RyanD

I would be interested to see how supporters would rate the prospects without a draft guide as to where they will go. The draft guess work for supporters is confirmation bias 101. You know they are a high-draft pick when you watch these videos, so it always stands out more. If you just had footage and no guide for the top 30 players, 95% of supporters wouldn't get close to picking the top 10.

Sometimes I need to remind myself to enjoy the moment we are in as a football club. What an amazing point in time where we can go about our Saturday knowing we are one of the premiership favourites going into a blockbuster on Saturday night. During those endless dark years, these are the times I use to dream about. We are going to look back in years to come and be in awe at some of the talent we have. Gawn, Oliver, Petracca, Viney, Pickett, May, Lever, Brayshaw and co. Don't think too far ahead, enjoy the day, enjoy the night and sit back and watch our players give it all. No matter the result, we are going into finals with a double chance. Go Dees!

And Port Adelaide are not paying 100% of their cap anyway, so basically it doesn't impact them at all.

Just in regards to Clayton's injury, Jack Mclean (Melbourne's strength and conditioning coach) does a podcast/Vodcast called 'Prepare like a pro'. He released his latest episode literally 7 hours ago where he interviewed Ryan Timmins, who has done a bunch of great research into hamstring injuries. They spoke about how the frequency of hamstring injuries in the AFL has decreased, but the severity (length of time out injured) has increased. One suggestion is that athletes these days are getting too strong too quick. In other words, the amount of force the hamstring produces will outweigh the ability for the tendon to transfer load to the bone. As we know, this is exactly where Claytons injury is, at the musculotendinous junction. There is no research into this yet, but the idea has some merit. The point here is that that our very own strength and conditioning coach is having conversations with a well-know hamstring researcher about why some athletes are injured for longer. The answer is we don't know yet and there isn't any research to help guide us. To me, this explains why the club has been a little vague with their information. These football clubs are often right at the edge of research and are constantly having to alter and adjust how they do things. Then you add in the complexity of each individual and how their own body reacts. Again, these are just my own thoughts and I have no context for Claytons individual case. I just found the podcast super interesting and from what I have seen of Jack, we really have some of the best high performance staff in the competition. From what Ryan Timmins was saying, some clubs are deficient in their hamstring prevention strategies, so we are in good hands.

I find the 'player comparison' embarrassingly cringy. Half of them are based on their looks, nothing to do with how they play. E.g. if Jake Rogers were white, you can bet your life they wouldn't compare him to Touk Miller.

Don't take offence, but it's not even worth posting this. In what world would WC take that? Or another team not beat that. WC will be expecting 4 + 6 minimum.

The last time Melbourne conceded two matches in a row of 95+ points against was in 2019 round 2 & 3. That is 102 games ago. Should we be concerned or is this the price you pay in order to score? Edited, 102**

Once again, quality post and thanks for putting in the time. Love seeing some objective data. Just throwing it out there, but would love to see some stats that 'stick out' when teams score above 70 points against us (regardless of result). Brisbane x 2, Essendon, Port, GC & Freo. The one that seems super obvious to me but isn't talked about as much is mark differential. In those games where we give up a decent score against, teams have a significant mark differential against us. The games we dominate, we seems to equal or beat the other team in marks. We could run a one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA test) for the stats that stick out, to see if they are actually statistically significant. Often statistics that seem like they stick out, may just be to chance. Again, we would need to see what stats keep showing up in loses, then we can run the test. But I think the mark differential is one I have noticed. P.s. please confirm if it's an ANOVA, I made the assumption because we would be testing 3 or more groups (matches), but it's been a while since I did stats.

Insert Fritch where they put Petty's name, foot 3-5 weeks. I think that is the only mistake.

He is indigenous. Therefore, I think there are a few loopholes the AFL will seek to use in order to avoid the NGA rules that apply to non-indigenous players. You will find the AFL will allow this to go through, rather than a priority pick. It essentially gives them pick 3 or 4. Our pick will slide.

