titan_uranus

From what I saw (second half only), we lost this game through two areas: our midfield got badly beaten, and we gave up goals at critical times through turnovers. Brisbane are a high scoring side and don't bring defensive pressure that much. They feed off centre clearances and turnovers and we gave both to them with far too much ease. The number of times we would have a chain of possession going but would either kick directly to a Lion, or miss a target and turn a 100% mark into a 50/50% contest, or we'd fumble on a chain of handpasses, or we'd drop a mark - we just kept doing it over and over again. And we couldn't get on top in the middle so we couldn't stop their momentum from the contest either. We can't keep playing Hunt, ANB, Hannan and Weideman in the same forward half, when most weeks they are all passengers. Something needs to change in that area.

If Lever and Hibberd are fit, they come in. Petty and Wagner are the ones to make way. But if there is any doubt on either of them, we shouldn't be risking it. ANB and Hannan struggled yesterday. Hannan has more upside and there's no obviously better player ready to come back until Melksham is fit, so they probably both stay. No idea why anyone would suggest bringing Preuss in when we've just seen TMac and T Smith kick 3 goals each, given Weideman is the most mobile of the three (i.e. the least like-for-like replacement for Preuss).

The only thing we should be doing that we mightn't be doing if we were pushing for finals is to err on the side of caution with injuries. Otherwise, there is no good argument for tanking, no good argument for trying to get a "better" draft pick. We should be aiming to finish 13-9 or as close to it as we can get.

6 - Viney 5 - Gawn 4 - Lockhart 3 - Oliver 2 - Petracca 1 - TMac

No. But right now he's behind May, Lever, Frost and Petty IMO. So we might not see much more of him. Challenge has been laid down to him to improve his strength, bodywork, positioning and ability to get involved in offence, with all of the above being better at most, if not all, of those things than him.

Yes they were two down on the bench for much of the second half, but Fremantle are a better side than most are giving them credit for. They've beaten Collingwood at the G and GWS in Sydney. Our score of 85 was the second highest score they've conceded all year. At times we made awful mistakes but as has been mentioned we had a noticeable change in tactics with a lower amount of immediate playing on, less run and carry and more kicking and uncontested marking. When we looked good, we actually looked great. Lockhart is a beauty IMO. He just wants the ball, he wants to get involved, he's great in close but he can kick too. Viney was a lot better as well, but he still kicks the ball far too high. Fritsch is a much better player across the wing/half-forward, he nailed two inside 50s early but still had a couple of howler turnovers. May is a gun. His bodywork is as good as any key defender in the league but he's actually a lot quicker than you'd expect for someone of his build, and importantly he can actually kick the ball. Really, really impressed with these two games from him. Would love to get Lever back out there ASAP so we can get May, Lever, Frost and Hore playing with each other and continuing to build chemistry. TMac had a terrible first half, he looked completely bereft of confidence and pretty much everything he did was a mistake. But he kept working at it and his second half was a return to 2018 TMac. Jones' mistake was careless but Walters dropped his knees to milk it. It was a two-goal turnaround, so if it hadn't happened we'd have won by nearly 5 goals. IMO, this win was more than just them being two down. Very undermanned - they had two best 22 players missing (Lobb and Pearce). So wrong there. Walking wounded - sure, they were two down. So-so - nope, see above. This is just completely unnecessarily OTT pessimism. The umpiring was poor, but I don't know if it was all that one-sided against us. The free to TMac in the fourth quarter where he kicked the goal from 50 was a shocking free.

His bets included spots, though. He bet on himself to kick 3+ goals. That required him to influence the outcome of the match to engineer 3 goals for himself, even if that was a bad outcome for the team. We've seen the footage showing him go for a 65m torp with 2 minutes left. Collingwood at that time were 40+ points up, but imagine if the Saints had been leading when he took that mark. Imagine if he'd gone for the low-percentage barrel with the game on the line, just because he wanted to get his own personal goal-count up to 3. There's a fair debate to be had around the AFL's taking of gambling money with one hand and doling out harsh punishments for gambling with the other, but that doesn't make what Stephenson did OK. It was not, and his penalty is probably too lenient given he is back for finals.

