titan_uranus

Lol WTF. Who are you complaining about here? Cam Pedersen, Sam Frost and Tim Smith?

Some of the commentary on here is genuinely unbelievable. You'd think we'd used pick 1 in the draft on Daw. He's training with the club to see if he's capable of taking a spot on our list that only exists because the options we actually wanted to go with (B Brown, Weideman and Hore) are injured. If he gets the list spot, he'll cost close to nothing. If he doesn't cut it at AFL level, he'll play VFL, and we're back where we started yesterday, which is a list with B Brown, Weideman and Hore injured. I'm happy to discuss if there are other key position players not currently on an AFL list who would be ready to play AFL football in the first 4-6 rounds while we wait for B Brown and Weideman to recover. Not surprisingly, there have been very few (if any?) such other players suggested as better options.

OK, what was your point? Because to me, your posts read as if you were critical of our list management for not having more talls on our list.

Oh come on dazzle, what rubbish. We went into this season with B Brown, Weid, Jackson, TMac and M Brown, not to mention Petty. We didn't and don't need more tall forwards. Suggesting that we should have then added an 18-year old project player to the list is ridiculous. How would an 18-year old fix the problem you're discussing here of McDonald taking the number 1 defender and Jackson the 2nd? List management cannot plan for worst case scenarios of the number 1 and number 2 forward getting injured in back-to-back weeks. It's not as if TMac hasn't done it before, and indeed M Brown has played the number 2/3 forward role well too. They're wholly acceptable options as the back up we'd planned them to be, and now need to rely on. It sucks that this is where we're at, but it is what it is. Most recent premiers have faced injury issues at some point in their season.

I love this. A lot.

Paine can stay but we need to be ready to move on from him if he can't keep his composure under pressure and/or continues to struggle with the gloves. Funnily enough, until this summer his strengths were his keeping and maturity and his batting was his major weakness. Now that's completely flipped. I agree that our batting is the pressing issue but the funny thing about the India series is that the Sydney and Brisbane Tests were set up by our batsmen to be won, and then our bowlers failed to get the job done. The bowling unit can be improved. I'd rotate Starc at the very least, if not drop him altogether. He leaks runs and doesn't take top order wickets when the going is tough. Langer/Paine are too fixated on the fact that he's a leftie, he swings it occasionally, and he has a nice yorker. His results aren't good enough and he flags after any more than two Tests in a series. So as we did in 2019, we need to be ready to have 4+ fast bowlers to play the five Ashes Tests. It's time to start thinking about Lyon's succession plan. He's a regular failure in the fourth innings, even on favourable Australian pitches. I'm not sure whether Swepson is the next best red ball spinner in the country but someone needs to be ready to come in either during the Ashes or at their conclusion. The batting isn't an easy fix either. There's no clear number 5 (but Wade's time in the Test side should be over) and I'm not sure what our best opening partnership option is. Keeping Warner in the side gets in the way somewhat, but I suspect he and Pucovski will get the openers' roles. Labuschagne and Smith pick themselves and Green gets to keep his spot at 6.

Agree Macca. The India series was wonderful marketing for the Test cricket product. In the meantime, England has the upcoming four Test series in India. Then it has a two-Test home series vs New Zealand, and then a five-Test home series vs India. So it has 11 Tests between now and the Ashes against the clear two best sides in the world outside of Australia and England (if not actually the best two sides). They also played two Tests in mid/late January 2020 in South Africa, then three Tests vs the Windies and three vs Pakistan in their 2020 summer, plus the recent two against Sri Lanka. Which all means that from the end of the January 2020 Sydney Test vs New Zealand until the start of the 2021/22 Ashes in November 2021, we will have played four Tests whilst England will have played 21. 21 Tests to 4 in preparation for the Ashes. Surely Australia can invite someone here to play some Test match cricket at a non-AFL ground in our winter? Or instead of playing South Africa, if NZ isn't doing anything we can head over there and play them?

