titan_uranus

I don't think the fact that some of their opponents were top 4 at the time of playing them means a whole lot in the first 6 weeks. Right now Fremantle and Carlton don't look like finals sides. So their wins over the Dogs and Essendon look good. But even then, I'm not sure Essendon will keep it going all year. Plus they're yet to play a non-Gather Round interstate game. Collingwood IMO is miles in front of any other side for flag favouritism. Geelong's beaten two (not even) VFL-quality sides and a Sydney side missing its back and forward lines. St Kilda see above. I'm unsure on Essendon keeping their form for another 18 weeks. Sydney's depth is non-existent and unlike previous years they're going to need it in 2023. Brisbane will win enough H&A games but they still don't defend well and have to get better away from the Gabba. Adelaide struggled to beat Hawthorn and strike me as a massive flash in the pan style side. Port Adelaide are hot/cold. Carlton have problems all over the place. As for us? Well, I don't know. But I know we're not as good as Collingwood.

Jeepers. Four goals down at half time to a side barely VFL quality? Let's hope for some improvement.

I think we know enough about how we were going late last year to know that wasn't our best performance. But even so, that's Brisbane's one finals win of merit in four years of finishing top 6 on the ladder.

Brisbane has one genuine away win so far, and that was yesterday’s far from convincing win over GWS, a likely bottom 6 if not bottom 4 side. Their home wins vs us and Collingwood were excellent but they have dominated at home for 4 years without being good enough to do real finals damage. I’m not at all convinced enough has changed there. Geelong are the only good side to have played both Hawthorn and West Coast plus they got Sydney at the best possible time. Their percentage is hardly reflective of their season so far.

One of only three sides to play both Hawthorn and West Coast so far (North and GWS the other two). They also got Sydney at a low ebb. Essendon, Adelaide, Richmond, Fremantle (away), GWS and the Dogs their pre-bye run. If they clear that 4-2 or better, they'll be fine. They have 6 GMHBA home games and only two road trips post-bye. I'm still not convinced though.

Sorry, that's right, we can only pass them on percentage if they lose. Fixed.

Sydney's missing too many from the same areas - key defenders (McCartin, McCartin, Rampe) and key forward (Franklin, Amartey, Reid). It's much harder to cover those sorts of players, particularly when they're all out at once. Clearly their depth is poor, but it's a tough ask. Our win against them was against a vastly superior version of them, and deserves far more credit than Geelong's win tonight IMO.

I don't know about that. Collingwood play two home games at Marvel this year (one of which is vs North Melbourne, which is ridiculous) and have done so for years, IIRC. I also don't think we are getting a 10th MCG home game as some sort of compensation. My understanding is that the AFL requires a minimum number of games at Marvel and because Carlton and Essendon (Marvel tenants) want and get their bigger games at the MCG, the MCG tenants have to play home games at Marvel. Our 11th home game would almost certainly be at Marvel if we didn't sell the Alice Springs game but we'd stay at 10, I think (Collingwood might drop a Marvel game to compensate). I have no idea how the above leads to us being sent to Geelong each year. I'm nearly 100% sure the basic reason for that is that the AFL (and/or Geelong) decide to make Geelong host bigger Victorian clubs at the MCG, which restricts the pool of Victorian clubs eligible to go down there to us, North, St Kilda and the Dogs. So we cop it most years. We're not ceding anything. It's the AFL and it's our crowd-pulling ability. If we stop selling the Alice Springs game we'll still get at least one more interstate game compared to those other sides. Hawthorn sold 4 home games per year in its dominant years. The AFL minimised the number of away games they otherwise played. We sell a home game but the AFL doesn't minimise our other away games to compensate. That's on the AFL, not on us. If we pull bigger crowds consistently, then more clubs will want to host us in their home games. Everyone wants to host Collingwood (and Richmond, and Essendon, and Carlton). So they get more away games in Victoria. If we pulled bigger crowds we'd get more of those away games in Victoria.

8th. If we lose, we'll be 9th (Adelaide won't lose to Hawthorn). Of course, if we win, we could be 3rd (Coll/Ess winner 1st, St Kilda/Carlton winner 2nd - we can pass St Kilda if they lose and we pass their percentage).

