The Chief

Sidebottom has been a great player for so long, but gee he made plenty of many mistakes tonight, same last week too. Is it just a temporary loss of form or is he cooked?

No doubt Josh Schache is a terrific young man and he has done very well to have a 10 year AFL career. I don’t want to bag one of our own, but until Josh can show that he can handle physical contact and eradicate the half hearted one handed marking attempts, he simply shouldn’t be picked. What has happened to team standards? What impact does continuing to select a player who isn’t AFL ready have on the rest of the playing list? And what about the club’s obligation of look after Josh rather than continuing to expose him at AFL level?

At the season launch, Max’s speech had a noticeable undertone of being pretty peed off with all the external criticism and I think he said something to the effect, the players need to respond through on field actions not words. His performance v Carlton was at an exceptional level for just a practice game. It’s a long season though and early motivational drivers could easily slip away, time will certainly tell. Looking forward to Thursday.

Kozzie attending 8+ centre bounces per game looks like a no brainer, he’s almost unstoppable. It also frees him up, boosts his confidence and is a nightmare matchup for oppo’s. Have the MFC brains trust got the brains to make this move consistently throughout the year?

Windsor reminds me of Alan Johnson, the loping stride with a bit of a back hunch.

The crew here at Control are Angus’s platinum sponsor and we’re so looking forward to catching up with him again. We won’t be discussing the concussion, that’s history. His insights on the team prove to be very insightful, he picked Judd Mc as a possible surprise team inclusion during the January catch up last year.

Any mug can see that without Kennedy dragging the best and often second best defender, Darling is a big ordinary KPF.

Truely believe if Petty played in the final series we would have won the GF - easily.

Ron was a guest at a corporate function held by my former employer, this was around 2013. My boss knew I was an MFC tragic, so unbeknownst by me they organised for me to sit next to Ron for the dinner. I couldn’t believe it. The 1970 GF was played on a big screen in honour of Ron and I was a bit star struck, so the conversation was a bit stilted. He was pretty focussed on the game, as it was quite evident that his memory of that GF was pretty hazy. I regret that I didn’t make the most of the opportunity in terms of discussing his MFC history.

This is spot on. I can’t divulge how I know, but Yze is basically the match day coach, all tactical decisions during the game go through him. No changes during the game are made unless Yze agrees. Goody’s focus during the game is on reinforcing messages to players, passing on Yze’s and line coaches feedback, providing positive encouragement and giving feedback on KPI’s/ key statistical measures. Nothing negative or overly critical is said to the players during the game.

Importance of Fritta can’t be overstated, without him we lose that game.

6 Viney 5 Petty 4 Gawn 3 Trac 2 Lever 1 Melksham

We’ve managed pretty well without Oliver, but looks like Bears are struggling without Ashcroft.

May - No kick outs

Quick shout out to the MFC members sitting in row E in bay N12 in the Warnie stand who left with 10 minutes to go in the last. We had a chuckle at your expense after the game in the bar.

We stayed behind at the G for a couple of celebratory beers & to dodge the filth crowd, before catching the train home. Still had the pleasure of getting the finger from one pie fan at Jolimont and then another drunk at Watsonia slurring out ‘you’ll be out in straight sets again’. They are all class.

Bit disappointed, would have preferred a 1 point win.

This is [censored], switching to Test on 7+

Can’t stomach the concept of watching a replay of Friday night’s game, but it seemed to me that for our kick ins from points, Port went hard 1 on 1 defensively, so there were no easy kick ins short or long. We seemed to just accept this and there were virtually no leads given to the person kicking out, which resulted in the predictable long bombs to the wing, where we got slaughtered and the ball was locked in their forward 50. Conversely, we used more of a mixture of 1 on 1 and zone defence when they did their kick ins, and they moved the ball fairly easily from their defence to forward 50, helping them dominate time in their forward half. After watching Port’s successful strategy for our kick ins, the idea of going a hard man on man defence for the oppositions point kick ins looks like a winner to me. We can still adopt a zone defence when the ball is in general play. What do you guy think?

Was lucky enough to speak to someone from the club last week. And amongst other things, the Pies come up in our conversation and he said words to the effect of ‘we can’t wait to play them, because we think our backline and defensive structure will stack up well against them’. I replied, yeah but wouldn’t Petty need to go back against them, and he said, ‘no, Petty has been our best performing forward and we prefer him up there’.

Prior to this year, I didn’t think JJ would be a long term prospect, but I think he’s definitely improved this season, with quicker decision making, improved sprinting ability and much better kicking, and the key question is how much more improvement is still to come? The reality is fringe players at top clubs will, and should, look to get more regular games at other clubs. The way things are looking now, be surprised if JJ doesn’t ask for a trade at season end.

Was told that Harmes was sick today, don’t know severity, may impact selection?

The MFC produced injury list is a bit more optimistic than the above.

Put my hand up for not believing JJ deserved to be selected before Sunday. Agree with all that’s been said, particularly that Sunday was his best game by far. One of the things I hadn’t noticed before was his long kicking, be interesting to see a ‘kick off showdown’ between him and Rivers.

Yep, bugger all out my way in the land of Plenty.