So the South Africa series has been called off. Sad, but not surprising. Has big ramifications for the WTC, if anyone cares about that. Losing the series to India was bad enough but we also lost 4 points for a slow over rate in Melbourne. As a result, without the SA series, whether we make the final depends on the India-England series. We'll make it if the series is drawn at any score, or India win 1-0, or England win 1-0, 2-0 or 2-1. Which all means we're unlikely to make it.

The press conference today is a sadly ironic window into the precise problem this report is trying to highlight. Rather than true acknowledgement of the issue, Eddie tries to spin it in the most egregiously stupid way possible by opening with the "historic and proud day" comment. A pathetic attempt to suggest Collingwood deserves to be congratulated for instigating the investigation. And his comment that Collingwood wants to put an arm around Lumumba and take the heat out of the race debate is unbelievable, from a moral standpoint as well as a PR one. That's not, in the slightest, the right thing to do. A press conference of brand management, narrative shifting and damage control. The same things that strike at the heart of Collingwood's broken leadership/culture in the first place.

Thanks @Bring-Back-Powell and others for the write ups. Terribly sad news for Hore. One question for those who were there. Did we play three of Brown, Weideman, Jackson and TMac in the "A team" forward half during the whole game?

Agree. If the AFL can do it in 2020, it can do it again in 2021. The Victorian government has worked out a way to get 1200 tennis players/staff into Melbourne for the Australian Open. The NSW and Queensland governments have worked out a way to get the Sydney and Brisbane tests played. The games will go ahead, whether as currently planned or with hubs or with quarantining or special rules or no crowds or whatever. The hope is that the outbreaks we've seen in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane in the last month are aberrations, not the norm, and that the earliest doses of the vaccine go to hotel quarantine workers to prevent it getting back into the community once we get rid of it again.

@Macca sorry I missed the tipping, was away for a bit. Will try to join in this week. A truly amazing first quarter. Kinda crazy to think the Browns and Bills are in the Divisional Round of the playoffs, and could theoretically contest the AFC Championship game. Gives us Demons fans some hope.

I didn't realise before that Paine had also been sledging Ashwin. The sledges themselves didn't seem funny but it just gets even worse when you sledge someone that hard and then fail as badly as Paine did today. Prior to the sandpaper disgrace the Australian side was developing poor tendencies. Under Langer/Paine that seemed to be rectified initially. It seems to me the side is now slipping back into old habits, with Paine and Wade in particular focusing too much on sledging and "mindgames" rather than just playing cricket. I don't think Smith should ever captain again. If we need a new captain it should be Cummins. I wouldn't drop Paine but I'd be getting the group together to focus on playing proper cricket again. I'd drop Wade and replace him with Head, or any other batsman in the country. He's a chronic underperformer. Horrendous result if Pucovski's hurt his shoulder. If so, I'd play a proper opener in his spot (e.g. Harris), not Wade.

Odds on that India is going to get through the entire day losing just three wickets, one of which fell in the first 15 minutes. It's a flat deck but nevertheless an incredible effort given injuries to Pant, Jadeja and Vihari. Paine's now dropped three catches today, all of which really should have been taken.

That's the 2018 game plan right there. Goodwin's game plan has focused first and foremost on dominating time in forward half. He has always believed that successful footy sides ensure the ball is in their forward half more than their opponents. I don't have the stats to hand to say whether he's right about that or not. In 2018 we achieved this through prioritising stoppages and clearances. We ran one off the back of the square to ensure we had an extra number at centre bounces and we regularly swapped out our sixth forward for an extra number through the middle. We then scored heavily through locking the ball in our forward half. And we used a high forward half press, with our key defenders in the middle of the ground, to lock the ball in that forward half. It largely worked, we scored heavily, and we won 16 games doing it. So we had a game plan. Since 2018 it's fallen apart for a number of reasons, including that it wasn't a particularly sustainable game plan to begin with. We've changed things since then, although Goodwin's core focus appears to me to remain time in forward half dominance.

