titan_uranus

I don't understand how people can be so disappointed with the season so far. We're not very good. We all know that. We're a bottom 4 side. But how could you not have expected this? How could anyone who is a Melbourne supporter have expected us, knowing full well what happened to us in 2012-2013, to come out in 2014 and be winning games regularly? Whilst we've lost games to weaker sides, the unfortunate reality of what is happening at this club is that we are not a guarantee to be beating anyone, Hawthorn or Brisbane. We are in the process of improving this club, a club that is coming from effectively VFL standard. So, to be able to say after five rounds that we could have won four of them is a positive, IMO a big one. Over the last two years how many times have we been able to say that? 10? Less? Some will say 'that's just accepting mediocrity'. No it isn't. No one is saying 'this will do, thanks Roosy, you can go now'. If you acknowledge that this is an early stage, not the end stage, in our path up the ladder, then you realise that this is about right for us.

Not surprised to see McKenzie and Evans out, neither was giving us anything. Spencer for Jamar is a bit surprising but I guess Spencer's paying the price for two rubbish games sandwiched around a decent game (against a terrible opponent). Not sure I'm in favour of Byrnes or Salem being included though. Would have liked to see Salem ply his trade a little longer at Casey and not get picked on the back of one great game, but that's where we're at right now. I guess that also goes for Byrnes, who I don't see any future for at all, but oh well. I guess this also means Pedersen will stay forward to be the second ruck and Dunn will stay back - hope I'm wrong about that though.

Another embarrassment of a thread. We've got people saying we should trade Hogan. We've got people saying his career is over. And, for reasons that are lost on me, we've got people talking about Wines. How delightful.

I hadn't thought of it like that until just now. In 4 out of our 5 games this year, we've been in winning positions in the fourth quarter of the game. That is such an improvement on the last two years.

Some do, some don't. Some don't like watching other sides, some for superstitious reasons, some just don't like it. Regardless, the real value in this is not simply that the players saw a good game - they can do that at any time really. It's the act of Roos bringing the team together and demanding that, at once, straight after a loss, they be subjected to, and be asked to critically learn from, the high watermark of the game right now. It will do a lot more from them when it's required of them by Roos and they do it as a group.

Well stated. The irony in WYL's utter lack of understanding is astounding.

Well, other than stats, how else are we meant to work out who looks like they own the game at VFL level? Flippant? It's borderline racist.

Port plays Geelong next week, in Adelaide. Should be a corker. They're very undersized down back without Lake and Schoenmakers. Their backline remains their weakness, and it's even worse than normal without those two. It's just that the rest of their side is so good, no one other than Geelong has been able to exploit it properly.

You're unbelievable.

What stands out most, more than anything, is skill. Players like Cheney are the exception for Hawthorn. They're unfortunately the norm at Melbourne. Speed (both of the ball and by foot) is also a big factor. I'd have speed and skill above effort as stand out differences.

If you've previously been stuffing up for 7 hours, then yes, that's an improvement. We can't just ignore the Neeld years; unfortunately, they happened, and that has put us in our current position. You're not disagreeing with the statement that 'it's all positive'. You're disagreeing with the statement that 'there are positives'.

I know you said he was 'ok'. I disagree. I don't think he was 'ok' at all. I don't agree that he 'won all his one on ones', I don't agree that he 'cleaned up a lot of others mistakes' either. Even if he did clean up mistakes, he created more of his own. I also think he was far too loose on Matera, he turned it over every time he had it, and at times he was in the wrong spot in defensive positioning. I agree that the backline had a tougher job than usual, but Terlich has now had two or three consecutive weeks of mediocrity.

Right. So we had a golden opportunity to win. We even 'should' have won. That's two positives right there. In previous years we only 'should' have won when we actually won, and even then we were lucky.

I assume it's because we wanted to ruck him for longer than we did last week, to give Spencer a longer breather. The longer he needs to spend out of the backline, the harder it is to use him there. As second ruck it's easier to be taken out of the forward line for a spell in the ruck than out of the back line. I agree though, we're better with Pedersen in defence and Dunn on half forward, and IMO Roos needs to work out (fast) a way to make that happen.

I may be wrong, but do the good clubs have just one player doing it all, or do they just make do with whoever is there at the time? I'd guess the latter, which they can afford to do because they have talented kicks in their backlines (e.g. does it really matter if Birchall or Suckling or Hodge or Burgoyne takes the Hawthorn kick in?). We can't afford to nominate a player or two and wait for them to show up every time we need to kick the ball in. It wastes time and gives the opponent time to zone, which leads to us resorting to our standard for the last 8 years, which is to kick it long to the 50 on the boundary, which is very low percentage and very stupid. No he shouldn't. For one, he should be playing forward. I'd rather Dunn be on the end of the kick-in as he can actually lead and mark decently (contrast with Spencer, who doesn't understand those two concepts well). For another, he isn't a smart kicker and too often tries to show off his long boot by playing on to himself and going 50 metres down the line. Every. Time. Which leads to opponents reading us faster than our own players. Agree re: Dunn, but you were not watching the same game if you thought Terlich was 'ok' yesterday.

