titan_uranus

St Kilda have Gold Coast next week, then get Collingwood in the Gather Round (i.e. avoiding having to play them at the G), then a further three straight games at Marvel including Port and North. They are going to build up a massive head of steam in these first 8 weeks and could well be 6-2 or better. Which I suppose they'd want to be if their only interstate game in the first 8 weeks is the Gather Round neutral game.

When was the last time any side kept up blistering form for 23 weeks? Even if they stay fit enough to play like this through winter, they have to stay in form whilst sides start targeting them in more depth. We didn’t cope well with that last year.

It's disappointing. TMac at the level he was at in 2021 would have made us a better side last year and would make us a better side right now. Unfortunately on what he's shown this year since coming back from injury, that form is way off.

They also remind me of Melbourne in 2022. First month of the season and most people have them well in front of anyone else. But they play a physically taxing style and will need to sustain it for another 5 months just to get to the finals starting gate. If they're playing like this in September, then outside of Sydney the rest of the competition has a lot of ground to make up to compete for the flag.

Well when it's 10 scoring shots to 1, Collingwood is +25 in disposals, +10 in CPs, +6 marks inside 50 and +5 inside 50s, you'd want to have a good defence because if they don't arrest the momentum the dam wall is going to burst.

I had initially wondered whether we were going to change things up and drop TMac. It’s risky no doubt, as JVR now clearly has to relief ruck, but it’s a different look forward of centre and means we go with two talls, Fritsch and at times Grundy. It’s not exactly short. I like seeing Hibberd in, you’d imagine it means Brayshaw, Rivers or Bowey play further up the ground. Unless Hibberd runs with someone a la Dusty last year. Strange we haven’t named Tomlinson as an emergency.

So for the second time in three weeks this year Sam McClure is having a go at our crowds: Faced with Richo querying him, he says he's "done the numbers" and we have the "lowest percentage" of members attending games. Let's check those numbers. Last year we averaged 39,218 per home game (or 42,508 excluding the Alice Springs game). Last year we had 66,484 members. That means our average home game attendance was 59% of our membership (increasing to 64% if we exclude Alice Springs). By comparison with the other Victorian clubs: Carlton's home average was 56% of its membership (49,784 out of 88,776) Collingwood's was 48% (48,573 out of 100,384) Richmond's was 46% (46,485 out of 100,792) Essendon's was 46% (39,754 out of 81,662) Geelong's was 37% (26,875 out of 71,943) Hawthorn's was 33% (26,502 out of 77,079) the Bulldogs' was 48% (24,655 out of 50,491) St Kilda's was 42% (25,386 out of 60,172) North Melbourne's was 29% (14,368 out of 50,191) Obviously for Hawthorn, North Melbourne and the Dogs, these are affected by their 3-4 sold home games each year, same for St Kilda which like us sells 1. And obviously the size of the crowd at a game isn't purely dictated by the home team, it depends on the away team too. But on these numbers we are not the "lowest percentage", we're the highest. And that was in a season in which we were away on the two biggest games we play, ANZAC Eve and Queen's Birthday. I'm not sure how else you're supposed to measure the percentage of our fans who show up to games. Would love to know what "numbers" Sam McLure "did" here. Or whether perhaps he's just another typical anti-Melbourne [censored] who loves to stick the boot in for the fun of it.

Jordon named in the 22, so we know he, May and JVR are all in. That’s likely the three changes (for Tomlinson, Gawn and Harmes). Disappointed Hibberd couldn’t get in.

I'm not expecting a starring role but perhaps a bit more optimism is warranted. This is a guy who averaged just over 2 goals a game for 16 games in the VFL last year, who's added a pre-season to that VFL year, and who opened this year's VFL season with 19 disposals, 11 marks and 1.1.

With TMac's current form there's half a chance JVR gets their 2nd best defender even if TMac plays. I hear you though, no TMac would put heaps of pressure on JVR. I suspect TMac gets another game and will be asked to do the relief rucking.

My point stands, perhaps even gets stronger. You've seen an article linking Geelong to King and you've inferred from it that we're not thinking about any forward at all. Again, that is a very silly thing to be thinking in March.

So is JVR coming in for Gawn, or are we going to go a bit smaller, swap JVR for TMac, and leave Gawn's spot to a mid/smaller player?

Of the many things I don't like about this thread or your post, you have no idea whether or not we have any interest in King. You have seen an article suggesting Geelong is interested and you have inferred from it that we therefore aren't interested. That logic is flawed. It's also silly given it's [censored] March.

FFS. It's March and already someone's "annoyed" that we're not targeting a player for a trade. You want to know what our plan is to improve our forward line? How about we see how the 2023 premiership season goes for a bit longer than two games first?! FFS.

North isn't "very young". Their side vs Fremantle had an average age of 25 years 7 months and average games played of 101.2 They were older and more experienced than Fremantle I25 years 2 months and 80.6 games).

Rarely do we see another sides' supporters as arrogant as this. Gee I hope we turn our [censored] poor form against them this week.

There's no point saving him for that role if he's not performing. We tried using Harmes in a run with role vs the Dogs but it didn't really do anything.

I'm not sure a better option is on our list.

It's Grand Prix Sunday. The crowd isn't going to be amazing. For context, on GP Sunday last year Hawthorn played St Kilda at the G at 3.20pm and the crowd was 30,926. Both sides were 2-1 at the time, Hawthorn's only loss was by 1 point and St Kilda was fresh off a 5-goal win over Richmond.

What are you on about? We averaged 39,218 to our home games last year. 6th best in the entire competition, behind only the big four (Carlton, Collingwood, Richmond and Essendon) and Fremantle. We were only fractionally behind Essendon, too, and that was because of the Alice Springs home game. Take that out and we averaged 42,508 from our 10 MCG games, which was 5th best. Inclusive of away games were also 5th highest. Other than Fremantle, we had 20,000 fewer members last year than Carlton and Essendon, and 35,000 fewer members than Richmond and Collingwood. I haven't run the precise calculations but as a proportion of our membership our home ground average stacks up bloody well IMO. And last year we were away on both ANZAC Eve and Queen's Birthday. I don't know what you mean by "minimum" 40k at Round 1 this year. The crowd was 48,103 on a day with rubbish weather, and the overwhelming majority were Dees fans.

Are you trying to say we missed Hunt on the weekend? If so, I don’t think you’re really focusing on the true reason we lost, which wasn’t speed.

Well to be fair, GWS was missing a bunch of best 22 players and was playing across the country after playing in 34+ degree heat last week. Still thought they'd win because West Coast are a rabble, but I can see how it went down.

Agree. I suppose it's possible pundits think Sydney's opening fortnight has been soft and perhaps that losing to Brisbane is no major issue. Whilst both of those are true, all markers point to a Sydney win. They are a better side. They will be closer to their best 22. They have the wood over us. It's being played at the MCG, where we play them worse (I'd be more confident if this was at the SCG). IMO, a win this Sunday will be huge for our season.

So this week the following streaks died: 47 consecutive rounds in the top 4 (but at least we have made it to 48 consecutive rounds in the top 8, thanks to West Coast) 32 consecutive games where we had led by at least 9 points at some stage of the match (last time we didn't lead in a game by at least 9 points was Round 19 2021 when we lost to the Dogs) 12 consecutive wins interstate (last loss was Round 10 2021 when we lost to Adelaide)