I think it's time to make some changes and set some rules around how teams/squads are named. On Thursday TMac named in the starting 22. Schache not in the squad. On Saturday TMac dropped, Schache now in the squad in his place. What's the point of these squads? Either name actual squads or delay them until a time when clubs know who they are going to pick. Anyway, as to the sub, going to be an interesting new face. I can't see Schache or Turner being the sub so you'd imagine it will be Laurie or Dunstan.

Gawn and Lever in for Tomlinson and Melksham. Spargo either replaced by Jordon or, presumably, Laurie. Surprised re Brown. Nothing in the club’s selection article to explain his situation. Assume he is fit but not picked. Which surprises me given TMac’a form.

Care to identify the things you think we're not doing "well enough"? Our injury situation isn't perfect but it's nowhere near as bad as a number of other clubs (West Coast, St Kilda, Richmond, Carlton and Sydney all immediately come to mind and I haven't even thought about it for all that long).

Well I'm not entirely sure about our forwards being "pus". I mean, we are the highest scoring side in the league...

Agree. I think the Dogs had a fair whack of injuries late in 2016 and Richmond opened 2019 with injuries galore, but by and large premiers are healthy more often than not. So far this year we have used 29 players, which is tied for 8th-most in the competition. It's not entirely coincidental that St Kilda, Sydney and Essendon are in the top 3 for fewest players used.

That's right - last year our run home included trips to Adelaide, Perth and Brisbane (plus Alice Springs and Geelong). This year we trade those three trips in for Hobart and Sydney (and of course keep Alice Springs and Geelong). The other point about our fixture was that 9 of our last 12 games were against eventual finalists, the 10th was against Carlton (9th on percentage) and the 11th was against Port Adelaide, leaving the 12th game as Adelaide, but that was in Adelaide. It's still a bit too early to be able to know for sure how easy/hard our run home is right now, but at the moment post-bye we have games against GWS, North Melbourne and Hawthorn, as well as Richmond and Carlton.

Disagree. McLure, who I detest but regrettably has some reasonable sources, said that "there have been murmurs around Kozzie Pickett getting closer to signing a contract".

Hopefully we at least get Lever back this week. I've been thinking about the loss and about how poor we were, by our standards, behind the ball. Our intercept game was off and Essendon scored far too easily going inside their forward 50. I started wondering: when was the last time we played a game without both Gawn and Lever? The answer? Round 16, 2019. 3.5 years since we've played a game without at least one of our two elite intercept marks in the side. I doubt it's a coincidence that we looked so poor defensively as a result.

Unfairly pessimistic take IMO. For one, look at who we've played in this 9-10 period. The final 14 games last year were almost exclusively against 2022 top 8 sides, with repeat travel/venue changes. So far this year we've played three 2022 finalists plus the in-vogue 4-1 Essendon, and with repeat travel/venue changes. More than happy to be proven wrong on this but I'm confident there isn't another side whose previous 19 games have been as challenging as ours. More importantly, we reset over the summer and there should be no reason to expect us to be 5-0 or necessarily 4-1. The 10-0 start last year is a perfect reminder than being scintillating right now is not necessary. It arguably isn't even a good thing. So when you say things like "we still have no idea what exactly is our best forward mix", that shouldn't be viewed as a strictly negative thing. I mean, never mind the fact that we've been forced to make changes (Pickett suspended Round 1, Fritsch missed Round 1, Gawn injured Round 2, Brown injured Round 3, Spargo injured Round 5). And never mind the fact we're the highest scoring side in the competition. It's not all bad that we're working through different combinations. We're learning how, for example, JVR works with TMac, and how Brown works with Grundy/Gawn. If we'd picked the same forward line each week Goodwin would be exposed to the 2022 argument against him that he's "stubborn". Also we're 6th in the comp for average CP differential, so our CP game hasn't fallen apart. We're 3-2 and one game off the top. We've hardly lost touch with 1st despite playing more games interstate than at home, having our hall of fame captain miss 80% of the season so far, and playing some reasonably good sides to boot. We've integrated Grundy, Hunter, McVee and JVR into our side, and we've had success with some positional changes (Petty, Rivers, our general approach to centre bounces). Having said all that, the one thing you didn't mention that I'd like to see improvement in is the rate at which our opponents score when going inside their forward 50. It feels like we're not as stable behind the ball as we were in 2021-22. That will in part be down to May missing two games, Petty being moved back/forward, Lever missing a game, Gawn missing four games, and a lack of continuity back there, but I'd like to see that area improve.

