titan_uranus

32 minutes ago, demoncat said:

I definitely agree about the state of the list

I think at the start of the year I thought we were just a few tweaks and a good run of form away from making finals again, but now it seems a new list hole is popping up every other week

However I don’t think this should be a reason to retain Goody because to me it doesn’t look like he’s willing to make hard calls on players and their positions to at least address some of these holes in the short term, or at the very least get development into our younger players for the long term

Why isn’t Trac spending 50/50 mid/fwd? Why isn’t Jack spending more time forward (reckon he spent about 5 mins up there at the start of the game on Saturday)? Why isn’t Rivers getting a go in the midfield? Why are players like Windsor and Petty being played out of their best positions?

I could go on - but the point is that while a new coach won’t immediately fix the holes on our list, they can cast a fresh pair of eyes over our players and make decisions about our list and gameplan accordingly

I don’t think after all this time Goody has the willingness or capacity to do this, particular in regards to senior players

The longer the season goes on, particularly one where we’ve had a great run with injuries, the more our list problems come to the fore.

Why isn’t Viney playing forward? Because we got so badly beaten at stoppage in the first quarter, Goodwin felt he had no choice but to put him back in the middle.

It was a disheartening moment IMO. We didn’t stay the course. We planned for Viney to play forward but couldn’t actually do it.

I hope we don’t abandon that plan and try it again this week.

1 hour ago, Lil_red_fire_engine said:

Kolt is super clean with his hands and feet but doesn’t get enough of it yet and makes howlers when he overthinks the game.

I believe he will look a lot different with a full preseason and continuity of play.

As far as those who were drafted after him, I suggest go and have a look. Of the next 15 drafted, only two of them played seniors on the weekend and they were Darcy Wilson and Riley Hardeman neither who have been killing it this year. Logan Morris is the one at pick 31 that most clubs missed.

Joel Freijah went at 45. Every club missed him, but still, wouldn’t he be a great addition to our side.

As for the OP, I agree with those who defend our kids given they are just that. Our biggest issue is the ongoing reliance on senior players who aren’t performing. 19 and 20 year olds who aren’t getting consistent runs at it are not the focal point right now.

However, I’m not quite sure of Kolt’s AFL-quality talents. You mention his clean hands - that might be fair, but he has to get more of the ball, and in contest, for us to be able to judge that.

36 minutes ago, monoccular said:

Fiorini KOs Petty in a contest, very similar or even more culpable than Kozzie v Moore last year, except that Moore was not concussed.

Kozzie gets 3 weeks, Fiorini nothing to see.

And some ask if the MRO is corrupt, inept, or both.

What are you talking about?

Fiorini was trying to pick the ball up, and Petty went in head first.

Pickett chose to bump. Yes, he got unlucky that Moore went to ground, and I didn’t like the suspension, but the two are nothing at all alike.

9 hours ago, At the break of Gawn said:

Think it's first time since 2020 due to covid. It's ridiculous that the club accepted this.

What do you mean “accepted”?

We don’t get a choice.

We also get what we deserve when we had sub-20,000 crowds in the last 2 months of last year.

If our crowds drop off further in the last 2 months of this year, expect more of the same for our 2026 fixture.

Petty and Howes miss with concussion.

JVR comes back because there's no one else.

Lever's the better fit but whilst TMac's struggling at Casey, he at least was doing well in the AFL before he was dropped.

Ironically, despite our injury list and run with fitness/injuries this year being as good as it's ever been, other than Windsor and JVR who just got dropped, possibly the only players on our list I really want to see get back into the side are AWM, McAdam and Sestan, who are the only actually injured players we have.

Instead, what do we do - make Laurie the sub again? Give Woewodin, Brown or Culley a game off middling (at best) VFL form? Billings?

One part of what happened today really resonates with me as the crux of our list problem.

We make the call pre-game to play Viney forward, acknowledging that we can't keep playing Viney with Oliver, Trac and Gawn as our majority midfielders who cannot deliver the ball inside 50 in a way which wins us games.

What happens?

We get annihilated at contest in the first quarter, so badly that we have no choice but to put Viney back into the middle to fix it.

Therein lies our problem - our list has no midfield depth on it, which means we can't do what we desperately need to do and replace Viney and Oliver with players who can kick. The ones who can kick can't compete, whether because they're too young (Langford) or, mainly, they're just not good enough as midfielders (Sparrow, Salem, Rivers, Laurie, Woewodin, Billings, Brown).

Third game out of our the last four on the road. A player down for three quarters (we had 13 fewer interchange rotations as a result). Opponent is a top 8 contender who’s lost something like 2 games at home in 2 years.

Is that enough to offset a disgraceful first quarter? Laying just 7 tackles in the first quarter (to their 18) despite them having 23 more touches is nothing but unacceptable.

