Temporarily Hopeful Demon

There's never a stress-free game against Sydney.

Already love Hunter as a player.

Yeah nah

Great quarter. Hibberd's showing that he's too good for the VFL.

Basically a carbon copy of the West Coast game in 2021. The only difference is that we were the ones playing catch up this time.

What's with our inability to take a mark?

We're miraculously still in this game.

Easily our worst quarter in three years. Yes, we're missing Gawn and May but surely our mids can win a clearance.

What a way to start the season! We looked so much sharper than we did towards the end of 2022. We were faster with our ball movement and our forwardline looked very settled. Gawn was simply outstanding. Lever was BOG in my opinion. I lost count of the number of goals he saved, especially during the second quarter. Also a shout out to Tomlinson. People were questioning his selection but he made a huge difference to our backline.

So much for the myth that Lever can't function without May.

Disagree. We've all seen what Pickett can do when he's at his best. And 2021 showed that Brown and Tmac can be very damaging when they're both fit.

I feel that Petracca is badly under-represented here. In terms of natural talent and watchability, he's very high in the list of best Melbourne players over the past 20 years. If he improved his goalkicking he'd be absolutely unstoppable.

The best 5 players of my lifetime (20 years) would be: 1. Gawn 2. Oliver 3. Petracca 4. Neitz 5. Yze

Oliver is so glorious to watch when he's on the outside.

The Gawn/Grundy combo looks top notch already.

If Hunter plays like this during the actual season then he'll end up being the recruit of the year.

It would be helpful if our record at the MCG matches our record outside Victoria.

They're easily the two best ruckmen of the modern era. As @DubDee said, it's very hard to split them. That being said, Gawn's 2018 season was probably better than anything Cox produced.

1. Langdon and Hunter become a formidable wing duo. 2. Brown regains his fitness and kicks 40+ goals. 3. Fritsch finally gets an AA jacket.

He's already had two seasons in which he's kicked 40+ goals. That's insane for a 21-year-old small forward.

He's off his head. Langdon was exactly the kind of player we were lacking when we recruited him.

Oh well. Weideman's career at Melbourne hasn't panned out in the way we hoped but he'll always live with that Elimination Final.

Oliver's football resume to date: -3× All Australian -4× Best and Fairest -2× AFLCA player of the year -Premiership player It's insane to think that this guy is barely half way through his career.

Sickening to watch Geelong play well. And a comment on how we let things slip up.

We've only woken up when it's too late. Infuriating.