Rodney (Balls) Grinter

Maybe they are trying to put together a list for the new 35+ veteran men's AFL competition mooted to come into play ...like never.

Latest training photos on the MFC website show Jack running around and kicking the footy. Must be getting pretty close if that's the case. My bet is that the club are both playing it ultra safe with Jack making sure he doesn't risk re-injury, but probably also getting him back to as close as possible to full match fittness, so that when he does get put into the senior side, he's cherry ripe, ready to smash some heads and make pleanty of opposition on-ballers cry. Dangerfield, Selwood, Bont, Zorko, his old mate Wines all need to feel the full force of Jack 'The Human Cannonball' Viney come the back half and pointy end of the season.

I think he's actually been available for a few weeks, but there's been no VFL footy in that time.

Guessing that if he's that 9 - 11 weeks away, then that could equate to him being in the zone of playing games for Casey around finals time. Would be handy to have as depth around then and must also be giving the man himself some motivation to play either AFL or VFL finals.

...but yes I get where you are comming from. I did read an article on Pendelbery in the past few months that was stating he was looking to step down from their captaincy and looking forward to mentoring the next captain comming through, so yes that would suggest he's pretty invested. Mind you this was all before the Collingwood board erupted in civil war and Buckley pulled the pin too. But he'll be pretty old at the end of the season and Collingwood will be looking to fee up.list spaces and probably cap space etc for rebuilding and also with a new coach, new board, new list manager and new club direction overall, who knows, he may change his tune all of a sudden.

I guess Jordan Lewis would never leave Hawthorn either.

From my own observations on game days, I agree with your statement that his disposal let him down at times, but I also believe he was highly rated for his kicking within the playing/coaching group. From recollection there was that pearler of a goal he kicked from 50m on the run to put us in the position of stealing the win/draw we scraped against GC in 2019, which would support high quality kicking ability. Our kicking as a team has improved out of sight this season as a team and I do wounder if playing in the current environment Hore would similaly benifit from the increased confidence and/or lesser pressure on the ball carrier that our improvement in systems and structures seem to be delivering?

Yeah, I get where you are going with this, as I do see some potential in their respective footballing abilities, but do wounder if their bodies will ever really allow them to be the sort of reliable contributor to the side that Hibbo has been. My impression is Maynard has been pretty sound over the journey in terms of getting out on the park.

How about prising Scott Pendlebery away from them as a free agent at the end of the year? Think he'd be a great addition to our team. Play him as a half forward to provide silver service inside 50 delivery and bursts in the midfeild distributing the ball to the outside. Would also be great mentor to guys like Sparrow, Jordon and co, and even guys like Clarry, Vines, Trac, Harmesy and Gus could learn some new tricks off him. Peddles gets the oppertunity to live out a childhood dream of playing in a Demons premiership. That has to be an attractive prospect compared to more misery at The Filth.

Sorry, can we please put this theory of the team taking lower teams lightly to bed now??! I really don't think this is a big issue mentally for the players any more (though it seems to persist perpetually with many of our supporters). That the team isn't putting away lowly teams early (or even until mid way through the last quarter in many instances) does somewhat irk me as a supporter, because I'd like to enjoy some stress free, fun filled game day thrashings of opposition for once. However I've seen enough of the team this season to have confidence and belief that our lack of putting big breaks on teams early isn't because our players are taking the game easy or the opposition lightly. My suspension is that our general lack of early prolific scoring is more because we are valuing our defensive game more than attacking and hence why asides from Hawthorn we've hardly won a game by more than 30 points, but most of them never really look like letting the opposition back into games late either. Conversely a more attacking team like the Bulldogs might blow the odd weak team with poor defense out of the water, but have been shown to struggle against the better defensive units like us and Richmond. I also don't see too many blowouts in games between other teams this season either, outside of teams playing the Bulldogs, (and/or St Kilda who have been woeful on occations) which I think speaks to the closeness of the competition generally. In short (unlike this post), I think we have a systems based less frills game style, one which plays the percentages of beating most sides most of the time, rather than having games of absolute dominance, but others where we strugle to genuinely stay in the contest. It's also possible (and I hope that it eventates) that over the remainder of the season, that we also hone the attacking part of our game, whilst maintaining our defensive stability and list health. If that occurs, then I think we would go from being a very solid top 4 team, to one that just about unbeatable come finals, like some dominant premiers of years gone by have been. Gee that would be something.

Lol ?

Jackson might have struggled a bit in the first half, but still got to good spots in the forward 50 when the ball arrived and snaged a pretty handy goal in the second quarter. I do love his work when he gets on the ball. His pickups off the ground and 360 awareness with his handball are absolute assets. Being able to throw in another player at the centre bounces who is quite different to Gawn in his hit out approach is probably also something which helps add a bit of unpredictability for opposition on-ballers to have to react to. But I still think it's pretty hard to beat Max's contributions in the ruck and marking prowess dropping back behind the ball. Some of the centre square clearances won between Max and Clarry in particular (with some good contributions from Trac) in the thrid and fourth quarters were awsome and a big factor for us getting back into the game and then our dominance of the Lions in that second half.

Agree. One of Cameron's goals came from a holding the man free, which I'm not sure Hibbo was responsible for. And then there is the aspect of Hibbo's damaging pin point passes to players in good positions comming out of defense (in that second half in particular), which I though really helped us rebound with gusto.

