titan_uranus

Nobody will ever convince you of anything though.

I agree with this, and your entire post, except that I wouldn’t say it was hitting the panic button. The majority view on here after last year’s finals was that we needed to change the way we play because the repeat inside 50 forward half press wasn’t going to get us a flag. I don’t think the FD panicked. I think they correctly identified that some changes would make us better. Unfortunately, it just hasn’t worked and, as you say, we’ve stripped our players of their identity in the process.

This has been our biggest problem all year. Our list and game plan revolve around the midfield. Under Goodwin we’ve never been good when beaten in the midfield. In 2021-23 it didn’t happen much. This year it’s happened most weeks and we cannot compete when it happens.

Confirmed by the club: https://www.melbournefc.com.au/news/1576080/injury-update-christian-petracca

Are you a doctor? If not, you’re not qualified to make this comment. Players go back on with rib pain regularly from my experience. And Burgo isn’t and wasn’t a doctor. Regardless of all that, hopefully Trac is OK and recovers well. In the meantime, for any game he misses, we get a good opportunity to try someone new, but we’re also [censored].

A classic MFC tale.

Which one is it? FWIW, it's not the former. This is not a "Ferrari" list. We've been extracting consistent and largely excellent football from the bones of this list for four years. But with the drop off from Viney, Oliver and May, the absence of Lever and the need to throw Petracca forward more than we'd like, the list around them isn't good enough to keep us in contention. Compare that with Collingwood who today covered for De Goey, Mitchell, Pendlebury, Elliott, Cox and Mihocek with players like Kreuger, Noble, Harrison, Macrae, Sullivan and Dean.

Not really though, last week was all about the annihilation we received in contest, clearance and territory. Just looking at the stats, we only fixed part of that today. +22 in CPs is improvement but -10 in clearance to a side missing De Goey, Mitchell and Pendlebury is bad, and -3 inside 50s is just as bad given we know we spent the week focusing on contest, clearance and territory.

Still overseas, so haven't watched this game either, but we're completely done for the year if we can't do better than a 38 point loss to a Collingwood side missing De Goey, Mitchell, Pendlebury, Mihocek, Elliott and Cox (plus McStay). To be that far off a side with 6-7 best 23 players missing the week after the bake we deservedly received is arguably more concerning than the Fremantle loss.

He wasn’t “outstanding”, he was fine against bottom 4 opposition. No good last week vs Fremantle and Collingwood’s forward line is short at the best of times, let alone with their current injury list.

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.