Rodney (Balls) Grinter

The media rubbish at the moment is mostly complete noise and based on my observations, I have confidence that Goodwin, the rest of our FD and leadership group will do a pretty good job at blocking it out from influencing his thinking and hopefully also that of the team. Robo on 360 last night (along with many of the other media twits) was questioning if Melbourne had a cultural problem, but looking back, on Goodwin's actions thus far, it's clear he has lifted expectations and standards even further than Roos and the club's respone to issues that have occurred has been first class. Goodwin was not shyed away from taking the hard line all year, from Jack Watts, to the drunken four. Incidentally, if the drunken four's on feild response is as good as Clayton's, then I say the club should go old school and let the players get on the piissss after every game... heck get Swarta to take them out to the races and then onto King Street for all I care.

Yet it was the AFL that basically set up and imposed Peter Jackson on the MFC. I don't think they would have done that if your narative above was true. We cab all be thankful for that and hindsight has shown it to be one of the most prudent administrative moves by the AFL in decades.

T Mac gets the gig in my mind. Always does the hard stuff, has his head on straight and has real presence. Bernie would my next pick. He really lead the way with his on field behavior when he first came to the club and if anything will, perhaps it might also lift his form a notch or two, which the side desperately needs at the moment.

Though he does actually invite that kind of attention though i.e. JJ Instagram saga.

4, 5, 6 weeks...seriously in the context of our present injury crisis, it's probably weeks 1-3 which will hurt the club more. I think this issue has become badly over hyped and overplayed in the media, bit at the end of the day, Bugg's stupidity and lack of disipline has cost the club at a time of need ...he's not the only one at the MFC in that boat this year though (thinking mainly of Lewis Rd 2).

Think you are indeed mistaken lad: http://m.afl.com.au/news/2017-06-04/whos-on-the-move-every-free-agent-analysed And see the bottom of Andrew's post

Think I'd rather the club go after and secure Zac Jones. Nathan might also be happier with that than Rich too.

Can he go on our list as a category B rookie and pull on the boots again? Apparently he was a reasonably handy player. The rate our injuries are going, we'll just about need an extended list.

I'm another with Harmesy. I predicted at the start of the season that he could become a bullocking, crash/burst through midfielder for us and whilst I don't quite think it's happened consistently yet, I think we have seen glimpses - now's his moment. I also like the sentiment of Trengove, but haven't seen enough of him this year to know how realistic it is he is about to burst back onto the scene. As a bit of a wildcard, I wouldn't mind seeing Watts in more of an on ball ruck rover role (hamstring permitting). Players with serious height are the new on ballers and having him distribute the ball in more parts of the ground would be a serious benifit. Can imagine him, Patracca and Oliver having some serious party tricks roving off Gawn. Throwing Tommy Mc into the guts in a roving capacity is another I'd consider. He has the endurance, reasonable evasive skills and what other position is there left for him to play. Jessy to step up and back to his dominant best is something else we really need. We also need him, Pedo, Gawn and Tommy Mc (perhaps even Oscar the way he's travelling ATM) moving up the ground and providing us with solid, reliable hit up targets out of defense the way Chip Frawley did the last season he played for us. I think all the aforementioned are well capable of doing this for us and it's something we missed a bit last week. I'd love to see Bernie back to his high impact best, but I'm not sure he's still got it in him, or that we should nessacery expect him or Lewis to do the heavy lifting anymore. They still bring value to the side in other ways and it's time for the young guns to step up.

Not as much of a pretty boy either.

Further to my other recent comment on this issue, though I haven't heard him speak on this issue yet, I get the impression that Goody is not impressed at all with Bugg at the moment. From the JJ incident to this one, Tommy must be wearing pretty thin in Goody's book. Again I haven't got a lot of direct recallection to go by (because I never took much interest in Adelaide at the time), I get the impression that Goody was a relentless, tough and hard but fair type of player and that he is trying to mold the MFC in this manner, which cool with me. Certainly don't want us to be thought of as bruise free footballers, but not keen on us being thought of as a team thugs either.

I get the feeling that Goodwin is well and truly up for the fight. @Ron Burgundy spoke about loving Buggy, but I think I'm well and truly starting to love Goody more.

I'm with you and Buggy on this one Jnr. Some of the media's response to this has been discusting, and I'm thinking mostly of channel 7's match day coverge and BT in particular, just didn't stop rabbiting on about it. Just after Buggy gave his (in my view poor, cleche riddled, insincre sounding) interview with Richo, they then went on to show Mills gazing off despondently through the camera for some more vilification of Bugg. Was poorly managed by the club really, they just should have issued a statement. Good on Buggy for aparently wanting to face the cameras and the club for letting him, but I don't think it will happen again. Anyways I fear all the over the top media coverage will have the effect of pressuring the AFL into applying a harsher penalty than what is deserved. If players and club officials are effectively gaged by the threat of fines for some of their statements and conduct, the same should also be applied to the official broadcaster, particularly after players are reported. As for these calls that Buggy has played his last game - pleeeease spare me. He has value as a depth player at worst and he borders on our best 22 when he is in top form, fringe player admittedly, but I hardly think the club are going to drop him like a sack of spuds just because of this one incident. Admittedly his form has fluctuated a fair bit over the past 4 - 6 weeks, goal kicking aside at times, he played a few fairly good games, but do I think he has lost the plot a bit after the whole JJ thing. He's obviously done the wrong thing here, but if he cops his wack, then goes away from this, pulls his head in, learns from the past month, knuckles down and trains hard, he could be right back in the mix late in the season and or next. He as been a bit of a goose of late, but he's not a complete Richard cranium either (which is apparent from some of the way he is liked by many of the MFC players), so let's not hang him completely for this.

