titan_uranus

Honestly, you swing into full-blown pessimism faster than anyone. Oscar Allen is a talented but largely unproven player. Luke Jackson went a long way to winning us a Grand Final.

Not to be rude but mods, do we need another thread on this? There's already the Low Attendance thread for discussing these exact issues.

Yeah. We know. FFS.

Hunt can be considered unlucky. B Brown and M Brown can be considered lucky, you'd have to say.

This is a terrible reason IMO. We spent decades playing non-competitive football, but now after one magical year, we all set the bar at 2021 form and won’t accept anything less? Meanwhile yes only three scores above 100 but another four in the 90s. That’s 7 of 12 games where we’ve scored 90+ (and an 8th game where we scored 87). This is not good enough. We are winning, we are top of the ladder, and we are a legitimate flag contender this year. Those three things will not always be the case. We have generational talent who won’t be there forever. FFS, on Saturday night our captain, who may possibly end his career as the greatest ruckman of all time, played stunning football the likes of which maost other talls cannot reproduce. This reason for not attending is bullsh*t.

There is crucial information about what happened missing from the story so far - who else was there, how long had May been drinking for, did anyone have the chance to notice and call it out, how much did he drink, etc On the face of it, and assuming he was drinking when the club’s rules say he wasn’t allowed to, suspending him is the correct call. Yes it punishes the team. That’s part of why it’s the correct call. If it had been a fringe player, it wouldn’t punish the team and therefore would be easier to stomach, but that means senior players can get away with things. I am keen to learn the full story before saying anything further though.

Personnel no, but game plan? Richmond used the same game plan for four years. Hawthorn used the same game plan for four years. There's not a single thing wrong with Goodwin backing in our strengths. They won us 17 games in a row for a reason. Personnel-wise, we've got too many players out of form and we do need some change, but we've been persisting with a new side all year - Hunt and Brayshaw in the backline, Smith too until injured, Jordon on a wing, ANB more time up the ground and Petracca more time forward. We've changed more than your post suggests.

Isn't Optus Stadium a very similar size to the MCG?

See the thing is, Brown does deserve to be dropped, but I'm just not sure Weid deserves to be recalled. Goodwin's comments on Weid in the presser suggest he's not particularly enamoured with Weid's form either. Reality is that we currently have no in-form fit tall forward on our list. Whoever gets a game next week, whether it's B Brown, M Brown or Weid, is getting a game more out of necessity than out of form or "deserving" it.

Petracca was ill, and put his hand up as being fit to play last week. What did the club do wrong there? Goodwin was directly asked if Brown's fit last night and responded with a simple "yes". There's no other evidence or even rumour to suggest he's injured, so maybe his poor form is just that, poor form. Not sure there's really an issue here right now.

I get you don't rate Weideman, and personally I don't think he's shown very much this year either, but Brown was being repeatedly outmarked last night. So you're not really on great ground going down that road right now.

I thought I did OK with my almost-live-post attempt! Goodwin's comments about Weideman really stood out to me, more than anything. Incredibly blunt.

There's no evidence of this "loading" thing. There is inside mail on here all the time, but not one post from someone professing to know for sure that the training loads have increased. I suppose we may never know for sure, and if we get better as the year goes on we may look back and confirm the suspicion now, but in the absence of good evidence/mail on it, I'm hardly inclined to accept it just because we happen to look a bit tired right now. I mean, we had a few ill players last week and this week brought in five new players, three of whom were coming back from injury and three of whom hadn't played at the top level for a long time (M Brown, Salem, Tomlinson). Coupled with a physically intense match, perhaps that explains the perceived slowdown?

Not sure about the frees. It didn't feel like we were giving away frees for in the back or holding the man too much. We seemed to be giving them away for getting caught with it or in marking contests. And as you know, I also don't agree that them kicking straight would have ended the game in their favour. The third quarter had the same logic but the other way around - we kick straight there, we may have had the game done at 3/4 time.

Well it's not that simple of course - the Browns had bigger and better defenders on them most of the time, as did Gawn when he was forward. Fritsch is able to get off the leash for that reason sometimes. But also, simply put, Fritsch is better than the Browns right now. He's in better form, he's holding his marks better, he's got enough pace to get away from his opponent but enough strength to not drop it in a contest. As for the crumbers, part of the problem was we were being outmarked in our forward 50. Can't put pressure on them when they're marking it. In the fourth quarter we were crying out for the ball to hit the deck if we couldn't grab it, but we kept getting outmarked. Coaches routinely talk about the importance of bringing the ball to ground. B and M Brown last night failed in that regard.

Good discussion points in this post, @fr_ap. On the bolded bit, how can anyone blame them - just look on here. When we win it's "well that was expected", when we lose it's "we're stuffed". Either way, there's far less excitement than there should be. Now that we've won it, I think there are parts of our core supporter base who have lost the desperation and passion that the 57 year drought brought to all of us. A bit of "oh well, so what if we lose it this year, we won it last year!".

