titan_uranus

Does anyone know what Bennell and Sparrow got their fines for? Lockhart's must have been the jumper punch. Walker got a fine for striking Gawn (good riddance) and Murphy got a week for rough conduct on Viney, what was that?

St Kilda really has had it easy compared to others. I'd love to see them get sent to Perth to play West Coast but by the end of Round 13 St Kilda will have played 8 away games to only 5 home games. The AFL could feasibly give them four home games for the rest of the year. West Coast also by Round 13 will have played 8 home games and so only one more game in Perth for them to come.

Yep, I agree. What Lynch does here should be called out just as much as what vandenBerg did. Teams repeatedly go after Max with cheap off the ball shots and I'm glad Goodwin is drawing attention to it publicly.

The same player ratings which have Steven May in the bottom half of players on the ground, when he was arguably second best behind Oliver? Does the measure of a defender playing Tomlinson's role come from player rating points? You say you don't want to wait for Tomlinson to fail. That's fair, but unfortunately for OMac we're in the same boat. He hasn't done enough to warrant having the faith that he won't fail in the coming weeks any more so than Tomlinson. I wasn't in favour of dropping him for the Adelaide game, but I'd be more than comfortable backing Tomlinson in again vs North.

Presumably Pickett gets ANB's spot. if vandenBerg is injured, I'd get Hannan back in, as I don't think he should have been dropped. I'm not sold, at all, on Jones and wouldn't be against bringing someone fresh into the side to help with the four day break. Yeah OK we get it, you don't like Tomlinson. But much to your dismay, he was actually good last night, and I'm not sure Oscar will do any better on the "big aerial threats" of Larkey, Walker or Daw than Tomlinson will. Tomlinson was asked to play a role, he played it well (no idea how you can be so confident that the reasons for moving him are limited to getting UPs and kicking from the backline - maybe it was just to play Oscar's role without the clangers?), and he deserves to hold his spot for at least one more week.

Started in the centre square at the opening bounce, I believe. Had no impact, at all, in the first half. Terrible half. Improved markedly as the game went on, and that's obviously a good thing, but we must keep in mind our opponent was pathetic. Needs to back that up next week, and longer term. Hopefully he gets some confidence from how he finished the game.

6 - Oliver 5 - May 4 - Viney 3 - Lever 2 - Petracca 1 - Jackson

He fumbled a lot tonight but his positioning and run is critical. He does so much good work for us. He can improve on the fumbles, and by jeepers I'd like him to kick a bloody goal next time he gets a shot, but you're a long way off it if you think he should be dropped.

We won all four quarters, and the fourth quarter was obviously everything we wanted at three quarter time. Gawn wasn't dominant at all but we worked into the stoppages/clearances as we went. But we have to bear in ind that our opponent is a basket case, and we had two extra days break. I'm loathe to read too much into that fourth quarter. So rather than team performance, there were some individual efforts that were super impressive. Oliver was incredible, and the key change he made to burst away from stoppages and get some distance from Adelaide's mids was really important and just what he needed to do. Viney stood up when we needed. Jackson showed a tonne of promise. He and Weideman worked well together, I thought. Lever and May were exceptional in the first half when we were making mistakes and Adelaide had pressure on. Hibberd was also good, Lockhart played his role, and I didn't notice Tomlinson which is probably a good thing. Still passengers galore though: ANB, Jones, Bennell, Sparrow, vandenBerg. Salem struggled, Brayshaw only came into it as Adelaide faded. As I said, I'm loathe to read too much into this. North will be a sterner challenge than Adelaide was, and I dearly hope we don't think tonight has fixed our problems. Finally, looks like vandenBerg is injured?

The umpiring is appalling. But we're still our own worst enemies. The ball was largely in our forward half that quarter but we kicked 1.3. Kudos to Oliver for improving his game from last week. Bursting from stoppages, breaking free from tackles, it's been a really important step in the right direction. Lever and May have been huge. So many passengers though.

I think Gawn got one free late in the second for it, but yes, it's infuriating. vandenBerg's was a free against, but it's all one way. They're doing whatever they want after the ball's dead and Gawn's copping it left right and centre. I don't think Bennell's problem is his legs or fitness. I just don't think he's feeling confident enough to put his head over the ball. Whatever it is, with him, ANB and Melksham in our forward line, it's a disaster. Hannan wasn't great the last two weeks but without Pickett, we should have kept him in for his pace and tackling.

Yeah the umpiring sucks. But let's talk about us. We suck more. We're barely up in CPs and down in clearances to the 0-9 basket case whose biggest weakness is their midfield. Gawn isn't dominating hit outs, so maybe that's impacted our ability to get on top in the middle. Who knows. I can't stand vandenBerg's OTT faux aggression. His free reversal is inexcusable. ANB and Bennell are giving us nothing, and without Hannan and Pickett we have no forward 50 pressure. And WHY is Brayshaw playing? 4 touches, spending time on the bench. I just don't get it. What is the point?

Hardwick.

This is sinking to new lows of hindsight stupidity, even by your horrendously low standards. Pickett was taken in a mid-season rookie draft at age 28. Every club, including Richmond, passed on him previously. He's played one outstanding game in the GF, where Richmond's opponent didn't exist. He otherwise averages 12 touches a game. Hardly "tearing it up". And he was dropped earlier this year. Middle of last year we were heading towards the bottom 4. How does an unproven 28 year old flashy player help us?

