titan_uranus

Let me start by getting this off my chest: the umpiring was disgraceful tonight. There were a dozen times, at least, where either a free was paid to them or an obvious one to us was missed which had direct impact on the game. Possibly the most important was Hurley's blatant interference with Melksham late in the second when we had all the momentum, robbing us of a goal and sending the ball down the other end. OK, with that out of the way. I feel like I just watched the St Kilda loss from last year again. A low-skilled side just brings pace and endeavour and finds that they can carve us up and score heavily. They're not good enough to be able to hold us from scoring heavily, but we can't defend them and they get a confidence-boosting win. We're getting beaten the same way we were in 2018 and we're not fixing the problems. The second quarter largely happened because for a long period of it Essendon had one on the bench. They stopped running and we managed to run through them through the middle, opening up our forward line. If ANB doesn't get dropped after this game then he never will. He adds nothing to the side and his dropped mark was a momentum-killer. Oscar was embarrassingly bad. He runs under the ball, he runs over the ball, he looks afraid to pick it up, he doesn't know what to do with it when he has it, but worst of all he can't defend. There was an early goal to Essendon where he simply lost his man. And Jones. I love him, I always have and always will, but he's a liability at the moment. Our opening play summed it up perfectly - after all that focus on stupidly bombing it inside 50, we get the first clearance, he's got time and space, but he bombs it 50m, turns it over, and Essendon slingshot for a goal. He's a liability and it's hurting us. What is wrong with Hibberd? He can't hit a target to save himself. So what it all means is that we've got too many liabilities (ANB, Oscar, Jones), too many new/underdone players (KK, Wagner x 2, Lockhart) and too many important players out of form (Hibberd, Weideman, TMac, Viney, Jetta). It's too much being left to too few and it's not working.

There's nothing in the HUN article which says Goodwin didn't watch it or review it. It's a conclusion drawn or a statement made by the author based on the actual quotes Goodwin gave. Also agree re: this contention. Our game plan was "exposed" by St Kilda mid-year. We were "found out" all 9 times we lost last year. We're being beaten the same way this year, and that's a concern to me, but it doesn't mean something drastic occurred in the prelim which needed to be specifically addressed more than any other of our losses last year.

This thread is a classic from classic Demonlanders. If Goodwin has said something about our bad pre-season, the same posters (ADC, beelzebub, SWYL) would be complaining about him making excuses. Yeah, because AFL coaches (and MFC coaches in particular) always make it to the end of their contract.

Turning back to some discussion on football, I saw a clip from Footy Classified last night where Lloyd or Judd pointed out three or four instances of us winning a clearance and Oliver/Brayshaw/Viney/whoever kicking long when a shorter option was available (one in particular had TMac leading up into a gaping hole 40m out directly in front but whoever had the ball went 20m past him to nothing but Cats). Is it as simple as our mids lowering their eyes? I feel we've conditioned the mids to wanting to get the ball and bang it inside 50 because we expect to either mark it or bring it to ground and the resulting congestion in there is what we want. Or is it more that Geelong read us better than other sides might? Or are the forwards doing the wrong thing by pushing too far up the ground when we really want them to stay deeper and ensure we have targets?

The club isn't blaming anyone. We the supporters are going berserk, but other than Goodwin and Viney noting that our midfield output had improved on the previous week (which, statistically, it did), this is just guff from a [censored] of a "commentator". Just to confirm, they were missing three players (Dixon, Hartlett and Wines), one of whom is questionable as to being in the best 22 (Hartlett). It's not like they were decimated with injuries. Not really the point of your post, I know, but it stood out to me.

Couldn't disagree more. If there's been one consistent failing of this club since 2006, it's been our lack of leadership from within the playing group.

You got any evidence of this?

From 2-3 we went to 16-8 before we lost the prelim. That's a period of 14-5 doing the same thing. Of the 5, only one of them was a loss by more than 10 points. Yes, the prelim was bad, but is it that surprising that we've approached 2019 by focusing on the 19-game stretch that got us into the prelim rather than the prelim?

Better example, how about Adelaide 2018? Improved considerably in 2017 to make the GF, were most people's flag favourites going into 2018 but their pre-season from hell and injuries wrecked their year despite them having a list stocked with talent. Our pre-season was not good and it is impacting our form. It's magnified by the new runner rule and no Lewis - we haven't trained together enough and there's not a lot we can do about it mid-match because the runner can't get out there to yell at us and there aren't proper leaders in the back or forward line (meanwhile Gawn is getting physically annihilated and Jones is likely too busy focusing on his form).

IIRC there's a quote from May where he talks about our training standards being much higher than GC's. Edit: this is what I was thinking of, I think. https://wwos.nine.com.au/afl/hamstring-setback-for-new-demon-may/6d95c2aa-3659-4ee1-b1b9-9f8868c26544 He doesn't say it but I think it's implied.

There are 5 undefeated sides in the league and we're the only one to have played two of them. Not sure if chicken or egg, but still.

Given I haven't seen the game I have to defer to those who have, so this post is certainly good to read. I was interested in the final paragraph though. I wanted to go back and take a look at those four games to see if there was a trend Last night Geelong scored 20 goals from 48 entries, which a 41.7% strike rate. Port - 12 goals, 59 entries, 20.3% Brisbane - 15 goals, 52 entries, 28.8% Richmond - 16 goals, 59 entries, 27% So across JLT and Round 1 our opponents were in the 20-28% range for goals from inside 50s. Then last night that jumps up to 41.7%. I suppose that supports your argument about Geelong well exceeding their expected score but I'm not sure whether you're right to say "Port the same, Richmond the same, Brisbane the same".