I'm not against the Brayshaw move. I like him in the backline, but I've been thinking about whether we're better off with Hibberd and/or Rivers in Brayshaw's spot, Brayshaw in Jordon's spot and Jordon in Sparrow's spot (dropping Sparrow). From what I saw of Hibberd he looked good, but then again most of what I saw was when Casey was dominating in the second half. I mentioned this earlier, but I don't think there's much doubt that Hibberd is capable of playing taller than his height, whereas Hunt, Brayshaw and Salem aren't (nor are Bowey or Rivers). We don't need another 195cm+ defender, we'll be rolling with May, Lever and Petty/Tomlinson next week and that combination is fine. But Hibberd is more flexible than all of our other defenders when it comes to height match ups. It's something worth considering IMO.

I actually agree that we're not that far off our form. The question isn't the gap, it's how we go about closing it. Remember, we led last night for 83 out of 106 minutes, and were leading with 5 minutes to go. We have issues, no doubt, but we're not that far off where we need to be. My query is how we go about fixing the issues. We've done it before, when it comes to mid-forward connection and midfield defensive two-way running. It's time to see us do it again. Given you've correctly identified Lever isn't the only player who is below his 2021 form, why the outlandish "what does he offer the side" comment? Last night we had no May, a rusty Tomlinson and an injured Petty. We turned it over repeatedly and gave Sydney acres of space. And despite everything on here, Lever wasn't even that bad! His rushed decision-making and poor kicking was no good, but his defensive work was nowhere near the top of the list of problems for us, especially given the context. I'm far more concerned about our inability to hit the scoreboard, the severe drop off in form of B Brown, Jackson, Sparrow and Spargo, and the slump Petracca's currently in.

It took Fremantle back-to-back losses to wake up. They didn't treat their GC loss properly, tried to write it off as a one-off, and paid the price the next week. We weren't as bad against Sydney as they were against Collingwood, but perhaps similar principles here - maybe we thought the Fremantle loss was a one off due to the injuries/players missing, and now realise there's a bit more to it?

I'm increasingly of the view that our supporter base just don't go to night games (finals aside). The one thing I'll say is that the public transport situation is a debacle. Left the ground at the final siren, straight to Richmond station, where there was a 10 minute wait for a single train to any of Glen Waverley, Belgrave and Lilydale. Platforms 9 and 10 fully clogged up. If you have kids and you're leaving a game at 10pm and you can't even get on a train until 10.30pm because there aren't any, I can (kinda, somewhat) understand why you might not want to go to more night games in the future.

Amazing game, totally deserving of 3 Brownlow votes. It is of course concerning, though, that despite that level of performance we couldn't get the win.

The only thing interesting about this question is that you've asked it. One of the principal reasons we won the flag and then won 17 in a row was that we have a system and we back the system in. I'm absolutely in favour of Goodwin not changing things up drastically, as you're wishing he did, after two losses. Instead, I think he's right to have approached things by working on the parts of our game that are obviously down (mid-forward connection and turnovers) which, when fixed, can result in our usual system working. Throwing random players around the ground didn't get us to last year's flag and I don't think is the answer. Also, he moved Weideman back halfway into the 3rd quarter, not the 4th, and that was probably the right timing given we were 20 points up halfway through the third.

Gawn going forward is currently weakening our midfield, but it shouldn't - remember the Grand Final turned when we had Jackson in the middle. Jackson's performed as an AFL-level ruck and then midfielder before, but right now he's out of form. Which is killing us because Gawn was winning us the match wherever he went yesterday, including FF, but we couldn't get it to work because Jackson was being beaten in the ruck.' I'm really unsure about Petty to the forward line. The May-Petty-Lever combo won us a flag and they work very well together. He hasn't trained as a forward in a long time and one of our major issues is connection - the mids and Petty aren't just going to start magically working out leading patterns/timing etc. when we flip our lock-down defender to the forward line. And it would mean retaining Tomlinson, who maybe needs a week under his belt to get back into it, but last night was really poor.

The tackle issue is legitimate, but I'm less concerned about the scoring shots one. They outscored us by 7 shots, which is the result of the second quarter (they kicked 5.4 to our 2.0). And that in turn was in no small part due to Petty being off getting his shoulder fixed. In the third quarter, for example, the favour was returned, but we kicked 1.5 to their 0.2. We should have turned our third quarter dominance into 4.2 or better, and then the fourth quarter could/would have looked a lot different (going back to your earlier post on how we approach fourth quarter leads and how we play).

Key takeaways (at least IMO) from Goodwin's presser: When asked about how we lost it in the fourth quarter, he immediately focused instead on how we dominated the third quarter everywhere except on the scoreboard When asked about our forward line, accepted we'll look at personnel but also method (I mean, that's obvious to all of us, but a reminder that swapping B Brown for Weid isn't going to make us score if we keep delivering it as poorly as we did tonight) Directly asked if Ben Brown was fit, and said yes They kicked 8 goals from turnovers, to our 0 Was asked about us being complacent, and denied it Was asked why M Brown got the spot over Weid: "he's playing better footy". Weid has to play "a big man's role". Was actually kinda brutal about this, I thought Petty had a hit to his shin, after the knee last week and then the AC joint tonight