Watson11

Tmac is surely being managed as well. He played 80% game time which is low for him. Wied played 93%. Wied was good in the first quarter. But he doesn’t have the tank to play those minutes, even on a cool day.

Disposal is super important but we get sucked into the contest too easily. That’s why we chase tail. When a 50-50 ball doesn’t go our way, we have 4 or 5 players within a few metres of it, and well coached teams have players free on the outside. If we have a good day with contested posssesion and ball movement, you don’t see it and our biggest defect is masked over. I’d like to see us improve kicking efficiency and set up better for when we don’t win 50-50 ball. Same happens at stoppages. Interesting stat, if we had scored the same as Port from stoppages on Saturday we would have won.

@rjay We got sucked into the contest for nearly all of last season. We were just as rubbish as Saturday for long periods of lots of games. It gets masked when we smash contested possession. It was not realistic that we would have no games like that this season. When we get sucked into the contest and halve contested possession the symptoms are: 1. Our tackle count is way down. You can’t tackle players on the outside when they are 10m away. 2. The ball transitions out of our forward 50 way too easily and makes our defence look hopeless. 3. Our intercepts are way down. Saturday we had the lowest number of intercepts since round 1 last year. I trust that Goody and the coaches can fix it like they did at the end of last year. I hope training reports this week show this issue is being worked on. Our list is the best it’s ever been and is not the issue. If injuries have impacted, it is simply that players have not had enough time to work on their connection and understanding around the ball yet.

There is so much MFCSS overreaction going on. I don’t see any major holes or excuses with the list. And surgeries is an excuse. We should have been 10 goals up by the time conditioning became a factor, and Port were always going to come home strong if it was close. And our gameplan is fine. It stands up in finals and big games. It’s simply our players are not well drilled enough to carry it out properly yet. We get sucked into the contest and leave free players on the outside, and it hurts us when teams split contested possession. We need to fix this. And we showed Port no respect. The coaches went in overconfident when they didn’t pick a second ruck, went in with Hore against the 3rd Port 199cm tall (Hore is 189cm), and didn’t send Harmes to tag Rockliff. And the overconfidence spread to the players after the first 3 goals. Hibbard trying to drill a 50m pass to the outer wing where we were outnumbered resulted in their first goal. Ryder against Weid from a throw in resulted in the second. We should have been 6 or 7 goals to zip at qtr time but were 4 to 2. For me, yesterday is the kick up the [censored] the coaches and players obviously need to get them back on track.

The only way 6-6-6 could have negatively affected us was if the 15x out of 24 we won the centre clearance, it rebounded back out so quickly that our defenders were still 6 on 6.

It’s easy to point to lack of work rate etc but I can assure you if there is one player who’s GPS and heart rate monitor numbers show they didn’t put in effort they won’t play again for the season, let alone next week. Perhaps some are underdone but to me it just looked like our effort is good but we just have poor defensive setup around the ball. Just need to play smarter. Contested possessions are everything and too many players chased the ball rather than closing down the loose Port player. Happens at stoppages all over the ground, in our forward 50, and sometimes but less often in our defensive 50. I thought we had fixed this flaw after week 21 last year but it is back with a vengeance. On the narrower ground next week I have a feeling we will smash it.

They killed us from stoppages also. Outscored us by 30 points from this source. Exhibit 1 was Ryder uncontested out of the ruck against Weids to Boak in Q1. Our stoppages, especially in the forward 50 were horrendous.

But we easily won centre clearances so 6-6-6 didn’t seem to impact. Our forward pressure was abysmal because we have no forward or stoppage structure and chased the ball like schoolboys again. Same as JLT. Every team in the league knows our forwards don’t defend well. It shouldn’t be too hard for our coaches to fix it and go man on man and become a forward 50 pressure team. If we do fix it and lock it in, we need to sort out stoppages. Port scored 30 more points from stoppages than us today. That’s the game just as much as being hurt on the outside. The contrast between the way they kicked in after points and the way we did was ridiculous. We just conceded and let them run it to 20-30m and go bang. But Port didn’t give us an inch after their points. You’re never as good as you think you are after a win, and you’re never as bad as others think you are after a loss. Prediction, we’ll beat Geelong.

Cameron Mooney’s comments about the Port 3 qtr time comment interesting. “Melbournes forwards don’t defend well” Enough said,

That’s where your wrong. May graded as medium impact. Jones graded as low impact.

