titan_uranus

They have Hipwood and Morris as tall forwards. Only two right? They’ve dropped Fort. So do we need three tall defenders?

In: Johnson, Melksham, Petty Out: JVR, Jefferson, Tholstrup I don’t subscribe to @dazzledavey36 ’s level of criticism of “selection integrity” but I do believe our selection week to week this year has been confusing to say the least, and probably reflects that the club doesn’t know what our best forward set up is. Constantly flipping between the talls, picking them off no form then dropping them after one or two games, going with one tall, then two, now three(?) (Turner, Petty, Johnson). I can’t get around it tbh.

A lot gets made of Hawthorn being 0-5, 1-6 and 3-7 last year, on their way to a 14-9 finish. I think what gets forgotten is that for the last few years, there have been sides who look right out of it far deeper into the season than where we are now, but made and/or won finals. Last year: Hawthorn (yes them again) was 8-7 and 13th on the ladder in Round 17, but won a final and nearly won two the Dogs were 8-7 and 11th on the ladder in Round 17, but finished 6th Port Adelaide was 9th in Round 18 (we were above them at this part of the year!) but finished 2nd In 2023: Carlton was 5-1-8 and 15th on the ladder in Round 15 and...well we all know how that turned out (a prelim) Sydney was 6-1-9 and 15th on the ladder in Round 17 and finished 8th GWS was 6-8 and 14th on the ladder in Round 14, still 9th in Round 18, 10th in Round 22, but lost a prelim by a point Even in 2022, Collingwood was 6-5 and 10th in Round 11 but ended up top 4 and losing a prelim by a point, and the Dogs were 10-11 and 10th in Round 21 but still made finals and led their final by 7 goals before choking. FWIW I don't see us making finals this year given our upcoming fixture, the competitors above us for the bottom few spots in the 8, and of course our overall form still not being good enough. But the last few years shows us that, if we do somehow get on a run from here, @Adam The God 's overall contention can be true, the season doesn't have to be done yet.

Ok yep so that’s 5 (Day, Scrimshaw, Barrass, Nash, McKenzie). There’s no way Dear and Lewis play in the same side, with Gunston’s form and Chol doing the ruckwork. Lewis is never on the park and Dear’s a second year unknown quantity. I’ll give you 6 combined. We still had 4 out and that’s not including AMW or McAdam who had strong pre-seasons but went down on the eve of the season. IMO hardly a hanging offence.

Meanwhile as to the other discussion taking place on this thread, I find the forum not necessarily negative/hurtful as it is pessimistic (just my personal experience), and it's easy IMO to understand why: it's easier to be pessimistic than optimistic. Getting your hopes up, and/or your expectations, runs the risk that they'll be crushed. Being pessimistic generally means you're right more than you're wrong - if the bar is winning flags, you are almost always going to be on the right side of the fence by being pessimistic about our chances as flags are hard enough to win when you're going as well as Geelong and Sydney have been going for the last 20 years, let alone when you're us. And of course, if you're pessimistic but wrong, that means we're succeeding, and you're either not going to be called out, or if you are, you can hide behind the team's success. Meanwhile, if you're optimistic but wrong, that means we're failing, and you're sure as [censored] going to be called out. It's just easier to be pessimistic, and over time, I think more and more on here have found themselves swayed to that position.

I might have missed something here, but 7 best 23 players out? Who were they? Day and Scrimshaw were out. Lewis was out, but he's barely on the park these days. Calsher Dear? Is he best 23 these days with Gunston's renaissance? Who else? We weren't exactly full strength by the way, missing Lever, Viney, Petty and Melksham. Are last quarter fade outs a sign of poor coaching as much as poor fitness? There's an element of poor coaching to the ongoing inaccuracy but that's equally, if not more, on the players. The phrase "he's out of form as a coach" is pretty meaningless but assuming coaches "form" works like players' form, he coached brilliantly against Fremantle just three weeks earlier and coached well enough against Richmond and West Coast. I'm not yet convinced that Goodwin has sufficiently righted the ship to warrant being here next year (payout implications aside), but I don't think last week was nearly as bad as your post is making it out to be.

Given none of us really know anything about his personal situation, I'll put that to one side. In isolation, I'm absolutely all for us bringing Jackson back. He's not getting his full potential at Fremantle, and I suspect that's partly due to the side's fluctuating form, and partly due to them trying to play him alongside Darcy, which doesn't work. We know Jackson and Gawn can work together. But if it's a choice between Pickett and Jackson, there is not a shred of doubt in my mind, the choice is simple - it's Pickett 100%.

More than “could well”. We should be 5-4. We could well be better than that had we not ground to a halt vs North and Essendon.

