NeveroddoreveN

Really felt last year we just persevered with players out of form....ie Harmes/Tmac/Melksham/Brayshaw but with no real reserves competition we did not really get to see others showing their wares. Baker was one that put together good string of form to get him few late games but apart from that i can't think of any others that were able to force their way in/up. I hope we just don't persevere with players horribly out of form in the senior team. I really think players like Mitch Brown should have been played much more and earlier last year when it was obvious a bunch of our senior players were so far off AFL standard.

I really don't think Max is utilised that well honestly. He taps like 90% over his left shoulder and instantly whoever gets it is under the pump. How about drifting forward instead of back occasionally? Our backline is great, we are constantly outnumbered going forward and this is in part due to Max always dropping behind the play. When he takes the mark in the backline he rarely hands off the ball by hand and tends to give it straight back quite often with a garbage kick. We may look better with Daw or Jackson in the ruck and learn to utilise Max more around the ground. Prefer forward to back as mistakes are not as costly. He gets a heap of Hit outs which gives him All Australian positions by default. Do we actually gain midfield ascendancy because of his dominance?? Not sure we do for how dominant he could/should be!

Don't and too, not sure whether intentional but made me chuckle.

Sure to confuse and frustrate both players, umpires and supporters. Got a feeling this one will be altered during course of season. Utterly absurd rule. Would love to see 50 m penalties for the random gut punches, cheap hits etc, not this minor infringement that is going to be hard to adjust to. Most metres gained? Free kicks for standing the mark, going to be ridiculous haha!

Guys that get invited to train are actually paid quite well to do so. Just thought this point needed to be made as so many seem to think that we are getting a look for free, it is rarely the case. Like HB he would be getting around 1k a week just to train and impress. Wish him the best of luck!

I think you are missing the point, it is not whether or not you like the guy. What does that have to do with systematic racism remotely? It sounds like you perhaps have that tall poppy syndrome and are a little bit jealous of his money and opportunities in life. It does not honestly sound like he had a privileged upbringing either,. Trying to validate hate or dislike for somebody so strongly, for no real reason other than letting us all know how you feel about him personally seems fruitless.

I am thinking that responses like this you would have been one of the masses booing Adam Goodes for no reason at all. Do you personally know the guy, has he done anything to you, screwed your missus? Fmd the racists here are disgraceful.

Lmao you reading some tea leaves to decipher that this is professionally written? Common sense is clearly not that common. Just wow.

They sound pretty legitimate....A media team would not be so specific with all the nicknames, nor would not be saying Rhys is most annoying then implying it was joke and saying i love you Rhys. It seems pretty obvious it is legit. Why are people trying to refute what is actually written? None of what he says actually changes what the whole topic is about...systematic racicm. I think many do not quite understand the concept of it sadly.

Family issue he flew back home for briefly.

Just take a peek through the Ben Brown injury thread. He is not saying much that any of the drama queens have not bought up already. The difference seems to be when Cornes says it though he is living on another planet. I actually agree with him, it would be typical Melbourne to use this as an excuse to underperform. We (imo) have a weak mental side and get distracted like moths by the little things. I really hope we mature when it comes down to it though, many games are won lost through consistency of effort and application. We have all heard the no excuse line thrown about...but really there are no excuses, this is just a minor setback for our clubs aspirations.

Definitely some type of "Upper"!" LSD not ruling out either.

Definitely broader than just these three players, the whole team needs a bit of cohesion, to work a bit harder, to be a lot smarter with and without the ball. Watching us against the Doggies was painful last year. They had a simple plan and we just coughed it up repeatedly. Could sense the frustration from Petracca that day as he tried valiantly to lift the team by doing too much, but ultimately he too had no counter to their tactics either. They just let us win the ball at Max's feet, cover all options and strangle us to cough it up. They had the outsides covered every time, it happened throughout the entire game. More than anything i really feel we have the players to be highly competitive. Well we should. Our gameplan and tactics for matchday have been lacking for a while i reckon. I am bullish that Yze and Williams are going to get the place in order. A gameplan, development of players, and tactics for each opposition, we should be finals bound. VandenBerg was woeful last year, i really felt like he was fifty-fifty proposition by hand or foot. Was almost laughable at times under no pressure. Previous years i thought he was pretty decent in that regard, something changed this year though, and he had lost quite a lot of his pace i thought too. Viney 1 in 6 seems pretty high. Theoretically he gets 24 disposals, but murders 4 of them. Viney will be much better once we have a solid system in place...our whole team should be!

