titan_uranus

It was clearly 50 against Fritsch. No doubt about it. He stuffed up considerably. It was also 50 against Bailey in the Petracca one. No doubt about that one either. If there's anything to be upset about it's the lack of consistency, but the decision against Fritsch was 100% correct.

The AFL's "Access All Areas" video has the behind-the-goals camera shot of the Lever score review: The highlighted players are ours. Food for thought on what we could have done with that. I also took another look at Hannan's kick to Fritsch: It's blurry, but smack bang in the middle there is Viney, all on his own. Hannan committed the 2020 MFC cardinal sin number 1: playing on and rushing his kick inside 50 without thinking. To give Fritsch some benefit of the doubt, Bennell was behind him in the goalsquare. Maybe he was leading up into the pocket to draw a player away from the hotspot and give us a bit more space.

Was it? The MRO statement refers to a tackle in the second quarter. The sling we're all talking about was in the fourth.

Agree. West Coast climbed 6 spots on the ladder with one win. That only happens when teams are all relatively close to one another on points/percentage. If we can go 3-1 over the next month and come out at 6-5, the season is very much alive. It will probably also still be alive at 5-6, depending on how we play and other results.

Great post @DeeSpencer. I felt this was happening as I watched live so it's nice to see it validated through your hard work of taking the screenshots. Good teams have always been able to push the envelope better than others. Geelong's been doing it for years. Collingwood blocked players off the ball and standing the mark. The Dogs in 2016 were great at falling to their knees for high contact. Carlton's made a point of the holding of Cripps at stoppages. If the focus this week of the umpires is to look for holds at stoppages, maybe Port won't be able to get away with it. In the meantime, we have to improve our cleanliness with our first touch (Neale was sublime when he got first touch at stoppages) and maybe there is some way we can demonstrate being held more without becoming sooky/reactive.

Brayshaw is clearly in poor form right now. He had absolutely no influence on last night's game. We may as well have had 21 players rather than 22, to be brutally honest. I suspect part of the problem is that his skillset is heavily geared towards being a centre mid but with Oliver, Viney and Petracca all in front of him, and shortened quarters, there are just not enough opportunities for him to get in there. So we're asking him to be on a wing, or on a flank, or sitting off the back of a stoppage as a sweeper. IMO, quite frankly, he's just not good at any of those roles. The TOG stat is interesting. He's playing less time in games than Bennell. That could be fitness-related. Or it could be a symptom of the coaches just not feeling confident in putting him anywhere else on the ground so rotating him off the bench instead. Or both. Who knows. I am not against dropping him and trying something different in that wing spot. Tomlinson this week is an option. vandenBerg long run another option. Long term for Brayshaw to fit with our development we need him in the middle more. A return to 20 minute quarters might assist. Otherwise, it will mean a lift from him coupled with Oliver and Petracca rotating through the forward line a bit more, I suspect.

Yep, it refers to the one in the second quarter where Pickett goes straight into the front of a Lion player. Disgrace from the MRO. Would love the club to challenge it but it's not worth the money.

Assuming 10 wins will be needed to make finals (9 might be enough), why not? Which of Adelaide, North, Sydney, Fremantle, Essendon, GWS, the Dogs, St Kilda and Collinwood are impossible for us to win? I'm not saying we will go 7-2, and it will obviously be easier if we do beat Port and get confidence that we can beat top 8 sides, but I don't look at our fixture post-Port and think we're automatically done.

27 shots on goal? 7.11 is 18 scores, so what were the other 9? OOB/fell short?

Replaceable with whom? TMac? Fritsch is our leading goalkicker this year with 10, averaging 1.43 per game. I don't agree he is easily replaceable. Instead, I want to know why he keeps leading to the pockets. Is that what he's been instructed to do? Or is it because he finds he can't get space unless he goes there? The key reason why calling it a trade is misleading is that we didn't give anything up for him (other than salary, but we do that for any player we take, whether from the draft, trade or FA). I too had high hopes, and I would like to see him come back into the side (maybe even this week) and improve on his failings from earlier this year. But there remains enough time this season, let alone into the future, for Tomlinson to cement a spot in our 22 (particularly when the non-Langdon wing is being manned by Jones/Brayshaw). Should be weeks. Healy's comment that Jetta "leads with his head" is classic old school footy player rubbish. In that instance Jetta was just going for the ball. McStay doesn't, should have tackled, but chose to bump. In choosing to bump the onus was on McStay to avoid Jetta's head. He failed. On the guidelines, it was careless/high/high which is 2 weeks. If a medical report suggests Jetta was more seriously injured, and high becomes severe, it's a third week I believe.