What’s worse is the positions in games we’ve squandered from three quarter time. We were ahead vs GWS. 12 points down vs North. 16 points down vs Geelong. 16 points down vs Essendon (and with good momentum) 1 point down vs Hawthorn. We lost each of these games, bar GWS, by 6+ goals. We could have made a fist of all of them, and should have won vs GWS and Hawthorn. We ended up taking percentage beatings and blowing genuine chances for wins. I hope we’re actively reviewing our training and fitness programs, because this isn’t good enough.

We’re clearly not as good as Hawthorn. Doubt anyone is silly enough to suggest otherwise. But we do have a win over Fremantle, who have been good enough to beat the Dogs and Adelaide. That’s about the same level of quality as Hawthorn’s best win, which was vs GWS. FWIW I think we lose on Saturday, but if we bring our best pressure and contest work I’m confident we can stay in this game to the end.

A simple reminder of how far back we’re coming from: We have the equal best win streak in the competition (3 straight wins), but are still in the bottom 4.

So many on here thought we’d lose. I assume similar vibes were on the Gameday thread at half time. I hope those posters are happy. 15 minutes in the second aside, a strong performance in the areas we care about. And we won a last quarter! Obviously West Coast are historically bad, so that must be remembered, but from where we were three games ago, a 32 point win tonight is solid. Also, Max Gawn is the GOAT.

Crowd apparently was 20,522. We've only drawn a lower crowd at a Melbourne home game against Fremantle once in the last 12 years, and that was in 2019, when we got 20,211 (so just a few hundred less). None of our home games have been a prime time slot though.

Impressive? They played against a side who turned in one of the all time awful performances. Says more about Fremantle than St Kilda IMO. They lost their last two games by a combined 116 points.

It’s ok to have an opinion that JVR hasn’t developed well, but go ahead and show us the “data” you speak of.

Is May out confirmed?

I’m far from sold on the changes. Yet another different look forward of the ball. The worst second-ruck option yet, whoever it is. Have we all forgotten how awful Petty was at that last year? And why would we subject him to that when he seems to be building form as a forward? Meanwhile Turner plays back, right? Given his form down there against Freo was good? Or does he get put forward, where he’s been as underwhelming this year as JVR but JVR at least kicked 5 last week. And yeah I don’t know if our forward half really needs both Fritsch and Melksham in it. Fully support the Clarry decision though. It’s a sign of maturity from both the club and Clarry, IMO.

Nothing given away by Goodwin in his presser

The debate around resting Max and some of the kids late on Thursday was valid (although a few other sides seemed to get good leads and ease off, including the Dogs and Fremantle). But it's worth remembering how brutal our next 10 weeks is, as until recently I'd forgotten just how tough this stretch is: Round 8 - West Coast in Perth Round 9 - Hawthorn at the MCG Round 10 - Brisbane at the Gabba Round 11 - Sydney at the MCG Round 12 - St Kilda at Alice Springs Round 13 - Collingwood at the MCG Round 14 - Port Adelaide in Adelaide (6-day break vs Port on an 8-day break) Round 15 - bye Round 16 - Gold Coast on the Gold Coast Round 17 - Adelaide in Adelaide That's 6 out of 10 weeks on the road, with travel at least every second week. It also features games against the sides currently sitting 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th on the ladder (plus Sydney, who are 14th but we never play well against them). Of course, the trade off is that our first 7 games featured just a trip down the highway and a neutral Gather Round game, whilst our final 7 games are all in Melbourne. And yes, non-Victorian clubs do this for all 24 weeks, not just 10. Regardless, if we want to achieve anything in 2025, we have to navigate this 10 week block well. So it doesn't surprise me that we looked to give Gawn a break, nor will it surprise me if we see Campbell getting games as soon as this week.

Yeah he really brings the show down a few notches. It’s supposed to be analysis, which he doesn’t offer. Instead, he chimes in with “that’s damning footage” every time they show any footage of anyone stuffing anything up in an attempt to make it sound like a massive story. It of course then gets a run on the Fox or Herald Sun website the next day, so it works, but it annoys me.

They’ve won 2 quarters in 7 matches. It’s an equal record low. Your definition of “alright” is a loose one and I dare say no one on Demonland would use that word to describe us if we had won 2 of 28 quarters. We need to be switched on, because we’re nowhere near good enough to just bank a routine win, but West Coast are really not a good side so it will be close enough to disastrous if we lose, IMO.

He played Round 3 vs Gold Coast too though, so isn’t his average less than a goal a game?

I think we did, but only late. For the first 20 mins of the last, the sting was out of the game but it was still played more or less on our terms. We should have kicked 3-4 goals, not just 1.

I think it came afterwards. Trac, probably rightly, went to Gawn for releasing the handball to someone with more time and space rather than kicking it himself under pressure. Consistent with what I’m sure we’ve been drilling into the players the last 2 weeks. I’m confident I saw them then get around Chandler, although I might be mistaken.