titan_uranus

The only reasonable option he had other than the long kick to the wing was Langdon, who was running into the pocket to his left. From the looks of Lever's reaction when he marked it, he was trying to take a few seconds off the clock before kicking. I don't think that's unreasonable, and I think he would have hoped/expected that the players up the ground would move towards the open wing to create options. Agree with this. As deanox has pointed out, it was the equivalent of Lever and 72 for pick 8. So it's really one first round draft pick, not two. Half the cost that most people suggest. And in the context of where our list sat at the end of 2017, the complete correct decision (despite the fact he could be playing better).

I'm inclined to agree. It's dangerous taking screenshots of play and then trying to extrapolate from them, but one thing that struck me was the angle both Smith and Lever were coming from. Lever's momentum appears to be shifting towards the boundary line, so his spoil would be in that direction. Smith is the opposite. So maybe Lever had the higher percentage spoil option and Smith ought to have recognised that? Of course, I'm guessing neither of them saw the other one and both only were ball-watching, so they both independently thought they were the third man up.

We beat Carlton by 100 and Adelaide by 90-odd in 2018. Those don't count?

I think I agree with you in that, if we are going to play two "key" defenders, we're better with OMac/May than we are with May/Lever or May/Smith. The main issue with it, of course, is OMac. I'm not convinced he'll ever be good enough to be our FB. However, I'm equally unconvinced in Smith being a key, or even third, defender, and I don't like Lever doing anything other than being a third tall/intercept defender. Structurally, I think we're better off with Smith either playing on a mid/smaller forward, or not being in the backline at all, with OMac, May and Lever being the three talls (in that order). I'm not sure this is the week to make any change in that area though, given Essendon plays a largely small forward line without Daniher (McKernan 198cm, Stringer 192cm, Townsend 187cm). The week after, though, Geelong plays Hawkins and Ratugolea.

I don't agree with the first point so much, but I do agree with the second. IMO priority number 1 needs to be the reintroduction of Harmes into the midfield as a tagger. He was so good in that role in 2018, and he's so ineffectual in the backline at the moment. One of the problems of doing that is it reduces the amount of time we can have Oliver, Viney and Brayshaw in the middle. So, as you say, we need to be able to put those players in other spots on the ground and they need to be able to contribute there. Oliver can go forward, he's done that well (IMO an underrated part of his game). I'd increase Oliver's time spent in the forward line to give Harmes more room in the middle. We'll lose out a bit on not having Oliver in the stoppages but we can cope. Viney and Brayshaw are more problematic. Neither of them look particularly good anywhere other than in the guts. I think Brayshaw could play Harmes' half-back role just as well as Harmes, or Jones half-forward role just as well as Jones, so I'd try that a bit.

Agree about the effect of standing next to someone 15cm+ taller than you, but Jetta's been a serial offender of unnecessarily going up in marking contests for years.

Agree with most of these. We can't afford to let Hurley and Hooker control the air in our forward 50 like we let McGovern and Hurn control it in Round 1. We must pick and play forwards who can compete in the air, either by taking contested marks or at least bringing the ball to ground for our smalls to work with. Smith could play that role (and indeed should either play that role or be dropped). We have to back Weideman in to be able to play that role too. Jackson isn't ready for that role IMO. TMac needs to lift. In terms of Saad, my concern is he'll be on Melksham or Jones and if they don't lift, he'll rip us apart on the rebound. Whilst I'd prefer us to be in a position to drop ANB before Melksham/Jones, we're not. Melksham has far more upside than Jones, I think. It should be Jones (to make way for Pickett), IMO.

So you blame Lever for our losses in that period?

If this is your read on the game then I don't know if you're reading matches well. We fell apart on Saturday when we started getting smashed on the inside. We were dominant in clearances and CPs in the first 1.5 quarters and with our obsession with a high forward half press, we turned that into repeat inside 50s and scores. Then Carlton started winning the clearances and we fell apart. IMO had almost nothing to do with getting smashed on the outside, aside from the poor defensive efforts of our forwards and midfielders in the second half.

He kicked 4 goals against us last year.

Hogan was a star. Who wanted to leave. So we took the best we could get for him and turned him into a key defender. After a year in which we'd been the highest scoring side but leaked goals and had Frost and OMac struggling to hold down the key defensive positions. Could not care less about, what, someone having a different opinion to you? It was hard enough covering 2 minutes. No way anyone could do that to themselves for 94.

Having reflected today a bit, whilst I remain exceptionally disappointed, I've come to think this as well. I genuinely think we've produced some of the best football of this round. I don't know if we're capable of producing it for four quarters but for my own sanity I'm going to let myself believe we can, and we'll learn from yesterday what we need to do when opponents make changes at the contest.

When we lost Hogan we had TMac who had kicked 53 goals in 20 games and we had Weideman who had taken the finals by storm. But we had OMac and Frost as our key defenders. Hindsight, hindsight, hindsight. Agree with this. Smith and TMac just stood in the defensive 50 doing nothing. Presumably crossing their fingers that Lever would find a magic target on a wing full of Carlton players and they'd be OK. Too often we see too many of our players failing to gut run when we need it. TMac is a senior player. Inexcusable. We see it from Jones, Brayshaw and Oliver as well. It's not good enough.

Of all the football I've seen so far this round, our first quarter is the best so far. Pity our second half was the worst I've seen so far this round.

Agree. He has the ability to take the ball in a stoppage and burst his way out, but then to use the ball well after that. Oliver and Viney are capable of bursting from a stoppage but rarely seem to be able to then damage with it. His third quarter goal was sublime as well.