Honestly A F? May was one of our best last night. No idea what your problem is with him based on that performance. Not sure we should be blaming him solely for that first kick out - looked like a set play gone wrong. Why? You don't like facts? And why is your number one gripe with Goodwin Jetta to Cameron? He only had 9 touches. Yes he kicked 2 goals, but so did Fritsch and no one's suggesting Fritsch had a good game. I'd be far more concerned with what how our midfielders were reacting to stoppages when Brisbane were all over us in the second quarter. Tomlinson? He was a free agent. And you're writing him off after, what, five games?

Today was Brisbane's second-lowest score for the year, just 1.1 off their lowest (which was when they lost to Geelong). They scored 7 goals from 42 inside 50s. They only took 7 marks inside 50 (their season average is 10.5). And Brisbane is possibly the best side in the comp right now. So if we're doing all that against them (on effectively away territory, given the crowd), then I think our defence is absolutely at the standard we need to challenge for finals.

Possibly (he was pretty good last week IIRC), but he's barely been in our bottom 6-8 like, unfortunately, Jetta and Brayshaw were today.

3-4, so 10 games to come. Will probably need to finish 9-8 at worst to make finals, so we need to find at least 6 more wins. It won't be easy but it's certainly doable. Our draw has Adelaide, North Melbourne, Sydney, Fremantle, Essendon, GWS, the Dogs, St Kilda, Port, Collingwood. The first four are the bottom four. Essendon struggles to beat anyone outside of the bottom four. GWS, St Kilda and the Dogs are all hot/cold. Port and Collingwood are better than us but are both capable of poor football (see this weekend as an example). There are no un-winnable games left in our fixture so let's shelve the "our season's over" talk for now.

Agree with this, they were holding him at most stoppages in the first half.

6 - VIney 5 - May 4 - Lever 3 - Oliver 2 - Melksham 1 - Petracca

With a four day break and a few passengers today, there are a few options on the table here. Jetta was really poor and I wouldn't be upset to see Rivers return. Each of Jones, Brayshaw and Bennell struggled IMO. But is there anyone outside the 22 who is an improvement? Does TMac get one of their spots? Are we going to see players like Smith or Hunt or ANB coming in to bring some extra run after the short break?

Here's a question. Why does the Lever score review need to stop play? Why can't the ARC review it behind the scenes and if it turns out it was a behind, then bring it back. The goal umpire should have called it a mark from the start. The score review system is making goal umpires second guess themselves.

You either have absolutely NFI, or you're a deadset troll. Either way, I cannot stand you.

Would love to see what other options he had. If he had nothing, I'd have preferred him to wait for an option that wasn't on the boundary. Fritsch leading to the pocket on his wrong side isn't ideal.

We lost that. We were on top for longer than they would and we should have won by 2-3 goals. Take your pick of which of our awful mistakes lost it for us: Weideman's missed shots, Bennell's miss, Pickett's miss, or the Hannan-Fritsch disaster late. The umpiring didn't help, nor did the crowd: that was an away game for us. The late "dangerous tackle" call on Pickett was an absolute disgrace. The score review on Lever was unfair too. The second quarter was poor but in the other three quarters were were good enough to win. It was those three quarters where we lost it.

We should have won the first quarter by 1-2 goals and that quarter by 2-3 goals. But we're 3 goals down and the game is probably gone (only one side all year has come back from a 3QT deficit and that was pre-COVID). We haven't been disgraced and IMO our defensive setup has again stood up well: the two goals we conceded that quarter were from a Jetta brainfade (he's had an absolute shocker IMO) and a throw in a stoppage following Bennell's horrible miss. Too many what ifs (Weideman's 0.3, Bennell's miss, Pickett failing to pass to Langdon, Jetta's free against, etc.) to win a game against a top 4 side.

Their two goals this quarter are from Jetta's horrendous free and Bennell missing from 10m. We've lifted this quarter but no reward for that lifted effort.

That's because Brisbane's got the game set up in their forward half, which is what we'd prefer to be doing.

We're not playing as badly as this thread suggests. We can't win when we're beaten this badly in the middle but our backline held up OK despite extreme pressure that quarter and we still look dangerous enough when we go inside 50. Need our mids to lift at stoppages and if we do that a lot will flow from there.