Hopeful Demon

Ha ha. Of coarse Green gets the first goal.

Are you serious? 2019 was one of our worst years in terms of injuries. Neither Lever nor May, who are easily our two best defenders, played more than 10 games due to constant injuries. Tmac did his knee after kicking 6 goals against Carlton and was unable to play for the rest of the season. Melksham, who had been in career best form, got injured very early in the season and wasn't seen again until around round 21. Our forwards were so hampered by injuries to the point where we were forced to play Hunt and Petty in the forwardline. Our performance in 2019 was obviously a shamble, but to say that we have "no excuses for it" is just ludicrous. If our players remain fit in 2022, our supporters should have every right to be confident.

You keep saying that we'll lose to Port Adelaide, West Coast, the bulldogs and Geelong but our record this season shows that we have been much more convincing against top 8 sides than we have been against mid-range and bottom teams. It shouldn't come as a surprise if we manage to beat three of the four teams mentioned above, if not all of them.

I find these two comments very unfair. Oliver's ability to win the ball was crucial and he provided some great run through the midfield. I don't think he should be judged based on a couple of skill errors. He was clearly our best midfielder tonight. I find the criticism of May bewildering. He was absolutely unstoppable in defence and he won almost every one-on-one contest. He was best on ground, in my opinion.

The hostility of the Essendon supporters was just as noticeable on TV. If they want Essendon to stop conceding 50m penalties and free kicks, then they should ask their players to be a bit more disciplined on the field.

He still nailed set shots at crucial times, though. Without him we wouldn't have won the game.

We were fairly scrappy throughout most of the night but we still got the job done. This game was another reminder that even when we're not playing our best footy we're still finding ways to win. The Melbourne of 2019-2020 certainly would not have maintained the lead in the final quarter. Lever and May were immense. Brayshaw's slowly making progress. Langdon was very good, as usual. If anything needs improvement it would be our forwardline. It was quite obvious from the beginning that we needed either Mitch Brown or Ben Brown. Let's take the four points and move on to next week.

Great goal. All we need to do from here is bury them.

The more I watch Langdon play the luckier I feel that we recruited him.

Shut up Stringer, you sook.

Spargo has been excellent, as always.

Surprising given that he's often a smart footballer.

The scoreboard doesn't reflect how dominant we were that quarter. We desperately need to start taking our chances and stop allowing Essendon to look capable of scoring when they get the ball in their forward line. This was a problem we had in 2019.

If Gawn and Jackson remain injury free for the rest of the year, I can't see Daw getting a game for us. We basically selected him as depth because of his height and his ability to kick the occasional goal up forward.

I've noticed that often. And what's even worse is that I've seen some people on this forum celebrate when a player who they don't like gets injured. Pretty gutless, really.

Interesting how we have "AFL players who can't do the basics" but can still be 11-2 going into the bye ?

I think you might be right. I can see the next leader being either Lever or Petracca. I'm actually confident that Trent Rivers will also be a future leader for us. He's only into his second season and he already plays like a senior footballer. Also helps that half backs are known to be good captains.

Gawn has set ridiculously high expectations. He probably hasn't been as outstanding as he was in the first 6 or so games of the season but I still think that he was among our best in our wins against the bulldogs and Brisbane. We just need to accept that he's not going to have an extremely dominant game every week.

I'm not going to justify the way Weideman played today but our entire forward line was dysfunctional. It gave many memories of 2019, when we were dominating inside 50s but not taking any of our chances. Yes, Weideman needs to lift against Essendon if he keeps his spot but you can say the same about all the other forwards.

I'm still hopeful that we can win but we just need to get out of the habit of playing catch up football in the second half. We may have gotten away with it against North and Brisbane, but we won't get away with it every time.

He hasn't been great but I'm hoping to see Mcdonald lift in the second half as well. When he lifts, the team lifts. The second half against Brisbane was a great example of that.

Please don't single out Oliver. He's been one of our few competitive players this quarter.

Oliver was far from our only problem that quarter.

Collingwood basically performed how I expected this quarter. I knew they'd be competitive.

Agree. I think that if we had a complete season in 2020 we would've been well placed to make the finals given that the momentum appeared to be going our way in the last two rounds.