Mel Bourne

Hore won’t be playing for a while unfortunately.

I’m not sure you can say Bennell is in our best team yet. It was indeed exciting seeing him on the park against the Blues, but maybe jets need to be cooled a little when we speak of “best team”. I would of course hope like hell he eventually becomes a staple fixture and that day isn’t too far away, but we’re not quite there yet. I don’t think getting a healthy representation of our youth in the side each week is the wrong attitude at all. This season is a bin-fire in so many ways. All the screwing around with rescheduling, re-homing, reduced quarters, no crowds, dud performances from gun clubs, blah blah. I mean, it’s fine to watch but I really have don’t have the usual amount of passion for this season and I’m pretty ambivalent about who wins whatever tattered flag is on offer at the end of it. It’s the perfect opportunity for a club like ours to get games into our future players, and also an opportunity to hand some much-needed reflection time on the sidelines to our under-performing “stars”. I’m specifically looking at Clayton Oliver. He comes across as a pretty arrogant dude sometimes, and it shows in his needlessly-flash approach to those dumb, quick handballs. He’s been talked up a lot in the press over the last three seasons as the next great midfielder, and it would have naturally gone to his head. Unfortunately the signs are increasing that he is not going to become much more than what he is right now - a great getter of the ball, but 60% of the time an abysmal user of it - and unless he pulls his head in and realises he has some distance to travel towards greatness, he’s not going to improve. Out: Oliver, Lever, Smith, VDB, Melksham In: Jones, Omac, Jetta, Bedford, ANB

And I get your point too, but I think some of our poor-kicking could be improved by addressing other aspects of the game rather than kicking technique itself. Namely composure, decision-making and a genuine lack of targets. I think certain players are actually getting worse at kicking because the confidence, conviction and intent behind so many kicks is simply missing.

The point being that players can improve their kicking throughout their career.

You do know a lot of teams have kicking coaches, don’t you? In fact Adem Yze began his career with Hawthorn as one. He improved their accuracy in front of goal from 48% to 57% actually.

I guess one hopes the club cooooaaaacches the players to kick better.

Disagree. He’s been average at best. Disposals have been all over the place.

Oliver gets dropped. Make it happen.

Brian friggin Taylor and the fake crowd’s over the top efforts to inject some excitement into this rubbish is just plain insulting.

God I hate the camera shots of that zombie in our coach’s box.

Oliver had a lone Petracca to kick to. Elects to do some other rubbish. He lacks brains.

How in the [censored] was that not a legit tackle on Martin???

I count ONE contested mark inside out forward 50 so far today.

May’s kick-ins. 9/10 times to a contest on his left side. Would be good to see some creativity in this area.

He needs to clunk more of those in front of the goals.

I mix albums for people. I’d love to have a crack at it.

The person in charge of the crowd sounds tonight is trying really hard to inject some vibe.

There is no debating that for the price of two first round draft picks and whatever large sum of money was handed over, he has not been worth it thus far. I want him, as I want every player at the club, to succeed and prosper. But in the case of Lever, he has zero laurels to rest on and needs to get at least one BOG for the club this year, or the price just cannot be justified.

I appreciate the considered response. Cheers.

So anyway..... He’s officially a dud? Genuinely curious here, because I really didn’t pay attention to many of his previous games.

I was as surprised as anybody to see his name appear twice in the press.

Help me understand the negativity towards Joel Smith, that I see so much of around here. Two articles I read (The Age, AFL) both cited Joel Smith’s influence in the backline (particularly running with Dangerfield) as a reason the Cats were kept to a low score. He’s played 11 games since 2016, and it looks like 2020 might be his first opportunity to get some consistent footy into him, but so many seem to be of the opinion that he’s had his chance and failed. Was it his attempting to take a speccy in defense against Carlton that put everybody off?

There’s an entire thread dedicated to this on DL. As per usual, full of facts and things resembling them.

Which is a shame, cos scoring goals is cool.