Rodney (Balls) Grinter

Great post Binman and I agree with much if not all of the above. The other important changes which we implemented last week that I think are important are the structural changes with O Mac down back and the second tall / Weid up forward (not that we actually had the second tall for 3/4, so probably more Oscar down back). Similaly, he may not have had many possessions, but AVB was huge plus for our forward pressure with his numerous bone crunching tackles. I actually think AVB is a real on feild leader for the level of physicality we play with, pulls up those around him to rise to similar levels of pressure and makes those around him stand taller. After a few games at the top level, I think AVB is now cherry ripe again and wouldn't surprise me to see his output and impact on games steadily rise over comming weeks, starting with this game against Hawthorn. Contrast this to our restart when we went in with a very inexperienced J Smith destabilizing our back six and a forward 50 that was also all over the place. I do think we need to blood some of these younger players, but it becomes much more viable to do that within a side that's more stable, predictable and when team confidence is good. This is a game that we should win.

Agree. Hawthorn are not a top 4 side and most probably not even a top 10 side. To me, as one of the other posters put it, this should be a game that we just methodically work our way through and move onto next week. The next step this side needs to take is to be able to have the maturity to get them selves up against any side, top or bottom and get on with the job of winning. Not being overawed or over powered by the best sides and not taking the lesser sides too lightly. Consistency is the key. On paper and potential, we have a side that is capable of beating any team in the competition and the age profile of the list is at a point where it's put up or shut up. If there are two sides that I think would come close to line in the sand for us, it's Richmond and Collingwood, but even then, I think we need to get to a point where beating these sides just becomes the next logical step in our progression and not a huge physoclogicaly barrier to overcome. I actually think we have had our line in the sand game against Hawthorn back in 2017, when they were the top side that bullied the competition playing 'unsociable football' and we out ran, out played them physically that day.

Oh, but I guess he will always have his millions.

No, there's actually a pretty big difference - I quite like ANB as a bloke.

I found it quite amusing in Max's captain's run podcast that he suggested that Oscar has asked for a portion of Lever's pay, since Lever only seems to play well when he's in the side. Lol. Came up partly in the context of that toss Adelaide club administrator having a go at Lever's pay. Max also had a freindly dig at Oscar that he was asking around trying to find our how to reopen his deactivated Twitter account to bask in some rare praise from MFC supporters after a good performance. Does make me think that when Melbourne play the Lions at Carrara stadium next week, I'm going to try and get down and shout some encouragement for big O Mac from the stands (noticed in the GC game last week that one of the benifits of small crowds is that individual supporters voices travel well). I think Oscar deserves some external positive reinforcement comming his way and I actually think he could have quite a high ceiling for us if he builds some continuity and confidence again.

They are professional manipulators they prey on the weaknesses of human nature to make scapegoats of minorities and blame someone else for the problems facing society. Politicians like Dutton are expert at it and assisted by Murdoch and Co. These people are too well resourced to be doing it unintentionally. These people often use the fig leaf of claiming to stand up for the right to free speech and that these sort of 'robust' conversations need to be had, but that's just BS cover for their racisim and wolf whistling. Unless you are talking about combating racisim it's self, to be genuinely look to solve problems of youth viloence, or terrorism etc, there is absolutely no need to bring race into the conversation if you are looking to have a productive objective debate. Bringing in race into the conversation in a negative context reinforces prejudices and us and them attitudes.

Great advice. Also for all of us to keep an eye on the mood and behavior of our fellow human's in a compassionate, non-judgemental way, to carefully and respectfully ask if they are ok and offer our love and support. People may scoff at the RUOK type movement's, but often it's when people from outside the imeediate family structure care enough to take notice, offer emotional support and provide aexpression the intrinsic worth of the other person, it can have a very important and positive impact. I have certainly experienced this from work colleagues of my spouse, helping to turn around a spiral or concerning depression for her, that I alone was limited in my ability to arrest.

Then there is also the issue of will the AFL reduce list sizes in 2020. If that's the case, I can see a lot of 2020 talent going through to the state league's and ready to be picked up as more mature, less of a gamble players as rookies or in the 2021 draft.

