titan_uranus

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).

Source? Particularly as to Garlett? KK played on the weekend so surely wouldn't be on the injury list any more? On a related note, why is the club's website so terrible?

We were 2-3 last year. Come back to me if we're 1-4 or 0-5.

Classic old dee. With four months left, you think we'll struggle to sign 1,200 more memberships to get to 45,000. Just for comparison, in 2013 (peak Mark Neeld) we signed 7,000-odd members between March and July. That would get us to 50,000.

Why? Kent would likely be on the injury list all year anyway, and if we brought him in we'd get his usual one good game for three bad ones. Don't start re-writing history now. I'd be prepared to put money on your changing your mind at least once between now and team selection. I read somewhere today that Lewis is out for a month? Is that right?

If Jones had held his dropped mark in the fourth and converted the shot (he's a good set shot from that range) the margin would have been 3 points early in the fourth. In the blink of an eye 3 became 15 and I'm sure confidence across the ground sagged. I suppose that means we were kind of in it even into the fourth?

It was described as a cyst or a boil on TV tonight. Was also mentioned that he was under general anaesthetic for the procedure to remove it. Potentially far more serious than some of the flippant comments in this thread suggest. If true, it wouldn't surprise me at all if it impacted his preparation or his performance.

Tom Browne on Talking Footy reported earlier that Gawn was in hospital last week for a day procedure under general anaesthetic. Not sure if ti's true, and if it is not sure if that impacted upon his preparation or his fitness. Has anyone else heard anything about that? Edit: given there's an entire thread on it, I suppose so. My bad.

Don't know for sure, but found this for Port. Looks like Port had Rockliff, Watts, Robbie Gray, Bonner and Amon. The article suggests that only Rockliff was going to miss any pre-season training, though. I'm not sure which of our players who had operations missed pre-season training, so it's hard to compare. But on raw numbers it's something like 10 MFC players vs 5 PAFC players. This is not a bad thought, actually. Our on-field leadership has always struggled and without Lewis would have been even worse. I'd be confident we were using Cross heavily last year to fix things up. The uncontested possessions tell the fitness story. It's the contested possessions that tell a more worrying story and go beyond the fitness issues, I think. I'd either missed or fogotten about Brayshaw. I don't know whether the bigger impacts come from surgeries in October/November which delay the start of the player's pre-season, or lack of match fitness which prevents full training in Jan/Feb. There's also the inability to get the entire side out on the park at any given time which hurts, too.

I hold fears too, but the reality is we're all operating on guesses and assumptions. None of us know for sure if his limp on the weekend was foot-related or was a cork or whatever he copped in the VFL practice match. Still, if his fitness doesn't let him do any more than he was able to on Saturday, I'd like him to own up to it and, as a leader, remove himself from the seniors until he's fit enough to compete.

Probably my last comment on the pre-season surgeries issue. This is a list of players who had interrupted or delayed pre-seasons due to surgery: Clayton Oliver (double shoulder surgery) Jack Viney (ankle surgery) Neville Jetta (shoulder/knee surgery) James Harmes (shoulder surgery) Aaron vandenBerg (shoulder surgery) Jayden Hunt (shoulder surgery) Christian Petracca (knee surgery) Mitch Hannan (dual knee surgery) Oscar McDonald (hip surgery) Marty Hore (ankle surgery) Jake Melksham (ankle surgery) Jake Lever (knee surgery) Guy Walker (shoulder surgery) Jones didn't have surgery but had a hamstring issue and, as the linked article mentions, impacted on his ability to take part in a "critical training phase" during the pre-season. Edit: and both KK and May had injuries as well. There may also have been other players with non-operated injuries, I'm not sure.

Which starts with Gawn, and means we have to look into his poor performance yesterday. Whether it was his fitness, or facing two ruckmen, or Lycett just playing really well, or a combination of those things, our gameplan relies (too much, possibly) on Gawn dominating the ruck. We just can't afford for him to have as little impact as he did yesterday.

It gets mentioned because it's relevant, ADC. Sparrow 0 games, Hore 0 games, Wagner 8. They had rookies and inexperienced kids, so did we. But one of the main differences was that their key players, their leaders and their A-graders, the ones they look to to lift them when they're down, are all far more experienced than ours. Many of our key players have barely played 50 games. It's an important issue, and it's equally frustrating to people like me to read posts like yours that say "well our opponent had some kids so I don't want to hear anyone say we're young". But in saying that, it's not the only issue (our ability to make a prelim last year shows it doesn't have to be a barrier).