No, we are not a chance. We'd need to win 9 out of 10 games and build our awful percentage up by 30% or so. Our fixture still contains Fremantle (6th), Brisbane (7th, and on the road), West Coast (5th), Richmond (8th, and by then likely to have more of its better players back in the side) and Collingwood (2nd). We'd therefore need to win all bar one of these games, and win the rest (Carlton, Bulldogs, St Kilda, Sydney, North Melbourne in Tasmania). It's not happening, even if we turn our form around rapidly. Having said all that, IMO the only thing we should "relax" our position on for the last 10 games (as compared to if we were 5-7 and borderline in the top eight) is player fitness. Don't rush injured players back, and when in doubt we should rest rather than persist. If TMac's sore, get him out of the side and rest him up. Ditto Viney, and anyone else. Otherwise aim to win all 10 games in terms of selection and gameplan.

Agree that Hogan shouldn't be our biggest concern. It's Walters that scares me most. He's a genuine superstar and we don't really have anyone who is fast enough or smart enough to deal with him.

Given the number of people who have said they have nothing to look forward to MFC-related, or aren't excited for football, or have lost emotion/passion, I must be lucky (or just odd) but I see so many things to look forward to this year. I'm really looking forward to seeing how the backline works as we get games of experience into Lever, May, Hore, Salem, Hibberd and Frost as a unit. I love watching Gawn every time he takes to the field. Baker will hopefully continue to show promise and Lockhart will probably get games again as the season progresses. Weideman's contract signing and the lack of pressure on him to be the guy to carry us to finals gives him the opportunity to unburden himself and maybe that will release him into form. Finals might be gone but the long-term plan remains and the final 10 games give us plenty of opportunity to keep that plan alive.

Yes, unfair. There is undoubtedly a lot of irrational and unjustified hyperbolic rubbish on here and you don't get drawn into that, which is always to be commended. But that doesn't mean I have to agree with you, and I thought the tenor of your post was to knock May and one way you did it was to note De Goey had kicked three. Saying "well he didn't kick all of them on May" is accurate, so then what is the point of mentioning it in the first place? Marking May more harshly because of your high expectations is fine, but it appears to me that a corollary of that is you mark OMac more generously because of your lower expectations. We're all more than entitled to expect May to play high level football given what we gave up to get him (although I disagree with your argument that we should have kept Hogan instead - he wouldn't commit to us beyond 2019 and so the opportunity arose to turn him into May. I'll defend that decision in that context until the cows come home). But I remain of the view that your post about his defensive work was unfair in light of how you have commented on OMac this year. Anyway, that aside one point you make that I do agree with is that it's not really the big forwards who are tearing us up this year as much as it is smaller or medium forwards. Hibberd and Jetta being injured/out of form are probably doing us more damage than Lever/May missing or Frost/OMac having limitations.

I reckon this is really unfair of you. With OMac your rating was always "he spoils and that's a big part of a defender's job". You never seemed to look at who was kicking goals and whether they were on him or not. May comes in and your first criticism is that De Goey kicked 3 so he wasn't as good as Demonland thinks. May showed more defensive bodywork and positioning of an AFL standard than I've seen from OMac all year. He was on De Goey in part because we lost Frost and our match ups seemed to go askew (initially we had Frost on Stephenson but when he got concussed IIRC we sent Hibberd there, and I suspect the initial plan was Hibberd to De Goey). And there are maybe two defenders in the AFL who would have stopped De Goey's goal.

