titan_uranus

Any surprise why we're losing? Jones unsighted this quarter, Vince, Cross and Lumumba all turning it over, Dunn squibbing contests. That's our leadership for you.

Lumumba's kick was awful, but the ball shouldn't have gone to him. Mistake by Grimes.

That's awful from Vince.

Gawn dropped the mark, but we had 4 in the contest on Ross, and the other three Saints stood off the contest. We're likely to lose this game because the selfish football is rearing its head already.

And there it is. 25 minutes into the first quarter.

I love Clarke's captaincy, it's great for the game and for the team too. That DRS decision was pretty baffling - watching it live it looked as plumb as it gets, and to not even be 'umpire's call' on the stumps was a huge surprise. I wonder if Marsh's innings was enough to hold his spot over Rogers? He's the simple option, opener for opener, but I'd prefer him batting at 6 to Watson I think. The bowling selection dilemma is getting worse it seems - both Hazlewood and Starc have done some lovely things this tour so dropping one for Harris is going to be harsh.

Great to see Casey get the win, and also great to hear King play well. Will obviously want to see him do it a few times before he is in the seniors, and who knows the quality of the defender he had given Dawes and presumably Spencer/Jamar were down there too, but exciting times. Why not? What's wrong with 47?

Neither Watson nor Marsh made runs in the first innings to cement their spot over the returning Rogers. We might not need a huge amount in the second dig - Marsh bats higher up so more likely to get one more crack.

Agreed. I think long term Frost can be the second tall, but obviously with him out we're stretching things a bit down there. I can already see McDonald being BOG blanketing Riewoldt but Bruce kicking a bag, Beau Wilkes style.

Whilst I think we've improved the balance of talls in our side, I'm surprised Fitzy has been pulled from the 18. They have Riewoldt, Bruce and Membrey in the side. Membrey's only 188 but to me he'd have been perfect for Dunn to run off. Instead, we have to put Dunn on Bruce, giving up a 5cm height advantage, and who plays on Membrey (without Garland)? Howe's gone forward, so Grimes?

You have to get the ball from somewhere. There are four ways, and only four ways - a stoppage, a kick in from a behind, a free kick, or a turnover. The stat that says Collingwood scored 13 goals from turnovers indicates they obtained the ball from a turnover instead of one of the other three. They might have kicked it between themselves 50 times around half-back without us touching it for 10 minutes in between. But they got the ball to start with from a turnover. It doesn't have to be a glaringly awful howler of a mistake to count as a turnover. Just needs to be a situation where they got the ball to start with off us. Maybe what that stat indicates more than anything is that they didn't get their goals from stoppages, for example (i.e. this wasn't a game where they were breaking free of us at stoppages repeatedly and scoring at will in that regard, which has happened before to the MFC).

Can't pick Spencer, we're tall enough as it is. Terlich's done nothing to deserve a call up and we've seen enough of him at AFL level to be past the point where we need to 'check him out one more time'. That leaves Stretch, ANB, Riley, Michie and Grimes. Can't see us picking both of Stretch and ANB. Assuming one gets a game (and that they both don't miss in favour of Spencer or Terlich), I expect they'll either be the sub, or be subbed off and Riley will be the sub. I hope Grimes does well. Shouldn't have been dropped in the first place.

Jamar's best is behind him. Right now he offers nothing around the ground and in the ruck it's really just a case of using his body to stop his opponent from being dominant. Spencer is the fittest and the most able to get involved in general play, but his ruckwork is the worst of the three, and he's an athlete more than a footballer (i.e. not smart). Gawn is almost the opposite of Spencer in that he's a footballer but not an athlete, his fitness is appalling but his ruckwork is head and shoulders above the other two. IMO, if Gawn gets fitter he's the most likely to be an A-grade AFL ruckman, and so he gets my vote. Spencer has to learn to play football and I'd rather work on Gawn's fitness than attempt to teach that to Spencer. Jamar's finished, which is sad but reality.

Out: Garland, VDB, and one of Newton/M Jones (my preference is M Jones) In: Tyson, Grimes and one of Michie/ANB (my preference is ANB) I was at the game, yes. Nice try. Manning up Oxley is a nice simple thing to talk about, but that wasn't the one and only thing that was the difference between the sides. We committed plenty of horrendous mistakes when we manned him up and when he was loose. Yes, some of the reason our ball movement fell apart at times was because we saw loose men forward of play and went backwards/sideways, but not all of it. The less injuries thing doesn't make them better than us. If anything that also goes in our favour - they've largely had a full list to choose from and they're 3-7, while we've had something like 8-10 of our best 22 out in some weeks. I disagree that they were any better against Hawthorn than us - Hawthorn turned off halfway through the fourth but didn't do that against us (much of a muchness really). They lost to Adelaide by close to double what we lost by (25 to 46). And we haven't played West Coast yet (meanwhile we did a lot better against Collingwood than they did). Of course, none of this is to say we are certainties to win this week. It's at Etihad, St Kilda's probably in no worse form than we are, and they do have Riewoldt which is always handy. I'm confident that our best football is more than enough to get the job done though, the key is whether we are able to display it for long enough.

