titan_uranus

Am I the only one not happy about Woewodin being dropped?

No it’s not. How many more times do we need to go back to the stats from Sunday: when we are embarrassingly uncompetitive in clearance, contest and territory, how is a 19 year old non-AFL fit debutant going to go, really? If he’s got ability, let’s give him the chance to develop into a player, not be rushed.

In all seriousness though he does say the changes aren’t working. So aligning that with Lever’s comments, I expect to see us play much more like 2022-23 on Monday.

[censored] these posts are tiresome. Do you say this in response to every word uttered by an MFC person after a loss? Goodwin’s fronted up to a pre-arranged interview and has answered a bunch of questions more thoroughly than he usually would. Including what may be the concession many needed to hear - that the changes we’ve made aren’t working and have robbed us of our identity. Literally no one reads these articles and goes “OK all is fine now”. We all wait to see what actually happens on game day. So FFS do we have to run the “talk is cheap” thing every [censored] time?

Meanwhile if we picked Kentfield this week you’d probably call us “desperate”.

Part of that is because they play 4 games a year in Launceston. The data shows though that we’re 2nd only to Fremantle in the percentage of members we draw to our games. That has to remain the case even if our form drops. At a time when Tasmania is gearing up to take members off the other clubs, Carlton and Essendon are going well and want to transfer home games to the G, and the AFL has to find a use for Marvel, we cannot afford (almost literally) to see our crowd numbers disintegrate. Too many MFC members stop going to games as a form of protest against bad form. Please don’t do that. It will make the club worse off.

I sort of agree. Certainly right now it’s almost all on the midfield and backline. But our forwards don’t lead well, don’t block well, the tall forwards don’t all pressure well, and aren’t all good at ground balls. At least part of our struggles comes from the forwards.

I've said a few times now this week but potting the forwards isn't the right analysis after a game in which we were pathetic at clearance, contest and territory.

Hoyne is becoming increasingly difficult to listen to as he gets increasingly bogged down in the data without having due regard for what's actually happening on field. One of his major issues is blurring the line between causation and correlation - for example, is our changed game plan the reason why Oliver is having the worst season of his career, or is Oliver having the worst season of his career the reason why we can't play well? However, the general point he's making here is valid - we've tried playing a different way this year and it isn't working. We're not a threat for the flag playing this way so something has to change. There's too much hindsight analysis here. A perfectly valid argument for why Gawn and Pickett didn't kick their goals, nor anyone else who missed their goals, was that the players were physically exhausted from our taxing game plan which also generated too many low percentage shots on goal (Gawn may have only been 10m out but he was on the boundary). It was a major talking point through 2022, let alone 2023. Yes, our changes to date in 2024 aren't working, but that doesn't mean attempting change was the wrong idea.

And Goodwin deserves credit for this. Not a question mark.

This is a silly argument. We only won it because our elite players were playing elite football? That’s how every flag is won!

I’m going to keep calling this out when I see it because it’s [censored]. 17-1-4 in the H&A season, we beat every other side except one, we finished on top and we dominated three finals. The revisionism on here from posters like you is embarrassing and pathetic. Focus on the problems we’re facing now but if you want to demean our 2021 flag, honestly, [censored] off.

Is it chicken/egg with Clarry? Is there an argument that he is struggling due to the changes? Or is his poor form a primary reason for our losses? I suspect the latter but not sure.

These are poor examples. Hollands wanted to go to Carlton to play with his brother. Bowes had a massive contract which any suitor had to have room for. Sharp was fringe. Picking other fringe player trades which worked and then complaining about our fringe player trades is fine, but hindsight affected. IMO the better argument is the type of players we’ve brought in. Did Billings or McAdam really fill a list need when, even with Gus, our midfield was shallow?

Interesting to me that Goodwin acknowledged that our inconsistency and poor form has been going on all year, not just the last 4 weeks. Good to hear him admit it. Worrying to know we’ve been unhappy with our form all year and it’s getting worse rather than better.

How good was he realistically going to be today when we had 35 inside 50s, 31 fewer than Fremantle? There’s an important discussion to have about Petty but IMO it’s not the priority. The priority is the other two thirds of the ground.

Sydney lost to Geelong last year by 93. Collingwood last lost by 90+ in 2015 to Richmond. But lost by 85 to Brisbane in 2021. Geelong last lost by 90+ in 2014 to Sydney. But lost a certain prelim by 82…

Sorry, misread. You said our window isn’t shut. I’m not sure about our window. I’m in the “our list is severely overrated” camp so for me, these continued poor performances from close to our best 23 mean I don’t see much improvement coming from within (would love the likes of Jefferson, AMW and Sestan to prove me wrong, and I still rate Howes). Can we find the right FAs/trades with whatever cash we have to spend for 2025? Not sure.

-42 in CPs, -25 clearances, -31 inside 50s. I haven’t seen the game but that stat line tells me that it isn’t the tall forwards who are the primary problem.

I agree that @Binmans PA got it wrong by saying we’re a contender but have huge problems. That’s an oxymoron. On our current form we are closer to the bottom 4 than the top 4. On our current form our problems appear fatal to our season.

We now have a bottom 6 percentage. As @layzie said earlier, for the last 4 seasons I’ve had confidence that we can stay in any game, if not by winning then by fighting hard to keep the deficit down. Our record through 2020-23 speaks to that. The WC loss and now today really shattered that confidence. Our percentage being as low as it is shakes me more than I thought it might.

Blissfully overseas and loving SE Asia. That is, until I opened my AFL app. No idea how the game played out other than by reading stats but one thing stands out from the numbers - yet another smashing in the midfield. Tell me again how good our midfield is. And so our run in the top 8 comes to an end. 82 consecutive weeks by my count. I like stats and records so it saddens me that it’s over (would love to know if it’s any sort of record - @WheeloRatings?) but maybe it’s a blessing - time to get real about our midfield, our list and our fitness.

You might be right about midfield depth but were we realistically going to find a midfielder in the MSD who would make a significant difference to our 2024 fortunes?

Gee can’t help but feel Spargo’s ages off, sadly. But good news on Turner and Melksham might be back not far after the bye!

By all means, don’t switch on St Kilda vs Fremantle if you think it won’t be entertaining. But I’d argue that for us, this attitude shouldn’t apply.