titan_uranus

A perfect example of prejudice. Lever can do better, but blaming our performances on him, or on bringing him to the club, is off the mark and incorrect.

You have a habit, dazzle, of taking your anger out on previous drafting/trading decisions. If you watched today's game and thought "we lost because Lever was poor", you don't understand the fundamental problems we're having through the middle and forward of centre. His role, like every other defender's role, is to defend. Our defensive set up wasn't our problem. Like most weeks, we put our defenders under insane pressure with our repeat turnovers across half-forward. I'm not suggesting Lever stood out in a positive way, but there are obvious, glaring problems in the other two thirds of the ground that are vastly more problematic than whatever you don't like about Lever.

His inability to hit a target by foot is a massive reason we're struggling. Massive, massive problem. We're not going to drop him, not after one bad game, so like the majority of our players, our future depends on him working hard to improve his mistakes.

Of [censored] course this thread shows up. The anti-Lever bias is insane on this board. If you think Lever was the problem today, or even a top 10 problem, you don't get it. Why the [censored] should we care about Lever only having two disposals. He's not in the side to get disposals.

That's rubbish, bing. It's not all on his shoulders, but our lack of improvement in the key areas that need improving is a shared responsibility between coaches and players. He's coached instinct out of some players, he's yet to find a way to teach them when to play on or when to stop, he's yet to find a way to teach them when to go long or when to look short, he backs in the wrong players and selects the wrong players, and he can't get us to play four quarters. It's not all his fault, but it is certainly partly his fault.

It's unbearable watching us make the same mistakes every week. The two key issues we've had since Goodwin took over are poor remain. We can't hit targets and we turn it over at crucial times. The negative comments about Lever in this thread only serve to highlight the almighty prejudice Demonland has against the obvious whipping boy of the club. If you're focusing on our defensive structure/setup as our problem, you don't get it. This is all about turnovers in the middle and, worse, across half forward. This is about playing all of Melksham, Hannan, vandenBerg and Fritsch and having only two of them (the latter two) show up (and even then, Fritsch's kicking was appalling). This is about Oliver failing to chase and turning over all of his kicks. This is about Viney showing us he's most likely incapable of changing how he plays and continuing to bomb the ball without looking. This is about Tomlinson kicking to Langdon on a tight angle when the game was there to be won. Hibberd was excellent, right back to his best and with good kicking to boot. Gawn was, again, good, as was Petracca, but we say that almost every week. Gawn plays well, one of the mids plays well, we generate a stack of inside 50s, but we can't score. We need a second tall forward to give us something to aim at. And then we need 90% of our side to improve their kicking. Until those things happen, we won't win games of football. And that is on both the players and the coaches, together. It's not one or the other. It's both.

This is classic Melbourne under Goodwin. We’ve had more disposals, more CPs, more clearances, more tackles, more inside 50s, but fewer shots on goal and we’re losing. That quarter was 9 inside 50s each. If you’re blaming the defenders you don’t get it. It’s all about our turnovers. They have 7 goals, 5 are from turnovers. Most of them are awful kicks inside 50 which don’t get marked. Fritsch has missed about 6 kicks. Oliver too. VDB in the first quarter under no pressure missed TMac in a paddock. We are moronic for not picking a second tall forward. Fritsch is getting belted and will be physically destroyed if we don’t get another body down there to help, because TMac is being blanketed. Instead, we picked all of Hannan, Melksham and VDB. It’s not working.

Oh dazzle would you give it the [censored] up. At the end of 2018, when we were the highest scoring side but couldn't stop big forwards to save ourselves, when Weideman had just taken two finals by storm, we should have ignored the key defender who wanted to play for us and instead taken a skinny forward in the draft who was unlikely to be in a physical position to assist us in 2019, the year we were ideally going to challenge for the flag?

If we assume 6-6-6 has played a role, and I think it has, I think there are two reasons why. One is what you mention - a lack of run from behind the centre square, meaning that as we get our hands on the ball at the centre stoppage, we likely don't have a runner to feed it to so we go with a quick kick. The other is the trade-off - we have two more players in our forward 50, but they're not generating marks from those quick kicks. That's in part because they're undersized, in part because they're out of form (TMac), and in part because we don't have a good forward set up. We don't leave forwards deep to lead up to the ball carrier (last year, when I was at games, we would have many of our six forwards sit up near the 50 to push up into the square and, presumably, to start defending if we lost the centre clearance).

Having a set number of players in the forward/defensive 50s at each stoppage might work, but it might not. If it's, say, 4 from each team, that's 10 from each team in the middle who can, and most likely will, follow the ball around. Another issue to consider is how the rule is enforced. When does the rule kick in? At the time the whistle is blown to call a bounce/throw in? At the time of the bounce/throw in? And who polices it? Do the umpires stop and wait for players to go back into their 50s? Do we have extra umpires watching (can we afford more umpires)? Do we have a video umpire? I'm not saying it can't work, but I'm not convinced it will, and I'm not convinced it's logistically simple.

That could be it - although it wasn't wet last week.

No second tall forward again. I'm not convinced that's the right call. I seriously hope Sunday shows me that this can work.

I agree. Much of Geelong's slow ball movement was designed to break through what has traditionally been a poor zone of ours. It held up relatively well on the weekend. When we had the ball, Geelong's slow ball movement became irrelevant. The main two reasons we didn't score were our own failures (missed kicks, poor choices going inside, no leading forwards, no tall forwards the usual 2018-20 Melbourne stuff) and Geelong's strong defensive set up. We still needed to adapt to how Geelong were playing, but the bigger issues from that game were what we did with ball in hand, as opposed to in defence.

