titan_uranus

That goal to Ellis was a disgrace of umpiring. It wasn't a push in the back (Ellis diving), it wasn't a high tackle on Rankine either. Still, main issues are ours, not umpiring. Still too many inside 50s which don't go to our advantage and too much time spent in forward half without scoring.

Our defensive zone is holding up really well. The two late goals they got in the second were disappointing though, both caused by too many defenders at the contest (May spoiling Lever the first time). We're obviously trying harder with the shorter kicks and slower play but it's not quite there yet, and still too many inside 50s which aren't going to our advantage. Don't know what game you're watching but they've both been excellent so far.

On balance the changes look good to me. I'm 100% in favour of Weideman and Bennell coming in, I see the logic behind replacing Smith with OMac (OMac plays that role better than Smith and I don't think Smith is a long-term defender), and I can appreciate Jetta replacing Rivers. Hunt wasn't playing well enough to resist being dropped but I'd have gone with Melksham.

Not that this matters too much, but that's not correct. Adelaide's season average is 6.6. Ours is 7.7. Since the re-start they're doing even worse: they average 5 goals per game, we average 7.3 (just saying that out loud is such a downer). Them being in the GC hub might have affected that, but they are unquestionably worse than us in all facets of the game.

I expected this to be satire.

With one exception I agree. The exception to me is gut-running from midfielders. I still see too many instances of Oliver, Brayshaw and Viney lagging behind opposition mids when we're in defensive transition. Otherwise, what others seem to think is a drop in pressure acts or tackles can well be explained by our inability to tie together a defensive zone and a way to move the ball in offence, coupled with far too many turnovers.

Like most of our midfielders, he has been turning it over by foot. Unlike most of our midfielders, he has been running both ways consistently across all four matches and there have been multiple times of him creating space and being ignored/missed by the ball carrier.

That will be part of it, I'm sure. Viney has been doing this for years but repeatedly shows he's not capable of composing himself or scanning the field. But one of the other things Lyon mentioned in that segment is our tactical decision to send an extra up to the stoppage. Someone on here mentioned this in another thread. That leaves a spare defender behind the play, which does not help us (indeed, contributes to our problem of failing to convert from inside 50s). That's on Goodwin. He's made a tactical call to do that (much like he was obsessed in 2018 with sending a loose defender into the backline if our opponent got on a run of goals) and it's not working.

I agree that GC are a bit underrated here, but some context is important. Their three wins were against Adelaide, Fremantle, and the horrendously out of form West Coast. And they were all at home on the Gold Coast. I would definitely say they are favourites against us but I wouldn't be writing us off, or suggesting they should win "comfortably".

You know that the AFL requires teams playing on a Sunday to name an extended squad don't you? It's not an MFC decision.

This is the dumbest thing written in this thread. The HUN article isn't the problem. We have our fair share of supporters who think the trade was a bad idea. Some, like @TheoX here, simply say the trade is bad until we win, in which case presumably it will be good. The most classic of classic hindsight reasoning. It's not like we threw a first round pick in the bin without using it at all. What we did was bring it forward into 2019. That was done in part because we saw ourselves rising up the ladder in 2020, and in part because we thought a first round pick in 2019 was worth more than a first round pick in 2020. Put to one side the fact that we've played 4 games out of 17 this year. In backing us in to improve in 2020, the club did what most people on here want. It set a higher standard for our performance. The alternative was to keep our 2020 first rounder because we were worried of finishing on the bottom again. That sort of attitude is "accepting mediocrity", isn't it?

He's also been talked up on Demonland as a capable forward. In both instances, he has weeks where he looks good and weeks where he goes completely missing. His main issue is consistency and I don't think it matters whether it's back or forward. Personally, if we've spent the past two years working on him as a forward, he should stay a forward, but should only be playing AFL if he's capable of contributing on a weekly basis (same goes for everyone else of course, including Melksham).

