titan_uranus

My guess is that the meeting happened, some grievances were aired, and then as the story got passed on from person to person it changed. Deliberately or inadvertently, someone heard “Petracca was upset about certain things in his meeting” and turned it into “Petracca is going to request a trade”.

I took two things from the article. The first was that it’s bad PR. Why send a message to members that we’re happy with how our defensive efforts were going in a year where our defensive efforts were patently not good enough? The article could have remained positive but at least been honest about our need to reflect on things and learn from them. The second is that the quotes from Brayshaw don’t look like things someone would say if they’d requested a trade (or are planning to), as has been reported on here.

Laird is an excellent player and worthy of a first round pick, but I’d rather us spend what we have on our midfield and forward line, if we can.

Yes (I’ll do my best to remember each week!)

This is one of the stupidest things you’ve ever said, which is something. Every club has to use their cap. Someone has to finish 17th (and 18th). You don’t get to tie payments to ladder position. Remember when I said I enjoy your actual posts about football but forget when they’ve ever existed because all you do these days is post these sorts of snide remarks?

I’m sad we’re delisting him, not because I disagree (I think it’s the right call), but because I wish he was still part of our best 22. I loved it when he joined and when he was playing well he was a reason to go watch us play.

Demonland proves some guarantees. One of them is that the same posters who are currently complaining about us making decisions before this “review” is complete, would be complaining if we had not made those decisions and waited instead (“Nero fiddled while Rome burns” would surely have got a run).

He didn’t want to leave Fremantle last year, whether to go to Melbourne or any other club. You’re currently upset that we didn’t trade for him last year when there is no evidence he had any interest in moving, so you’ve just made something up in your head. There is some supreme hypocrisy/irony in the bolded line.

Ridiculous. If anything, he’s a rich man’s Spargo. I’d kill for Spargo to play like Elliott. But I’m not sure I’d take Elliott, I think his best is probably behind him and I’m not sure about his back.

The pre-game and gameday (before the game started) threads are full of people saying we’d lose by 10+ goals. Yet I can’t see a single post in here where someone admits to being surprised by the result. I haven’t seen the game so I would actually have liked to read a post or two touching on what we did to match/best them for long parts of the game. Did we seek to play the more controlled game we’ve tried playing in the second half of the year?

Agree. This pre-season I hope/pray that players train in their best positions and that is where we see them in 2020 - so Fritsch spends the summer in the forward line next to TMac and Weideman, Hunt forward, Petracca more in the middle, etc. I wonder how much of the 18/19 pre-season Fritsch spent in the backline/midfield or Hunt spent in the backline?

You really need to stop taking your anger and sadness out on people who see things differently to you. Whether you like it or not, nothing BBP said was wrong. We absolutely “looked like winning” the Brisbane and WC matches, and neither the Fremantle nor Carlton games looked as bad as you are suggesting (if we hadn’t had three injuries including TMac vs Carlton it’s completely reasonable to suggest we’d have won by 7+ goals). I would suggest the “sad” one is you, and anyone else like you who isn’t capable of seeing anything positive.

Sensible changes (although there won’t be too much care). Would love to see us surprise everyone and win this game, but I’m not holding my breath.

No we won’t. Pretty sure we will get Anzac Eve but remain away on Queen’s Birthday so that from 2021 onwards we’re home in one and away in one each year. Agreed. A complete non-story.

Maybe because he didn’t want to leave last year? FFS. Ridiculous post. Par for the course, but ridiculous nonetheless.

How do you know that: 1. We’re only focusing on Langdon? 2. We’re not focusing on those other three? 3. They’re all going to St Kilda or Carlton? Or is this just pure MFCSS?

It’s one way of measuring performance, but just one way, and as with all stats needs to be viewed in context. Critics of our 2018 season say that we built our 14-8 record and big percentage by belting crap sides. Did Fremantle in 2015 have a similarly “easy” draw? Maybe they played more games against top 8 sides? Maybe in 2015 they had great record against top 8 sides and that could be a different way to measure their performance. Anyway, not sure what the point of this thread is really. Who cares if Fremantle 2015-16 was a “worse” drop than us 2018-19?

Goodwin might not be our coach in 2021 but he absolutely should be for the start of 2020. People like beelzebub and stranga want to pull triggers left right and centre. That’s not smart business or football, even if the temptation is strong. There always has to be a degree of reflection. We’re not 12 months removed from a PF. We need the context of the 19/20 pre-season and the 2020 season (at least the first third of it) to truly know where Goodwin stands.

I’m overseas and so haven’t seen a second of the game. Waking up to see a 9-goal loss to a side that was on the road for the second week in a row, playing kids, on a 5 (or more?) game losing streak, in our “member appreciation round”, was amazingly disappointing. I’m rapidly losing confidence in the club, which is sad. I’d kept that for much of the season and I still think our 5-16 record is worse than our actual performance, but this sort of loss shouldn’t happen, no matter who is on the park.

The changes look odd on their face but look a bit deeper. May, OMac and Petty are all forced outs. Preuss and Keilty have stunk in the seniors this year. We don't have an obvious second ruck, but Sydney barely have an obvious first ruck (they're playing a rookie, Hayden McLean, who's played four games). I'm not sure I agree with ANB/Stretch/Spargo over Baker/Hunt, but it's not like Baker or Hunt played well last week. Indeed, both were pretty poor. Looks to me to be a bit horses for courses when it comes to the talls, and maybe a last chance saloon sort of thing for ANB and Stretch.

I like it when you actually talk about football.

Well played.

Carlton haven't magically risen up the ladder. Their list should have been performing like this ages ago. Bolton was, for whatever reason, holding them back. They're long overdue to play consistently good football and from what they've shown under Teague, they have the ability. But let's see them show it consistently when the Teague novelty factor has worn off and the games aren't all dead rubbers (FWIW I think they'll push for the 8 next year).

From what I've seen of Carey in the media, he's pretty quick to distance himself from "new school" football and training methods, so I'm actually a bit surprised that he puts as much stock in the pre-season as he does.

I think it's probably a bit of all of those things. I think teams looked at us in 2018 and when planning for us in 2019, they've focused on how they set up at stoppages. I think the way we approach stoppages also means that if we're off (in that we don't convert our first touch into a clean chain away and a decent inside 50) we're set up to be exploited by our opponent. And I think that the mistakes we were making, leading to repeat wasted inside 50s, sapped us of confidence and that affects our mids' ongoing work rate. I reckon we've been trying to change this in the back half of 2019 but it's nowhere near fixed yet.