RyanD

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.

I posted this in another thread. Since 2022, Petracca has had 115 attempts on goal for 31 goals. The bold is the total shots on goals. Top image is 2022, bottom is 2023. First number is total goals.

This stat is mind blowing. Please take some time to look at it. Also, my previous comment was slightly wrong. Since 2022, Petracca has had 115 attempts on goal for 31 goals. LET THAT SINK IT. The bold is the total shots on goals. Top image is 2022, bottom is 2023. First number is total goals.

It was in the post game on kayo about 15 mins after the game. In other words, he has had 58 shots at goal, 12 are goals and the remaining 46 are either behinds, out on the full or sprayed totally off the boot out of bounds or didn't make the distance. He is fundamentally hurting out team.

That was his 'goal' this season was to fix his goal kicking. He and the entire forward line have been doing extra sessions. You can't fix poor kicks like him.

This is factually wrong. His kicking was equally poor last year. He isn't a polished players by foot. He has a powerful kick and can do some fantastic things, but fundamentally is a poor kick.

Crhistian Petracca has kicked 12 goals 46 including total misses at goals. He did something similar last year. People are too scared to admit that something like that will never ever change. That is a huge sample size or atrocious kicking. He may well have a period of 5 games or even half a season where he fixes that, but fundamentally he will revert back to his mean and miss many more shots than he kicks. Clayton Oliver is similar, Jack Viney is similar and that is our engine room. They are all amazing players and I love them, but you need to admit what their flaws are.

Any idea on crowd size? Hoping for 75k. Anyone going to 'the lounge'? I noticed it free beer, wine, soft drinks and food as part of my membership.

I understand the passion, but lets not forget those dark years we all struggled through. I don't care what happened, a premiership player is a premiership player.

It was mentioned, we are not inferring.

Wouldn't say rare, but this is correct. However, the reason it's less common is because of the occurrence of the incident happening in the first place, compared to a non-contact ACL. BUT, once the 'unlikely' incident occurs, e.g. a force applying a valgus on the knee, it is not any less likely. In fact, it's more likely given the force will be higher.