Colm

Provided he’s good to go next week I don’t mind this at all. Second time he has missed this season and we have bye in round 14. Think Jack is a player that benefits from a break every so often. Stops that foot injury from flaring up and keeps him fresh.

I don’t for one second think we are gifting games to Melksham to get him to 100. We may however be making this change with next weeks game in mind. Freo have a better defence than any team we have played so far this year and we need to improve our work i50. Perhaps Sparrow takes on more of the Harmes role and Melksham plays a bit further forward. He’s a great kick of footy and would link up very well with our forwards.

Others are better qualified to judge than me Jaded, but I don’t think so. Both look good in the middle but freo don’t look great up front and I don’t think Carlton have the defence or fitness to worry us come finals

This, couldn’t agree more. This is why I thinks it’s the smart move to play Sam for a few more games. The reason there has been so much discussion around Tmac and Sam is because our second tall forward is the one area where we need a fair bit of improvement. Hopefully this more will help trigger one of them into form. If not here to hoping JVR might be able to make some sort of impact by the end of the season.

Same. Disappointed where Gary Lyon went with it. But at least Robbo had the balls to call it as it is and the AFL have to back down for the good of the game.

Surely not?!?!

Hmmmm sounds like they will be in a good position to make a decent pitch to Jackson 😩

That’s a fair point, but having either of Tmac or Weid in better form would still be massive for us. Even if it’s pushing further up the park to link up and create spaces. Weid did take a couple of his marks closer to the middle last night. I’m probably leaning more to keeping him in and giving him a few games with BBB.

Agree that one must go and BBB will come in. But the thing is that we still need another tall to be playing well( better than Tmac or Weid currently are). I think this is where our biggest improvement has still to be made. Very confident BBB will come in and play at a very high level but we will go to another level if Tmac could regain his early season form from last year. Or if not him Weid/JVR or M. Brown. If we can do that and keep a healthy list we will go back to back

What’s wrong with Howes?

Glad someone started this thread. I lost the plot at the start of the third when Hill was handed another goal via a 50m penalty. I think that one was for us playing on as we thought the decision went our way and we were taking advantage. Thankfully Kossie scored his third just after and we went on a run from there. But I’m a tighter game some of these stupid decisions could of cost us the game. I get that abuse of the umps needs to be cut out but this rule has gone way too far. If the AFL want to makes the umps job easier why do they keep making the game so difficult to call with so many incidents being a coin flip as to which way it goes. Instead of trying to turn the players into emotionless robots they should focus on making the rules simpler and look at making the umps full time employees.

Given the depth of talent we have in defence once we have everybody full fit and injury free I think we are going to have to think about giving minutes or games to players further forward be that in the middle or up front. So I’m open to the idea of Smith getting a run up front. Could also see Rivers getting some midfield time and bowser at half forward.

Haha. Yes I believe I was in the Hayden Young camp also. That super kick in his highlights package sucked me in.

McKenzie a late out for port. Their defence is very depleted. Great chance for the wied to build on last week.

Not overly confident for tonight. Think we will need to see a big improvement from last week especially in the middle as I thought we were poor there last week and Boak and Wines are better than we faced last week. Having said that I still think we will win as having Lever back and they are still missing key Aliir and Dixon. Be great to get the win and improve our form a bit we play 8 out the next 10 at the G, Goody spoke last season (before covid changed finals plans)about how we want to really wanted the G where we play our best footy. The run of games after tonight’s will be the perfect opportunity to do so.

Thought Smith was solid tonight. He won’t miss next week.

Agree that our defence is ahead of other teams in the comp and that the better teams won’t score as easy against us but still feel we miss to many gettable shots for goal. Can’t find stats for season but as of June 8th last year our set shot kicking was 48% and the worst in the comp. BBB cemented his place in team after that and our kicking in Prelim and GF probably improved our average but it’s still an area I think we will need to improve. We dominated most of the top teams in the home and away last year but poor goal kicking often kept opposition in the game for longer than they should have been and we relied on our superior fitness levels to get the job done in the last quarter.

Perfect example of when we take our chances the margin we can win by as was the prelim against Cats19.11 125. But the vast majority of games last year we kicked more behinds that goals. I just checked through all the results and the only other two games we kicked well in were against North and Adelaide. As teams start to copy our style of play if they are kicking straighter than us in front of goal we may find ourselves falling behind a bit.

Damn it I feel asleep during last quarter and missed Buds 1000. The two games so far this round really show the difference when a team is kicking well. Dogs 13.12 90 v Carlton 16.6 102 Swans 17.5 107 v Cats 10.17 77 I think it’s an area that we will need to improve on if we want to win back to back flags.

Yeah I thought they were one of our toughest games last year and with a years improvement into their younger players I think they will be a real danger this season.

Agreed. The difference in quality between this game and the Sydney/GWS game earlier is night and day

Toby Greene suspended until round 6. We play them in round 5.

Given that Charlie Cameron caused us more problems than any other forward in last years finals series when we had almost all of our defenders available I think we still need to replace Nev.

The talk around draft time was that we were trying to move up the draft order to pick Darcy Wilmot( Brisbane picked him at pick 16). He is touted as the best small lockdown defender in last years draft with very good skills coming out of defence. Due to the fact that we would probably haven to give up our first 2 picks to get him I wonder if we might target another small lockdown type ? Or perhaps we just really rated his talent.

Watched it live and couldn’t believe it at the time. He lost the plot and didn’t seem right before he had a go a Morris. My biggest take from it was how [censored] weak it was to bring mental health into it for a jurno just reporting team news. The only other interview I have seen live that I can compare it to was Rafa Benitez “facts” rant in 2009. I can also remember their skipper Steve Gerard commenting on his managers rant years later- how cringed watching it and was embarrassed for him and the club at the time. I wonder how the Bont and rest of the players will feel about how their coach when they watch it today?! One thing for sure I’ll be extra confident the next time we play them don’t think he’s rant will help them at all.