Rodney (Balls) Grinter

I did like it when AFL/VFL was a only semi profersional back late 80s.  That said, I do think there is truth that other international sports would take the best athletes and take over if the AFL was not able to complete on a player payments basis, which is where a fair portion of the TV rights costs go..  Just look at what has happened to West Indian cricket.  

Personally I fork out for Foxtel, but only because I live interstate and can't attend many live games.  Biggest beef I have with Foxtel is that I have to pay for all their other crap channels.  There use to be some half decent stuff on BBC Knowledge and a few other channels, but then they rebundeled it a few years back and I'd have to pay extra for those, so now I get my non footy viewing mainly from ABC iView, SBS onDemand  and YouTube.  Rarely even bother with free to air, except on grand final day.

Up here already got my tickets.  Great to have two games in Qld after none last year, although disappointed we are no playing at Metricon/Carrara as it's a great stadium.

11 hours ago, xiss said:

Agree about work rate, attack on the footy and professionalism but he lacks agility, strength and that awkward kicking technique, where he takes an eternity to get the ball to boot affect his decisions and vision because they limit what he can do, he needs clear space to be effective by foot and unfortunately he's a total liability one on one

You could well be right about his kicking style inhibiting his ability to cleanly dispose of the ball during play, it certainly does look a bit propy at times.  That said, he can be a reliable set shot on goal under pressure.  Remember well the goals he kicked against Geelong in our victory against them in 2015 and Hawthorn in 2016.  He looked pretty good against the Hawks that day and looked like he was about to break out into a quality, regular player, but instead has somewhat plateaued and been overtaken for his place in the side by the likes of Nibbler.  Incidentally, Nibbler also looked like a real prospect of a player right from the start in that 2015 game againt the Cats, think he kicked 3 goals or something and did some other pretty good stuff, then wasn't quite at the right level or make enough impact at the senior level in 2016.

You could well be right about Billy's other inherent limitations and perhaps they might ultimately inhibit him from being a regular senior player at the MFC, but I haven't given up hope on him just yet. A big part of me really likes the loyalty and romance that he, Viney, Smith and Maynard bring to the table and motivated, determined players can find ways around their weaknesses and develop a role for themselves.  If I had to sum up where I think the two are at right now, I'd say Billy has potential, but Nibbler is delivering.  I do realize though, that with limited list spots in modern AFL teams, at age 22 and 5 years or so in the system, Billy's time to deliver on his potential is fast running out.

8 hours ago, DeeSpencer said:

I'm not over the moon about our depth and I think depth in general is a little overrated. Most teams have similar players in the 25-32 range who aren't regulars for a reason. Injuries to top players are very hard to cover, injuries to middle tier players are best covered by the top guys still playing well!

One thing that impacts how depth players are viewed is more mature depth players are often given little patience by the fans. I know I do that. The inherent bias is they are no good so you're waiting for them to stuff up. Where as younger players are often viewed positively when they come in. For example Dean Kent and Dion Johnstone could both come in and play the same game on a forward flank and Kent would be labelled a failure and DJ a success. Similarly the young guy might get a few weeks to prove himself whilst the older guy gets 1 or 2 games.

Our list isn't really full of young kids so I think we'll at least have a variety of options if they stay healthy and there's about 6  or so who played on the weekend who might miss round 1 and have something to offer - Wagner, Brayshaw/Vince, Maynard, Stretch, Pedersen, and one of the small forwards. I'm also very keen to see Spargo, Baker, Joel Smith, DJ and Balic start playing some footy at Casey.

Agree with alot of this.  I'm just hoping those second tier/depth players and up and comming stars like Petracca will be a step further physically developed and go the whole distance this season.  Our season last year was somewhat wrecked by injuries to star players (and to a certain extent the mis-management there of) at the wrong time of the season, but also a general fade out and inability of the emerging younger players like ANB, Hunt, Harmes, Oscar, Frost, Salem and others to produce at a high intensity for the whole season.  I guess I'm also hoping that the further development of guys like Trac, Oliver, Viney, Hogan, Salem and Brashaw that have the potential to be A graders out strips the drop off of guys like Jones, Vince and Lewis.  Gawn is a proven A grader when he's fit and in form, but I felt he was effectivly only a B grade player for most of the second half of last season when he came back.

Melksham only found his vibe in the back half of last year, but looks primed to rip in from the get go this year (I'm remembering all the winnable losses at the start of last season) The other guy that has potential to add depth that didn't quite ready and didn't really get the opportunity to do so last year is Maynard.

All up though, I'm not counting too much off the back of JLT games though.  I also remember dominating and toying with a close to full strength Carlton in a JLT game, only to fight and struggle to get a win against them in the season proper when it actually counts.