Sorry, I thought there were a few howlers of decisions both ways. I'll take the goal, but that fee kick paid down feild to Fritta in the first quarter was absolute rubbish. I also thought that free kick paid against Salem holding the ball, which gifted Coleman a goal was equally rubbish, because the tackle slipped below the waist pretty early and Salem was practically tripped. Then there was that non free where Daniher was tackled to the ground, but then allowed to kick it free whole on the ground without it being paid holding the ball was ridiculous.

Yeah, but the way the talk was at the time, I suspect the MFC was prepared to pay a reasonable portion of T Mac's wage. Daniher cost the Lions $2.5M over 3 years = $830K per season.

Yeah, but it's not like Daniher was outstanding throughout that period either and I'd argue that some of the fundamentals with T Mac like his goal kicking have always been better. Was there a MFC player in 2019 that wasn't terrible? I also don't think T Mac was all that bad last season. He was almost at a point where he was finding his form back again and then he got his eye poked out in that game and that was his season gone after falling out of fashion/favour with the selectors.

As I was watching the replay of the game again today, I couldn't help but think what an oppertunity Brisbane let pass them by last year when they assumingly (along with many others) passed up the oppertunity to sign up T Mac and instead chased and got Joe Daniher. I suspect they would have got T Mac on a fraction of the coin and looking at the respective output of the pair, I know who I'd rather have. Watching Daniher again yesterday reinforced to me how atrocious his goal kicking really is and what an asset T Mac's is. Just take for example that shot that Daniher had where he tried to screw it round with a banana from 45m out on the boundary and ended up completely shanking it. Compare that to T Mac absolutely nailing his set shots under pressure week in, week out. These are momentum/game changing moments. So glad we got no bites for T Mac last season and he's still at the club, producing his career best form again.

Totally. With Sammy at the moment, I also get the impression that it's somewhat a confidence thing and he could be one good game away from really turning it on and getting his mojo back to the level he was at last season. ...or he could be five games away, I don't really know. If it's the route the coaches/selectors decide to take at some point, I don't really think it did him any real harm to have him run around in the two's last year and build his confidence back there (hopefully the COVID pusses off). I think it's also possible that in a few weeks time we could (hopefully) face a selection dilemma of squeezing Langdon and Viney into the side. In this instance, I wouldn't have an issue with Sammy being dropped without BBB in the side. Our forward line functioned pretty well for the first ~6 games of the year with just T Mac, Jacko and Fritta as the main tall targets and a structure like that might even be our best option as we approach finals. In this instance I think we'd look to play Harmes, Trac, Viney forward a bit more and that could certainly work.

With the crazy eyes!

Love them. No issues at all, I think that add great colour to the crowd. I'm sure that someone on here could confirm, but I think they belong to the Demon Army (or were at least instigated by them) and were found to be a great way to include members. On the basis that they are used in the Demon Army, I don't think there'd be any real objections to them from the other people sitting around them ( i.e. other members of the Demon Army ).

Some ridiculous truth in that last part. Ex footballer type comentators trying to concoct a moment of drama to entertain their audience for a few moments, because they can't think of anything actually useful or integent to say, like perhaps just getting on with calling the game. Having watched this incident again a few times, I'm pretty much in total agreement with you. Was so incidental it should not have even been a free kick. Sparrow doesn't elect to bump (he's more back towards him than side on) he barely even shepard's as opposed to just trying to position himself in the area to contest the ball or be in a position to receive it. I'm not even that sure he was aware Rich was there. It's hard to see that it was even judged head high contact as an infringement on Sparrow as it's Rich running into his back.

Totally agree. But there also comes a point with his current form where you need to ask, is it doing the right thing by him and the rest of the team to keep playing him without an appropriate level of performance from him. Personally I thought the noise that we just had to play him due to his VFL form or risk loosing him to another club was pretty overblown. If he wanted to walk to join a weaker team for more money and oppertunity, then best he be gone. I personally didn't and still don't get the impression that was a significant risk on behalf of Weid. I personally think he's more invested in the team and sucess than to shophimself around at this point. And he'd played what 3 or 4 good games at Casey without getting a call up - hardly despiration stakes kind of stuff. Despite his lack of dominance, I also though Ben Brown's performances at both Casey and AFL level were serviceable and at his best, he's an outright gun of a forward, so I'd have no issues with him being promoted back up to senior level. Similarly, I very much get the impression that BBB has the kind of level head and maturity that if he has to improve his game at Casey and bang the door down for the next 6 weeks, that he'd take that on the chin and just get on with it and do whatever he could to get himself right. From seeing what both BBB and Weid are capable of (mainly his solid form last year for Weid), I think it's somewhat just a matter of confidence and the challenge of an injury interupted start to the season that both these guys are struggling with and have reasonable faith they will turn their fortunes around with further game time. Where ever this ends up, I think the MFC is in a great position to have such good depth and competition for key forward spots.

Yeah ok. Fair call Jnr. ...but you know what I meant. ?

Agree, with the minor addition above. Some had us as winning the flag in 2019, but we all know what a false dawn that was. I'm just hoping that we can maintain the rage, stay healthy as a list and get even better throughout the remainder of the season.

Loving his work. I have been really happy and impressed by Petty's efforts to step up and into the role played by Tomlinson. He's not quite a Tomlinson clone, just because of their differing physical attributes, but still contributing to the backline/team defense that's allowed us to maintain such good stability down back. He looked a little shaky for a few weeks and still has the odd brain faid moment where he shanks it out on the full or something, but overall I think he's brought himself back up to backman at AFL level. Starting to take some big strong intercept/contested marks and get involved in good chains of play as well.