titan_uranus

We need to keep Frawley - if you think we should trade him you're one of the classic MFC supporters who thinks the draft is the answer; it is not. Frawley is actually a big part of the answer. Who would pay anything for Blease or Tapscott? They can't even develop VFL-level form. As for the rest, let's leave that kind of discussion until the end of the year.

That is definitely true, but I (and others, it seems) feel as though there were far too many 50-50 decisions which went their way (the Ablett free was appalling, the Watts incorrect disposal, the passage of play in the third in which about 4 free kicks went begging before one small high contact went to them, even Jones at the opening bounce getting cleaned up in the head), and at momentum-killing times too.

Agreed - we've blown 3 chances to get valuable confidence-boosting wins on the board. We don't have St Kilda, Carlton or Gold Coast again this year. We do, however, still have to play Geelong, Hawthorn, Fremantle, Sydney, Essendon, Collingwood, Port Adelaide (twice), North Melbourne (twice), West Coast in Perth, and Adelaide in Adelaide. Bulldogs (twice), GWS at home, Richmond and Brisbane are probably all we have left, to be perfectly fair (though at our best who knows against Sydney this week). It really hurts to think that, with a bit of luck and a couple of crucial moments going our way, we could be 2-3, even 3-2 right now, with a lot more confidence at our backs.

6 - N Jones 5 - Viney 4 - Dawes 3 - Frawley 2 - Cross 1 - Grimes Much the same top six or so as last week - the issue is the others who played quite well last week played poorly today (McDonald, Georgiou, Bail, Watts, Tyson, Dunn, Spencer).

No way, I thought JKH showed quite a bit today. Has goal sense, which we crucially lack from smalls. Not sure we want to push Salem in straight away, but if we do, Jetta goes.

Get Kent, Hogan, Garland, a more confident Toumpas off half-back, and Jamar/Gawn into this side in place of Jetta, Terlich, Evans, Spencer, and one other (Bail, McKenzie, Georgiou), and we'll continue to be able to match it with sides that are better than us.

I'm sorry, but I cannot see how Jetta got selected for today's game, and I certainly have no idea how he evaded the red vest. I'm a fan, but he was our worst today and IMO should go straight back to Casey.

We can't really say accuracy killed us when the opponent kicked 11.19. We did miss a lot of crunch goals, right when we needed them (Frawley's miss at the start of the fourth hurt too, as did Howe's shocker in the third).

Agree with all this. Viney's disposal is letting him down a bit but he is already dominating for us in and under. Some will say the margin flattered us but we won three out of four quarters. That second quarter was Neeld-esque and is where we lost the game, but for 75% of the match we were either equal to the Suns, or better. That's a marked improvement from the Melbourne of 2013, even if it's frustrating.

This is now the third game out of four that we've lost when we could easily have won it. The umpiring killed us - too many abysmal decisions went against us at crucial moments, none more so than the Ablett free, which was possibly as bad a decision as there ever has been. Anyone other than Ablett and that wouldn't have been played. Nonetheless, we were our own worst enemy again today. We had good players down on impact (McDonald got ripped apart, Dunn was shocking, Watts was too quiet, Howe spent half the game again doing nothing) and our substandard players were exposed in the light of a better side's pressure. Jetta was awful, Terlich is regressing, Spencer got destroyed by a kid in the ruck, Evans added nothing for the second week in a row as sub, Tyson was quiet (shouldn't have been subbed though, Jetta should have). N Jones again brilliant, Dawes again great, Frawley lifted, Howe lifted in the second half, Vince was good early but disappeared late. Too much left to too little with too many awful skill errors. We could, and almost should, have won this game, and it sucks that we lost it. But at least we're coming out of games feeling frustrated at losing them, and not despondent over our future.

Leaping Larry's take: http://smh.com.au/afl/afl-news/structuring-a-snapshot-of-footy-commentary-20140417-zqvzn.html

Why? Howe's just now starting to settle into defence, whilst Dunn has made a difference in attack. Why change that now?

A few things need to go right for us today. We have to break even with their midfield - it may be at reduced capacity, but we won't win if we can't at least compete with Ablett and co. We have to maintain our forward structures from last week - if Dawes doesn't play, then we need Fitzpatrick to step up (which I don't expect, to be frank). We need Frawley to continue to lead up at our mids and we need Dunn to continue to work hard across half forward. We cannot win without hard working forwards who are prepared to lead and contest and bring the ball to ground if they can't mark it. We have to tackle hard - our pressure on Carlton ball carriers last week was superb; we continued to corral them and restrict their flow, which caused them to second guess, go backwards/sideways and turn it over. If we can apply that pressure to them coming out of defence, we will force the turnovers that we need to create, to give us more of a chance of scoring. This is an eminently winnable game, but we need to apply ourselves like we did last week.

Not hugely surprising. Coming off a game played in 32 degree heat last Sunday twilight, both Essendon and Fremantle had six day breaks. Both sucked. St Kilda's been gifted its three wins - good on them for making the most of their chances, we haven't been able to do that.

Wow. You're a [censored].

The problem with the OP (amongst others, anyway) is that he seems to believe that if you don't think we can make the finals, you don't think anything productive can come out of the season. The unfortunate reality of where this club has been of late is that we are able to draw significant progress out of a season that finishes with around 6 wins. That's just how things are right now.

I guess what we know is that statistics are very rarely indicative on their own. The more you have, the more context each individual stat has, the more of a picture they paint, but even then, there are so many things that happen in games that don't get picked up in statistics.