I've never wanted the Seahawks to win before. I felt significantly dirty doing so yesterday. Then the Titans getting up on that last play field goal thanks to that AJ Brown catch just before was a fitting end to a good game (and saved me in this comp!). Thanks @Macca for running things again!

Ravens, Seahawks, Titans

As far as I know the division winners remain as the 1-4 seeds, which means the first match-ups are now 2v7, 3v6 and 4v5. In the NFC, that means the winner of the NFC East (either the 7-9 Football Team or Cowboys, or the 6-10 Giants) will get a home playoff game against, likely, the 11-5 Bucs. I'm not against division winners making the playoffs but I think it would be fairer for the seeding to occur based on all 7 playoff teams' records, not guaranteeing division winners get the 1-4 seeds no matter what.

Burns out of the squad. Right call. Warner to replace if fit. If not, Pucovski if fit. If both unfit, Harris gets the spot. If both Warner and Pucovski are both fit, both play, Wade moves down to number 5 and Head gets dropped. Wade's not an opener but has done more than enough to hold his spot (subject to his own fitness - he wasn't running well in the field after his leg injury). There's an argument that even if only one of Warner and Pucovski are fit, Head still goes, with Harris coming in and Wade moving down.

Sucks for the Browns to have lost their WRs to COVID, but still, losing to the Jets with playoffs (and the division) on the line is classic Browns. They can still make it even if they lose to the Steelers next week but that requires the Colts to lose to Jacksonville, which surely won't happen, or a whack combination of the Titans losing to the Texans and then each of the Ravens, Colts and Dolphins winning.

Half a chance this will be an innings loss. Can't keep carrying Burns, Head and Green in the same top 6. Green may score well but even if he does, we're just far too lean in the top 6. Smith's horribly out of form and Labushagne can't convert any of his starts into 50s, let alone 100s. Must drop Burns for the next match. Never should have played the first Test. Funnily enough though, he's the only member of our failing top 6 to have made it to 50 this series so far. I know Head's got future captain ideals but he should go too. Throws his wicket away far too often. We can do better - whether that means shifting Wade down to 5 and bringing in two of Warner/Pucovski/Harris, or finding another middle order batsman to bat at 5. We have to strengthen the top 6. A few dropped catches cost us dearly (Labuschagne's drop of Gill at the end of Day 1 was as big as any IMO - they should have been 2/4 with Rahane out there facing Cummins and Starc at their best) but ultimately you can't win Tests if you can't make 200, and that's a fair chance of happening for the third consecutive (full) innings.

MFC predictions Ladder position at the end of the H&A season: 7th Position at the end of the season (e.g. stage of finals): 7th B&F top 5 (1 point for correct inclusion, 1 point for correct place): 1. Christian Petracca 2. Clayton Oliver 3. Max Gawn 4. Christian Salem 5. Steven May Leading goalkicker: Ben Brown Most marks: Steven May Best first year player: Bailey Laurie Most improved player: Sam Weideman All Australian 40-man squad selections (1 point each): Petracca, Gawn, Oliver, May All Australian final 22 selections (1 point each): Petracca, May Big Ben Brown will kick his biggest goal tally against: Essendon Biggest winning margin (exact guess is 5 points, within 1 point margin is 4 points etc): 68 Biggest MFC story of the year (5 points): Petracca wins the Brownlow Other MFC predictions (1 point each): TMac doesn't crack back into the best 22; Jackson shows strong form; we lose a game to a bottom 4 side; we beat Geelong in Geelong. AFL predictions Premier: Geelong Runner-up: Port Adelaide Wooden spoon: North Melbourne Biggest improver: Fremantle Biggest slider: Collingwood Brownlow medal: Christian Petracca Coleman medal: Charlie Dixon Rising star: Matt Rowell

According to this article, it's never happened before - all 11 teams to go 11-0 prior to this year's Steelers won their division.

Bears, Browns, Bills

Browns can easily take the division - if they beat the Jets and the Steelers lose this week vs the Colts, that final Week 17 game will be for the division. Wonder if a club's ever started 11-0 and failed to win the division.