I've just watched the final two minutes again (here). It starts with Carlton bringing the ball back after Fritsch's miss. Our zone is woeful. Jones and Brayshaw are guarding space leaving Fritsch to defend three Blues. Docherty's poor handpass stops them getting it out. Then Salem kicks to Melksham who can't get the ball over the line, it comes back to Salem who gets crunched, and when Carlton get possession you hear Garry Lyon say "oh, they're out". Why? Because we've pushed our defensive zone so far up the ground that we've left space out the back. Walsh's kick to Mackay is Melbourne-esque and Jetta gets the free. He looks to go down the line, Viney and Hunt are open near the boundary, but I think (and maybe I'm being generous here) he mis-kicks it so it goes in board. Still, Petracca is there to take the uncontested mark, but fluffs it (maybe his only mistake all day, to be fair). Ball gets back to Walsh who, MFC-esque again, fails to see Casboult on his own and kicks it straight to Lever. Lever then, correctly, looks down the other wing which is where he should be kicking it. No one leads there other than Fritsch. Meanwhile Joel Smith is standing in the goalsquare telling everyone to pause. Most of our forwards/mids are stuck on the other side of the ground and appear too tired or unwilling to get across to help Lever (Brayshaw is, again, in no-man's land). Lever is forced to kick to the 2-on-1 but the Carlton player runs under the ball and we're able to clear. Langdon and Tomlinson gut run into the 50 to give us options and that's enough time off the clock to win. One poor kick (Jetta's, but possibly a mis-kick rather than a bad choice) but the poor defensive positioning and lack of running was a bigger problem.

This is your big point? In a round where Collingwood scored 0 goals in 2.5 quarters and combined with Richmond for 10 goals in perfect football conditions, Hawthorn scored 1 goal in a half, and West Coast scored 1 goal in a half against a bunch of teenagers?

As is often the case on Demonland, everything's binary. It's either the coaches, or the players. IMO it's both. We have a group of players who regularly fail to execute basic football requirements (two-way running, defensive pressure, holding uncontested marks, decision making under no pressure, getting back behind the mark, zoning, communicating with one another to stop three players flying at the ball, leaders disappearing). But we also have a coaching group which is failing to fix those problems and has, I think, doubled-down on a rigid style of playing which exposes us to losses when we're not at 100%, which happens all too regularly. Both sides are at fault and both sides need to improve.

Too simplistic IMO, binman. The mid-forward connection issue is a real one and it's more than just foot skills and pressure. It includes forwards knowing when to lead and where to lead to, keeping a forward structure which doesn't continually get sucked up the ground, having forwards who can crash packs and bring the ball to ground (and/or hold marks). It's not all as simple as opposition pressure and foot skills. Yesterday wasn't about our mid-forward connection, though. It wasn't a case of us having repeat inside 50s going to waste. It was a case of our midfield losing control and being unable to get it back, combined with a lack of forward/midfield defensive pressure.

If I had to choose between us bravely holding on or Carlton completely stuffing it up, I'd go with the latter. Heaven knows, as an MFC supporter, I know what a side choking in the final two minutes looks like.

Yes I think this is harsh, ridiculously so. The issue I have with Bennell isn't his output. Anyone who expects him to be tearing the game up had unreasonably high expectations. The issue I have is that we're playing him knowing he's not fit enough to play much more than 50% of the game. Jackson's barely fitter. And we had Rivers as a first gamer and were planning on having Pickett as a second gamer too. We're really going in with 20 or 21 players when Bennell and Jackson's combined fitness isn't the same as a standard AFL player. We're not good enough to be able to do that, IMO.

The more I think about Goodwin's comments, the more frustrated I get. There are two quintessential current-MFC ways to lose: dominate inside 50s but fail to score, conceding easy goals out the back because our entire 22 are in our forward half locking it in; being beaten in the middle and failing to turn the tide. The "mid-forward" connection thing is what goes wrong in the first such problem, but not the second. When we dominate inside 50s and score, we get 2018 MFC, which is what we got today in the first 1.5 quarters: a 42 point lead in that amount of time is nothing to be sneezed at against any opponent. Goodwin continues to try to get us playing a game that relies on ruck/clearance/CP dominance and locks the ball inside the forward half. If we don't dominate in those areas, we seem to be incapable of winning.

Is it a non-issue? I'm not sure. We played awfully for 2.5 quarters. We held on despite momentum being against us for over an hour. Yet our players walk into the rooms so keen to sing the song, they don't even look around to see if everyone's there! They just can't help themselves. I accept it was our first win in nearly 12 months, but IMO there is something wrong with some of our players failing to realise their captain (newly appointed, never won in the role before), as well as Tomlinson and Langdon (new to the club, never won with us before), were there. I actually think it's an issue of some importance.

Was that even our main problem? We built a 42 point lead on dominating the ruck and clearances. When Pittonet started breaking even with Gawn and Carlton's mids started getting clearances, everything else fell apart. Our mid-forward connection was a big 2019 problem, but so was our inability to respond to our opponents changing things up and taking away our CP/clearance dominance (which was what got us to the 2018 prelim). That, coupled with "leaders" missing (Jones, TMac, Melksham, Brayshaw, arguably Viney), were far worse than our forward-mid connection today.

I agree with the problem, but not with the argument that OMac is part of the solution. We had this exact same problem last year when OMac was in the side. IMO the problem is that we lack a defensive unit which plays as a unit. The better sides' backlines work together so much better than ours does.