So where does he rate amongst all onballers for last year? I am looking currently at footywire and can't seem to make that filter/comparison. Realistically i have him as our 3rd best onballer....doubt he would be the number one at any of the other teams.

Just looked up clangers count from last season. We have 3 players within the top 20 which is not a good stat to have. 3. Clayton Oliver 69 total clangers. 12. Christian Petracca 60 clangers. 18 Jack Viney 55 clangers. Looking at previous years appears to be much the same in terms of clangers. Need to find ways to be much cleaner from what is supposedly a very good midfield. Adding turnover counts.... Equal 4th. Christian Petracca 84 turnovers for 2020 8. Jack Viney 80 turnovers 19 Clayton Oliver 77 turnovers Harmes/Brayshaw right up on these lists when they play onball too. We basically have bunch of onballers that undo a lot of their good work with careless skill errors and turnovers. Until we clean these areas up i don't think we will go far.

He is never in the top 50 players reviewed each year fwiw. Not exactly comparing onballers with wingers/half back flankers. I would think the areas he would definitely be in front are turnovers and clangers. He has large heart but plays with very little brains imo. I think top 200 would be accurate. To get an accurate picture of where he lies he should be compared with on ballers only. I doubt he would be in the top 30% of all onballers, would be surprised if he was!

4 years of foot issues now we signed him up. MFCSS!

Haha! I was typing it with a lopsided grin. He looks something that we don't have anyway, Tomlinson being the only one that i can think of that will be able to do the repeat runs, roughly his size. I can see why some think he may end up being our other winger. Of the 3 draftees he looks the more likely of them to play early.

Will be much better player than Jack Watts going by his highlights. Lets not heap pressure on the guy though, he needs to get into side and build from there. His size and being able to run all day i am sure makes a lot of us quite bullish about his prospects. Looking forward to seeing what he has got!

Who cares lol... We all have different opinions but apparently that is bad to you. Calling someone out is trolling btw.

He is actually adding content here and answering the Original Post....What are you actually adding here? You should be banned, this is trolling 101.

We wanted to change the way he played if i recall correctly, we wanted a far fitter, more mobile May who was going to get to and impact more contests....he broke down with new loads he was not used to. He has been the person who i would say shows more leadership than our actual captain, no sleight on Gawn but May is/has been inspirational. Should have been All Australian last year. He is an Ex- Captain who is in career best form and he is driven to have success before his career ends. Why would you wait to have him in leadership group, you'd only be punishing the team! Who would you have above him in the leadership stakes?

Gawn and Viney stay as Captain and VC. May (has to be in) Lever (should be in) Petracca (Has to be in from what i seen and heard of him, come a long way from an excited kid with ADHD, he will drive new standards) Langdon( Leads by example and deserves to be there) Ben Brown (humble bloke who will get the forward line organised and working as a group) Melksham cannot be considered on what he showed all last year (Not leading by example) Clayton Oliver should be close to leadership group (Needs to get have huge preseason much like Petracca last year. He has been driving new standards since he got to the Club but can take his game to giddy heights, we all seen it in bits and pieces...When he gets to these new levels he will win games off his actions and could see him easily winning a Norm Smith or Brownlow.

i think a lot of you seem to be looking at through your own moralistic stances, which is fine!. Most normal humans are going to condemn this type of behaviour. To infer that JP had mental health issues before all this smut came out would be somewhat right. I mean the text messages are as damning as the pictures he sent...Does he have a coke issue? If he does it is likely that he has some mental issues. The main point though is after the event. He got called out on front of national papers, following day it was more girls verifying he is a serial offender. Hawthorn told JP to stay away from training as they did not want the circus with media. There would have been discussions that they will go through the due process, but your career as an AFL player is on severe tenderhooks. I would say his career is done and dusted and he is wondering how he fell so fast, his head would be spinning ,a trip to the mental health ward may be not a card played but more fallout due to hugely stressful circumstances. Not condoning the acts at all but the fallout would be real for any human facing similar circumstances.

Bedford cam 2nd in our first time trial last season, behind ANB. Really would like to see Bedford given a bit more chance this year, has some good skills just needs to get more involved.