Swooper1987

Well the club threw everything at it at least. Jack Rush is a former Supreme Court Judge and was a Saints Board Member as well as being Judge Advocate General. Nobody more qualified.

Hall is a jet. Kudos to him, and the Saints recruiters for unearthing him.

The irony of the votes I am about to give is the genuine lament I feel about lack of onfield leadership in the last quarter, however, clearly our best two players over the entire game were Gawn and Viney, so here goes: Gawn 6 Viney 5 Rivers 4 Fritsch 3 Pickett 2 Chandler 1

Your observation is correct. Grundy the 14th highest rated player on the ground according to Wheeloratings. Game rating of 10.6. Callaghan was best with 21.7 and there were three swans (Mills 19.5, Warner 17.6 and Hayward 13.0) ahead of him and a plethora of Giants. It was another typical Grundy game where he gets a bit of it and not much actually happens as a result. As long as Buckley and Cornes are AA selectors, Gawn is getting in ahead of Grundy every day of the week.

Pickett - an absolute to delight to watch this guy do his thing Gawn - just a genuine superstar and brilliant leader. Beat both the Carlton rucks easily Fritsch - nice to see Bailey looking like he's enjoying himself again. Oliver - thought he tried hard, especially in the second half. Took a couple of nice contested marks. Rivers - stood tall early and remained a consistent positive influence throughout. Langdon - I liked Ed's game. Lots of contested possession for him and ran hard as always.

Fortunate to have seen every Melbourne player since the late 1970's. Flower stands above all as the best I've seen. Gawn is next because his influence has made everyone else better. Oliver sits comfortably third behind those two and well ahead of the next best. At his best (and he was amazingly consistent between 2017 and half way through 2023) I would say he was the most influential mid in the competition. In 2017, only his second year in the AFL he won the Bluey by nearly 200 votes! He polled 530 to the runner up, Jack Viney's 346. He had just turned 20. 2nd in 2018 - his first AA year, tied with Gawn in 2019, 5th in 2020, Back to back wins in 21 and 22. That's 6 consecutive top 5 positions in the Bluey, 3 x AA and 2 x AFLCA Player of the Year to go with a flag. If he stopped playing today he'd rightly be recognized as an all time great, yet at 27 there is so much more to come. Have a great game Clarry and thanks for the incredible highlights you've provided us with over the last 10 seasons. Much appreciated.

Coaches votes: Petracca 10 Melksham 6 Gawn 5 Sheezel 4 Fritsch 3 McKercher 2 Gawn now equal 8th and ahead of Xerri by 1 and Grundy by 2 for leading ruck.

Agree. Xerri was super frustrated. Gawn was absolutely dominant and Xerri had next to no impact at all. Just checking Wheelo's ratings, Xerri scored 4.9 for the game which is by far his lowest rated game of the season. Gawn was third highest rated on the ground with 17.3 which is actually his 6th highest rated game for the season. Xerri was losing it before he dropped Sparrow.

Petracca - impactful the whole game. Disposal needs a tidy up but was almost back to his best Melksham - irrepressible as always. 5 goals is a mighty effort Gawn - a dominant display against the second best ruck in the game. Haven't seen the stats but seemed to have a lot of hit outs to advantage, even if our mids sometimes found a way to mess up the clearance. 6 clearances of his own and 8 score involvements. Fritsch - his best game in some time. Langford - polished and thoughtful with the ball. Salem - a very nice game. I sat with his nephews and they are ripper kids.

He was no doubt a great footballer - one of Melbourne's greatest ever, however his legacy as a politician is largely overlooked. He was a genuine "small l" Liberal politician and was one of the key drivers in the Hamer Government's push to modernise Melbourne and Victoria. He was Minister for Youth, Sport and Recreation and most notably led the introduction of the Life. Be In it campaign, but as a cabinet minister in a moderate Government he worked to introduce stronger environmental protection laws, the abolition of the death penalty (he strongly opposed the execution of Ronald Ryan), the decriminalisation of homosexuality and the introduction of anti-discrimination laws. His contribution to the state was immense.

If ever Campbell was going to play this is the game. Absolutely ragdolled Xerri in the preseason game when Gawn was recovering from the throat injury.

Gawn is a victim of his own incredible standards. Because he doesn't dominate, even though he shaded Witts, Hardwick rates Witts game highly. Montagna called the Witts the games biggest tagger on 'First Crack".

Melksham - probably should've kicked 7 or 8. He was thoroughly dominant. Loves the QLD weather Pickett - influenced largely by his epic last quarter Viney - putrid first quarter but along with Gawn got us competitive again in the second Gawn - see above. Witts is a very good AFL ruckman and Gawn shaded him Bowey - 25 at 88%. Our best ball user by a mile Petracca - gets a vote simply because he was involved but his butchery is a real problem.

Coaches votes: Georgiades 10 - 5/5 Ratugolea 8 - 4/4 Rozee 5 - 3/2 Horne-Francis - 1/3 Gawn - 2/1 Coaches in agreement as to the best 5. Gawn now equal 5th on 54 votes.

Well any semblance of confidence I might have had left in the CD player ratings has just flown out the window. Georgiades after a 7 goal performance is the 22nd highest rated player on the ground and Gawn with 20 contested possessions, 8 marks including 5 contested and 10 hitouts to advantage is the 23rd highest rated. Old mate Hoyney has a bit of work to do on this dodgy system. If Georgiades wasn't best on I've never watched a game and it's an insult to Max to have rated anyone other than Kozzie's first half better than him from the Melbourne side.