titan_uranus

In: May, Johnson, Billings, Melksham, Langford Out: Jeffo, Spargo (both injured), Woey, Turner, Howes (all dropped)

If this is any indication, Langford, Johnson and Billings will be in and Sharp will be one of the two (other than Jeffo) who is making way.

Ah yes, because all work environments are the same.

1. Well then you can say “if we only win one flag I’ll consider it a failure”. 2. Yes they are. The competition in 2000 was so different to what it is now. The evenness through the ladder right now is unprecedented (we won 11 games last year and finished 14th, for example). The gap between the best and the rest is smaller than it ever has been. It’s “BS” just as much as the assertion that multiple flags was the requirement. 3. Multiple flags is dominance. The sides who’ve done it recently will go down in history for their efforts. But that’s my point - instead of viewing them as the benchmark we were supposed to meet, they should be viewed as the sides who exceed the norm. And your last bit is I think the underlying issue. I think you and the others who agree with you are just frustrated that our flag came in 2021. The benchmark isn’t a second flag, you just want to replicate it in a normal Melbourne year. It reads like you’re criticising me for “reliving” 2021, as if it’s a crime to reflect positively on it.

Speak for yourself. The competition has never been more even. Comparisons to Essendon from 2000 are misguided. The bar has never been, nor should be, multiple flags.

This is just an article quoting the Tradies podcast. Remains the same “source”, McClure.

It’s both. I’m with you on the injury impact. 13 players unavailable is making things tough. But we also have to acknowledge that the likes of Spargo, Laurie, Woewodin and Billings are all a bit “samesy”, on a background of Sparrow plateauing, Howes not improving, and Sestan, Adams and Verrall all queries as to when/whether they will debut.

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?