titan_uranus

It seems I’m in a minority here. I enjoyed season 2023 more than many other season (2021 the obvious exception). IMO the quality of the game is trending upwards and equalisation is working (has there ever been a better bottom 4 side than 2023 Gold Coast?). Combined with great crowds for great at-stadium atmosphere, and I’ve loved it. I completely agree that the MRO system is broken. I don’t subscribe to the corruption guff many on here believe from the Maynard incident - the rules are murky and there has been inconsistency as to classification of bumps for years - but the entire system is stuffed and needs an overhaul. I also agree that umpiring is at historic low levels of performance. But for whatever reason, I can get past that and enjoy the sport. I’m super excited for 2024.

Things I’d like to see: 1. No trip to Geelong or, in the alternative, Collingwood, Carlton, Richmond or Hawthorn also going down there 2. A proper bye - no more Thursday night game after KB 3. More travel pre-bye than post-bye 4. A few more afternoon games 5. West Coast in Melbourne 6. Port Adelaide in Melbourne I expect we may get some of these but not all. I also expect to see a tonne of Collingwood and Carlton in prime time, and too many Thursday night games.

I said this last night and will double down today. IMO this is your anti-Collingwood bias speaking. There were a handful of goal of the year contenders in the first quarter alone. The first half was a great blend of high scoring but high pressure - it never felt like a defence-less shoot out. The second half was lower scoring but still intense. I hate Collingwood, and Nick Daicos more, and Howe possibly more again, but the game was fantastic and they are wholly deserving winners after the season they’ve had.

I did. I was there. It was fantastic. Put your MFC-disappointment and your hatred of Collingwood out of your mind.

I reckon the only part of this that is correct is that Collingwood should have won by more. How you reached the rest of your conclusions is beyond me. It was fast, skillful, aggressive and exciting.

It was one of the best games of football in years.

I don’t know, feel free to look and find out. All Vic sides get big home games against other Vic sides, and home games against interstate sides.

I know the popular thing to do is bag the umpiring. But we have so much to learn from that game, and from Collingwood. They just won a GF with Frampton, Mihocek, Cameron and Cox as their tall forwards/rucks. They are relaxed, they balance defence with offence, and their supporters support them no matter what. They were the best side all year and it’s hardly like they didn’t deserve to win today. Brisbane were great, and it will go down as one of the all time best GFs, but rather than trying to tell ourselves they only won due to our poor QF kicking or today’s umpiring, let’s all acknowledge reality - they are the benchmark and they are better than everyone else.

Given he’s a free agent, we only get a pick if the AFL gives it to us, and one of the key considerations appears to be the terms of the new contract. So if he’s not on big bucks in the new deal at Sydney, we may not get any compensation, bearing in mind he was clearly a fringe player for us.

If he doesn’t go on big coin there’s every chance we don’t get anything.

He has a premiership medal for being the sub in the GF. He may not have got on the ground but it could have been far worse (see, eg, McStay, Adams and Noble this year, or Rich and Gardiner/Payne for Brisbane).

I get the sentiment but as @Axis of Bob says, some of the needs on our list are very unlikely going to be filled by elite kicks. That's largely because, as much as we need better kicking, the competition isn't flush with elite kicks and certainly not in the ruck or key forward positions. If Naughton were available he'd make us significantly better instantly, and that's assuming his kicking for goal remains as it is now.

Well on this front we are 2nd best in the league (took this from the Useless AFL States page):

Bengals, Steelers, Chiefs

Sorry if this is too late - Bills, Eagles, Cowboys (like many others!)

Or perhaps Gawn’s palm on the line… Or the ARC overturning the ANB goal… Or Melksham’s ACL… Or our own inability to kick easy shots on goal…

Agreed. They are under enormous pressure and don’t currently look like they can cope with it. We were always going to be in with a shot if we’d made it. A genuine shot at the flag was thrown away in the 90 second disaster last week.

Yeah, it sucks, but don’t give me umpiring. There were a handful of blatant Collingwood frees that weren’t paid late (the Moore high and the HTB on Idun were horrendous misses). If GWS got shafted it was by having to have a 6 day break into this game. There’s no need to ensure the top side gets 8 days into the GF. 7 is enough. But the drop from 7 to 6 is more severe and GWS shouldn’t have had to deal with that. But in the end, Collingwood have been the best side for the majority of the year, so it’s no real surprise or shame that they’re in the GF.

It’s hitting hard today. It’s prelim weekend, there are Collingwood scarves on the train I’m on, but when I opened Demonland I started with the drafting and trading board.

Want to find this and share it? I was at the ground and what they showed on the screen at the time suggested his fingers touched it.

I'm sure it's been discussed somewhere already but as expected, the behind the goals vision of the last play from the Lever mark to the Acres goal shows how terrible we were as an entire team (i.e. not just Viney's poor kick). Rivers is briefly open wide but once he's shut down (Lever rightly taking a bit of time to assess his options), there is no movement short, not a single player tries to get open. We are just waiting for him to dump it long. Despite that, once he does dump it long (and you can see he looks frustrated with his kick for going too far inboard), the defenders don't reset. They ball watch. We also have way too many players up the ground and nowhere near enough in the D50. The switch occurs, and we're light on numbers who are then completely outworked to free up the Acres space. It's tough to break down one play in the final 90 seconds of a very intense game but we should have been better than this. https://www.afl.com.au/video/1034289/trsf-dees-collapse-opens-acres-door-giant-killers-do-it-again?videoId=1034289&modal=true&type=video&publishFrom=1694873897001&tagNames=AppNewsFeed:Yes

You may notice I didn't say that. I said the absence of Petty, Melksham and JVR made our chances worse, on the back of Fritsch, TMac and Brown missing months of football (and in Brown's case, never getting back). I've posted elsewhere that there are multiple issues which contributed to our loss last night and our season ending the way it did. Injuries were one of them. I don't really think there's much of an argument to the contrary.

I'm proud to say I picked the GWS renaissance before we played them in Round 15 or whenever it was. However at quarter time of Carlton v GC at the MCG in June, I thought Carlton were more likely to finish bottom 4 and sack Voss than get anywhere near this far.

They can't kick them directly in front but Riccardi nails one from the boundary 40 out. Love to see it. Keeps the GWS v Brisbane GF dream alive!

Mate, I get it, it's disappointing, but we have an elite player who is in the conversation for the competition's best player and is a genuine chance to win the Brownlow, we had a third straight H&A season with 16+ wins and a top 4 ladder finish, we got to watch us play two finals in front of 90,000+ fans, we hopefully found a new forward in Petty, we saw Joel Smith get his body right and finally get a prolonged crack at AFL level, we saw Melksham rejuvenate his career, we saw Viney put together probably his best season of his career, and we saw Rivers take major steps towards becoming an A-grader. One of the reasons you're so upset with the finals loss is because of all these other positives. If we didn't have the other positives, we wouldn't have been playing last night and/or it wouldn't hurt.