33 minutes ago, DemonAndrew said:

Clear goal, we woz robbed

Yep... and if we just miss out on finals due to %, it will all come back to this I'll fated decision.

Third quarter.

Ball on the edge of the oppositions foward 50, Stretch to Nibbler, to Melksham, to Hannan just inside our foward 50, goes back and drills it right through the middle in windy conditions.  

Such clean, confident ball movement end to end.  Can anyone have thought the MFC capable of such just 3 or 4 years ago?

Sorry ifor this has been pointed out before, but I recon Tommy Mac might have been robbed of a great goal on Saturday.  That one he wheels around from the boundary and snaps.  Comentators said he missed and goal umpire flags a behind (Fox didn't show the hand signals that preceeded), but I thought at the time and have confirmed via freeze frame on the replay tonight that the ball clearly goes the right side of the post for a goal.  The only possibly was that it might have skimed the post, but there isn't any obvious deflection.

Mighty good shot at goal regardless and big Tommy is certainly showing some good forward line skills.  Bring it on (again) in the season proper I say.

2 hours ago, Salems Lot said:

My disappointment is in his best mate #15.  I really want him to progress the way Alex has..come on Billy giddy-up!!

Agree.  I think Billy has most of the same wepons, skill set and personal trays - speed, attack on the football, work rate and proffesionalisim.  Watched him closely on Saturday and it just doesn't seem to be clicking for him at the moment.  If there is perhaps one key thing he might lack in comparison to Nibbler it's vision and decision making with the football.

What is up with Frost?

Fit, but not considered for JLT 1?

In form and/or with some minor further improvement in his game I think he could be an important part of the team.

16 hours ago, Redleg said:

You were on him early and so was WJ and of course me.

Posted November 29, 2017 (edited)

You sometimes get a feeling about a recruit and I just think that Bayley will be a good player for us. He has got to this point by virtue of hard work and he has undoubted talent. I just think he will make it. He will vie with the likes of Harmes, Hannan, Bugg, Melksham, JKH and Kent for a spot and he could end up the best of them.

Edited November 29, 2017 by Redleg

 

I'm not sure that JKH and Kent are really being talked about for selection at the moment (not that I'm writing them off either though).  But I was really quite pleased with the performance of all our small-medium forwards yesterday.  Pressure without and execution with ball were excellent I thought.

On 2/10/2018 at 7:14 PM, dl4e said:

Newmans goal happened right in front of me. It was special. Cunningham and Humphries look special players to me. Our midfield of Paxman, Pearce and O'Dea play well together. Jakobssen from Carlton played really well.

Cunningham has certainly caught my attention.  Am I recalling correctly that this is her first season of AFL?  Huge upside.  Height, athleticism and can play footy.

Watching yesterday's game on reply now.  Nice first quarter goal to Alisha Newman.

On 2/9/2018 at 10:35 AM, Little Goffy said:

On the congestion issue, I would guess that you could almost build an imaginary equation to explain it. Obviously in any game of footy congestion happens whenever the ball gets stuck in one space long enough for extra players (the peloton?) to arrive.

So, the 'trouble' is that in the women's game the player's willingnes to work hard to get to contests has reached a standard above a balance with player's ability to quickly grab and dispose of the ball.

The two main skill deficiencies in the women's game seem to be

a) collecting a loose ball from the ground

b) quick, effective handballs to a teammate to open up into space.

Both are skills that take a lot of practice. And then some more practice. And some more practice after that. They are also skills that basically don't turn up in any other sport that players might be switching across from. Not in netball, soccer, basketball, long distance running, or even ultimate frisbee.

So it makes sense that they are the skills coming through most slowly for new players. And unfortunately I expect it will continue to be a slow process improving those particular skills.

On the one hand, it'll take years to really pick up, while we wait for all those Auskick girls to have spent ten years with a Sherrin in their hands all day.

On the other hand, there's definitely no biological reason limiting women's ability to collect a loose ground ball or to execute an effective handball. So, for the fans, when you see that error, at least you'll know that it will eventually clear up.

And if you happen to know any fit young women or girls (it'd be granddaughters for most on this sight, yes? ) make sure you do chaotic handball drills with them every time you see them.

 

 

Good analysis and agreed.

The other area where the women's game will be inherently at a disadvantage with respect to congestion is the lesser distance that players can achieve, both by hand and foot which will inherently compress the spread of players around stoppges and make it harder to break out into open space.  Not sure how that could be best combatted?  Limited zoning perhaps? (Which I also think could be a good thing for the men's game).  Perhaps cut the feild in half and make it that all defenders can not go past half way, with one player a side to be perminantly positioned in the foward 50 arc...might be reasonably feasible to umpire using GPS tech now.

I'm still at a miss as to why the AFL don't keep pulling back the interchange limit in the mens game.  In my mind, it would force players to pace themselves more and for coaches to revert back to tactics that didn't rely on every player trying to cover the whole feild all the time.