Brown against Sydney? Didn't we sub him off as soon as his back seized up? Sure, but Samson Ryan and Ben Miller are not a patch on Draper and Philips.

His proper focused takes on the game are actually good. But he is paid to make bold calls and to have them regurgitated all over his various SEN and Channel 9 gigs. So he days big things designed to be inflammatory. On JHF he’s blatantly hypocritical but I suspect he knows that and doesn’t care.

I posted earlier that I think we assume that because we beat Sydney without Gawn that we can/will beat anyone without him. Reality is that the Sydney win was exceptional from us but the challenge of winning games without him in the side is a big one, and it is exacerbated by a player like Lever missing as well. Agree re: Grundy. His aerobic fitness just isn't there right now. Can get away with it when the opposition has one ruckman (e.g. Sydney and West Coast) but against two, he can't keep up as they both get more rest than he does. This week Richmond have 0 ruckmen, so it shouldn't be as big an issue for us.

We must not play Gawn. Our opponent doesn't have two rucks like Essendon did. They don't even have one. We have a second game five days after ANZAC Eve. It's not the right time to bring Gawn back. If he's even fit for ANZAC Eve, hold him, and bring him back the following week against North.

Richmond is in the bottom 4 for a reason. They're not very good at full strength, let alone with a number of their better players out. Sydney didn't have a backline against them and won by 8 goals. Even if Gawn, Lever, Brown, Hibberd, Salem, Spargo and Sparrow are all injured and forced out of our side, we should have no business losing to Richmond. Not after a disappointing loss that should be spurring us to get real.

Selection this week is going to be as interesting to me as any game has been for a long time. Why? Because Spargo will be a forced out. He hasn't missed a game since Round 16, 2020 (when we lost to Fremantle in Cairns). He's been on the team list every game since then, and at times that's been through questionable form. Obviously enough the FD rate his role as part of what we sometimes call our "engine room" (i.e. him, ANB, Chandler, etc.). Without him this week I'm keen to see what the FD do to replace him. Two other big tests: Melksham and TMac. We can't play both in the same forward line for the reason of the year IMO, and there's a strong argument that we shouldn't be playing either of them on current form (TMac's four goals against the West Coast 2nds shouldn't stand for as much as perhaps we thought it did).

I haven't seen the full game so I'm not as qualified as others to comment on what went wrong. There's no doubt IMO that covering for Gawn's absence every week is not straightforward and that the fact we were able to beat Sydney without him doesn't automatically mean we can beat everyone or anyone without him. Not having Lever makes us exponentially worse as well - Lever was in AA form and him out means our two best intercept marks were missing. Then you add in that Petty's been thrown back and forward without continuity, and IMO hasn't actually been in much good form all season at either end of the ground, and May's still not close to his best, and all of a sudden the part of our game we've relied on being consistently good at for 2+ seasons, our back half, is now porous and weak. Then there are the factors that you'll either think are a disgraceful unjust conspiracy against us, or are [censored]-weak excuses: We were playing in Adelaide off a six-day break from a (warm-ish) game in Perth This was our third road trip in five weeks (it was Essendon's first) We haven't played two consecutive games in the same State, let alone venue, all season We haven't played two games in the same timeslot all season - Sat night, Fri night, Sunday arvo, Sunday twilight, Saturday twilight (and won't next week, with a Monday night) We've already had two six-day breaks and have a five-day break coming up between Richmond and North Melbourne To be 3-2 after these five opponents is probably no better than par (you could have budgeted losses to both Brisbane and Sydney but would have expected the win over Essendon). I'm still OK with that, as we know all too well we don't need to be in peak form in April, but I'm not OK with a defence that can't stop scores as well as it should be able to, nor am I OK with a midfield that doesn't seem to produce its best with any degree of consistency.