titan_uranus

You may be right about the need for change at the top, but if I were you I'd refrain from suggesting that some posters on here are in the wrong for "turning on Trac". You were one of those just a few days ago. Reality is, none of us on here know the true story, we're all reacting to what's been reported in the media, many of us consider Trac to be one of our all-time favourite players, and seeing this play out without any certainty and with rumours and suggestions and ideas flying around is necessarily going to lead to some posters becoming disenfranchised from Trac. It's a sad, sad state of affairs.

I'm not saying the club's above scrutiny - far from it - but I'm not sure I agree with Hutchy on this, not yet anyway. The vibe around the club last week was a lot more positive, with talk that Trac had returned to the club, smile on face, etc. It may well be that the club genuinely thought that things were trending in the right direction, and thought he was in a position to say something to that effect. He agreed to do the interview because he heard the panel was three soft ex-players and no journos. He could come out, say something, not be grilled, and walk away. But when he finds out there's a journo, he doesn't want that, and he walks off. Perhaps at that point he feels the club lets him down by blaming him, if that's what happened, but I'm not convinced this is a sign of the club being "naive", as Hutchy said.

I like Xerri's season but it's honestly just anti-Melbourne bias or Gawn AA fatigue to suggest Xerri's had a better year. Gawn's the AA ruck, and deserves it.

IMO, the three most telling pieces of information to come out of tonight's reporting are: Sam Edmund saying he wants to play somewhere with "leadership from the top office". As clear an indication as we've had that there are issues between Trac and the board, and/or Pert, and/or Richardson. Caro saying that there was a board meeting going on as Footy Classified went to air. It sounded like that was a snap meeting. If so, that's not the sign of a club who is wholly resolute in the whole "we're not trading him" piece (although that may remain the position following the meeting). Lloyd saying that he's spoken with other players at the club who now think it's best that Trac leaves. That's almost the biggest piece of news to come out of it all.

Take the two polar extremes. At one end, you have a club who has completely mismanaged every aspect relating to this situation, whether it's how we dealt with Clarry last year, or Trac's KB injury, or whatever else is going wrong behind the scenes. We are falling apart and the most professional player on our list doesn't want to be a part of that any more. At the other end, you have a player who has become disenfranchised from the club and is seemingly prioritising selfish desires over the club's and his teammates, all the while tearing the club down from the inside and making us even worse off than whatever we were before. Neither of those situations will be entirely true. But I'm sure the truth is a blend of both. For the club to be in a situation now where our most important player, both on-field and off-field, no longer wants to be here is an indictment on the club. It does not matter what you think about Trac, it is an indictment on the club that we are even anywhere near this level. But there is a degree of Trac prioritising the wrong things that I think is becoming clearer. Part of that may well be the impact of his injury on his decision-making, but regardless, we now have a player who appears to no longer have the trust or connection with his own teammates, and I think that says something about how he has carried himself. Whether or not this is fixable remains to be seen. If there isn't a deal out there that is extraordinarily substantial in value, it's going to have to be fixable, because Trac leaving pushes us down into levels of irrelevance that we literally cannot afford right now.

They will be a markedly different side in the first final, if they can get back a decent number of Curnow, McKay, McGovern, TDK, Saad, Marchbank, Boyd, Cerra and/or Martin. They have no pressure, as most expected them to miss the finals altogether. They'll be underdogs against Brisbane even if they get all these players back. But their best football this year has been in the best football any side's played, and they can do damage if the release the mental shackles. (Or alternatively they'll get pumped by Brisbane. TBH not sure.)

FWIW, my view is that Fritsch is more of an icing on the cake, and in a season where the cake was disgusting, the icing didn't get a chance to shine. We need to fix the cake (ball movement) and if we do, he'll be better for it. However, that's not to say he can't improve his defensive work, because he can. But I don't think that goes anywhere near the level of trading him out, because I don't think he's easily replaceable at all, and I think his value goes up exponentially if/when we improve the midfield.

13 players in the entire competition this year kicked more than Fritsch's 41, and only 17 had a better goals per game average. One of those 17 players was Sam Day, who only played 5 games, and another was Thilthorpe, who only played 7. Of the other 15 players who played most of the season and averaged more goals per game than Fritsch, only 6 averaged more pressure acts than Fritsch's 8.3 per game: Treacy, Ugle-Hagan, Rankine, Langford, Greene and Sam Darcy. "Not that hard to replace...with someone who can put on pressure and tackle"? I beg to differ.

