Ollie fan

Nowhere near ready yet.

I think you’re harsh on Tomlinson. And I think Mitch Brown has shown on Saturday what he showed us in a game or two last year – that is, he’s just not up to AFL. He gets brushed aside too easily and has no presence in a pack.

It’s not a final

It would be nicer watching Geelong getting flogged…

Out: Melksham, BBB, In: anyone else

Oliver, Petracca and Viney are better than anyone - including Carlton mids.

Apart from the Viney/Dunstan etc argument, BBB out, Weed in. BBB is looking very slow.

I don’t rate Richmond. Dusty has been a tremendous player and is still good but he is not the unstoppable force he once was. Cotchin, Riewoldt, Grimes are past their best. Bolton is a great player at times bug not a reliable match winner. Then quite a lot of players who are good but not A grade. They may well make the 8 but won’t go far after that. Brisbane is the really interesting one. The old saying is, a good defence will always beat a good attack. When we play them, that will really be tested.

The ladder is really interesting. It is completely clear that only two teams have any idea about defence – of course, we are one of them. so lovely to see Geelong on the slide.

I think they don’t worry about the opposition too much because our mix of defenders is so versatile. We have players like Hunt and Salem who can play on small or mid-sized forwards, May and Petty can play on tall forwards but May is not out of his depth on a medium-sized forward.Lever really does his own thing and cuts off attacks before they ever get to his opponent – in other words, probably the only thing that might bring a reaction would be if there were, for example, four hulking tall high marking forwards on a fine weather day. But how often does that happen? And if it does, then the opposition are very vulnerable to us bringing the ball to ground and running away with it.

REST LEVER!!!!

Without ranking them, but a few comments: I’m old enough to to remember Norm Smith, and how can you go past him? Bobby Stilton was good with a terrible team. Barassi was a disappointment, and I don’t agree he set it up for Northey. Northey came in and coached us to the wooden spoon, as I recall it, while he sorted out who were the real goers; then we took off with players who were not stars: Yeats, Bailey, Balls, Sugar Healy etc.. Got shafted at Brisbane because he couldn’t handle the merger. I don’t rate Balme at all. The talent in 1994 was as good as today (I know many will see that as heresy). His style was crap and so we ended up in 7th and had to play the prelim in Perth; no wonder we got wiped. Wasted a massive opportunity. The Reverend is a hero. Roos transformed us - with the help of a reasonable administration - from a total shambles to a professional club. Goody - every single match we play the commentators refer to how superbly drilled our defensive systems are - which is purely from coaching.

Poor Melksham is going to really struggle to get to his 200…

I would actually be very interested in the 1:1 stats for all our defenders. Are they available?

The AFL counsel argued Young could have gone to the side and avoided contact. What would the coach have said about that???

I saw him warming up pregame a week or so ago. The others were doing various things, but Hunt was spending his time with choco, practising hit up kicks.

Only one voter has included him, but I thought Hunt played a great game.

“At selection, we chose defenders who were very strong and had very quick reflexes which meant that they were able to withstand the Melbourne forward pressure and get kicks out of the backline fast and accurately. We then moved the ball into our forward line low, fast and hard, and our defenders moved up to create a press and lock the ball in.” (and we paid the umpires a LOT of money)

Adopting Sandeeson’s genius plan leaves them with a whole TWO players with which to actually win the game!

…. and really, “ employ a tagger”? On which one of our champions - and Clarrie learned how to beat a tagger about 3 seasons ago. ”Generate scores from forward-half intercepts” - well, duh! A bit easier said than done!

I would think that for a team to adopt a game plan which it is not used to, in an effort to beat us, is a recipe for disaster. As we have seen with the development of our own game plan, it takes years to ingrain it so it is played well. To try and adapt to a new game plan for a single match strikes me as totally unrealistic.

Or Sparrows effort last week to create a goal.

6 Oliver 5 Clarrie 4 no 13 3 Clayton 2 the red headed bloke 1 the best player in the leashes

Things we are learning: 1. Carlton can’t deal with pressure. 2. Freo have copied our game plan……. but 3. They don’t have May, Lever, Petracca, Oliver or Brown.

Goody was very clear that they won’t be. H/S protocols won’t change that. Presumably he’s thinking of sending TMac back to replace Lever.