furious d

Disagree entirely. We have a demonstrated inability to win when, on the odd rare occasion, we enter a game as favourite. I can't remember us winning as favourite since a "Relax we've got this" thread before a season opener we were humiliated in several seasons ago. We haven't won 2 games in a row since then either. AT some point, if we ever want to be a competitive footy club we need to be able to win the games we should and we need to be able to win games consecutively. The next 3 weeks provide a golden opportunity to tick these boxes and take a definite step forward as a footy club. The concern for me is that while we could take a step forward, we could just as easily take two steps back. Win 2 or 3 and it will definitely be a step forward in our development, lose all 3 and it's 2 steps back.

Before I can have any confidence in our ability to make finals next year I'd like to see a few thing happen on the run home this season. First and most important is we finish the year off. Last year post bye was an absolute shambles. This year, with the draw we have, we should get to 8 wins, if we finish with less than 7 we've gone backwards again. Next we need to show we can win games against teams that are inferior to us. We don't have a great record in the few games we've started favourite in the last few years. (This is just going from memory so I could be wrong) We'll most likely be favourite against Carlton and Brisbane at least and really need to win these two. We need to show an ability to back up, it's been a long time since we won 2 in a row and you won't play finals if you can't do that. We have 2 pretty good opportunities to do it on the run home, the Ess, Bris, St K block and Carl, WB late in the year. If we can tick those boxes I'll be pretty confident we'll be well in the mix for finals in 2016

Rubbish, he's played a few good games, he's played at least as many woeful ones. Played well today though.

Ha, b e a t is censored, only on a Melbourne forum. We're rarely beaten because we're usually too busy being reamed

I have rarely berated players on this forum in my near decade here. I've always thought if you've gotnothing good to say about someone say nothing, that ends here. I'm sick of these pea hearted maggots disgracing the jumper I love, so here goes. Jeremy Howe can just fcuk off now. I'm sick of padding out the resume of scumbags who take our money, give no effort and then walk at the end of the year. Delist him now, play him at Casey, whatever, just never make me watch this [censored] give his half arsed efforts in the red and blue ever again. Someone put a fork in Grimes, he's done. We need to add a career consultant to our coaching staff because a lot of these blokes will be looking for a new job in October. Spencer isn't a footballer or an athlete and he's light years away from being an AFL standard ruckman. I'd [censored] this spud in a contest and I'm in my 40's. Jamar is bog ordinary but he's a million times better than Jake. What exactly does Dawes offer? Getting us to minimum salary cap spend is about it. Matt Jones, Michie, Pigdog, Toumpas and Bail aren't up to it, all must go at years end. Crossy has a crack but time is catching up, the fact he has a crack puts him ahead of half our list but the end is coming for him. Lumumba caught Melbournitis quicker than most of our recruits. We usually get one decent year out of mature recruits before they turn to crap. Tyson, Cross and Vince have followed the traditional route and become Melbourne standard players in year 2 here. I look forward to Garlett, Vanders and Frost all being putrid next year as is standard for our recruits. So how do we get out of this hole? Buggered if I know, soon it'll be buggered if I care.

Today went a small way toward ending the pessimistic mindset I've acquired in the last 8 years. Plenty more performances like today before I can erase the accumulated scars of the last near decade but today was definitely a step in the right direction. Three times I thought we were going to get overrun and three times we steadied and kicked away. Whenever we've been challenged in the past we've surrendered quicker than a French president, can't really believe the resilience we showed today, resilience!, us!, can't believe it.

6- McDonald- Was a rock today, grabbed everything that came near him. 5- Garlett- If he had of kicked straight would've been best on, very lively. 4- Jones- Solid Jones-like performance. 3- Watts- So reliable with ball in hand. 2- Viney- Beat Ablett and won clearances, his career obituaries were the most premature I've ever seen. 1- Cross- was Cross, great get this guy, sets the professional standard our kids need to see on field and off.

Gee the new guys were good. Garlett could've kicked 5, Brayshaw lays 9 tackles, Jesse takes 4 contested grabs kicks 2 and split a pack to pieces resulting in a goal, Lamumbas goal couldn't have come at a better time, Newton snagged a couple, Frosty was solid and Vandenberg looks an inspired rookie pickup. I think the recruiting staff deserve a few votes today.