GWS, Port or the Dogs for me. Although at this point I’m going to have to barrack for whoever is playing Geelong or Hawthorn.

Correct. North copped a much harder set of double ups than Hawthorn did. There are no guarantees with a bottom 6 fixture because it is set based on the previous year’s performance. Hawthorn’s just an example of how it can work in your favour.

This won't happen. For one, I'm pretty confident that he either leaves this trade period or he commits to us and, as a result of committing to us, never leaves. For another, his contract means we can't trade him without his agreement, and if we theoretically opened up bidding to all 17 clubs, the highest bidders will be clubs he doesn't want to play for. He'll only agree to certain clubs and they won't be anywhere near the highest bidders. He will either find a club he wants (Carlton, Collingwood, perhaps Essendon or Hawthorn) who his manager believes can offer something we'd genuinely consider, or he'll commit to us and say he had a very difficult year (true), reflected on everything (true), didn't know what he wanted to do (true) but ultimately realised he is a Melbourne person, even though it took him a long time to work it out.

In relation to the quoted line about acting in good faith, whilst the line comes in the analysis of the rules that were left to be decided by the judge, the paragraph and surrounds don't link that phrase solely to those rules. I don't know that the judge would have been so unequivocal on that issue if he had privately thought to himself that the club's conduct in relation to the other rules wasn't in good faith etc. It's at least open for debate I'd have thought, so I'm not sure I misinterpreted anything there. Then in relation to the second point, the judgment shows that Peter rejected the amendment the club ultimately made, which was to make it clear that the phrase "disparage" does not include reasonable constructive criticism. I find it hard to see what Peter thought was wrong with that amendment, which is precisely what the judge said. I agree though that it obviously came at the conclusion of the trial, so had he agreed with the amendment it wouldn't have made a difference to the fact that the trial had already occurred. But this wasn't the only rule left for the judge to consider. There was still at that point no agreement on the rules relating to giving interviews and using social media. So you've had a go at me for something "factually incorrect" but I'm not sure your post is completely correct either. Regardless, what I meant to focus on in my first post (but which I see on reflection was not clear) was less the disparagement point and more the point about being able to give interviews on TV and radio and post on social media. Combined, the effect of what he was seeking was the ability to go on radio/TV and criticise the club. As I said, I don't think that is something he ever should have sought in the first place. When I said the ends don't always justify the means, what I meant was that the outcome of this case, which should largely be seen as a win for him, doesn't mean that his actions can be stripped of any sense of entitlement or selfishness which would otherwise attach to them. But I completely accept that our election rules are better now. I also completely agree that Roffey's email was disgracefully misleading.

Overall record against the finalists: Sydney: 6-3 GWS: 6-6 Collingwood: 6-6 Port Adelaide: 5-3 Geelong: 5-5 Bulldogs: 5-5 Adelaide: 4-1-8 Hawthorn: 4-5 Carlton: 4-6 Melbourne: 4-7 Brisbane: 3-5 Essendon: 3-6 Gold Coast: 3-7 Fremantle: 3-8 St Kilda: 3-8 Richmond: 1-10 West Coast: 0-8 North Melbourne: 0-12 So whilst the bottom 6 draw worked for Hawthorn, it did not work at all for North, who copped 4 of a possible 6 maximum repeat games against finalists (Carlton, Geelong, the Dogs and Hawthorn). Adelaide had the roughest on this metric, with 5 of its 6 repeat games against finalists (Geelong, Port, Brisbane, Hawthorn and Sydney), meaning 13 of their 23 games were against finalists. Meanwhile Brisbane, despite making the GF last year, and Port, despite being a top 4 H&A side last year, ended up with just 1 of their 6 repeat games against finalists. Brisbane fared well getting Collingwood and us twice. It's obviously a rudimentary metric - part of the reason the finalists are finalists is because they beat the other sides. Also this doesn't take into account when a side won these games (e.g. of our 4 wins, 3 were in in Rounds 1-3).

The help of a bottom 6 draw can be seen in Hawthorn. They got each of Richmond, North Melbourne and Adelaide twice. They went 6-0 against them. The way they play is very attractive and exciting, but it's also important to note that the only finalist they've beaten since Round 13 was Carlton two weeks ago, when they had no one on the bench in the second half, and they only played three finalists in total since Round 13 (lost to Geelong and GWS, beat Carlton).