Aussie rules is at it's best when it's a free flowing display of airial and ground ball contests between a limited number of opponents, not a huge pack of players fighting for clearances.  The occational pack is ok IMHO, but when the game starts to be defined more by packs than ball movement is when it looses it's appeal.

On 2/9/2018 at 11:30 PM, Caligula's Cohort! said:

I'm all for AFLW league, but if you want to be professional, then you need to look professional. Daisy Pearce and Mel Hickey are obviously the role models for the game. But when I see players like Cranston who to me looks 15kgs overweight, it just doesn't look good for the game. I saw several large women running around across the games on the weekend and I honestly couldn't take it seriously. Schoolboys could run all over them. I haven't even mentioned skills yet, but gosh they were atrocious and on par with a under 16's schoolboy games just from watching the first half of the Melb vs GWS game.

In short, work on your bloody fitness so you can at least resemble an athlete and learn how to kick properly and you'll make the game more bearable to watch. 

 

Doesn't look as 'unfit' as Tony Locket did at times when he played and no one seemed to make a huge thing about that.  

I don't recall plugged going for too many runs on the ball like Cranston either.

On 2/10/2018 at 5:48 AM, Lucifer's Hero said:

I'm not sure where the 15 goals comes from?  An AFL game is 120 minutes but an AFLW game is a little over half that at 68 minutes (with 16 relatively inexperienced players).  If last week's scores are adjusted for time played they would be much more like an AFL game. 

Upscaling/adjusting of the scores from yesterdays MFC Vs Crows game  for minutes played would have us scoring almost the 100 points level (98.82 to be precise) generally considered to be par in the men's game.  Even then, there were numerous times in the second half of last season our mens team failed to get above the 100 points mark.

A few observations I made from the MFC Vs GWS game:

1. Some patches of good ball movement and good ball control/skills;

2. Both teams actually had the ability to move the ball the length of the feild and score quite quickly at times, to the point that, with only two minutes still remaining,  I was concerned that GWS were still in striking distance of scoring a match equalizing goal.  It also needs to be remembered that the women also play shorter game time, so that will inherently reduce scoring;

3. As much as I thought I would hate the  so called 'last touch out of bounds' rule,  I was pleasantly surprised that the actual rule seemed quite ok.  It's not really last touch rule at all, but more of a last controled possession, which I see really working as a more objective form of the deliberate out of bounds rule;

4.  The main problem I saw with conjestion was the umpires unwillingness to pay holding the ball for player diving on and sitting on top of the ball.  They seemed to alow far more tolerance of that than in the men's  game. That's not so much a player skill thing as an umpiring one.  If the umpires pay the free kick more quickly, the players will soon learn, adjust, get the ball out, stop diving on it or be moving it freely via the free kick.

I can't comment much on the other AFLW games, though I have seen the odd good highlight.  The unattractive moving maul in modern footy is as much a problem in the men's game and I'd rather the AFL take step like serverly cut back interchange or introduce zoning in a more normal preseason game than play this AFLX thing or mess excessively and intrusivly as they seem to have with the AFLW in this instance.

On 2/1/2018 at 8:26 AM, Bring-Back-Powell said:

I was in the 2.7% minority that voted for the white jumper. I quite liked wearing a white jumper as a change up, and I happen to think the royal blue is a shocking colour.

I don't recall too many supporters were complaining about the white jumper when we smashed the lead leaders at Adelaide Oval, or when Tommy Mac broke a 15 year Subiaco drought with a goal with 5 seconds left , or Jake Melksham kicking a scintillating goal in the dying minutes to pull a game out of the fire against Carlton. The whinging on Demonland was also  kept to a minimum when we kicked 13 goals to 6 in the second half against Essendon to score a solid win...in you guessed it....the white jumper.

Whilst last year's white clash jumper was not one of our better ones, what was wrong with this one in 2016?

Like you said you were in the 2.7%.  As an analogy I think there may well be 2.7% of people that would be ok with it if the International Olympic  Committee forced Australia to compete in pale yellow and cyan or maybe green red and white so as not to clash with Brazil.  Wouldn't make it OK.  Conversely I don't think many Aussies really care whether we play in predominantly yellow or predominantly green, so long as the other colour is yellow or green.  Adding a predominace of white completely changes the whole symbolisim of the teams colours if they didn't originally contain that colour.

Whilst obviously I like all MFC supporters still celibrated the on field victories we have had in those hideous white and silver monstrosities, it adds a bitter aftertaste watching replays and highlights of the game with a jumper that isn't easily associated with the MFC.  When we smash our opponents into oblivion in future seasons, they and their supporters will know they've been beaten by the team we love, the team of the RED and the BLUE.