I'm not sure I understand your complaint about us "grammophoning" our game plan to the world. Almost every good club has an identifiable brand. We know how St Kilda tries to move the ball. We know how GWS, Richmond and West Coast tried to move the ball the last few years. Why is the issue that we've "grammophoned" our game? Isn't the real issue a combination of two things: we didn't execute our own game plan well (e.g. missed kicks inside 50, poor choices, etc.) and we didn't adapt to an opponent to tried to take that away from us?

Agree with your post, particularly the bolded bit. Our game vs Essendon last year was high scoring (100+ each) but devoid of all skill. I strongly disagree with the notion that "more goals = better product". If there is an issue with the game, it is that a higher proportion of the game is spent in stoppages with a higher proportion of the 36 on-field players within a certain radius (say, 20m) of the ball. Reducing the number of players on the ground won't fix that. If anything, it could make things worse (there will be fewer options forward of the centre and teams may just try to roll stoppages down the wing until they have a forward 50 stoppage). Making backwards kick play on won't fix that either. There is no evidence to suggest backwards kicks are contributing to lower scores (indeed, it's the opposite this year) or more stoppages. IMO, three things that could be done to reduce stoppages: Immediately penalise a "third" player into a tackle. Where one person tackles another to the ground, we often see others jump on the pile. The first player to do that (whether they are on the side of the tackler or tacklee) should be penalised. Keep it to one-on-one on the ground and the onus remains on the tackled player to make a reasonable attempt to dispose of the ball. Remove the ruck nomination rule and permit third man up to come back into ruck contests. This is to our detriment as it weakens one of Gawn's strengths, but it allows clubs to clear the ball from stoppages. It also saves time, removing the need for umpires to slow things down by asking who is rucking. Just get the ball, throw it up, and move on. Tighten the rules around holding the ball. I think we've erred too far on the side of "protect the ball carrier at all costs". I don't agree with the idea of removing prior opportunity, but I also think too many players take it, drop it in a tackle, and the game is allowed to play on. There is scope to tighten that rule without going OTT, I think.

Agree, except I can't see why they would make us "host" GWS or Sydney at their home ground. We'll end up having "home" games in other states. So long as they're against other random clubs (e.g. we host Adelaide in Sydney or we host the Dogs in Alice Springs), that's completely fine with me. There is a lot the AFL can't control in this season but one thing they can control is not making sides "host" their opponents at their opponent's own home ground. A real risk, IMO. Victoria's current problem stems from two things: bad management of hotel quarantine, and bad luck. NSW has the first one under better control, but I suspect it's more likely than not that the second one will hit at some point.

Axis of Bob said they're similar players. He's 100% right. The difference between them is Pickett is, right now, much better. But they are both on our list to do the same thing and in 2018 Spargo was doing what Pickett is now doing for us. I'm not in favour of Spargo playing this weekend but not because I think he's inherently incapable of playing AFL, like you and many others do (prejudicially and unfairly). I'm simply not in favour because I don't think he's in form and I don't think I want him in the side at the expense of the likely candidates on the extended bench to lose their spot (Hunt, Rivers, Lockhart).

So does this mean Rounds 8 and 9 will be vs GWS and Sydney? Surely, if so, both will be away games. That will mean that after Round 9, we'll have had 2 home games and 6 away games. Meaning that we'll need to have at least 6 home games somewhere else to come. Presumably will have to be in NSW against other sides to join us, or in another state. At least that Hawthorn game should be on FTA for us. Which is inexplicable given how we're playing.

I knew this thread would start up the whole Dean Kent thing. We did nothing wrong in moving him on, and he's not playing as well as this thread suggests anyway. We don't make decisions with the benefit of hindsight, we make them at the time we make them, and at the end of 2018 moving Kent along was a completely justifiable decision, as was keeping vandenBerg. The tendency of MFC supporters to complain the moment an ex-Melbourne player kicks a goal is so incredibly frustrating.

And ahead of Jones and ANB, too. Did he play well in the scratch match?

Poor old Weideman clearly still struggling. I hope for Rivers, Hunt, Brown and Lockhart as the bench, meaning Brown takes vandenBerg's spot.

We very well still might. We've already had a FTA game and we've got another one coming this week. That will be 50% of our games so far on FTA. It's hardly a disaster.

The same Ross Lyon who spent his entire career being criticised for being overly defensive and not scoring enough? The same one who never won a premiership despite coaching the best side in 2009-10 and getting three GFs to attempt it? Meanwhile Simpson "has a great team" which is some sort of negative against him (how does that work) and Beveridge gets two question marks. At least they've gone all the way!

I think this is a case of correlation rather than causation. I don't think teams win finals because they have an "average" ruckman, or because their ruckman isn't as talented as Gawn or Grundy. I think you're just looking at some recent successful sides and noted that their ruckmen aren't at Gawn or Grundy's level and concluded that there's some sort of relationship. I don't think there is. Wasn't directed at you, there were others who were jumping on Gawn and bemoaning his output. Part of this makes my point - where you say hitouts to advantage is as much a midfield group stat as it is a ruck stat. I agree. That's why I asked the question of whether playing against WC and Geelong, two strong midfields, impacts that stat across a sample size of three games. That doesn't mean Gawn is doing flawlessly in the ruck: indeed, the other side of the coin of him dominating the first half vs Carlton was that he let Pittonet level the playing field in the second half. All I'm saying is that I don't think Gawn is playing as poorly as some other posters on here suggest, and I don't think his output at the moment is a significant reason for our current poor form.

Nice conspiracy theory but we can't go to WA because we've already played West Coast. Having said that, North is being suggested as going to NSW but they've already played GWS and Sydney so I can't see the logic behind that.