Lord Nev

Could be because we have 1 key forward who hasn't scored for nearly a month, 1 who is currently on one leg, 1 who uses their seniors card for train tickets to get to the game, and 1 who the coach hates... Only logical ;)

Good oil or gut feel?

Oh! Sorry haha! Didn't realize it came across like that.

Just goss that he'll be back to attending some centre bounces again like last year.

Watch this space...

I think the implication is the punishment is pretty light given the circumstances around punching someone with concussion in the head.

Probably to send the message that decking players out with concussion isn't something the club condones...

To clarify, I'm in the "I think we're loading" camp, and definitely think it has affected our performance, but I also believe we wouldn't go so hard with the loading that we would then expect to lose. If they're doing it, I would think it would be about riding the balance between timing the peak fitness and not impacting so much that it means we'll likely lose. Probably the best way to explain my thinking on it is perhaps the effects of loading have magnified some existing issues with our performance - specifically forward structure and delivery, backline cohesion, centre clearances and lack of full understanding of the zone movements due to instability in selection.

I mean, I know I didn't use the saracstica font, but there's clearly a bit of facetiousness in the last line there. If you're using it as a legal argument, you may even use the 'puffery' defence.

“Melksham has floored him, according to the reports. With all the evidence around coward punches and one-punches and all the damage they can do, he’s floored him, punched him, he’s already in concussion protocols, and we know how serious that is, so he’s potentially suffered two concussions in the space of a week, and Melksham has got nothing. “Work that out for me.” The aspect of the Melksham/May brawl that “doesn’t quite add up”

Jon Ralph actually wrote a pretty decent article bringing all the bits together from the week - form, injuries, Bartlett texts, Melksham v May etc - and he finished with this: So here is the message for Melbourne: sharpen up and get it together. Good clubs smarten up and strip away the distractions. Clubs who cannot do that spend the next decade like Collingwood, wondering whether the Mick Malthouse succession dramas of 2011 had enough of an impact to derail them. In 2015 Hawthorn captain Luke Hodge blew .068 in a drink-drive controversy and six weeks later the Hawks were premiers. In 2007 Steve Johnson didn’t play AFL until round 7 given a club-imposed ban and 20 games later was the Norm Smith Medallist in a Grand Final victory. In 2020 Richmond looked to self-immolating in a hub amid fallout between Trent Cotchin and the senior hierarchy as kebab-shop punch-ons were the order of the day. Months later Richmond won a third premiership in four seasons. Distractions don’t have to define football clubs. They can be valuable lessons that recalibrate a player or a team or club. Melbourne is still the most talented team in football, but it is far from invincible. There’s no better stage than Queens Birthday, against a white-hot Collingwood side and without their All Australian defensive star in May, to start that march back to respectability.

Really poor comment by May, but if that's all it takes to get a 30 year old grown man and parent to throw punches in a public place then Melksham has some issues to deal with himself.

I haven't seen anyone say we've lost purely due to loading, but I might have missed it.

Just checking that you know that's satire and not Tom Browne's account... (You can never tell on Demonland)

Yep, and interested as to whether Gawn was there tbh. Viney wasn't, and he absolutely tore shreds off the playing group when they all met about it. Goody did also, apparently absolutely lost it, but more about the incident rather than directly at players.

He wasn't drinking, he was just 'loading'...

Is anyone doing that though? I personally think we may be doing it, but I'm certainly not saying it's the sole reason we lost. There's a TON of factors at the moment, so for mine we're really not traveling that bad considering.

100%, which is why this thread will go round and round in circles as no one at this stage knows the factual answer.

Ummmmm..... come on mate...

For sure, but I was making the comment in the context of your comment that we weren't loading when we lost to Adelaide last year because we lost due to kicking inefficiency.

Our skills have been noticeably poor the last couple of weeks, that happens when players are fatigued.