What a thread. All we're going on here is a rumour in the Herald Sun. Could be completely false. And even if it's true, what do people think happens with contract negotiations? Of course he's going to start high.

Having covered the negatives earlier, I think it's worth dealing with some other issues: We asked for Gawn, Oliver, Viney and Brayshaw to improve on Round 1, and they all did. Oliver aside, they can all continue to improve, but at the very least we saw increased output from the core of our midfield. Our pre-season can't be completely ignored. We're hearing comments from Goodwin and the players that we're struggling with our connection between the backline/midfield and the forward line. I'm certain that we didn't have enough time over the summer with our best 22 in full match training together, and it's showing. Not every opponent this year is going to defend that many inside 50s and simultaneously score 20.6 from 48 inside 50s. Geelong's defence is one of only a few capable of dominating poor quality inside 50s as much as they did. We've played the top 2 sides on the ladder. Not sure anyone else has played two undefeated sides? We're coming up on three weeks of games which look, at this point, to be against much weaker sides than Port and Geelong.

Despite the hyperbole on here, we're not at "drop him" or "trade him" yet. But IMO we're at the point where we have to ask ourselves what is going on with him and where his career is going. It feels to me as though we've spent years waiting for him to take the next step.

Did Geelong put time into him?

We need Lewis back in the side for his leadership down back. We need Garlett back in the side so that we have a genuine crumbing forward. We need AVB and Hannan back as they're better half-forwards than the ones we're playing right now. And we need Lever back so that we don't have to keep playing both of Frost and Oscar. But none of that is happening this week, so any changes we make are just bottom 6 players for bottom 6 players. As we did last year, we need to turn our fortunes around with the overwhelming majority of the 22 who played last night. Longer term, we have to think long and hard about where Jones, Petracca, OMac and ANB are at in their careers.

A couple of things I keep thinking about: Last year we were the league leaders in quarters won. At one stage we won 20 straight. This year we're 1-7 and we've lost 7 in a row. Last year we were the highest scoring side in the league, averaging 104.5 points in the home/away season. This year it's taken us two games to score 107 points and that's less than Fremantle, one of the league's lowest-scoring sides in 2018, scored in Round 1 alone. We've already lost the contested possession count this year the same number of times we lost it in the entire 2018 season.

I haven't seen the game but it's not hard to imagine what it would have looked like. I can see it now - midfield getting enough of the ball at stoppages but when they get their hands on it there's no link-up of handpasses to break into space and deliver a measured ball inside 50. It's grab it and then kick it straight away. Geelong have one of the best defences in the league but we went into the game with no small forwards and three key forwards who are all out of form, and then we continued to play non-forwards as half-forwards. That all means we get the ball inside 50 a stack but we have no ability to mark it or to crumb it. So it comes back out again. But we've set up to keep it in our forward half so we often get it back off Geelong and repeat our attempt to score. Eventually, though, Geelong get through our press and they have an acre of space in their forward half to work with. They take shots from in front, they make the most of them, and they isolate weak defenders. We looked liked this in the Hawthorn and Richmond losses last year, when we slumped to 2-3. We had threads like this. We had calls for Goodwin's head. We had questions over our gameplan. Then we won 6 straight. This is the only thing which is keeping me from thinking the season is shot already. But things need to change. We need to do something to shake up the stagnation of our mid-level players - we can't keep carrying OMac, Frost, Hunt, Petracca and ANB in the form they are in and just hope they improve. They're not improving. We need to think about our forward line and the way we try to target TMac and Weideman. They need to work harder on how they operate as the two talls. We need to do something about Petracca. Drop him, change his role, something. We need to stop giving games to players who aren't ready for AFL football (Hore and Sparrow last week, KK and Lockhart this week). And we desperately need to win on Friday. Essendon is probably the only side in the league so far to play football as bad, or worse, than what we've displayed. There is a glimmer of hope in the next month - Essendon, Sydney (0-2, out of form), St Kilda (the worst 2-0 side in AFL history?), Richmond (out of form, possibly no Riewoldt). A confidence-boosting win on Friday, in prime time, could do us wonders. A loss might just destroy us.

@old dee - see what I meant? Exciting news. A win tonight coupled with a prime time Friday night game next week could give us another nice boost.

If we look anything like the MFC of 2018 we should be markedly better than last week and could well win. Our next three (Essendon, Sydney, St Kilda) are all winnable but we have back-to-back six day breaks from today, which isn't going to make catching up on fitness any easier. Today is important.

This is quite possibly correct. Viney hasn't played 100 games yet. Gawn just played his 100th game. Frost has played 70, OMac 63. That's the point I'm making: our key players aren't in the same age/experience bracket as Port's (or most other good sides'). You're not wrong about the actual experienced players being poor though (Jones and Jetta were terrible, Hibberd did a lot of good things but his kicking was atrocious). But we weren't looking to Jones and Jetta to drive any improvement, we were looking to Oliver, Brayshaw, Viney, Gawn, Salem, Harmes and Petracca and, of those, Gawn is the only 100-game player (with the weekend being the 100th game). Our 2018 shows that this isn't the be all and end all. These players, despite their age/inexperience, can get the job done. But I believe it is important for us to keep our list demographic at the forefront of our minds when we look at performances such as this one.

Certainly more positive than the rumours which were going around on here last week (doesn't mean the rumours aren't true of course, but at the very least I'm heartened by this comment and the fact that the rumours haven't yet been suggested to be true). I wonder if he's referring to some of the off-the-ball blocks Port put on Gawn?

Sure, but we didn't hire someone to replace him?

This ties in with the points that have been previously made about our list demographic. Port's key players (Boak, Ebert, Gray, Ryder, Watts, Westhoff) are all far more experienced, with more pre-seasons under their belts, than our key players (many of whom have barely played 50 games).