I think we've established numerous times here that statistics never tell the entire story. The effective disposal statistics is no exception. It is a bogus statistic. I remember reading the definition of an effective disposal in the AFL Prospectus once, and from memory it includes kicks which travel 40 metres or more and go to a 50/50 (or better). So, you could kick it 50 metres to JKH vs Jamison and that would be effective. Similarly, the stat doesn't speak to how bad your ineffective disposals are. Grimes regularly turns it over directly to the opposition, as opposed to those kind of kicks which go to a 2-on-1 or get spoiled or something like that. I find him to be as bad as anyone in our side for turning the ball over directly to the opposition, and when you're running off half-back that's both more damaging and more noticeable. Even though I know we've played Carlton, St Kilda and GWS, I still believe that is a significant improvement and comes from a wide range of things, including a far more competitive midfield, more time with the ball in our hands instead of the opponents', and fewer turnovers.

I find it borderline useless. From the stands you can't read them. On TV you can't read them unless they're zoomed in and the players are relatively stationary. We've all coped with just numbers for 150-odd years now, I'd like to think we can continue to cope.

I also thought that Fitzpatrick's inclusion was a pretty big surprise given his form hasn't been great. I don't necessarily think it means there's an issue with Dawes, it might just be in case of an emergency (which is I guess why they're called emergencies). Could also be someone other than Dawes, too.

I think Dawes, Vince and Cross are perfect examples of why we shouldn't worry too much about who formally is or isn't in the leadership group. Nonetheless, if we're going to have one, they might as well be in it.

More? You just said before that being 2 points down didn't reflect the state of the game. Now you're trying to say that us being 14 points down with 4.44 to go means that we were being dominated until that point. Can't have it both ways. We weren't dominated for much of that quarter, and for about as much as they were better than us, we were better than them. Don't forget their opening goal came courtesy of a careless free kick and a careless 50 metre penalty. Hardly a reflection of dominance. No, they have everything to do with each other unfortunately. Your argument is that we were lucky because Carlton kicked inaccurately, and had they kicked accurately maybe we would have lost. Correct. But that is the exact same argument that says we could have won the St Kilda game, in which case we'd still be 1-3 and our season would look relatively similar to what it does now. Funnily enough, you already agreed with that. I'll cop that one, I mixed the figures up and saw 29 and 35. At any rate, whilst it shows we have work to do, I'm rather pleased that unlike the Melbourne of 2013, losing the clearances didn't automatically rule us out of the game. First of all, Carlton did get worse. That's pretty much my point. Things change. Secondly, Carlton getting worse and us getting better aren't mutually exclusive - they can both have happened. Says the guy who called me a 'smarta55' and regularly takes pot shots at anyone on this forum. Look, I responded to your negativity by noting that for everything you've mentioned, either your point wasn't very good, it wasn't valid, or even if it was, there was an equally valid positive way of looking at things. If you think that necessarily means I 'think we are in fact a wonderful new side' then you are a perfect example of someone who does not, or cannot (or both) appreciate other sides to any argument or debate (which your last sentence confirms). Just because I don't discredit everything to do with our win doesn't mean I think we're going to win the Premiership (and you'll note I said that in the part of my post which you didn't respond to). I didn't pick this argument with you for no reason, I picked it because your post struck me as baseless in parts, ridiculous in parts, and unnecessarily negative in parts.

This is precisely the problem with people who rate Naitanui. You've cited two one-off instances of performance and tried to extrapolate that into 'he's a great player'. First of all, how is kicking a goal after the siren indicative of anything other than chance? That kick, by the way, should never have happened, with the free kick issue going on just before it. Second of all, yes, that run and goal is a great bit of highly athletic and talented play. But that's all people ever talk about with him, the one-offs and the highlights reel. What about the other 99.99% of the time? He does nothing, that's what. And no one cares, because people get caught up in his highlights reel. His poor performance right now is not purely injury based. He simply isn't that good a player.

OK. First 10-15, maybe. We dominated the latter 10-15, and I don't think it's unfair to say the margin was about right. Well, if you want to play that game, we should have won the St Kilda game. So we'd still be 1-3. So what? We've shown this year that to win a game you need to have more disposals or more inside 50s. We only had 50 fewer disposals; we've been a lot worse of late. A difference of 6 in clearances is being beaten, but it's hardly being 'smashed'. In addition, we had 19 more tackles, which is significant for us. We can only beat who we play, and we all know we're not going to beat the likes of Hawthorn, Geelong, etc. Why do we need to beat the great sides to validate our season? From where we're coming from, every side is better than us, and any win is a good win for us. There is no basis, nor reason, nor point to be gained, from saying our opponent isn't very good. Dawes has played one game, and clearly has no match fitness. Viney's played two games and doesn't appear fully match fit yet (he played something like 70% of the game time on Saturday). We've just made some positional changes (Frawley, Dunn, Howe) which will take time to get used to. It's not all about getting them on the park. It's also about getting them on the park together and playing in their positions for extended periods of time. And at any rate, why do you look at a diminished injury list (which isn't that diminished, anyway, in terms of significance) and see a negative? We played Carlton at the MCG in Round 6 last year and got done by 10 goals. Things can change. No sh*t.

Just because JKH is smaller doesn't mean Salem isn't also undersized. He's 81kg FFS. Well I figured 'isn't quite ready yet' had something to do with experience. Sorry if I was giving you the benefit of the doubt.