titan_uranus

Why do you even bother supporting this club? Everything is a disaster to you. He fractured his hand (freak/acute incident) then has a calf strain without (AFAIK) a history of calf issues. It’s disappointing but not really that big of an issue.

There are two separate issues here. The modern AFL media is all about big opinions, big headlines, big stories, regardless of whether there is a basis for them. We have daily podcasts, multiple opinion shows a night, radio running 15 hours a day of AFL content, and websites clamouring for discussion in the comments. But @rpfc’s earlier post is also correct. @Redleg is a classic example of a Demonland poster who thinks the AFL world is out to get us. They are not, at least no more than any other club. We bring it upon ourselves. We have a coach who mis-speaks in the media, senior players who flirted with leaving last year, a disastrous president interview, a CEO who shopped a player around against his will, and a fan base which picks and chooses when to go to games. I hate the “less talk, more action” trope that gets rolled out over the pre-season, because there is no ability to act over the pre-season, but the media landscape requires that we talk. But now, in season, it’s valid. It’s time we stop talking about “healing”, “caring” for one another, and being on a “journey”, and we start demonstrating that we’re doing that (that doesn’t mean we have to win every week, but it does mean we don’t produce that fourth quarter from Sunday again).

On radio tonight Daniel Hoyne said we’re bottom 2 for movement of the ball, with Carlton (not sure what the actual measurement or data is here but it’s also hardly surprising). He also said we were -11 at winning contests in our D50, our worst result in 10 years and therefore under Goodwin, and conceded scores from 56% of inside 50s, our second worst result in 6 years. The forward half might be an ongoing work in progress but you’d like to think we see an immediate response in our back half this weekend.

That came after he spent 10 minutes explaining why other clubs might be interested in Fritsch if we miss the 8. Not because he’s disinterested or wants out. Just that if we struggle this year, other clubs might be interested given his form slump and lowered value from his peak in 2021-23. It’s hardly a reach, is it. And it will be forgotten about if it never eventuates because it’s [censored] March.

Players usually deserve more than one game to establish themselves, but I fear I’ve seen this story before. When you’re as slow as Spargo is, at his height, he has to have elite work ethic to spread and cover the ground, to enable him to get the ball. If he can’t cover the ground, there’s no point playing him.

I agree and disagree with this bit in equal portions, if that’s even possible. I agree, for example, that it’s not all just down to injuries. I also agree that good sides cover for injured players, and that our list depth remains poor. But I think there’s more to it than your analysis here. Yes, Brisbane and Hawthorn are winning despite injuries, but the key difference IMO is that they each have 6 players in total on their injury lists, whilst we have 13. So we’re missing 4 of our best 10-12 players, but we’re also missing another 4-5 who would be our next rung called up. And saying that injuries don’t lead to a 10 goal loss is silly - they clearly can. Missing your best players can lead to inconsistency, as evidenced by St Kilda going from inept in Round 1 to, well, not inept in Round 2 (they got Owens and Stocker back, by the way).

https://www.melbournefc.com.au/news/1740330/injury-report-trio-of-demons-to-test Culley, Tholstrup and Kentfield all progress by a week, but McVee stuck at 2-3 weeks still, sadly

The why the [censored] did you start this embarrassment of a thread?

We went 13-4 at Marvel from 2017-2023. 0-2 since.

Of all the stats to run with this week, you picked this one...

Out of interest, what other sorts of losses are there?

I don’t doubt this stuff is true. But how does he know that Gawn was blindsided, but doesn’t know how he reacted? Anyway, tomorrow will be insightful, given we’re due to hear from Gawn at the least. And also - I [censored] hate that we’re doing this whole off field drama thing again, just two weeks into the season.

Agree with a lot of this. Missing McVee and Windsor is killing us. It is compounded by AMW being injured, as you'd imagine he'd be replacing one of them. So with them all unavailable, Rivers has to go back to half back. He's not dominating in the middle, and we need his run and line breaking off half back. I suspect we will persist with the Fritsch experiment a bit longer but I have no faith at all that it will work. I do not see a future in Spargo (nor Laurie, nor Woewodin, nor Billings). When Gawn is that badly beaten, we almost always struggle - think Darcy dominating him in our recent Fremantle losses. However I don't agree on Petty - he was excellent last week. I doubt May is right to go this week so the decision can be deferred one more week but if it's line ball between Petty and TMac, I'd prefer we play Petty as TMac's much closer to the end.

We don’t have “a couple of our better players out”. Our depth is being tested because we have May, Pickett, McVee and Windsor unavailable (four of our best, or most important, 10), as well as Tholstrup, Melksham, McAdam, AMW, AJ and Culley. It’s because we can’t pick any of these (and it’s completely arguable that 7-8 would be playing if available) that we’re seeing players like Spargo, Sharp, Woewodin, Jeffo and Turner, and are now discussing Laurie and Billings. Don’t get me wrong though - I agree that our list is nowhere near as strong as some want to believe, and agree that other clubs cover missing players better than we do (eg Brisbane won the flag last year without McInerney, Coleman, Doedee and McCarthy).