So, this year, this is the way I see it. 0-2 wins- Disband the club it's unfixable. Well maybe not but the despair would be palpable, all hope would be gone and I'd be seriously considering whether or not to renew and commit to a rebuild of a rebuild of a rebuild. As a Melbourne supporter I can't rule this out as a real possibility. 3-4 wins- Fail, but not the Armageddon scenario above. Just your run of the mill depressing waste of a year we're all accustomed to. 5 wins- An F+, still a fail but an improved fail. 6 wins- This might just constitute a pass but would still be disappointing. When your kid brings home a D- it might be a pass but that doesn't mean you're happy with it, same applies here. 7-8 wins- Solid improvement and given where we're coming from I wouldn't be unhappy with this as long as we're out of the bottom 4. 9-10 wins- This is what I'm hoping for, would set us up for a genuine crack at finals in Roosy's last year in charge and would give us back some real respect as a club. 11-12 wins- Huge improvement, knocking on the door or maybe just sneaking into finals. I'd be very happy and this place would be buzzing in anticipation for 2016. 13+ wins- Finals. Roos would be the messiah and the whole football world would be lauding his genius. As a Melbourne supporter I can't rule this out as a real possibility.

Great work DeeVoted, count me in.

You don't even need to press play to see that is a free kick. The Suns player has both arms around Jack and the ball in 5 metres away. Jack was ordinary today but that clip is posted by a moron who knows nothing about football. It is illegal to tackle a player who hasn't taken possession of the ball, poor from the umps, not Jack. I wish you would get a holiday from this site for such a disgraceful comment, mods please ban this scumbag. That video showed Jacks smarts, he did the right thing and if he wasn't illegally tackled he would have turned his man inside out and been running toward goal. I'm not saying Watts played well or has met expectations I'm merely pointing out that that video is the wrong 5 seconds to illustrate Watts' failings. How that isn't holding the man but Abletts free in the last was I'll never know.

When we had the boring box logo of our jumper my 4 year old niece thought we were the envelopes.

Just adding my opinion to a conversation steve, it's what you do on a forum. Please show me where I claimed you said the opposite.

I'll take being trounced in one stat over being trounced in every aspect of the game like we were last year. Nobody is claiming we don't have stuff to work on, but whichever way you look at it we've been much better this preseason.

After the last few seasons and the "relax we've got this" threads heading into round 1, I'm a bit nervous about this game. Yes we look better this year and our opponent looks worse but I won't be confident until we are more goals in front than there are minutes left. Any predictions around here that we'll [censored] St Kilda make me even more nervous. On the Viney thing, I don't think he walks straight into the side just because he's declared fit this year, we have a helluva lot more midfield depth than the past few seasons. He needs to get a run or two into his legs and hopefully he can do that over the next couple of weeks. When up and running there's no doubt he's best 22. Does anyone know if Casey have a practice match in the week between the Hawks game and round 1? If so he's still a chance to press his claims for a spot in the 22 for the season opener. I really can't see Michie missing out if he gets through this week unscathed, he's been very good in the preseason. Don't mind you getting excited C&B but I reserve the right to be a bit nervous. We haven't won in round 1 for what seems like an eternity, don't think we've won in round 2 for a fair while either. Edit: really, f l o g is censored, so i have to type easily beat or win by a fair margin. The auto censor around here is out of control.

Our recruiting last year is looking bloody good atm, Vince, Michie, Tyson and Cross have transformed our midfield. Geelong have 5.5 from turnovers, if we can get them down to an acceptable level we'll be able to compete with anyone.

Too late for me GS. I'm horribly conflicted atm, want them punished to make sure this never happens again but picked up Watson as my first pick in a super coach draft league. It'll be a shame for the players if they cop infractions for having trusted the coaching and medical staff, but it will make the players realise that it's them that is responsible for what goes in their bodies. If players are rubbed out we'll never see such blatant abuse of that trust again because no player will meekly sit there while a club injects them repeatedly with dodgy substances. Hird, Robson, Dank, Robinson and Reid and any other member of the coaching/medical staff who was complicit in this should never work in football again. And yes Reid was complicit, he didn't do anywhere near enough to stop this and the players trusted him. At best he was a coward and his cowardice could cost the players up to 2 years of their careers.