In Round 18: We were in the top 8 Carlton was 2nd Fremantle was 5th Essendon was 6th Port was 9th, 2.1% behind us The Dogs were 10th Hawthorn was 11th, a game and 10% behind us St Kilda was 15th, 4 wins and 14.4% behind us

So we just finished 14th. To be honest, I hate seeing us that low on the ladder. But if you’re going to have a down year (and let’s hope it’s just one year down), may as well make it as bad as possible. Getting pick 5 after being in the finals race with 3-4 games to play has its upside.

There’s no way they trade either of them. No way at all. Regardless, this is the key issue at play in relation to the silence - Trac wants to know if there’s a club he can nominate who will offer up something the club will be genuinely interested in. How are Carlton, whose season may have another 2 weeks minimum left, going to be able to indicate a trade of one of these sorts of players without asking them, which they can’t and won’t do until their season ends?

Agree. Too much talk about key forwards, not enough about the midfield. I’d rather spend whatever we’d have to pay Lynch on a mid, assuming we can find one.

Daicos’ worst game this year was arguably KB, when ANB tagged him right out of it. We didn’t get near them.

I think at this point there are two factors in his silence. The first would be that he is mulling over a trade request but doesn’t yet know if a club he wants to go to can satisfy us. So he can’t commit, nor can he say he wants out. So he says nothing. The second would be his mental health. I suspect he is in a much worse place than most on here understand. Stepping out of the interview late last night can IMO be well explained by that. He isn’t anywhere near his normal self and that will be impacting his judgment, decision making and persona.

I found our losses interesting this year. They were either close games, which we largely botched, or they were large scale losses. From 6-2 onwards, when we went 5-10, our losses were by 1, 2, 5 and 5, and then by 35, 38, 56, 50, 51 and 92. Six times we couldn't keep the margin below 6 goals. The other four were botched close games. Nothing in between after Round 5. Edit: so were our wins, too. After Round 5, our wins were by 3 and 8, then 17 to Essendon (but that was 40+ with 10 minutes to go), and otherwise were 38, 43, 54 and 54. One game after Round 5 that wasn't decided by a single digit or by 6+ goals.

A lot of clubs have bogey sides. Right now Collingwood and Fremantle are that for us. It'll be partly in our heads, I'm sure. It's also talent. Collingwood are smarter and faster than us, whilst Fremantle match us at contest and are too strong defensively for us to score against. There was a thread going around the other week asking when we know our season was shot. For mine, it was King's Birthday. Losing to a half-strength Collingwood by 6 goals told me we were no good.

Sadly, he's just not good enough. He didn't deserve to be dropped after the GWS game, which was arguably his best, and maybe some continuity would have helped, but the rest of his performances didn't warrant ongoing selection. I've never seen it, and I still don't. The decision to give him the contract extension was baffling given the lack of faith we showed in him.

Well, so it ends. From the Oliver trade story 11 months ago, into Joel Smith, into copping a fixture that we now can see was as difficult as could be, into Gus, we had an off-season we all wanted to believe we'd put behind us, but which ultimately wrecked us before we even set foot onto the SCG for Opening Round. At the absolute least, the capitulation from 6-2 and 4th on the ladder after Round 8 to 11-12 and in the bottom 6 with a sub-100% percentage tells us that we do not have the right list, coaching staff and general approach to contend, so it forces us to change. We can't sit still, make list changes at the fringes, and go again. Already seen a stack of posters going on about getting a key forward. That's not the number one issue. The number one issue is, and has been all year, our midfield. Even assuming Trac and Clarry get back to their peak levels next year, we don't have enough depth or support through the middle, nor do we have anywhere near enough quality ball users. We need a complete re-think of how we approach the midfield in 2025. After the midfield, I don't want an A-grade forward as much as I want a cheap third tall who can ruck and therefore allow us to stop rucking JVR. It's wasting his development. I don't hate Petty as a forward as much as others (although I find it hard to run that argument when we gave him 20 games this year for 9 goals) but if the consequence of getting a proper second ruck is that we have to play Petty back, that's not exactly a bad thing. And the other thing I care about? Our fitness. We didn't have repeat soft tissue injuries but we also didn't look fit enough for most of the year. We won just 10 of our 23 fourth quarters, which is a shadow of the side we were in 2021-23. Whatever approach we took to fitness this year failed IMO. Let's celebrate the wins of the year (getting Windsor, Rivers in the middle, McVee again (but not as a mid), Gawn's hopeful 7th AA jacket) but acknowledge that on most measurements this was a failure.

If St Kilda beat Carlton, and GC beat Richmond by about 20-odd points I think, we will finish 14th. The draft pick crew will be happy.