titan_uranus

How many people do you seriously think would turn up to this game if it was at Marvel? If we knew it would be at the G I’d be more inclined to move it. Hopefully we don’t need the revenue as much these days but with the soft cap crunch, any extra revenue to get any leg up on our opponents is worth consideration, and we’ve won, what, our last 3 at Alice Springs?

Because the same argument applies to every Melb-based club and particularly Collingwood, Richmond, Essendon and Carlton. They have to play some Melb-based clubs at GMHBA (they currently have 9 games there and can’t host all 8 interstate sides so there are 2-4 games a year for Melb-based clubs to play). It routinely means it’s us, St Kilda, the Dogs or North. The AFL continues to let them play two home games at the G. I don’t know whether that’s the AFL forcing Geelong, or Geelong asking for it to make money and/or get more games on the G. Regardless, until that ends and Geelong plays all 11 home games in Geelong, which is what should be happening, we will continue to be overburdened with trips down there to offset the absence of the bigger sides. In the interim, it beggars belief that Hawthorn, in some respects a smaller club than us and currently a weak on-field club, gets to avoid the trip. They should be down there next year. So should Carlton and Essendon, two sides who haven’t succeeded in finals in a decade.

I don’t know how many more times I can explain why I consider everything you’ve just said to be rubbish. Again, we dominated Carlton everywhere except our goalkicking accuracy. If we had kicked straight and won by 40 would you describe that as a “mild victory”? I doubt it. Carlton didn’t lose any of its losing streak games by more than 34 (including losses to Collingwood and Brisbane) so it’s not realistic to have expected us to have belted them by a huge score and, again, our dominance of the game was enough to warrant a 40 point win. I can absolutely deny the Collingwood thing. Their own coach denied it. There’s no evidence to properly show they were unfit. And the allegedly sick players still ran well on the day.

Ah @binman. I applaud your resolve, running so openly and strongly with this after mast year. I will maintain my view from last year, which is that I’d prefer to see concrete evidence from the club that shows we have actually engaged in loading through this period of 2023, before accepting this is the dominant reason for our performances as you argue. Last year there wasn’t such evidence IIRC, and we waited to see us bounce back with running fitness as the weeks went by, and it never happened. Granted, that may have been due to injuries, but it meant there was no real evidence that the loading block had occurred. If you can prove me wrong with interviews, or confirmed reports/vision from training, which show us increasing our training load over the last few weeks, I’m all ears.

Isn’t this all a storm in a teacup? He did his hammy. He then got a blister. The blister got infected (bad luck more than anything I’d guess). He had to be hospitalised to treat the infection. The hospitalisation meant he lost his progress recovering from the hammy. So he’s still not ready. Seriously, there isn’t any more to it than this, right?

I agree that we play too many small forwards. Spargo shouldn’t be playing and was a horrendous choice as sub. But IMO that spot should be another midfielder. We lack midfield depth and need another runner to work through stoppages. JVR, plus another tall, plus Fritsch, plus Gawn or Grundy resting forward, is probably sufficient. I don’t think we need to add Smith to that.

Some food for thought for selection next week - Bowey, Tomlinson, Melksham, Brown all putting their hands up.

I lost count of the number of times Smith was outbodied or out of position. I’m sure some of that was due to kicks to him being poor but I’m also sure some of it was to do with him being a limited forward. Not all his fault as he’s continually flipped from back to forward through his career, but I don’t know that he is a viable long term option as a tall forward.

You can’t keep calling your negativity “reality”. They are not the same thing. You are inherently pessimistic. For as long as I recall you posting on here, you have been. That doesn’t mean the “reality” is as dire as you perceive it. Your proposal to wait to season’s end is a classic pessimist’s ultimatum. 17 of the 18 clubs won’t win the flag. The odds are always in favour of the pessimists. It’s easy to say we won’t win it because that’s the likely outcome. And of course, if we do, no one will care that you’ve been OTT negative all year.

I didn’t suggest otherwise. But we didn’t “limp over the line” against Carlton and we didn’t just benefit from some rumoured illness at Collingwood. In both games we were the better side in most facets for most/all of the game.

I thought we’d learned our lesson last week when we subbed him out for another mid. We do not need all of Spargo, Chandler, Pickett and ANB in the side. IMO Spargo offers the least. He should never, ever, be the sub.

Ah yes, the classic post-loss revisionism. Accuracy is the only reason we didn’t beat Carlton by 40 and Collingwood by 20, as both performances deserved. Never mind the hysterical “black death” thing which has little evidentiary basis. Be as upset as you want with last night’s loss but the previous two wins are only cause for concern due to our goal kicking inaccuracy, a worrying trend.

