agree with those who question Smith's defensive efforts. All the examples I've seen in the media in both the semi and prelim were examples of him running into attack. So I had a look at the pressure acts stat on the AFL website, which also includes defensive half pressure acts. Smith had 22 pressure acts, 8 of which were in the defensive half (i.e. 36% of his pressure acts were in the defensive half). By comparison, Treloar had 26, 12 in defence (46%), Bontempelli was 25 and 12 (48%), Macrae was 17 and 9 (53%), Dunkley was 26 and 8 (31%), Hunter was 13 and 6 (46%). Libba, interestingly, was 20 and 4 (25%). In our prelim, Oliver had 27, 14 in defence (52%), Viney was 23 and 15 (65%), Harmes was 21 and 13 (62%), Petracca was 13 and 9 (69%). Langdon was 12 and 8 (67%), Sparrow was 16 and 8 (50%), with Brayshaw 20 and 8 (40%). Maybe I'm reading too much into this but I read this as our mids working harder into defence (all bar Brayshaw did 50% of their pressure work or more in the back half, whereas for them it was only Macrae doing that).

Did that actually happen, though? I wasn't sure if he was moved into defence for any period of time or just happened to be caught there, which happens from time to time (Ben Brown was caught in defence a few weeks ago, against Geelong in Round 23 maybe).

Mate, come on, @Lord Nev gave you the quote. The article is just poorly written. Which is not exactly uncommon for AFL media.

This is officially in my top 5 favourite threads in the history of Demonland.

Sounds like he made the perfect decision. I don't know whether to read Jerri's post as her own view on the fact that Nathan isn't in the team, or an expression of Nathan's true feelings, or just a (kinda) poorly worded expression of the turbulent times they've both been through with him being in Perth in quarantine and then only just making back whilst she was in hospital. But it should be no surprise to anyone that Nathan would be disappointed to not be playing in the Grand Final.

Whilst I don't think it's so simple, I do like the idea that the Round 19 performance understated us and overstated them. I similarly think Round 23 did the same thing to Geelong. I think they thought "look at the first half" and figured, they got 44 points up, just go back to the well and do it again and they'll beat us. When, in reality, they were only on top in Round 23 for 15 minutes and benefited from the most ridiculously one-sided period I've ever seen. I hope the Dogs look back on Round 19 and place too much stock in it. I think the game was far closer than the 20 point margin suggested.

That's silly. Do you really want a situation where we're playing, say, Geelong or Hawthorn, where there is no clash at all, and we end up wearing our clash jumper for no reason at all. Maybe I'm a purist but in my view, the default position should be that in every game (H&A or finals), the away team wears its regular home jumper with white shorts, unless that poses a clash. I don't know if they've ever been deemed a clash? They certainly weren't earlier this year.

No it's not. There's no clash at all between our navy blue jumper and their royal blue jumper. This is 100% the right call. If navy blue and royal blue were a clash, we wouldn't be allowed to wear our current clash jumper, as it wouldn't fix the problem of our more genuine clashes vs Adelaide and Carlton. It would also mean we have no viable jumper to wear in an away game vs the Dogs.

https://www.youtube.com/user/harrypotter6116 Edit: I'm taking someone else's credit here, this was posted elswhere.

We can analyse the forward and backline matches up until the cows come home, but IMO it all pales in comparison to two things: the battle for CPs, clearances and ground ball gets; and goal kicking accuracy. If they dominate us in CPs, clearances and ground ball gets, we'll be in trouble. Conversely, if we take that part of their game away from them (whether we dominate or we just break even), that does heaps for us - their game stems from those areas and if they don't control them, they don't set up as well. Goal kicking accuracy is the other big one. We had our chances in Round 19 but kicked 9.11 to their 13.7. If we get chances early, we have to take them. We've already lost games this year due to poor kicking, I don't want to lose the biggest one of all of our lives.

Whilst I don't know if we'll make a change, I do think we know the following: Daw isn't going to be the sub TMac is going to play defence (unless we have no other options, which means both May and Smith are ruled unfit) Hunt isn't going to play forward

That wont work. Did you see Martin last night? He's cooked. He'll compete in the ruck, but I don't think he is any chance of keeping up with Gawn or Jackson around the ground. It's an area we can, and need to, exploit.

We're better than Port, but the Dogs are better than Brisbane and Geelong. We've been the two best sides all year. It's a fitting final match up. The Dogs will embrace the backs against the wall position - five states in two weeks, bottom half of the 8, quarantine, no training on the oval, etc. The week off will help them more than it will help us. But our best is good enough.

Port and Geelong won't go anywhere until they fix their respective inherent problems. Geelong's gameplan doesn't work in finals. Port cannot deal with pressure.

This game was there for Port if they hadn't been so awful in the first half. Dogs have kicked 3 goals since half time, and look nowhere near as slick as the first half.