He said earlier in the presser that we went “straight line and bomby” in the third, hence the 2 goals from 19 entries debacle. He said that’s not how we’ve trained. But he contextualised it by then saying we were belted in the middle, and played in the wet last week, as explanations for why we haven’t seen it work yet. He at least sees the issue. But as Zita (or whoever the journo was who raised it) asked, can we be confident he, and this list, can fix it? There comes a point where that question necessarily, through repeated failure and the passage of time, becomes “no”.

As is always the case on Demonland in the hours after a bad loss, there are some pretty rubbish takes on here. Spare me the “we fluked a flag” guff. Don’t tell me Gawn’s cooked. Neither are remotely true, so let’s just focus on what’s going wrong and whether we can fix them any time soon. How can we reconcile that level of effort with the “healing” messaging coming out of the club? An underdone Spargo, yet again. No adequate second ruck leaving Gawn to be annihilated, yet again. 19 inside 50s in a quarter for 2 goals, yet again. Uncompetitive if we don’t win CPs and clearances, yet again. 20-odd points below our expected score, yet again. I said pre-match that two games is too small a sample size for sweeping judgments. St Kilda looked like this last week, then beat Geelong. West Coast this week looked like an entirely different side than last week. So it can turn around quickly. But until Pickett, May, McVee, Windsor, Tholstrup and Melksham come back, we’re going to have to keep fielding the likes of Howes, Sharp, Woewodin and Spargo, which right now feels very troubling. And of course, the outs say nothing about the lack of effort. I’m worried. Really, really worried.

This happens every year. Someone wins big Round 1, gets declared premiership material, almost immediately loses (Geelong). Someone gets flogged Round 1, gets declared bottom 4 material, almost immediately wins (St Kilda/maybe West Coast). Making sweeping judgment on any side after 1 game is stupid. Even after 4 games it’s still dangerous. Now more than ever, it’s about your form in July and August, not in March and April.

Out of interest for those watching, are we missing easy shots or are these tough shots from the flanks/pockets?

For those who are [censored] off at the fixture, I hope you go to our home games when you can. Our fixture this year is not at all surprising given our 2024.

Would surely be on the back of St Kilda’s win. If we bring the same pressure and contest focus as last week, we should find it easier to score against North’s defence than GWS’.

Here’s hoping Spargo is somewhat back to his 2021-22 form, because the Spargo of 2023-24 shouldn’t be getting a game. Bit harsh to give Langford the sub vest and just one quarter, then drop him. The other two changes make sense, position-wise.

We lose a lot of run if Sharp goes alongside Windsor, and we get little of it back with Spargo. Would have to have Woey playing a full game with plenty of run off half back but even then, might not be enough.

This surprised me too. In the “one’s” all summer, then emergency and now nowhere to be seen. I expect Turner and Woey, as the closest positional replacements for AJ and Windsor. But we could go Spargo or Laurie instead of Disco if we’re going to try a smaller forward line, Fritsch going deeper to be the third tall.

This topic is always triggering, to everyone no matter what your views are. IMO the crowd on Sunday was completely within what ought to have been expected. Scheduling a game against the lowest or second-lowest supported interstate side against the Grand Prix was always going to result in a low crowd, and then add to that the rain, and it's not just unsurprising, but honestly pleasing, that the crowd was 23,000+. If you watch on TV, you don't get it, because the MCC is consistently 10x more packed than anywhere else in the ground and you can't see the MCC from the broadcast wing. In 2022-23, our home crowds as a percentage of our membership were, I believe, the 2nd highest in the league, behind only Fremantle. Our raw home crowd numbers are of course lower than Collingwood, Carlton, Essendon etc., but they have 1.5-2 times as many members as we do. By and large, criticism of our crowds is misguided. However... I have been, and remain, of the view that our club has too great a proportion of supporters who choose to withhold their attendance as some form of "protest" against the club. My view was ratified last year when this debate came up after our game against North. Posters readily admitted on here that they chose not to go simply because they were "sick of Goodwin" or "sick of our low scores" or that they'd "go when the team starts playing the way I like". IMO, if you choose to withhold your attendance as a form of protest, you are killing the club from the inside. When I say this, I always say the next bit too - I do not, for one second, begrudge a single person who cannot go to a game because of cost, family, health, distance, work, or all the other sorts of things which make us unable to go. Almost no one can go every week. My comments above are directed solely to the portion of our supporters who can go (financially, health-wise, time-wise, family-wise), but simply choose not to. @Bring-Back-Powell asked earlier what will happen with our West Coast crowd if we keep losing close games. I would suggest that something that might help us win a close game is a loud crowd in our favour. So instead of asking what happens to the crowd after the losses, perhaps we should ask whether showing up in greater numbers earlier might help us win those games instead? @Dr. Gonzo earlier posted that everyone gets to make their own choices, and I agree - ultimately, you decide if you want to go or not (assuming you can). But if you choose not to go, when you otherwise could, IMO you don't then get to complain about, for example, our home games being shifted away from the G and to Marvel, or our games being in the worst timeslots, or our club not getting the same level of funding as other clubs. Whether we like it or not, this sport cares about crowds, and they are important.

This was always going to be a suspension whether we like it or not. Arms pinned, driven down. He maybe gets off if he can show he didn’t pin Brown’s right hand but the way the Tribunal works with dangerous tackles, I doubt it.