I don’t think this would have made the difference but I agree it felt wrong. I felt we got a couple of lucky HTB calls early but then throughout the game some critical umpiring decisions went against us: 1. The lack of HTB on Kolodjashnij 30m out from our goal at the start of the 3rd (blatant HTB, horrendously missed) 2. Not calling Chandler’s advantage back (he took the kick a microsecond after the whistle, that gets called back 90% of the time) 3. The “throw” paid against Viney (the umpire had to have guessed, he was blindsided) 4. The lack of HTB on Rohan in the middle of the ground when Petty wrapped him up (another blatant HTB not paid, can’t recall if they scored from that chain though)

6 - Viney 5 - Petracca 4 - Rivers 3 - Salem 2 - McVee 1 - Hunter

My gut from hearing Richardson pre-game is that Oliver won’t be ready. I’d drop Petty and send him to Casey to find form. I disliked the decision to bring him in for Tomlinson when it was announced and the more I think about it the more I hate it. We’d seemingly settled on him as a forward, he then doesn’t play football at all for 6 weeks, and then we decide not only to insert him straight back in off no prep against Geelong in Geelong, but to do so in defence when we were coming off one of our best defensive games all year, forcing us to drop Tomlinson after his best game in years. Never ever play Spargo as the sub again (nor any other small forward). Midfielders or utilities only. It shouldn’t even need to be said. Spargo was bad anyway, and shouldn’t come back into the 22. Smith was good in the first half but a major problem in the second half when he routinely failed to stop Stewart from marking. Must lift, but I’m not at all confident he has the ability. I want Rivers in the middle permanently and Bowey into the backline. Rivers takes Jordon’s spot.

The last quarter was horrendous in almost every respect. Very little to redeem from it. But we lost this game in the middle two quarters. We dominated general play and had plenty of inside 50s against a side who has been poor all season at conceding scores from inside 50s. But the story of our season, and for too long under Goodwin, remains - we are too efficient in our forward half. We blew chance after chance and honestly should have been 4 goals up at three quarter time. Don’t get me wrong, the last quarter was a disaster, but we should have had enough of a lead to hold them off. We also got really unlucky with some crucial frees and their accuracy but it never should have come to that. Selection was wrong. Spargo was a terrible choice for a sub. Petty wasn’t ready for AFL level football and shouldn’t have played. Smith isn’t a forward and we got burnt by his inability to contest the ball repeatedly. McVee was great again, Viney a warrior, Rivers is improving weekly and Salem strong all night. But in wet weather we get far too fumbly and players who struggle in the dry (ANB, Langdon, Gawn) lose all ball handling ability. We will blow our chances this season if we don’t sort out our goal kicking and general forward half efficiency.

I think we’re right to be underdogs. I don’t care how out of form Geelong is, and I don’t care that they lost their most recent game at GMHBA. Winning down there is tough. Tonight is all about territory IMO. Geelong are a bottom 4 side this year for conceding scores from opposition inside 50s. Even though Clarry misses, if we can get on top of their midfield with no Dangerfield and Guthrie, and get the ball camped in our forward half, my hope is we will get enough opportunities to score. But if we are down in stoppages, I can’t help but fear that Cameron will return to his early season form and/or Hawkins will have one of those infuriating nights where he slots goals from everywhere.

I was late to this news but I am strongly opposed to dropping Tomlinson for Petty. It just feels wrong. Tomlinson’s game against Collingwood was too good to warrant Petty being an automatic inclusion. The harsh result should have, as unfortunate as it may be, been imposed on Petty, not Tomlinson. Jordon for Spargo the correct call in Oliver’s ongoing absence.

This seems a bit odd given they won their most recent game at the G prior to last week - obviously that was a final but why exclude it from the analysis?

I think we're over-worrying about our defensive match ups on Geelong's forwards. Port's main weakness is their one-on-one defence and it didn't end up being an issue for them because they got on top in the middle and played the game in their forward half. IIRC Geelong are bottom 4 this year for conceding either goals or scores (or both) from their opponents' inside 50s. They are not repelling entires anywhere near as well as they did last year, and their transition game isn't as strong. They will be missing Dangerfield and their 2023 season without (fit) Dangerfield suggests they are not a dominant midfield. Even without Clarry, if we bring the midfield heat that we brought on King's Birthday, I'm confident we can get the ball locked in our forward half for long enough to score enough to out-do whatever their forward line manages from their match-ups against us.

I get what you're saying. The longer the season goes, the less impact to percentage each week has. Still, in Round 13 last year we had a 15.2% gap on Sydney which by the end of the year had closed to 2.6%.

Good. I don't think it's a coincidence that we found that hunger and defensive pressure buy-in in our first game as underdogs since who knows when.

Smith had 11 pressure acts on the weekend. JVR had 17. Spargo had 10 despite being subbed off halfway into the third. Also, as has been mentioned already, from this week's 22 if you are dropping Spargo for Petty you have to drop someone else for Oliver. We need Oliver more than we need Petty alongside JVR/Smith, which increases the pressure on Smith to be dropped if/when Petty's back.

Love the passion and agree that David King flip flops all the time. Just on this though, I'd be very cautious of saying there's almost no chance they catch us on percentage. At Round 9 last year we had a 37.6% buffer between us (159%) and Geelong (121.4%). By season's end they had a 13.7% lead (144.2% to 130.5%). That's a 50%-odd turnaround. Sydney nearly did the same, despite us having a 33.3% gap on them at Round 9. This year our run home fixture doesn't appear as tough as our 2022 run home ended up being, but a 15% gap is half what we had last year.

I have to say, I got really nervous when the Melbourne cheer, in the Collingwood style, started up. That was before the Mihocek goal and then after the Daicos one I thought to myself, if this goes pear shaped, the industry blow-back on us going early on the cheer only to lose will be enormous. Thank [censored] it didn't eventuate, because otherwise I thought our cheer squad (and our supporters generally) were the best we've ever been, other than perhaps the 2018 finals. The media has seized on how loud we were to drown out the boos when Grundy took that first mark and I thought that was so damn emblematic and made me so proud.