Need to consider in context, i.e. with the stats for what we've scored in the same final quarters: Hawthorn - 2.3 GC - 3.4 WC - 1.3 GWS - 7.2 Adelaide - 1.8 Collingwood - 2.6 So we've scored 16.26. Which means we've generated more scoring shots in those final quarters than we've conceded. I think the reasons have been previously touched on - our opponents are regularly generating shots on goal that are uncontested, or in open forward lines, or in the goal square, or directly in front. They're taking shots with confidence (generally leading us) and they're not under the sort of pressure they should be under.

Seriously? He had the flu. Unfair IMO. I feel as though Spargo is getting the 2019 Coaches' award, a bit like ANB last year. Lots of running and contested work but no flair and poor skills. It's one thing to say he's getting CPs and working hard but the reality is he offers very little offensively and as a forward, that's not great. It's one of the reasons ANB is playing VFL, not AFL.

6 - Gawn 5 - Harmes 4 - Brayshaw 3 - Oliver 2 - May 1 - Petracca

If you think the colour of our jumper is relevant to our form in any way, you’ve got absolutely NFI. For the record, Collingwood wore their clash jumper on Queen’s Birthday last year. First time I can recall either side in a Melb-Coll game wearing a clash jumper.

We have three major problems IMO. The first is the gameplan. It’s been tweaked (we keep more forwards deeper than we used to) but it’s not working, and so long as it’s not working it hurts our confidence as we see fast break after fast break turn into opposition goals. The second is the forward line. Whether injured or not, TMac shouldn’t be playing. He’s a complete shadow of his 2018 self and is a liability offensively and defensively. But it doesn’t stop there. Our forwards are low skilled, lacking confidence across the board, slow and weak defensively. Even a modicum of scoreboard pressure would make us a better side but we continually miss easy shots and either fail to put our opponent under pressure (eg today) or we keep the door open (eg last week). The third is our co-captains. Would Viney or Jones be playing on this form if they weren’t captains? IMO, they wouldn’t. I loved seeing May and Lever, and Gawn was unbelievable against a superstar opponent. Harmes and Brayshaw were strong all day and I thought Weideman got better as the day went on. But we’ll finish bottom 4 this year and we need to address all three of the above issues to move forward.

On paper, this is undoubtedly the best 22 we've fielded in 2019. But we have to be realistic. The backline isn't going to immediately gel and I expect it's going to get exposed more than once today. Other than the obvious interest in seeing the backline playing together (indeed, playing at all), I'm really keen to see how our midfield goes. If Oliver is out, I expect to see Brayshaw getting more stoppage minutes and that could be a good thing for him. Either way, their midfield is excellent and if we can't compete there then it won't matter that we've got a better backline.

I think Weideman signing on is great news. I think @Matsuo Basho's posts on Weideman's comments, personality and ability to succeed in the AFL are terrible. The idea that there is a one size fits all approach to "mental toughness" is a classic example of what is wrong with society (and in particular older white men).

How many sides lose a game where they have a 31 point lead and from then on have more scoring shots than their opponent? How many sides lose a game where they lead at all three changes, twice in one season? The frustration is somehow getting more severe. Luckily I haven't seen the second half. To be fair, we were missing five first-choice defenders (Lever, May, Salem, Jetta, Hore), which doesn't help. The stats and commentary suggest they started scoring too easily in the second half (in the first half they were struggling to convert their inside 50s). But we still generated enough shots on goal to win the match and should have even with their scoring. The story of MFC 2019 (and indeed MFC 2017 and 2018 too). The players need to be better but we can't keep playing football like this and that's on the coaches.

Garlett should have 3 goals this quarter. His misses have been shots he should be kicking. 8 scoring shots to 4 but only a 9 point lead, too.

This is our best first quarter this year, with 6 minutes to spare. First time we've kicked 5 goals in the opening quarter.

We've scored 7 times from 11 inside 50s. This is anti-MFC-2019.

Infuriating mistake from Fritsch.

How was that not HTB, but the one on Viney was earlier? This is the best Garlett has looked in years.