Colm

Agree. Having Max out gives us to have a different look at things that could be very beneficial to the rest of our season both in the middle and up forward. He has always played taller than he is but is now playing bigger than he is. Hard as nails. MCcuggage gave him a bump and a few words after he missed a dribbler from the boundary last night. By the end of the quarter he had poleaxed two of them. Don’t mess with fritter!!

What a leader. Inspirational performance last night. Definitely his best game that I have seen. Clearly his tackles were awesome but that’s always been the case. It’s the other parts of his game that have gone to new levels that have been truely impressive. Busting out of pack, and then hitting a target, always seems to pick the right option. Getting more involved away from the stoppages too. His fends offs are getting dusty like. I think now that he is over his foot injury (wasn’t this his first uninterrupted preseason in year?) has enabled him to be the best physical version of him we have seen. He seems to be even stronger now while also gain a yard or two of pace. He also missed a game or two this season which I think helps him keep that level of intensity.

Yeah I agree with your reasoning. We need to get more run all over the park. Weid or M Brown aren’t good enough up front so let’s constantly rotate one of Jacko, Max and Trac through there. Brayshaw back to the wing( but not against himself and JJ rotating between wing and going in the middle). I’m happy to bring in Rivers and Dunstan to but not sure who goes out. Really don’t want to face the Lions without Max but we may need to rest him. He’s pretty banged up at the minute and if he goes out for an extended period our season is done. Is Daw fit?

Not sure he has the frame or boxing skills just yet!!

It’s also a bit of the chicken or the egg. Which came first?! Didn’t take been beaten in GF well so went out parting to drown his sorrows. Made the decision to go a step further and hit the powder. Anybody that has taken a bit of powder in their time knows your mental health tends to suffer afterwards.

And Griffen a few years ago. Bevo has lots of form playing this card.

Bulldogs will pull the mental health card and that will kill the story quick smart.

How does the process work with an AFL investigation? Can we appeal in same way we can with normal suspension arising from something that happened during a game? It would seem a massively unfair for DeGoey not to receive any ban but May gets more than the club enforced week.

Time to think about putting petty forward ?

He may have a few runs on the board to keep him safe me thinks

Assume Viney was having a chat about the 4 wacks we took after marks when 50 wasn’t paid

I’m getting as sick and tired of commentators being to gutless to call out poor umpire decisions as I am of poor umpire decisions

It’s probably easier to have that mindset when you can look at guys like Sparrow and JJ who took a couple of seasons to break into the first team.

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.