Our plan B is looking fantastic. McKercher or Sanders are quality. I am absolutely certain plan A will be Reid. A lot of people are letting the whole 'overhyped' stuff get to them. Reid is the number 1 pick by a distance. Dynamic, powerful goal kicking midfields are what seperate the best players in the league. Martin, Petracca, Ablett, Bontempelli, apologies but.....Daicos. We absolutely need pick 4 or pick 5 at worst, Fremantle vs Sydney this week is massive.

Expected score: Melbourne 77.1 vs Brisbane 89.3.

Again, thank you. Fascinating reading.

6. Petracca 5. Gawn 4. Brayshaw 3. Viney 2. Melk 1. McVee Im shocked that some people have Max over Trac. We don't even get a chance at the come back without Trac. For most of the game, that was one of the best solo performances I have seen in a long time. Max was absolutely fantastic, of course.

I think Spargo has to make way for Chandler. His lack of penetration with his kicking really costs the team at times. Not to mention the amount of times he gets out marked 1 v 1 . Chandler at least offers a goal threat and has some real penetration when he swings on his preferred foot.

My feeling was that we tend to lose more games we are expected to win and we don't win many games we are expected to lose. But this doesn't really support either, so it's great to see some objective data to show it's just my MFSS kicking in.

These sort of posts are amazing. Thanks for doing the work.

All we know is location of the injury. There are so many variables of the actual injury and what the imaging was showing that it is total guess work to make an assumption on what would be best practice. To try an answer your question, yes it is normal to be running after certain types of hamstring injuries. There is one thing I am 100% certain on and that every supporter needs to understand. The medical staff would be responding to his injury and imaging by the book OR new approaches that are backed with current research in the field. To think anything else is totally misguided. Just keep in the mind, as the player progresses through each level of training, the medical staff are relying on the player giving them feedback on pain/soreness levels and tightness. If a player is not reporting these things, then he is progressing through the rehab faster than he should be. Take what you will out of that, but that's my hunch....

Out of interest, what is your understanding of what the 'loading period' included? From a numbers perspective? There are so many question I would love to ask Selwyn. E.g. in an average week player X does 60 mins at zone 2 + 20 mins in zone 4 (excluding game time). Therefore the loading period increased the running minutes for player X by? P.s. these numbers are totally made up. If we could find out the additional minutes or kms the player ran (even very roughly), there is plenty of normalised data you can use to predict an increase in aerobic performance. Did Selwyn speak about what the loading involved? Assuming it's purely low heart rate base running (zone 2).

Physio here btw. I'll leave you with some literature to review. Unfortunately, it's quite the opposite. We know from the research that athletes have a 3 fold higher risk (3.6x) of future hamstring injuries if they have a previous injury. Great peer reviewed research here that includes AFL athletes for context: Skip to the 'incidence/prevalence' heading https://www.jospt.org/doi/epdf/10.2519/jospt.2022.0301 It is hard to manage because the strain (tearing) has occurred at the musculotendinous junction. The further you move away from the muscle belly and toward the tendon, you decrease vascularisation. Basically, less blood flow and slower repair. Yep, spot on. As hard as it is to accept, Clayton will have to manage this for the rest of his career. That sounds more dramatic than it is, but it's a fact. During the season and future pre-seasons will now incorporate extra and or modified workouts to mitigate reinjury. However, that's why football clubs have the best medical staff.

If Kangers get a draft compensation for Ben McKay (800k salary = Pick 6), does that mean if we get squeezed back a selection this year? or would that apply to next year?

This is essentially why you can't drop him. Kozzie is the only player in our team (bar Trac) that can create goals out of nothing, these are gold in modern day football. In addition, his goals give the team a lift. Hard to quantify, but we all feel it.

Does anyone know the last time we won a game when the expected score wasn't in our favour? The irony in losing the majority of key indicators and not playing our brand compared to the last 3 weeks.....and yet we win the game.

Yep, finally someone has hit the nail on the head. The sample size it too large for it not to be related to our game plan. We also have some terrible kicks and that's contributes. But this is essentially the issue. when you play a forward half turnover game, there will always be large numbers of the opposite in your forward. There were 3 times when GWS took the ball from our back half and had 2 or 3 full lead up marks. When I saw that I was shocked, because I couldn't remember I single time when there was a Melbourne player in space leading up and getting the ball. It looked like they were playing a different game.

This.