I don't rate Spencer, hope he can prove me wrong but I think when fit Jamar is still the better option. The only thing holding Max back is his lack of a tank, hopefully he can stay fit long enough to develop one.

Nine players set for intra-club return Key forwards Chris Dawes, Jesse Hogan and Jack Fitzpatrick; ruckmen Mark Jamar and Max Gawn; versatile tall Jack Watts and smalls Jack Viney and Dean Kent, Shannon Byrnes are on track to play. That's from the club website, Watts "is on track" to play apparently.

Disagree, I'd like to see us go as close to full strength as possible against Geelong and Hawthorn. Practice playing the way Roos wants us to play. I don't see any reason to deliberately go into round 1 with a completely underdone forward line. We have winnable games early in the season, we need to be as well drilled as possible early to take advantage of that. We only have 2 more games against opposition before the season starts.

I follow Roosy, Roosy is my messiah.

The Queen's actual birthday is April 21, can't see any reason the date of the public holiday will change. It'll just be the King's birthday weekend. Charlie's birthday in Nov 14, we don't need another holiday so close to Melbourne cup day.

If we can be competitive in the disposal count, inside 50's, and clearances, I'll be wrapt. We were woeful in those areas last year and there is no reason we can't be at least competitive with most of our best mid's playing.

Those complaining about our injured talls should be happy with this quote from the website. Well see a number of players returning and playing their first game for the year, including a number of talls: Max Gawn, Mark Jamar, Chris Dawes, Jack Fitzpatrick and Jesse Hogan. Wed anticipate that the majority of players in this game would be preparing for our second NAB Challenge game in Alice Springs and the following practice match against Hawthorn at Casey. Sounds like we'll have close to a full list to pick from by the second practice match, fingers crossed nobody gets injured during the NAB challenge. Can't remember the last time we went into a season, or a game for that matter, with anywhere near a full list to pick from. Go Dees!

Pretty happy to read this quote from Rawlings this morning "We're pretty serious about the NAB Challenge, so you'll see a pretty strong side from us next week," Rawlings said. I don't think we have the luxury of trying things and rotating players through the preseason. This team is being rebuilt from scratch and we need as much time as possible to allow the players to get used to each other and the game plan. The situation is completely different to Roosy's first preseason at the swans and he's too smart not to know that. For me the scoreboard will be of interest but it won't be the most important measure of our preseason. I'll be hoping there isn't any of those patches that were all too common last year, where the opposition slam on 8 goals in a row as our boys go missing for 15 minutes to a quarter. With us playing 2 top 4 teams and a top 8 team from last year, getting through the preseason without any of those run ons from our opponents would be a serious improvement. So when multiple goals are scored against us i hope to see some sort of ability to shut the game down for a bit to stop them scoring. I'll also be looking to see some improvement in some key statistical measures. A team who gets so comprehensively towelled up in possession every week can't really hope to be competitive. We were last for average disposals, 40 less than the afl average and 16 less than GWS who were the next worst team. that's something akin to playing 2 players short every week. We need more ball, contested and uncontested so I'll be watching in the hope of seeing an improved ability to win contested ball and keep control of it once we've got it. The other stat that killed us last year was inside 50's. Equal last in the comp and way off the league average. With our potential (I know I hate that word too) froward line this year we need to get in inside 50 to give those blokes a chance. Given equal opportunity and supply I think our forward line could easily become one of the most potent in the league. The inside 50 differential will be an important thing to keep an eye on during the preseason to measure any improvement. We were last for centre clearances and need a much improved setup at centre bounces. I expect that to improve with Cross and Tyson coming in to help Nate Jones and take some pressure of Viney. George Stone could also prove to be a great recruit in this regard. I didn't see a lot of footy last year but I read here often that our rucks would tap the ball to their own feet. It's just a guess but I think this is a lack of confidence in their teammates ability to win the ball in the clear. I used to play a bit of ruck and just from personal experience if I thought we were outgunned in the guts I was loathe to tap the ball into space because it would usually fly off towards the oppositions goals. Anyway I'm pretty optimistic about the season ahead. There is plenty of improvement to be wrung out of this list and for now I've got faith in Roos and his coaching panel to be able to achieve it. Early losses won't bother me too much as long as they're not floggings.