The rules are the rules and shouldn’t be that hard for Christian to apply consistently. He just seems incapable of being consistent. By the way, you can be suspended for hits to the body.

So whose hit was harder? May was graded as medium impact. Jones as low impact? That’s why May got suspended.

Graded as low impact to the body. That hit was so much harder than what May did, and the “optics” were so much worse because it was so far off the ball. But it was exactly what I think Stewart did to Max Gawn at Geelong last year, and the talk about the hit to Max was how he faked it and Stewart didn’t even get cited from memory. Go figure.

No not from points in the JLT. We kicked 16.5 and 15.7. It was just coming out easily from ground balls and intercepts.

Who will Harmes tag? Gray if he plays midfield. Otherwise Rockliff? Ports midfield depth looks pretty weak.

For me 30 goals and providing a genuine contest and tackle pressure is a pass. 2 or more goals a game would be a distinction.

Sorry, but unless they had an MRI at Casey the doctors have no idea of the damage. Preuss looked worse than Smith at the time. He’s ready for round 1. Have the utmost respect for the professionalism of MFC these days but not on this occasion.

The front 6 is what worked at the end of last season, and would be a safe bet. Our issue in JLT was the ball came out of our forward 50 way too easily. Hope these 6 are back to locking it in and causing turnovers, and if they do the back 6 will be fine and we’ll win easily.

Maybe the mids can start kicking it to where he is running and not over his head so much

I don’t know any more than any other uninformed poster. But I do know that professional well run clubs don’t put players with mental health issues up for trades. AFL is a very stressful profession for young players, and mental health issues are not uncommon. Clubs have professionals supporting players. Jesse requested a trade and his struggles would have been a factor for sure, and the club would have considered all the factors. But it is not a Jack Watts scenario.

I wish Jesse all the best and hope he makes a super speedy recovery. He deserves to have a good run at it. But the idea Goody or the club would ship out a player who is struggling with mental health issues is archaic and insulting. Can you imagine Sydney shipping Buddy off after the 2015 season? It wouldn’t happen at Sydney or Melbourne. Jesse asked to be traded and Josh Mahoney said “we will do the best thing we can, if we can get you back to Perth we will, but it needs to be a good deal for us.” No different to Lachie Neale requesting to be traded to Brisbane. Mental health had zero to do with it.

Agree they have a quality list and will bounce back. Also hampered last year were Betts, Tahlia, Douglas and Sloane. Adelaide won 12 last year and would have won 14 if they played GC and St Kilda twice like this year. With an easy draw I can see them top 2.

I was travelling back from Perth today, and the Sunday Times has the same article as above, but 2 pages later had all the writers predictions and Mick still had us missing the 8. Only other pundit that had us missing the 8 was our now good friend Karl Langdon.

Agree re kick out rule. But from what I have seen the 6-6-6 rule will help the best centre clearance teams a lot. Of all the teams, Richmond should be concerned the most and need a new game plan. Just look at our JLT v Richmond for a snapshot. Richmond still rely on defence intercepts to attack, but no longer have the benefit of +1 or +2 so they will get exposed at times. In the JLT we were a shambles in our forward 50 trying players who didn’t know how to structure up defensively when we lost the ball, Richmond played their best back 6, and the result was Bacher et al clocked up countless easy possessions and Richmond scored easily when the ball slingshot down the other end. Same against Brisbane. Take that away and you take away Richmond’s scoring and score more yourself. Right now J Smith and Hunt in the forward structure are a liability. They could be great long term because they add speed and should improve our forward 50 defence, but right now neither knows exactly what to do when we lose the ball. It just takes one forward to not do the defensive job and it makes all of them look average because we lose our biggest scoring source which is forward half turnovers. I don’t expect us to lose versus Port but if we do it will be because of poor forward 50 defensive structure, and won’t be because of the new 6-6-6 but will be in spite of it. Spargo and ANB have both copped a lot of flak in the JLT, but if they play they will do their job and if all of our forward 6 do the defensive job, they’ll suddenly look a million dollars again. What I expect to happen early in the season is we’ll persevere with Hunt or Smith as forward options as the upside could be huge by seasons end, we’ll still dominate inside 50s, we’ll still struggle with our front 6 unable to lock the ball in, and MFCSS will blame Lewis, Omac, and Frost for our losses.

Can you show me a VFL ruckman we should have taken on who averaged more than Preusses 46 hit outs with 16 to advantage last year?