I'm feeling it too.  Have been thinking there is huge pressure on the team to make finals this year.  As much as I think they are primed and ready to make the next step, the last few years and watching other teams like Carlton and Collinwood and North that were also said to be building over the past decade, but then only falter into mediocrity, tells me it's no certainty.

I'm really looking for this Melbourne team to mature into something solid and dominant beyond MFC teams of the 90s and put a consistent season from start to finish, stitching up a top four position and setting it's self up for a realistic crack at the big prize, rather than scrapping out the last six rounds just to scrape into the top 8.

Personally, I'm a little of column A, column B and C.  Would like to see a few of the current outsiders played key roles, step up and push a case to be picked round one, any guns comming back from serious injury put in cotton wool and the rest of the side played more or less in position.  A few of Weiderman, Bugg, Maynard and possibly Harmes, Trac or Brayshaw are the sorts I think of as  potentially stepping up into key roles and Stretch, Kent and JKH as fighting tooth and nail for a Rd 1 spot in their more established roles/positions.  I don't think you can throw the magnets around too much that close to Rd 1 and then expect the team to click and play with good chemistry for the opening of the season proper.

Thus I expect to see a few that are on the cusp of bigger roles in the senior team given some bigger trial runs in that position, some of the developing players given a small taste with limited game time, our B grade and fringe players putting in the bulk of game time and scrapping out their case for a Rd one selection.  Sounds boring, but it's really the development in this later group of players that I think will make or break our season anyway.

Under Paul Roos, Sydney were natiorous for playing preseason sides lacking many of their best 22, but turning up primed to play the season proper.  I'm not sure if we are there yet, but I'd like to think that' where we are heading and that as others are mentioned I'd like to see a sustained full seasons output from guys like Viney, Oliver, Jones, Lewis, Vince, Hibbard, T Mac and Lever.  I don't really think guys of this sort of quality and experience need a heap of game time to step up and be primed for Rd 1.  The only exception of sorts would be that it would be good for Lever to play around his new team mates so they understand how each other plays a little better.

3 hours ago, TeamPlayedFine39 said:

Wtf?  How is ‘[censored]’ censored on a football site???

 

(The word is FLAG but replace the A with an O)

I do respect the moderators roll in aiming for some level of  decorum, but the auto censor on this site is way too sensitive for my mind.

[censored], [censored] and a few others I use in every day speach get censored. ...buy abreviating things like WTF are fine.

I thought there was some really good passages of play in todays game from both teams.  Daisy and Cranston did some really stand out stuff which I thought was the difference in the last quarter.

Umpiring though was generally pretty auful though.  Forget this last touch out of bounds stuff for speeding up the game, they really just need to start paying holding the ball for players sitting on the ball on the ground more often, was a real blight on what was otherwise a decient game.  There were certainly a few other dubious decisions and non decisions, but from a nonpartisan point of view, I thought the holding the ball in when on the ground took the cake of the poor umpiring.

Love Nev.

Another key quote from the article:

"He is ranked No.1 in the AFL from 2011-2017 for the kick-rating stat, where Champion Data measures how well a player kicks the ball compared to the AFL average taking into account pressure, field position and intent."

Wasn't that long ago that people lamented our lack of foot skills, but clearly we are aquiring and importantly developing elite talents in this important area of the game in many parts of the ground.  I say developing, because I don't think Jetta would have been viewed this way early in his career.  I think it also has something to do with overall team improvement as players now have that bit more time, space and confidence to dispose of the ball better than in the shambles our team was when we were getting smashed.  Full credit to Nev though too, because clearly he has really knuckled down and developed his game since being delisted.  Also an illistration of great determination and resilience to survive both being delisted and our era of depression.

On 1/28/2018 at 10:16 AM, biggestred said:

 

Think I'll get #2 on mine haha

Good choice.  If you foget about Steven Armstrong (which I had), a couple of great players in this jumper in the modern era (asides from Robbie whom I assume you were reffering), just Tingay and Jones have worn the jumper with great distinction.  The jumper No. seems to have had some magic with it that has brought out great players ever since Robbie played in it.

P.S.  I mean no disrespect to Armstrong, he's just not in the same elite company of the afore mentioned.

18 hours ago, Biffen said:

We wore those colours in the mid 80's .

Zantuck, Giles,Healys,Battiston, Wacko etc when we stunk it up big.

Barass throwing tantrums.

Those were the days.

Jacko was about the only reason my old man went to games in that era.  Brent Crosswell, Carl Detterich would have been some of the other players of note in that era... Steven Icke towards the end of the royal blue era.

On 1/28/2018 at 12:01 PM, Clint Bizkit said:

I think I saw on social media that it won't be available, I could be wrong though.

You would hope it is available in the AFLW version.  I can see alot of young MFC girls prefering that version and would be good for all involved.