titan_uranus

*Shudder*... People are being sucked in by Dunn again. Happened in 2010, we gave him a new contract, and he repaid us with nothing. Now, we get to the end of another dud year, we have few shining lights so any half-decent performance stands out, Dunn manages one or two games of not being as totally useless as usual, and people begin to take his mature frame as an indication of ability. Dunn doesn't use his frame, so who cares if he has it. All he does is point and yell at everyone else to get in position.

Great thread, and agree with the sentiment, he's been better than Frawley this year. Terrible post, however. Absolutely no way his skills are better than Frawley's. His skills are worse than almost every other player on our list. He's in the top 5 worst kicks at Melbourne, which has tough competition, and he continually turns it over by hand as well as foot. Sorry, that statement is ridiculous. Luckily, he's got the art of defending worked out really well. His bodywork is exceptional despite his small frame and he has good pace and leap. Skills will hopefully come, such that he turns into a star defender.

Spot on.

Points to following people saying we should wear red, slaps forehead, and whispers under his breath...did not miss point, but in fact was totally on topic, given there are still people who don't understand the source of the white.

You spelled 'go' wrong. It's a bit hard to try to decipher our plan based on our current form, but the switch seems to be something the defenders are trying to use when they think it's on. Problem is two-fold. One, they use it when there's nothing on, making it a dumb choice. Two, almost all our defender's can't kick with precision, making cross-ground kicks dangerous. McDonald is as good as we could ask for...until he gets the ball in his hands. Unfortunately he is a terrible kick and his decision making at the moment belies his inexperience. That kick across goal shouldn't be taken by anyone, far too dangerous with St Kilda players near him. That kind of kick only should be made when there's 0% chance of it going wrong.

Proving pretty much everyone wrong. Good on him. You'd pick him well before picking some of our senior players based on his effort, grunt, clearance work and enthusiasm.

According to PeterJames, Tall Defence and UTAH, we'd be better served with red. I was commenting on that.

Dunn, Petterd, Bate and Bennell can all go. So glad to hear they're all out of contract. Edit: Moloney surely is in trouble too.

You would have to think so. Really odd decisions otherwise, given they had GCS this week. However, I'd be cautious saying we're a certainty to do anything, let alone win. If any club can lose to a tanking side, it's us.

Why? Logic too much too handle?

6 - Jones 5 - Blease 4 - Jetta 3 - Rivers 2 - Spencer 1 - McDonald

Great game, one of his best, if not his best. Left a few other players for dead in terms of workrate and courage.

What's ridiculous is that this is still an issue. Get over it, people. The AFL says our home guernsey clashes with Essendon, and thus we have to have something to wear against them which will solve the problem. More red does not solve that problem. Hence the white.

He only had 8 tackles because he was consistently second to the ball. Terrible effort today. Not the only one, of course, but he was rank. Trading him is not the answer. Can't afford to get rid of one of the few players on our list who has ability.

When the best two players play for the losing side. Come on. Anyone who watched the game knows the best two players were Bennell and Ablett. We had a much more even contribution across our team and we played like a team. They had two dominating stars and a bunch of hack kids.

Insanely positive write-up. I thought he was slow, lacking match practice, and didn't really have an impact on the game.

I hate listening to people tell me we suck because we tanked and it created a losing culture. We were terrible anyway. We could easily have lost those games even if we'd tried. We already had a side going down, we already were good at losing, and I resent wholeheartedly any attempt to say that the reason we suck now is because we instilled a losing culture which we can't shake. No. The reason we suck now is because Neeld is attempting to make our team play a brand of football that is competitive and might win us matches, but can't do that with a list given to him by Bailey which was as crap as it was. People who know us know this. People who don't, who generally don't give a crap about us, who consider us irrelevant, just jump to straightforward conclusions.

Good call Melbourne.

Late change: McKenzie out, Magner in. Magner the sub. I'm about to head into the G. Looking forward to some sun and a win. Or is the sun a bad omen? Or am I just a little paranoid?

This poll confirms that there are 9 idiots on this site.

Don't agree. I just watched it again too, and I see Rioli grab his arm and drag it down, thus making the ball fall out. Either way, though, the umpire was behind, and can't have known he knocked the ball out if in fact he did, meaning all he saw was Duncan grab it, run, then get tackled. That is holding the ball, and it should have been paid (although I will say that I do like umpires putting the whistle away late in close games). Hawthorn was also hurt by Sewell playing on. Hawthorn got a free kick for holding the ball after that, when Podsiadly was caught, but I'm convinced Sewell didn't hear the whistle; any decent footballer would have known to stop and take the kick and wind the clock down, so I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt here and saying he didn't hear the whistle, and as a result, he kept going. It was hard on TV to hear the whistle. Finally, the biggest issue of the lot was Puopolo going for goal of the year with 30 seconds left. They had 3 on 1, he should have done all he could to keep the ball in play and either bring it back to a teammate or straighten up. Or at least take it out of bounds to drain time. Going for a mid-air hack was just irresponsible.

The interesting part of the debate is whether we're concerned about our actions or their consequence and purpose. What we did, if true, was to rest players or play new players in new positions. Whether or not the purpose was to try to be less competitive, or to ensure we had a stronger list in the future, the end result was that we weren't as competitive as maybe we could have been. But as many are already pointing out, the same thing happens in other guises. What did Collingwood do last week against GWS? They intentionally played a weaker side than they could have. The purpose for doing so was different, but the conduct was the same, and I'm sure the consequence was that they were less competitive than they could have been. In the end, what we did is done by lots of other clubs in lots of other ways. We had a valid reason for doing so, more than one in fact, as do clubs like Collingwood when they rest players with one eye on the finals. People should relax. It's going to keep happening no matter what.

I care as much about this game as I do about the Olympics. Suffice to say, I don't care.

Can't imagine Garland being dropped after one bad game/moment/whatever it was that is causing people to want to drop him. I'd like to see Sellar back, I thought he was really developing well at CHB before his injury. I'd also like to see us field a side without Dunn, Bate, Petterd and Morton, but I reckon we have too many injured/missing players to be able to fill all those gaps.

Well I could have just disagreed, but then you wouldn't have understood how much I find your opinion ridiculous. Judd didn't actually dislocate his shoulder, you know. Not saying that Judd didn't deserve weeks (should have got more than 4, really), but the essence of what Judd did was that it was dangerous, stupid, intentionally done, and completely unsportsmanlike. All of which apply to Howe. The mind boggles indeed. Very good call!