And if that wasn’t enough, we then had 8 more inside 50s (all in the fourth) and 7 more scoring shots than them across the last three quarters but only outscored them by a combined 17 points, because we kicked 12.12 to their 10.7.

Yet another game where we have one awful quarter, and yet another game of inaccuracy (is it any wonder that the inaccuracy got worse as the game got closer? No, is the answer).

I’m ok with making a selection statement. I’m ok with dropping Lever. I’m even ok with dropping Windsor, even though I’d have preferred that we just move him to a wing - hopefully going back to Casey sparks him a bit.

But dropping JVR frustrates me, and bringing Sharp and Tholstrup back after not much at all at Casey frustrates me more.

I’m no Laurie fan but how can the FD justify recalling Sharp when Laurie busts his [censored] at Casey every week? Even Billings would be justified in shrugging his shoulders.

As for JVR, apparently we’re not playing TMac because he’s not the future. Well, Melksham, as good as he was 6 weeks ago, is out of form and is just as much not our future as TMac.

I’m also fundamentally sick of us playing JVR for 67% game time, some of which is in the ruck, then dropping him when he doesn’t dominate.

I presume we’re going to put Petty in the ruck when Gawn rests? Shapes as disastrous - he stunk in the ruck last year, and when he does go there our forward target is going to be Jefferson against Collins and Andrew.

Julian DeStoop on SEN said JVR was also dropped (along with Windsor and Lever). Anyone else heard that?

Gold Coast is going to be the side to miss the 8, right? A post-bye slump as per usual?

What an absolute fail it will be if they do miss from 8-2 with the list they have.

(Meanwhile I expect them to comfortably account for us on Saturday. They should be fired up knowing their finals spot is on the line).

Meanwhile North will be a draw behind us.

No matter what you think of our year of change, to be a draw out of the bottom 3 at the bye is not even close to good enough.

4 hours ago, VoiceOfReason said:

The players say they want to play for Goodwin, but actions suggest otherwise. The effort might be there, but that is about it. Wasteful football in 2/3's of the ground. Oliver and Petracca looked to have checked out.

Don’t agree with this. There’s no aspect of Trac or Clarry’s performance which suggests they’ve “checked out”. Far from it - Clarry’s defensive efforts are to me the opposite sign.

Just because they’re playing poorly doesn’t mean they’re not playing for Goodwin.

3 hours ago, Supermercado said:

"A dozen matches in the past three years have turned a dynasty team into a rubble."

Somebody's spell check refused to accept 'rabble'.

Spoiler alert - the whole article is based on expected score which is a lame way of judging something like this.

Whatever we were meant to score the 2022 QF against Sydney was the big miss. We were in front, May thrashed Franklin, and a win there off the back of thumping Brisbane the previous week would've sent us to a prelim on a high. Bah.

You could argue the true turning point was the off the ball free paid against May, to Franklin, when we were 17-odd points up and all over them. Never recovered from there.

23 minutes ago, ElDiablo14 said:

Goodwin got handed over a strong list from Roos.

He then proceeded to underachiever with said list. Flag aside and 2018 aside, I can't feel anything but like wasted opportunity for more success between 2017-2024.

What an utterly bonkers post.

Our 2016 list included Dawes, Lumumba, Stretch, Kent, Ben Newton, Garland, Pederson, Michie, JKH, Weideman, Hulett, Bugg, Mitch King, Ben Kennedy, Mitch White, Josh Wagner, Dean Jones, Terlich and Max King. Plus poor old Grimes and Trengove whose careers and bodies were shot.

In what world was that a “strong list”?

But then I love “flag aside”. He’s underachieved so long as you just ignore the [censored] premiership we won.

[censored] me.

1 hour ago, Bring-Back-Powell said:

What’s even more damning for Goodwin is that we’ve barely got an injury.

Aside from Spargo and McAdam (who never plays anyway) we had a full list to choose from on Sunday and still delivered that slop. There’s a lot of clubs that would kill for our injury list at the moment.

Unfortunately, this is correct (although right now I’d love to see if AMW could make a bit of a difference to our ball movement).

We’ve had a comparatively smooth run with injuries this year.

Yet we’re bottom 4 at the bye.

6 minutes ago, picket fence said:

And the coach's press conferance was fantasy land stuff! CARRYST SIMON take some responsibility!

He did! Carryst!

He acknowledged that it’s on both players and coaches to ensure that what we practice actually shows up on game day.

He also acknowledged that our forwards were rubbish and we kicked the ball to them with no composure. Nothing “fantasy land” about anything he said.

3 minutes ago, ANG13 said:

I think the kicking bit is debatable.

It’s really not.

That says more about Clarry, though.