Last game my rear end. He was set the example by our newly aquired experienced master of the trade Lewis.

Shouldn't get six weeks...it's not like he smashed any teeth loose.

Jimbo, agree with you 100% on the blod above, but that's quite different from your original statements. Also agree with your last statement above and agree to disagree and move on.

I laugh every time I watch AFL 360 with Jack Reiwalt when he's enevitably defending Richmonds record in close games he often refers back to beating us earlier this year. After loosing two players including a ruckman in the first quarter of the game, I actually think it's amazing we were still in that game well into the last quarter, particularly given I don't recall Pederson playing, such that Jack Watts rucked for most of the game for pretty much the second week running also depriving us of a key forward in a team already without Hogan.

The absence of Hunt in the first half and also being down Salem probably hurt our ability to break the ball out of the back half a fair bit last night I felt. Watts and Hogan are also pretty good link players comming out of our backline, so hopefully getting them back next week should help in this regard.

No, I think it does actually. If a player is not to AFL standard, they get found out pretty early and rarely get past half a dozen games. Pretty much all the players you mentioned (Harmes, ANB, Peddo, Stretch, Melksham, Wagner, Bugg etc) have made solid team contributions on a routine basis this season in a team which is currently sitting 5/6th on the ladder. Furthermore many of them have made match winning conributions in games. I think that makes them very much AFL standard players. If you said they were average to fringe players that were not capable of lifting the team on there own in the absence of too many of our best 22 and a team which was flat/lethargic after 3 X 6 day breaks against the other form side of the comp (& last year's runner up), then fair enough, but that doesn't make them not AFL standard. Sure when the teams performance is down, it's probably it's lesser players that get most exposed, but what has actually impressed me about the way we have played this year is that we have played such a good team brand of footy and most of those mentioned have been instrumental in thay along with the fact that even our most capable and skilled players have brought into the same team first, team oriented system. That's the kind of players and team that is going to bring us sucess, not having a team brimming with brilliance. By your definition, 30%-50% of the players that pull on their boots in AFL games every week are not AFL standard, which seems pretty illogical to me.

I don't like making excuses, but with the consistency of effort and intensity I have seen from our boys over the majority of this season, I'm ok with puting down last night as an anonomly with a number of mitigating factors. The scoreboard was probably kinder to us than flow of the game dictated. But I'm at least happy that I don't think the side threw in the towel or dropped their bundle. What could have been easily a 60 - 80 point hiding was kept under control by good performance by our defense and the rest of the team doing it's best in the circumstances. Probably still should have lost by 50 points, but Sydney's poor goal kicking let us out off a bit there.

I do really like Bugg, along with the agreesion, niggle and bit of moungrle and dare he brings to the side. But he has been on the cusp of something stupid and completly out of line like this for a number of weeks now, because he hasn't been smart and moderated, adapted and controled his outbursts of agression in a way which is acceptable to the current state of play and tolerance for impact type asults (flying fists and palms) on opposition players. Any player who throws around their arms and punches/slaps etc opposition players is bound to make contact and result in something serious sooner or later. The club should send him to Judo lessons to learn how to wrestle better in his absence from the game as a new acceptable way for him to exert physical dominance and intimidation on the opposition. I actually thought his attempt at an apology came across as scripted, staged and a bit insincere. He had to do it and I'm not saying he wasn't sorry at all, but it didn't come across very well.

That's a nice opinion to have, unfortunately, the facts are that players you think are apparently not up to standard have played 200 - 400 AFL games between them that means that they are up to the standard.

Reading this again, I agree with most of the above except the first part. We really need to replace Garlet with a like player. As it was we lacked both a small forward use to playing the role of tackleling/chaseing, providing that speed over the back and taking Hunt out of the backline robbed us of that linebreaking rebounder. Like you, I was almost waiting for White and the reshuffling of our team to play out as some kind of inspired move on behalf of our coaching team, but it didn't materialise on the night, probably because the rest of the team was so flat and depleted.

WTF, what a load of BS When we were winning all these blokes looked the goods and we're kicking goals metaphorically (and literally). Pretty tough call to single out these guys when 3/4s of our side looked spent and lathargic tonight. Oliver had a [censored] night, perhaps he's a VFL player also. Gawn was ok, but still not hitting his A game (with good reason). If anything, I thought Harmes and Melksham were a few that actually showed a bit of energy and drive tonight. Yes Harms missed a soda early in the second half, but that's hardly what lost us the game tonight (not to mention the clutch goal he kicked last week to keep us in the game in the fourth). Let's not forget that a number of those you list are still essentially developing players who have continued to improve and pretty much all normally fearlessly and relentlessly attack the contest, hunting the ball and the opposition and take on the gamr in a manner that our game plan/style which has been so successful over the previous four weeks demands. I'm quite prepared to put this game down to 3 X 6 day breaks, No Watts, Garlett, Jones (& Pactically Viney) and comming up against the other form side in the comp who are at close to peak fittness/personal. Even then, we hardly discraced ourselves. If next week's game is a disaster, the things would look more ominous for some, but let's wait and see there, so far this year we have been pretty good at backing up after a loss.

We lacked a fit (read uninjured) energetic midfield brigade to get the ball into our half. Our forwardline did pretty well for the limited opportunity they got tonight.