I haven't read the whole thread, but gee Demonland has a fickle attitude. When May was recruited, he was the best thing since sliced bread. Injured for a season and arguably not in the best form and all of a sudden he's a dud trade. To be fair, I wasn't a fan of loosing Hogan, but in the circumstances, the Hogan/May deals looked like a pragmatic overall solution. Something we do need to ask ourselves is if we didn't have May right now, what would our back six look like? I'm guessing most on here would be far less comfortable with Frost than May down back. James Frawley is arguably a player with significant deficiencies when it comes to his kicking, yet was identified, targeted and recruited by Hawthorn as an important missing piece of their premiership team in subsequent years. Similarly I saw a stat that Jake Lever still has one of the best in the league intercept and one on one win rates of any in the league over the past two years. Think we really need a longer term lense when evaluating the value of trades and shouldn't confuse individual or team form with inherent capability/potential. Calling a trade deal a bust after 5 or 6 games as ridiculous. The same thinking would see Jordan Gysberts as a future Brownlow medalist and draft steal.

Some more / similar links below: https://fyfluiddynamics.com/2020/07/how-well-do-masks-work/ https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019/question-and-answers-hub/q-a-detail/q-a-on-covid-19-and-masks https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019/advice-for-public/when-and-how-to-use-masks

A few comments / suggestions: 1. Is there anything which would stop you wearing a fully medical specked up mask underneath and then a cosmetic red and blue on top? 2. I thought that at least part of the rationale of wearing masks was to protect other from COVID ' in case ' you might have it and that they did this by providing at least some physical disruption / diffuser effect to the flow of infected droplets from your breath, such that they don't travel as far away from you, similar to covering your noise with your elbo when sneezing? Thus even something non medical grade is likely better than nothing; 3. On similar basis to 2, it has been suggested that a scarf might be a reasonable makeshift substitute for a mask - I have plenty of MFC scarfs to wear in this way, without purchasing a whole new custom made red and blue mask.

As a Queenslander I'm happy to at least be given the oppertunity to watch the side live once this year. But the timing on a Sunday night is not great. The Gold Coast is almost like taking the trip down to Kadinia park form Melbourne from where I live. Would have been much better on a Saturday afternoon or even played at the Gabba.

Agree with a lot of this. I had been critical of playing Smith as a defender, but I was actually a little disappointed to see him dropped after the Richmond game as I thought he was actually starting to show a few glimpses of what he could do and did some gutsy things going back with the flight of the ball. While he did look lost and low on footy smarts at times, I also think that too much was asked of him to be playing on a clever experienced campaigner in Jack Riewoldt for most of the game, who he also gave up 5cm and 5kg in size to. One of his worst moments also wasn't helped by a hospital handball to his feet from Oliver. If/when Smith gets another go in the backline, it should be at the expense of Jetta, Lockhart or a forced injury and not Oscar.

Was very happy to see Oscar back in the side on the weekend. To see him play well didn't really surprise me, as my recollection is that he had looked ok during our preseason games. Oscar doesn't generally play a flashy sort of game, but when he is in form and playing with confidence, he is pretty solid and dependable. He held up pretty well in 2018 before we had either of Lever or May. I think people may (pardon the pun) have thought that he would be squeezed out of the side by those two, but I think it should be pretty self evident that his role in the side complements rather than competes with those players.

Really deserves to be sent out at the MCG in font of the MFC faithful, but unless he were to play another year, I think that is unlikely. It's a pitty that he's run into these injury niggles, as his pre-season form was looking red hot in the forward line.

I'm impressed by the way he just scoops up the ball one handed under pressure and makes it look easy. Has some nice dance moves to which mesmerize the opposition while he finds space and delivers to the advantage of a team mate. It's a real skill to kick to the side/dangerous space like he seems to do consistently and quite intentionally.