Generally, I agree with you. I don't think we can progress as a football club if one of our midfielders is as limited as McKenzie is. Usually he gives us a lot with tackling and pressure through the middle, but you need to be able to offer more as a midfielder than just that. He doesn't want to get involved in scoring plays and he's no good when it happens to him anyway. The major problem with us right now is that McKenzie is not the only one. You could carry a player like McKenzie if you didn't also have Jetta, Terlich and Evans in the side. None of them, being perfectly honest, are good enough to play AFL. The sooner we are able to replace them with Salem, Toumpas, Clisby, Michie, Riley, Trengove, maybe Strauss, the better this side will be. The longer we persist with this crop of unskilled players, the longer our recovery is going to be.

It's not fair to say that umpiring cost us the game, especially given everybody knows that ball was touched (time for the video review system to be killed off; if that was 'inconclusive' evidence then wtf is the point). However, the general feel I had watching the game was that a lot of very iffy, very 50-50 decisions went Gold Coast's way, and a lot of them were at crucial moments. They either halted our momentum or led to Gold Coast goals or robbed us of shots on goal, those kinds of situations.

I don't think Watts ever was going to be subbed off, it would have just made the focus all on him again, and that's the last thing he or the club needs. As for the skill v hard working thing, yes, we'd all love to know we have 22 players who are putting their head over the ball, but the reality is we will never be a decent side whilst we carry so many unskilled players. You can have a Terlich, but you can't have a side with Terlich, McKenzie, Jetta, Georgiou, Bail, Spencer, Grimes (kicking-wise, anyway) and McDonald (kicking). That's the problem, and we cannot progress until either these players improve their disposal, or we upgrade them to players who are skilled. Who has defended Watts' game? We actually won in Round 4 like we did this year and were 1-4. Your point is valid though, the four losses this year have been by 17, 93, 32 and 8, with the 32 blowing out in the fourth after we trailed by just one point. Last year the four losses were 79, 148, 94 and 28. Except Carlton. Lol Carlton.

That was a huge mistake. Even though I'm sure you are referring to Watts, I'd have gone with Jetta. Regardless, I'd also have gone with Watts before Tyson. Subbing Dom off did not help us.

Agreed - it's good to see people acknowledging that Watts was not the only disappointment today. The 'effective tackle' thing is interesting - I vaguely recall reading Champion Data's definition of a tackle and I believe it involves something along the lines of an act which either earns you a free for holding the ball or stops a player from disposing of the ball effectively, or something like that. As in, I believe if the player you're tackling still kicks or handballs it, it won't count as a tackle. I might be wrong on that, but in essence I think the stat already is 'effective tackles'. What we could use, though, is a comparison between 'tackles' and 'tackle attempts': the amount of times we try to tackle but they slip through our attempts is too high. The team count was far too low today - that's in part due to the players I've mentioned recording zero tackles, but it's also due to our positioning in stoppages and their ability to use pace to evade us. Carlton was good at neither of those last week. We can't expect our opponents to make it easy for us. Agree on the backline - McDonald wasn't as confident to take the game on, possibly because he was being beaten more often in marking contests than he's used to. Dunn's kicking out is incredibly frustrating, as is the team's in general. We've had these problems since Bailey, maybe even Daniher. Our 'plan' has always been to kick long to a contest on the boundary line. It's awful.

Here's another problem with how people perceive Watts - we're waiting for a 'breakout game'. Why does he have to leap into stardom for people to accept him? Even if he had this 'breakout game' this weekend, that would only serve to let those with anti-Watts bias jump on him every future game he did not live up to that 'breakout game', such is the way people want to view him. With some, he just will never be able to win.

No, Robbie's right. We matched it, on the scoreboard and everywhere else, for most parts of the game. We were insipid in the second quarter and that was largely the reason we lost. But for the remainder of the game the teams were level.

You think the players have attitude issues, yet you refuse to acknowledge positives when they're staring you in the face. Classic.

So you'd play Garland in Terlich's role, as a small? Or Jetta's (whatever that was today)? If he plays small, would there be match fitness concerns? He's done it before, so that could definitely work (and I'd take Garland over Terlich any day of the week whilst Terlich continues to be disastrous with the ball).

It's undoubtedly the case that there are a stack of MFC supporters who can't stand Watts, even when he plays well. Today he was abysmal and deserves criticism, but not in a vacuum. He was not the only player today to play poorly. He is copping an almighty serve from most of us, which mostly is warranted, but if people want to slam Watts, they should also consider looking at the others in our side who aren't playing well.