This board has become incredibly anti-Trac, after what happened last year. I can understand it to an extent, but I also think Trac gets raked over the coals by many on here when he is actually doing pretty well (today he was poor but he’s is a focal point after almost every loss).

Poor old Clarry found some form as a defensive mid but can’t seem to pick up the offence side of his game. And now has to compete with Viney for centre bounce attendances.

50 minutes ago, Dr. Gonzo said:

He's right, Max is huge around the ground but consistently let's himself and the team down with his goalkicking. It is inexcusable that it hasn't been fixed, he's kicked what 2.13 or so for the year? Many from within 30m on barely any angle. It's demoralising for the team when that continues to happen.

No, he’s not right.

I get you’re angry, we all are (at least we all should be), but even allowing for Gawn’s poor kicking he’s not an “anchor” on us as the OP said. He’s a star and without him we’d be closer to 18th on the ladder.

Edit: and the subsequent post that he lets us down as much, if not more, than Lever, Viney, Trac or Clarry is offensively wrong.

Goodwin made multiple mentions of our inability to compete aerially in the forward line today.

We must, as a result, drop at least one of Petty, JVR and Melksham.

We can’t drop JVR unless we’re prepared to have Petty do the relief ruckwork, which was disastrous last year, or we bring Johnson back.

I don’t mind Turner forward but we’re doing him no favours by moving him around so much. Of all the “big moves” we could make, I doubt we’ll drop May or Lever so unless we soft drop one of them, I suppose TMac in and then Turner forward to replace Petty could work.

Jeffo for Melksham I suppose.

I’m all for identifying better ball users but Billings isn’t up to AFL level and I don’t think Laurie is either (albeit how could we know for sure as he rarely gets full games).

We’ll probably just drop some kids and bring back Sharp and Tholstrup though, won’t we.

Goodwin in his presser made a few telling (IMO) comments:

1. He said 3-4 times that one of our key problems was our inability to compete aerially in the forward line, and that our third quarter spark came from competing better in that space. I’d be staggered if at least one of Petty, JVR and Melksham aren’t dropped for our next game as a result

2. He said that under pressure we “reverted”, and when pressed ok what that meant he mentioned our inability to lower our eyes or to be composed when kicking. Again, I’d be staggered if we didn’t see some sort of midfield change in our next game (whether that’s dropping someone or shifting magnets to lower the likelihood of Viney, Oliver, Trac and Rivers doing all the kicking inside 50).

IMO our biggest and most fundamental problem is that under pressure we cannot reliably execute our plans, and revert to habitual type, which is to rush or dump kick the ball in the hope we’ll subsequently lock it in or reset and go again. One major contributor to the pressure we are constantly under is our goalkicking - continually missing easy shots, particularly early in games and quarters, heaps the pressure on when our opponent inevitably kicks their own (which is happening far more now than in 2021-23 because our defence is nowhere near the level it was then, and is structured differently as well).

10 minutes ago, BW511 said:

The worst part about this week is we have confirmed what all the Collingwood faithful said last week, we played our grand final against them so this was always going to happen.

We can steel ourselves for a big game occasionally (Brissy, Kings B’day) but we cannot perform consistently at the level required to be anything other than pack fodder.

If I was a young player at Melbourne, I would be absolutely shattered seeing our senior players pick and choose when they are ‘on’ and also squander opportunities at the rate they do.

We are going to be dragging the anchor of Max, Trac, Viney, Clarry, Lever and May for as long as Goody is still coach, so let’s hope the club can see past 2021 and start addressing the future in a meaningful manner

For all the reasonable points you’ve made here, lumping Max in that “anchor” comment undoes them all.

Yes his goalkicking is terrible but he gives unconditional effort and consistently high quality football, whilst also being physically targeted weekly by opponents who play the man, not the ball, because they know they can’t compete otherwise.

I’ll cop criticism of his kicking, which is wholly justified, but not anything else. Max deserves praise.

5 minutes ago, Clintosaurus said:

Done. If we get on a run, the umps would find a way to end it.

FFS let this conspiracy theory [censored] go.

We lose games because of ourselves. Let’s get our own rubbish under control before looking anywhere else.

We’re back in the bottom 4, which after the last three weeks is where we belong.

For all the gains we made during the 5-1 streak, we’ve cooked our season by losing two games to (at the time) bottom 4 sides in the most maddeningly classic Melbourne fashion.

Better analysis will come but for now, the overwhelming feeling is that we’ve taken a promising run of form and absolutely [censored] it up against the wall right when we needed to buckle down and focus before the bye.

As disappointed as I’ve probably been since 2020.

28 minutes ago, Rab D Nesbitt said:

As an emergency why is he in Melbourne?

That tweet was posted yesterday. He surely travelled with the team as the travelling emergency, doesn’t mean there’s definitely a late change.

Final team

In: Viney

Out: Tholstrup (omitted)