Have to agree with all this. The use of shorter kicks on the 45 stands out as a piece of the puzzle we're missing. I recall Melksham being useful in 2018 at opening up the ground through 45-degree kicks from half-back/wing into the middle and half-forward, opening space up and getting through and around defensive zones. There's been very little of that since 2018. I know we spent parts of 2019 sending an extra man up to stoppages, and in 2018 we would also regularly drop a man behind the play. Both of those tactics routinely left us with an opposition spare man in defence. Are we sure we're doing the same this year? It feels like our opponents have a loose defender but is that a byproduct of us sending an extra up to the stoppages? I would agree with you, though, that our lack of key forwards is hurting us in these respects. TMac comes up to the wing to get the ball, doesn't leave us with anyone behind him who can make a contest in the air.

I don't agree. It's a shared responsibility. Viney's been doing this for years. That wasn't a one-off. The onus is on players like Viney, who are our "core", to work on their failures. It is also on the coaches to identify these failings and work with individual players, and the team as a whole, to stop them from occurring.

No

Schwarz's comments are cliches, motherhood statements and guff. Most of what he says is misguided/wrong. But the general point he's making is true: things aren't working at the MFC. He cares, just as much as Lyon or anyone else, and he feels the same way many supporters do. His reasoning for it is wrong, but it doesn't matter so much right now.

The most obviously damning thing that comes out of the analysis is the way our mids move the ball. The footage of Viney at the first bounce in the fourth quarter picking it up, haring off, failing to see Hannan free at the 50, kicking it up high and being intercepted by Richmond, is as demonstrative of our problems as any 5 second piece of footage you can find. Yet half this thread turns into another Frost/Lever/May fight.

It's not that I'm confident May as a forward won't work (although I don't think he's as good forward as he is in defence). It's that I'm against the process of moving players around just to see what happens, particularly when you're proposing moving a player who is playing well, in the only part of our team that is playing at a reasonable AFL level, and which is starting to suggest that consistency and playing together is helping. Why disturb the one area of the ground that is even close to working when we have players on the list we're ignoring to fill that role (Brown and Weideman)? At the very least, let's see Brown and Weideman up there before we resort to ripping our backline up.

Not in my view. By that logic we should try Oliver at FB, Melksham in the ruck and Salem at FF. Because we just won't know whether it works until we try. There are a number of things we're struggling with. One of them is the chemistry between our players. Lever and May have still only played a handful of games together, even fewer with Smith, fewer again with Hibberd. They are, finally, starting to as a unit develop some consistency and are able to defend the width of the MCG. Now is not the time to disrupt the progress we're making there just for the sake of seeing if May can kick some goals.

I'm near certain we did put Oliver forward.

I understand we're all desperate to change things up in our forward half to get something going, but I really think this is a terrible idea. Our backline is the only part of the ground right now where we're playing at least mid-table competitive AFL-level football. Both last week and this week we've defended the G much better and most of our opponents' goals have been from turnovers, rather than from breakdowns in the back half.

It's both, bing. It's both poor coaching and poorly skilled players. Goodwin can't kick the ball for them, but he holds responsibility for poor decision-making and our inability to compose ourselves under pressure. Not full responsibility, but some responsibility.

What disappoints me the most about you, and others like you, is your genuine enjoyment at being "proven right". The easier option is to be negative. 17/18 clubs fail to win the flag each year so the odds are in your favour. Last year in particular, a number of us tried to keep our hopes up. I maintain that being optimistic is much harder to do. So it's always deflating when there are people like you who label the optimists "pollyannas" just for having that hope. Now here we are, in a thread where everyone is admitting they're losing hope. I am too. As every week goes by that we make the same mistakes and exhibit little to no improvement, I question whether and when it will turn, and whether we'll be able to make something of a list which should be playing better football than it is currently. I'm rapidly losing faith in Goodwin, I'm rapidly losing faith in Mahoney, in a number of players who should be "core". It sucks. But I wish people wouldn't gloat about it when things go poorly.

Bringing May in at the end of 2018 was the right call. We'd just come off a year of being the highest scoring side with a shocking defence. The problem wasn't bringing in May, it's that we knew we needed to make TMac and Weideman work and we've failed, so much so that we're not even playing Weideman despite crying out for him.

I agree with the general problem (kicking to the wrong spot) but IMO a second tall forward helps structure us up and should, if we do it right, ensure that there's someone in the 50 who can lead up at the ball carrier and take a mark, or bring it to ground. It will also take some pressure off Fritsch.