titan_uranus

Best case scenario is we win by heaps, GWS and Brisbane lose, and we finish the round 7th (requires us to increase our percentage by 4.7% to pass Collingwood - requires roughly a 10 goal win I believe). If Brisbane wins we can’t finish higher than 8th. If GWS also wins (they currently lead Carlton), we’d near certainly not catch them on percentage and would finish 9th or 10th depending on percentage. (If anyone’s wondering, Hawthorn’s loss means we don’t drop if we lose.)

Melksham and Salem for Petty and K Brown. Bowey for Tomlinson the only other possible change I reckon. West Coast is tall up forward so if we wanted four tall backs last week, surely we’d want them this week too. Bowey or, if he’s not in, Tholstrup to sub I guess.

That’s a rather measured way of putting it. If we lose this weekend, I and probably most of Demonland will be filthy AF.

Do you seriously think this? You think the players go hammer and tongs, play exceptional football, build a solid lead, then stop because they’re frustrated with the coaches? Like some sort of protest? Seriously?

https://www.melbournefc.com.au/news/1591511/injury-report-melksham-reaches-return Have to say I get the sense from this that Petty and Salem are in doubt.

Not sure we can be this definite. If we win the next two there's a good chance we'll be in the 8, but we need 5 wins from the last 8 games and even then, with our poor percentage, that isn't a complete certainty of getting us in. To get 5 wins, the next two are essential but we also need to beat GWS and Port (both of which are at the G), and find a win out of the four harder games, being Fremantle in Perth, the Dogs at Marvel, GC on the GC and Collingwood. Dropping any of the WC, Essendon, GWS and Port games requires us to find more than one win in the Fremantle, Bulldogs, GC and Collingwood games.

The glass half full response to that would be that we played one of our better games for the year without Gawn dominating. Mostly this year our best games have been driven by Gawn, so to play well when he’s not starring is probably a good thing.

I'm on the bandwagon, don't worry. Just posted about it in another thread. Being 12th and sub-100% right now feels bad, but most of the sides between us and Fremantle are within one win and 10% of us. The thing about our fixture is that it's full of the classic "8-point game". We play most of the contenders for spots 3-8 on the ladder (Fremantle, Essendon, Dogs, GWS, Port, GC, Collingwood). Almost any win from here on out does double damage in our attempt to make finals (the converse of course is also true, last night being the first example of it).

If you think there's nothing to play left in this season, or that we're no chance, have a look again at the ladder. We may be 12th, but we're one win behind 5th, and only 1.5 wins behind 3rd. We may have a percentage of 99.9%, but 6 of the next 8 sides above us have a percentage under 109% (i.e. within 10% of us). It's a season of pretty fine margins. Holding on last night and only losing to Fremantle by 60, not 90, would have us 5th and right in the thick of the top 4 race. Hell, holding on last night even with our sub-100% we'd be 7th and a draw behind 3rd.

Dropping last night's game hurts even more now. Had we won we'd be 6th and sitting just a draw behind Essendon, who are proving themselves to be fraudulent. 7 of their 9 wins are against the bottom 6, and they're being flogged by a side on a 1-6 form run who haven't done almost anything right for two months.

That's Ben Long...

For mine, an elimination final and a shot as underdogs to get the finals monkey off our back is worth playing for, and a finals win from here is a fantastic result all things considered.

3 goals conceded from kick in is disappointing. The pressure stats are also interesting. They were over 200 in the second quarter!

It’s a combination of being 8-7 and how we played tonight. If this is what we bring for the rest of the year, rather than the football of our previous 6 weeks, then our season is alive. The fixture is challenging but 6 games in Melbourne, 5 at the G, and some 8-point games where wins can help bring challengers for the top 8 down (Essendon, GWS, Port, GC).

All of us should. There is a season left for us to make something of.

Anyone else reckon it was a 50 to Rivers?

This sounds like an acknowledgement that we hit a fitness wall and consequently tried saving the game instead of trying to win it (because we didn’t have the necessary run to take it on). I’m bullish about what we can do if we play like this for the rest of the year but I’d reserve judgment on the idea that “we have rediscovered our DNA” until we do it week after week.

It is an issue, clearly, but all I’m saying is that I don’t think it was the biggest one when Brisbane kicked 11.20. Unlike the two finals last year where we had more scoring shots, inaccuracy wasn’t the big problem with us shutting down in the last quarter IMO.

Possibly. We’re a young side but it’s concerning that two weeks in a row post-bye we’ve hit a wall late and let our opponent back in. But even with the fitness and inaccuracy issues we had enough opportunity late to work it out and win it. The entire last 15 minutes was problematic after 2.5 quarters of doing a hell of a lot right.

A lot of posts about the inaccuracy. Confident we would have lost on xScore too. Each of the fourth quarter misses was a shot that on average gets kicked less than 50% of the time. It’s still a problem, but in a game where our opponent was making the same sort of errors at the other end, I’m far more interested in our mindset, tactics and fitness.

Plenty on here said we were no chance and would be lucky to clear the line. The overwhelming sentiment for those people should be pride, because we significantly outperformed that expectation. To lose from that position though is more than disappointing. Clearly our fitness isn’t where it needs to be, but the tactics weren’t right and panic set in. Too many long kicks to nobody in the last 5 minutes, and not enough talls at the fall of the ball. The ANB free was a panic moment. And Rivers taking too much time and then kicking too long and to no one but Sparrow. All bad stuff. The question from here is whether we can harness what we found tonight and unleash it on the last 8 games. If we can, and if we can fix these fourth quarter problems, this season isn’t done yet.

It honestly can only make sense if it was predetermined that Brown was only ever playing vs North and not vs Brisbane. How could anyone have looked him in the eye and said “you didn’t quite do enough” after his debut?

Not sure about May, Lever, TMac and Tomlinson all in the side. Are we planning on TMac or Tomlinson playing forward? Or May or Lever playing small? Not a fan of Brown being dropped after 10 minutes of game time and I’d prefer we don’t make AMW sub, so presumably Woey cops it again.

As @DeeSpencer has very fairly been saying for weeks, he isn’t working hard enough, and that’s the problem. I hope that realisation has set in. With our forward line, we can’t afford for Fritsch to not impact games.

I hope this is right. They were 1-3 when we first played, looked completely out of sorts. We were 4-1 and humming off the back of our Adelaide fortnight. Our clubs have a strong recent rivalry. They got themselves up for that game. Think Rayner going berserk but barely firing a shot the rest of the season. This is the first time in a long time we’re rated no chance by anyone other than a few on here. We’re complete underdogs. I would love for us to use that “hunter vs hunted” mentality to our advantage. I don’t think we will win but I do think we can surprise many with our performance.