titan_uranus

Can anyone confirm the time for the unfurling of the flag and/or any other pre-match festivities? Has this stuff been communicated to members and I've just missed it? Edit: found it: https://www.melbournefc.com.au/news/1077849/afl-round-1-game-day-guide Unfurling at 6.40pm.

Three defenders out is not ideal. We saw vs Carlton what the impact is of an unsettled backline, particularly when compared to last year's stable back seven. You would expect Tomlinson, Smith and Hunt to be the replacements for Petty, Hibberd and Rivers; all three selections make sense. I am not a fan of Smith and Hunt being in the same backline though, adds too much unpredictability. At least they all got a run last week so they're not coming in from the cold. I suppose the only other question is whether Jordon pushes into the starting 22 and, if so, who he would displace? I would otherwise assume we won't see any other non-GF starters in the 23.

I base that on them being a very good side in 2021. They may well be the best side in 2022, which is a different year to 2021.

I'm sure they'd be commenting on overconfidence. There are too many posters who are describing this game as a "should win". We are going to lose games in 2022 and the first of those could easily be this Wednesday.

I've read this post and the subsequent discussion. As I understand it, your concern is that Jackson may have indicated to the club that he wants to go home, and that based on that indication we told Cerra's camp "don't worry about that" when they asked how we'd get the deal done. This makes no sense. If the club was of the view that Jackson wanted to go home, and Cerra was into us, why wouldn't we have made it clear to Cerra's camp that a deal was capable of being done because we'd offer Fremantle Jackson? Cerra ruled us out because we couldn't provide anything that they thought Fremantle would want. The only logical conclusion that can be drawn from that is that Jackson was never on the table. If he was, things wouldn't have played out like they did. In turn, that rules out your concern that Jackson might have indicated to the club that he wants to go home. An alternative explanation for the "don't worry about that" quote is that the club was trying to convince Cerra that he wanted to go nowhere other than Melbourne (i.e. don't worry about Fremantle, if you nominate us you'll get here for whatever we offer).

I don't think anyone should be surprised if we lose. How much of Demonland goes on about drinking bathwater, particularly after we lost to Carlton? We're coming up against arguably the best side in it other than us (if not the best side in it full stop), it's a new season in which 2021 doesn't stand for too much, and we'll be missing at least two best 22 players from our backline. We can be disappointed with a loss, but no one should be surprised if we drop a game to a fellow 2022 flag contender.

Agree with both posts. Libba's a pest and not in a good way, Hunter is a Selwood-level ducker (some will say Spargo is the same but whatever) and I reckon Beveridge has known for years that English is too soft to be a good ruckman as he gets bullied around far too easily. Otherwise, I think the Dogs get physicality right. Macrae, Dunkley, Bont, Daniel, Smith, Naughton - these are players who don't shy away from contact but don't go out of their way to be [censored] about it (unlike Libba).

Great video. I loved seeing the snippet of Goodwin's half time address. Would love to see more of it (and the QT and 3QT addresses, and indeed anything else from behind the scenes).

I saw this too. It might have been that Harmes was in red for a period where they mixed things up, but then again I didn't see anyone else surprising in red. Joel Smith was also in blue in that video, FWIW. If you take the grand final 22 and bring two of Tomlinson, Smith and Hunt in for Petty and Rivers, I'm not sure who else comes in for Harmes (unless you count Jordon coming in from the sub position).

Seems like the image has been taken down from the website. I have no idea why, but I'd guess maybe they missed a name and have to re-do it.

@The Mighty Demons - you are a Demonland legend.

Agree. The full quote from Oliver is even better: “We probably didn’t realise how harsh it was going to be,” he said. “But in reality it’s fair because the umpire isn’t going to change their decision and most of the time they’re right anyway. So we’ll stop it. “We had a pretty big chat about it. Goody (coach Simon Goodwin) sat us down, Gawny (captain Max Gawn) sat us down for 5-10 minutes. “It’s not on. It’s not a good look for the game in general, talking back to the umpires. They’ve got a hard enough job doing what they do anyway, they don’t want the players chirping up and having a go at them so we’ll stamp it out pretty quick.” Oliver gave away a time wasting penalty against Carlton and said giving the ball back quickly would be something he would need to focus on. “I’m pretty bad at that. Troy Chaplin, our backline coach, he knows I do that a lot and he gets pretty angry at me when I do it at training and try to hold the ball up,” he said. “That might hurt me a bit, but you’ve got to adapt and change and it’s like anything, every year there’s new rules that come out.” I hope that second line is the message Goodwin and Gawn were sending - the umpire's not going to change their mind so it's a pointless exercise. Ask them what the decision was if you don't understand, perhaps, but don't get upset, because it literally cannot help but now can harm significantly.

I don't get this whole "the Dogs are not tall" thing. Most people look at our best 22 as being the GF team. Which was a team which played the Dogs. It's not like we're coming up against something drastically different. I'm not sure if there is any merit to the idea of going in smaller in the early rounds rather than taller, but that aside I don't see the Dogs' lack of height as being relevant to our best 22.

Incredibly harsh. Gawn works hard, that is true. But so do ANB, Langdon, Lever, Brayshaw, Hibberd, Brown, May, TMac and a host of others. And Gawn has his down games through a season, just like everyone does.