And also forced to undergo some kind of education and reconciliation process. Probably not going to sink through to all of them, but perhaps it will for some and in that way hopefully some kind of progress can be made. It also needs the mainstream media to take a strong stand and call it out as well. Channel Nine's reaction to Pauline Hanson's latest jib of racist comments, still lent her an air of legitimacy that she doesn't deserve by only going as far as labeling her statements as divisive and not having the guts to call her our for being the racist bigot that she it. People like Pauline encourage and give comfort to the faceless racists amoung us and the mainstream media has been giving them a platform for way too long now at the expense of basic decency.

Was thinking exactly the same thing. I pitty the mental state of these socially undeveloped and ignorant humans.

The way Harley has handled himself at the MFC has been a credit to himself his family and the Noongar people. No one should have to put up with this rubbish. We Stand With Harley.

Time for social media companies to take some accountability for this mess (pardon the pun). These gutless faceless (sorry more pun) trolls don't just appear from nowhere. I'm no IT guru, but surely any new accounts and logins could require an IP address before allowing users to proceed. IP addresses that get warned for unacceptable behavior get banned for escalating periods. These platforms take billions of legitimate dollars in advertising, it's way past time that they took responsibility for conduct on their platforms. I've heard enough of this 'no censorship of the internet rubish. These companies are managing 'social media' platforms and profiting from the presence of the comunity, not just vanilia data access for a fee. They have sophisticated automated artificial intelligence algorithms that screen every users data to maximise advertising revenue, fixing this problem isn't beyond them by a long shot.

I get and respect all that, but I thought he was way OTT with it last night and felt more like him looking for excuses to plug his own new theory and jargon. Not every time a player choses the wrong option or doesn't execute a disposal can be put down to 'Red Mist' and even the best players have at least one or two clangers a game. On a slightly different, but related note, I also thought that the bagging of Gawn for his little chip over the boundary out on the full in the last quarter was uncalled for. For a gangly ruckman, Gawn generally has very clean skills and had played a ripper of a game. Yes it was a lapse, but Garry seemed to want to blow it up into a systemic flaw, again harping on about it for way more than it was worth.

One thing which stood out to me with our ball movement into the forward line and willingness to look laterally last night is that it made it very hard for their defenders - they didn't know whether to stay at home and defend the goal square or stay with their man and frequently ended up in no man's land, which allowed us to take relatively uncontested marked 20 - 40m out straight in front of goal. More often than not, last night we played a very unselfish game honored the lead and it paid off, but I can see that in the future, we will also need to have players willing to take very gettable shots on goal themselves as well and find other avenues to goal, perhaps with a few handball chains to players running into space, to maintain an element of unpredictability, but generally a real step forward. A few classy and clever little bits of play from Kosi with his tap on to Freitch and Salem with his underground bounce kick to Viney showed we are starting to get it as well.

Agreed, it would only have taken one of our players to have read it better and shepherded it through and it would have been in the contest for goal of the day. It's a little disappointing that our forwards were so badly positioned, because surely they all know that Trac has a huge hoof on him and should have seen the shot on goal comming.

Not a critisim, but I thought he was good without being great last night. He has clearly taken a big step forward this season and set a new standard for himself. If his disposal was more accurate and effective on some occations, he could have been BOG. That 50m goal in the dying minutes was a real sign of maturity from him. I actually don't think our whole on ball brigade is that far off becoming the best in the comp and most difficult to contain. Will just need Brayshaw to find a bit of touch (which I think is coming).

Nothing freakish about it, it looked like a totally well controlled regulation shot on goal - is that what you are insinuating? We need this kind of control, making the most of our opportunities to punish the opposition to become the norm at the MFC. Would help us stay in an win games that we are otherwise soundly beaten around the ground in - it's the sort of thing that made Hawthorn so good for those three peat years. Overall, I thought our kicking for goal was very good last night. Nailing those set shots in the last quarter was what won us the game and lost it for Gold Coast. The long 50m bomb through the middle by Trac was more celebrated, because it was the nail in the GC coffin, but I thought that Weid's goal in the last quarter that put us a goal clear in frount was super important and a real credit to him.