BW511

A very enjoyable little piece from the Melbourne media team.

As mentioned, Brown definitely looks like he put in.

It’s still not a team that would scare the top tier, but it looks infinitely better than last year. Jackson is going to be interesting, it’s going to be very hard to not play a 199cm bloke that puts in

I agree with this 100%. I never watch a night game past half time, the break is just long enough to realise I've probably had more beers than I should and cut myself off and call it a night. If the break was halved, I'd just keep plowing on

Appears we will have a 200cm big-big bodied mid running round very soon Also, haven't seen a pic of Gaz in a while, that was a surprise!

I think this is the logic recruiters use. Someone like ANB springs to mind. He's always around the contest with his elite running, but is never doing anything WOW

Would love to see some of the permanent mids challenging for the top 5 later in the pre-season

His demonland podcast contained every Goodwin cliche under the sun.

If they all make it fit and firing to Rd 1, that's great, but we still need a rotation or two.

The thing I like about us potentially landing Green is that he will be playing senior footy almost immediately. By all accounts, he could waltz past 2 of our 4 starting mids and we will be better for it. As alluded to in the Rd 1 starting 22 thread, we are still light on across the ground for high quality.

It seems pretty simple doesn't it - practice executing your skills as much as possible so that it can be repeated under fatigue/pressure/expectation.

This is absolutely true, but the pros still do a mountain of volume. A good friend of mine rides in the world tour (has won multiple grand tour stages) and made a change in his training 3-4 years ago which has benefited him greatly. He dropped from 5-6 hours a day to 3-4. That's still 20+ hours a week of training not inclusive of pilates, gym etc. For your weekend warrior, there is a lot of gains to be made from High Intensity, particularly when they are time crunched.

I am quite passionate about cycling and have read some respected international level coaches who believe the volume is key, versus intensity. This is to get people doing well in events ranging from 90mins full gas or 5-6 hours. It's also worth noting a guy that trains for the 100m sprint still does an absolutel mountain of hours of running throughtout the year for a 9-10 second event. AFL players do very little training compared to many high level international sports, but we have the added variable of body impact/collision which requires management during the week.

I think our shepherding/blocking or lack thereof is disgraceful. I don't remember too many great shepherds in recent times, you have to want to do it for each other and our blokes didn't in 2019

It's probably fair to say we lacked intensity for a large portion of this year, so having two new gun runners will allow the mids to actually rest in 2020. They may have only dropped off their intensity marginally during games due to fatigue, but that is the difference between a win/loss in today's game. Hope the plan works, but there is also a bit more work to do around the ground to get things humming.

I've seen a lot of positivity around him, just don't see a 177cm, sub 70kg, kid getting the opportunities at AFL level

Will be interesting to see how we go on draft day, I'm concerned that we are expecting kids to impact immediately, reality is they will be 2-3 years off having much meaningful impact. Re: Weightman - I'm very skeptical of a small, lightly framed 18yo making any impact next year. Could very well be a great pickup down the track, but Goodwin & Mahoney need results now I don't know anything about the various prospects, but we could use an upgrade on every line.

Agree. I think 2019 has shown just how good he was, despite some flaws

If everyone gets back to their 2018 form, we are still 2 goals a game down (Hogan) We had a lot of games decided by less than 2 goals

I love Fritsch as much as the next guy, but are we confident he can kick enough goals when teams put more work into him as a permanent forward?

We desperately need someone who can help get back the 47 goals Hogan gave us in 2018

I just had a bit of a browse through some 2019 stats on goal kickers for Brisbane, Collingwood, GWS, Richmond and Melbourne. Brisbane: 20+ Goals - 7 Players (Cameron & Hipwood combined for 92) 10+ Goals - 12 Players Collingwood: 20+ Goals - 5 players (De Goey & Mihocek combined for 70) 10+ Goals - 13 Players GWS: 20+ Goals - 4 players (Cameron & Finlayson combined for 120) 10+ Goals - 11 Players Richmond: 20+ Goals - 4 players (Dusty & Lynch combined for 95) 10+ Goals - 9 Players Melbourne: 20+ Goals - 3 players (T-Mac & Weid combined for 29) 10+ Goals - 7 Players Yes, we can all agree we had an ordinary year, but scoring power still has to be a major concern? Plus we are talking about moving our second highest goal scorer into the midfield for more minutes

And T-Mac didn't do anything in 2019 to suggest he should be relied upon either

That ^ list doesn't promise 14-16 goals a week

It’s been mentioned a couple of times, but the fact Langdon is always on the move and at speed, will improve us instantly. For a team that relied on chaos, we were very flat footed in 2019. The way Richmond run the ball is purely due to the fact that at any given point, 80% of their side is trying to run to create an option or space for someone else. If we can get back to running for each other, it will go a long way to helping us jump back up the ladder. Both T-Mac and Weid are lead up forwards, so they should be licking their lips at the thought of genuine movement on either wing