My gripe with dropping OMac isn't that I think OMac played well. He didn't. It's about structure. I think our best long-term plan is for OMac, or someone else who can play that role better than him, to be the "second" defender (May is the "first" defender, taking the opposition's best key forward, and Lever is "third", zoning off, intercepting, playing a little freer than the other two). We've seen plenty of examples of asking Lever to be the "second" defender which haven't worked. We've also seen examples of asking Frost or Smith to be the "second" defender: because they're both unreliable teammates, that hasn't worked well either. OMac has flaws, indeed some significant ones that IMO mean he can't be a long-term candidate for our best 22, but the structure with him in the side has had the best look to it. And our defence has been our best performing part of the ground for the past month with OMac in it. So I'd prefer us to be playing to our preferred structure, even if we're unhappy with OMac, unless/until there is a proper OMac replacement to play in his stead. And that is not Tomlinson (nor is it TMac).

I just posted this in the Gameday thread: tonight's game will be our 9th, and our 7th different venue. By comparison, Adelaide will have played 10 games after tonight and only at 3 different venues. I wouldn't mind seeing us get some stability in our fixturing in the remaining games to come: some repeat games at the same venue (presumably Metricon or the Gabba) would be nice.

However, before we get to tonight's game, I wanted to post a few devil's advocate thoughts, just to get them off my chest before we (possibly) lose. Tonight will be our 9th game. We'll playing at our 7th different venue. By comparison, Adelaide has only played at three different grounds (Adelaide Oval, Gabba, Metricon). Adelaide also appear to be a better side at home than away. Other than the Showdown, their losses in Adelaide have been to Sydney (3 points), St Kilda (23 points) and Essendon (3 points).

I can't shake the feeling that we're going to lose this one. We shouldn't. We should win by 6+ goals. But I can't help but feel Adelaide will pull one out, knowing this may be their last chance to win a game all year.

If we lose tomorrow night, this thread will want 90% of our list traded or delisted.

If we lose, this board will go bananas. If we win, even by 100 points, this board will shrug its shoulders, dismiss it as an irrelevant performance, and expect us to lose to North.

The backline was, by far, the best part of our side last week. Lever was a stand-out part of that. Rest of your post is anti-Lever biased guff. Agree re: Hannan. In recent weeks I've seen footage of Melksham giving huddle speeches and revving up the kids. I've read somewhere that he's a leader of sorts and I think that is part of why he's kept his spot. He's also improved the last few weeks, to be fair. He should have been dropped a month ago though. Melksham earlier this year, and Harmes/Brayshaw right now, are the biggest examples of favouritism we're seeing. In all three instances, we've seen players woefully out of form being persisted with. TMac, OMac, ANB, Hunt, Smith, Bennell, Jetta and Hibberd have all been dropped this year after having had fewer chances to perform than those three. I don't know if it's cliques, it could simply be Goodwin's stubbornness on show: doubling down on his method, and therefore the players he sees as "core", because he thinks that's the only way out and/or doesn't know any different.

Two thoughts come to mind following that game. The first is maybe that 4 day breaks are a factor: Brisbane was off a 4 day break, Richmond had 6. Although to counter that, Brisbane generated plenty of scoring shots, so it wasn't all one-way traffic. The second is that the comp remains very even. Brisbane were pretty poor in most facets after quarter time. Pretty much every side has had a stinker of a loss so far this year. Indeed, every club except GWS has lost at least one game by 30+ points this year (side note: a week ago, there were three other clubs who with GWS had not lost a game by 30+ points. They were Brisbane, Carlton and...wait for it...us).

Lever was unquestionably in our best last week, but feel free to maintain your bias. Frost and wrecking go well together, though.

Thinking this through, surely Tomlinson is going to play defence. If he does, we have a back six of Lever, May, Tomlinson, Hibberd, Salem, Lockhart. Jones/Harmes (vom)/maybe Sparrow seventh defender. Forward six then is Weideman, Jackson, Melksham, Fritsch, ANB, Bennell. vandenBerg/Jones/Sparrow maybe seventh. The rest are midfielders: Gawn, Oliver, Petracca, Viney, Brayshaw, Langdon. Harmes/Sparrow/vandenBerg rotating through as needed. If Tomlinson plays wing, we're short in numbers and height in terms of defenders, and we then have too many players trying to fit into the limited minutes we can give to the five non-Gawn midfielders.

I don't get it, and I don't like it. Oscar was poor last week, but we've had a settled and functioning backline since he came in. Last week we had a disgusting drop in pressure and increase in turnovers, so it's no wonder the back half performed worse than it had the previous month. Adelaide has a relatively tall forward line (Himmelberg is 198cm, McAsey is 197cm, and Walker, Fogarty and Lynch are all 193cm). Was this the game to throw the third tall defender out and, presumably, rely on Hibberd to play on someone 7cm+ taller than him? Or are we sending Tomlinson into defence when he hasn't been training as a key defender all year? Or are we really dumb enough to put Fritsch back into defence after the abject failure that was Fritsch in the backline in 2019? It doesn't make sense to me. Meanwhile our midfield last week was poor and we've made no changes. All of Sparrow, Jones, Brayshaw and Harmes retain their spots. I don't mind Bennell and ANB changing up our forward half mix, and I absolutely agree with TMac being dropped, but I'm concerned that we're going to disrupt the improvement and progress we saw in our back half. Maybe it's MFCSS, but I can see one of Adelaide's talls doing a Kent Kingsley and bagging 5 against us, making Lever and May look woeful as they repeatedly find themselves out of position trying to cover too many talls without support.