Did I miss this or is this a new announcement? If the latter...isn't it odd that the first we're hearing about this is 4 days before it airs?

Dunstan might bulk it up a bit but otherwise no, we don't have exceptional midfield depth. The players we roll through to relieve Oliver, Petracca and Viney are good but not great (think Harmes, Sparrow, Jordon). The Dogs have significantly more depth (Bontempelli, Macrae, Libba, Treloar, Smith, Dunkley, Hunter). Our best mids are elite, but we go from elite to pedestrian as you go down the list a bit too quickly to warrant the word "exceptional".

Yep Smith may take Rivers' spot and Tomlinson plays Petty's role. They didn't have Bruce in the GF but we went in with May, Lever and Petty so you'd think we'd go a similar level of height for Round 1. I don't know about the Dogs' injury list much but you'd imagine they'll be running a similar forward line, meaning Naughton, Schache and English/Martin, with Hannan and then Bontempelli down there too. Reducing the 50% figure down to 30-40% wins us last night's game with ease. I agree the midfield defensive pressure wasn't up to scratch and was a key contributing factor, but the number of inside 50s Carlton generated should not have resulted in 10.3 to half time.

Liked your whole post @binman but just on selection, it's not Tomlinson v Smith that is my main focus for Round 1 (personally I prefer Tomlinson, which is I will admit in part because I remain yet to be won over by Smith, but that battle isn't going to make or break our backline once May, Salem and Hibberd are brought back in). My main focus is who gets Rivers' spot for Round 1. Didn't really see anything last night to indicate someone is ready to step up into that spot.

The topic is a valid one but the way @Mach5 is going about raising it is p**s poor IMO. If you are aware of specific failures within the club's management, explain what they are. To the rest of us mere members, all we see is increased membership, increased sponsorship, better FTA fixturing and more relevance in both the media and the general footy public. The only example I've seen you put up here is a criticism of sponsorship, which is a topic on which the publicly available evidence suggests we have improved as a result of the flag. Which, to me, makes you 0 from 1 so far. i'm happy to debate how we're going embedding ourselves into the Casey region as well as other areas of Melbourne that might be considered appropriate for us to target, but you've not raised any evidence to suggest we're failing to do that.

The midfield two-way running I saw last week vs North was miles ahead of last night. Intensity often drops in practice matches and it wouldn't surprise me if we planned to go all-in for one match and less so for the other. Assuming that's what happened though, I don't really know why we picked the North game to be the all-in one, but anyway. IMO many are undervaluing the importance of having all of our missing players from one part of the ground. Having one key defender out can be covered (e.g. Smith covering for Hibberd last year, or Tomlinson covering Petty vs North last week) because it's only one stop-gap with a majority of the usual faces around you. But last night we had Lever, who hasn't played competitive football since the GF, and a 9-game 19-year old in Bowey, as the only regulars down back having to help organise a back half that we didn't spend much/any of the pre-season planning to deploy. That is then compounded by the unfortunate reality that some of the second-stringers are too loose (Hunt and Smith), so it sort of spirals a bit. The weak back half meant they were scoring from just under 50% of their inside 50s in the first half (13 scores from 27 inside 50s). Part of that comes from a poor midfield display but I'd back our first choice backline to do better than conceding 50% of the time. I certainly would rather have dominated the game but the result doesn't mean too much to me. I am, though, disappointed that Baker didn't demonstrate much/any improvement and we saw too much bad Hunt and not enough of the 2021 improved version.

It’s a good rule change. It will be applied too strictly in Round 1, but the answer isn’t to whinge about it but to adapt to it. -62 disposals, - 3 CPs, -14 clearances, -8 tackles. Pre-season or not, we won’t be winning many games of football this year with those figures.

I reckon this game is teaching us all a few things. First, a reminder about the importance of a healthy list. At no stage last year did we go into a game with 5 first choice defenders missing. Having one or two second rung players filling in is fine (eg Smith in the late Rounds and early finals last year) but when you need them to all work together with only Lever there to marshall, it shouldn’t surprise that it isn’t going to work as well. Carlton scored from 48% of their inside 50s (we had more, surprise surprise). Secondly, goal kicking accuracy. 12.3 vs 5.6. We lost games last year because we didn’t convert. Third, we are nothing without workrate. Last week vs North I saw an entire side working like they did in the finals. If we’re not at that level tonight, that will explain why we’re behind. And fourth, tonight is a more real game than last week (too many read too much into a genuine scratch match) but it’s also not a real game. Remember, we got belted by the Dogs in this game last year.

I don't envisage us playing a single game this year with all of May, Lever, Petty and Tomlinson. IMO, it's one of Petty and Tomlinson for the third tall.

Based on the first 7 rounds last year one could argue that Tomlinson would be a premiership player if not for his ACL. I think Smith and Tomlinson are both in the category of key defenders. I suspect the FD will be looking to pick whoever is best overall. I wonder whether Smith's intercepting role yesterday was increased due to Lever's absence? Would he have the same licence if Lever was in the side?

This is so unimportant...but...I really don't like the lighter blue Zurich logo. Much preferred the previous version which blended into the blue on the body of the jumper.