From the looks of your posts since the game, your view appears to be if we'd simply put Cross on Oxley and Toumpas hadn't have handpassed to Gawn that one time, we'd have won. You've blown the Toumpas thing completely and horrendously disproportionately out of the water (especially given the gravity of some of the other mistakes made by senior players) whilst the Oxley thing was important, but not as decisive as the skill errors. On what basis do you think St Kilda has had a better season so far than us? They've beaten GC, WB and Brisbane. We've beaten GC (same), WB (same) and Richmond (better than Brisbane). Their percentage is 6.1% better than ours. That may be because we've played Fremantle, Sydney and Port Adelaide whilst they've played Essendon, Carlton and West Coast in the only three different games so far. In fact, I'm confident if the fixture and percentages were the other way around you'd be saying words to the effect of 'given who we've played, the fact we're only 6.1% in front of St Kilda shows how bad we are'. We've won 16 quarters to their 12 (which includes 6 first quarters to their 3, first quarters at the very least being quarters where the game isn't over yet). If anything, we are tracking evenly, but if there's an argument to be made about one being better than the other, it's in our favour, not theirs.

No it's not, it's just a bunch of people who see only what they want to see in Watts. That effort was far from the 'worst play of the day' and wasn't close to as soft as some say it was. It was a mistake, sure, but in the scheme of mistakes made by MFC players on the day it doesn't even rank top 10. Our effort yesterday was fantastic, from all 22 (Newton started really well but faded as the game wore on). There was nothing to worry about from a 'having a crack' perspective.

Then you'd be taking a good look at the wrong people (and for the wrong reasons). Don't focus on the junior players (coincidentally, Toumpas played alright today, you only see the mistakes but he was one of about 18 players to make bad mistakes). Focus on the senior players who are continually letting us down instead.

I should add, Fitzpatrick's mistake was embarrassing, but it happened because Gawn tried to mark the ball on the line instead of punching it through. How many goals have we given up on the goal line this year, mainly because our ruckmen aren't trained to kill the contest? Fitzpatrick never should have had to have his panic moment.

Stretch clearly wasn't ready for AFL when he was in the side, ANB hasn't been ready since the start of the year and no one's debated that at all (he is nearing readiness now though, we may see him in the coming weeks), and Michie is a good VFL player who hasn't been able to demonstrate two-way running at AFL level once in his career. Meanwhile Howe and Watts had vastly improved games today (agree with you that Dunn and M Jones had poor games). There are things to criticise Roos about (we didn't handle the loose man back well, which is common for 2015), and then there are personal peeves which aren't warranted.

6 - Vince 5 - N Jones 4 - Brayshaw 3 - Cross 2 - Viney 1 - Gawn I love Cross too, but...

We were the better side for the middle two quarters but we couldn't capitalise because we continually made critical errors leading to Collingwood goals. Garland, Dunn and Lumumba all did some things right, but all made horrendous mistakes when we had momentum. We can't progress as a team when this continues to happen. N Jones, Vince, Cross, Brayshaw and Viney were immense. Newton and Riley tackled hard but otherwise offered us little. M Jones was awful - has absolutely no football instinct. Pedersen also opened the door for Dawes, I wouldn't be surprised to see that switch made.

In the dying minutes of quarters, we need leaders to stand up. Those two late goals were both caused by turnovers, both from Garland. The opposite of what we need.

If Collingwood win today they'll have 7 wins and they will literally have beaten the 7 bottom sides on the ladder. They're nothing special. Richmond and the Bulldogs are better sides and we beat them, easily. If our players remember that, and don't view the QB stage plus the big crowd and the opponent as being more meaningful than they actually are, then we are absolutely in this.

Two selection dilemmas coming up. The first is batting - Rogers will return either for this Test or the first Ashes Test. Surely Voges can't be dropped, even if he fails in the second Test (especially given he's played a lot of English county cricket), so the pressure now turns to Marsh and Watson. I suspect Rogers will miss this next Test to be right for Cardiff, so I think the worse performer out of Marsh and Watson will find themselves on the outs in the Ashes. Watson may need to take wickets to keep his batting spot. The second is bowling - Harris will come back for the Ashes and with Johnson, that's two pacemen's spots taken. At the moment Hazlewood looks likely to get the nod for the third but it's nice knowing we have Starc keeping the pressure on and ready to come in if/when we have to rotate the bowlers through the five Tests. To be fair, Starc was destroying tailenders all summer and through the World Cup. He's grown quite good at it - he swings it, he keeps his pace up, and he bowls it full.

That's the only basis for picking the team? Tackles? I'm not discounting their value, but there is a little more to picking the players than just counting tackle numbers. On your basis, you'd have dropped Jetta?