BoBo

Essendon play the kind of footy that will stand up in finals. They look so organised. Very well coached.

OH BOY WOWEE

Can’t agree with this enough!!! Incredible band

I didn’t know that bounce made a difference, but that’s a terrible rule. If the only option to effect a contest is to leap and spoil the ball (which is fine if the ball doesn’t go out of bounds), then the umpires should be giving the benefit of the doubt to the spoiling player as long as he doesn’t have another option. He clearly wasn’t trying to deliberately put the ball over the line as the main action, he was doing the only thing he could do to effect the contest. Paying deliberate out of bounds is when you have other options (in theory). Not sure what else Brayshaw could have done other than not even go for the contest, sit back and wait for the opposition player to collect the ball. That is not in the spirit of Aussie Rules.

Need to vent about this. Brayshaws deliberate out of bounds whilst leaping to spoil a pass to a Richmond player. What the F was he supposed to do differently? Push in the back in full view of the umpire on the same wing by the tall young kid for Richmond. (Don’t get me started on pushing in the back in general, but this was as CLEAR as it gets) Genuinely don’t like umpire bashing, but the ANB non-50 and the two I mentioned (probably many others), I cannot see how those outcomes were reached and how there could be so many horrible decisions in one game.

Happy new recruit to the club 🤗

Mate this is embarrassing even for the game day thread.

If my teenage years are anything to go by, there absolutely was a trespasser. I was like a termite up the walls of Melbourne train system.

Freo are a basket case. 6.40 onwards: Lobb said in February that the coaching staff at Freo were pointing him in the wrong direction (not great to say publicly), but given the above clip and the fact they were only 18 points down when that happened, that they are desperate for a win, I’d love to know what the coaching staff told the players in the lead up, as they were clearly fixated on Lobb. (not saying the coaches told the players to go after Lobb)

Imagine us playing Geelong down there with no May, Lever, Petty, Gawn, Fritsch, BBB, VR. Tomlinson, Turner and Smith on Cameron, Hawkins and Henry? Yikes…

I’m so glad you mentioned Mackay getting off… that was patent absurdity. [censored] ridiculous. I have no idea what the AFL argued, but I’ve watched it a few times (as I and my Carlton friend that sent me the clip, couldn’t believe he got off) and there’s 3 problems that obviously the AFL (incredibly) doesn’t categorise as contributions towards suspension. 1. McKay is looking at Sheezels head the entire time he’s running towards him. Almost universally in sport, you’re looking at your target. So his focus was solely on Sheezels head. 2. Sheezel kicks the ball a fraction of a second before McKay hits him. McKay could have easily attempted a smother but CHOSE to put his elbows out and hit Sheezel. So he chose to hit Sheezel and not try and smother the ball. 3. He bee lines Sheezel and his ‘defensive’ action, running at full pace, is to put his arms out in the way you describe. Not a tackle, not a smother, not a hip and shoulder, but elbows out at neck height. He got off as it was argued he ‘pushed’ Sheezel in a defensive manner. Running at full pace, not looking at the ball but at Sheezels head, not choosing to smother or try and tackle, but raising his arms, elbows up and hitting him barely shoulder height. That constitutes defensive apparently.

If they want the booing to stop sooner, Hinkley and Cornes probably could have tried to control the narrative and made this story about how good of a game JHF had, and just dispassionately acknowledge that he received negative attention. But they’ve accentuated the booing aspect, so now that’s the story. Which means in people’s heads, booing and JHF are tied together.

This game has really knocked us down a peg or two. If we lose to Richmond, we could be out of the 8 going into round 7….

Hard to argue with that. Goodwin backs us in to regain momentum mostly by depending on us to win back contested ball. Yesterday and the lions felt the same purely because they knew we were going to be predictable and were set up to absorb it. It’s clear now that teams have the blue print on how to beat us and will do it all year unless Goodwin can make it so we aren’t so predictable which plays into opposition plans. Wouldn’t mind seeing us switch more to be honest just to make oppositions have to change their set up, up the ground. We kick it straight to a contest constantly in which Essendon was winning at ground level. I don’t understand the point in persisting with that when we are getting outworked around the ball.

Wait, so you’ve gone from ‘spargo was trying to pick up the ball’ (which he was doing the furthest thing from) and now trying to argue that Spargo wasn’t ducking, but ‘crouching’. Be honest, are you seriously arguing Spargo was not ducking? ‘Whether Redmann was trying to hit spargo in the head or otherwise, does not matter. The fact is, Spargo was hit in the head by Redmann’ You’re arguing for players to be able to duck (or crouch) INTO players coming at them and no matter what the context, no ifs or buts, a free or report should be given if their head gets hit. Players can just choose to duck at any stage no matter what and they’ll get rewarded. Players like Ginnivan and Weitman will kick 100 goals a season each with what you’re saying.

It is sacrosanct but you can’t do what Spargo did and it be called a free against Redmann. If that was the case, players could just duck head first into the everything initiating head high contact and get frees. Spargo put himself in that position unnecessarily. Had aeons to get rid of the ball but chose to duck like that and it’s clear that Redmann wasn’t trying to hit his head.

In the context that it happened yes. It’s not ideal but nothing illegal happened. It wasn’t a ‘whack’ it was a collision. You can’t change direction, leading with your head whilst ducking towards a player running at you, after taking a mark, running off the mark, stopping dead, turning into said tackling player. It was Spargo that put himself in that position. He could’ve kicked it, but he didn’t, he tried to evade whilst putting his head down. Redmann didn’t do anything wrong. He didn’t bump Spargo, he went to tackle him and Spargo ducked straight into the tackle.

He wasn’t picking up the ball though, he took a mark off a dees player from half back then ran off the mark towards the forward line. Redmann was running at him, spargo then stopped and tried to change direction, ducked his head toward redmann to try and evade and Redmann collected his head with his hip. It was holding the ball all day long and Spargo unfortunately put himself into a bad position. There want anything Redmann did wrong if you watch it again,

The tackling especially! Just no intensity today

Brad Scott was the main factor (not the only) in why we were beaten today. Completely pulled Grundy’s pants down and exposed that he has virtually no defensive impact. I think we can cope with one of Gawn/Lever/May out of our backline, but not two of them. Took out the confidence of our backline to even attempt to intercept, which is our biggest strength back there. They also just worked way harder than us. Had options every time they got the ball and just like the Brisbane game, they also had time and we had none. They basically ran harder and played harder around the ball. Our kicking into F50 mostly to their defenders advantage and the fact that they ran so hard meant, even if they didn’t mark it in their forward line(which they did a lot) there were more Essendon players at the drop of the ball than Melbourne players. Mostly disappointed that we were so outworked.

How many times have we kicked it to a pack of 1 of us, 3 of them in our F50 and they STILL win the ball at ground?

That passage looked much better. Finding connection. Go dees!

I could be being pedantic, but those are lions. Haha

Collingwood beat St Kilda just, we beat Essendon by a few and we’re back on top. Let’s gooooooo

Get there Dees fans. Should be a brilliant night.