Great Northern Summer

Probably because he wasn’t at the ground. On ‘gardening leave’ already.

Unfortunately GWS have watched too much of us over the last two weeks and failed to capitalise on shots on goal. This game is still alive :-(

He's the best player in the comp hands down

I'm going to sound like a broken record. This is also a rhetorical question. Why didn't we pick up Jesse Hogan when Freo wanted to ditch him? He's exactly what we need!

Giants ain't losing this. Port's defence is deplorable. So loose. Hopefully another two wins for them after this!

That’s exactly what I’ve been saying for a while… it’ll come out one way or another eventually. In my view, without any in-house knowledge, I suspect there was a massive personality clash with someone important at the club (likely to be either the coach or the captain - quite possibly the latter). The media stuff was all drivel, they always have to say the positive optimistic stuff. I deleted my instagram not long ago but you can see by that, the changes in Grundy. I followed him. He’s a frequent user/poster. The only club stuff he was posting was him and Choco together, even catch ups with old Collingwood teammates… compare that to earlier in the season, a massive change.

Last night’s game rivals Essendon’s loss in the 1999 PF as the biggest choke I’ve ever seen in a final. Essendon made a pact the following year to seek revenge, to leave no stone unturned. They didn’t even sing the club song after wins due to the bigger picture. I realise the game has changed a lot these days and little separates most clubs with facilities, preparation and sports science, whereas back then the ‘haves’ and ‘have nots’ were more evident. However, I whether we might head down a similar path to this and 2024 takes us to the promised land?

Goodwin’s explanation was they wanted the “bigger body out there”. Does Goodwin realise the “bigger body” didn’t get a touch in the final quarter?

Doubt he would have directly (he wants to be paid), but I have no doubt he may have indirectly through body language, etc. As I’ve said before, something just doesn’t add up here. The combo didn’t work after a dozen games and it was thrown in the bin, remembering a number of those games were played in the wet, which was always going to negate the benefit of two rucks together. To simply be cut adrift where it didn’t even appear he was really in the frame for selection just indicates something else was at play (ie maybe a fall out or personality clash with someone important within the club). Could be wrong. I’m sure we will find out one day, either when he departs in a few months, or when his career is over and he tells all.

The coaching department didn’t think it was a viable way to win a flag because whilst we looked great going forward, we exposed ourselves the other way. It was similar to the way Collingwood play now. Maybe it wasn’t that bad after all, just that our personnel in defence was the main issue (ie Frost and OMac holding it up).

Every time I’ve walked past Roffey she has looked completely unapproachable. I actually walked past her yesterday hours before the game sitting on a couch in the mcc alone. Didn’t exactly give a positive impression that she was the ‘president of the people’. Poor body language. That’s my impression anyway. Maybe just attention your correspondence directly to the board.

The idea that teams have head coaches that do everything is misguided. That changed 20 or so years ago, give or take. In various cases, the coaching role is split up - for instance the head coach might be the ‘people coach’ and an assistant/s the ‘technical/strategy coach’. Clearly the case with Collingwood - Leppitsch is actually coaching them, McRae is the positive morale and media man. I sense it’s probably the case with Melbourne - we all lay blame on Goodwin because he’s the face of the coaching department, but it’s probably not him calling the shots.

Goodwin used the word ‘learnings’ in his presser too last night 🤦‍♂️

What part of the game plan? You mean the kicking at goal game plan? I agree there. We dominated the last two weeks with our game plan, so I’m not really sure why we’d want to move away from it when our list has been built for it and it’s proven (not just by us but previous premiers). I’ll say again, our goal kicking cost us 2023, not our game plan. Recruiting a few more skilful players would help too.

He actually used the word ‘learnings’ at his presser last night too. I have no words.

Give away our first round pick for McKay (Carlton’s). Carlton don’t need two forwards. They’re better without. They may consider this.

Truth be told, AFL coaches get great tenure and loyalty. If this was UK or American sport, he’d be walking on eggshells with the list he’s got and the finals output over the past two seasons. Yes, goal kicking yips cost us both games, but management/coaches wear it. EPL team managers get sacked months into the following season after winning silverware.

He’s only contracted until 2030.

Like a lot of posters, for some reason, last week's loss felt more gut wrenching than tonight. We owned Collingwood after 1/4 time. The path was clear for us - we win that - we get a home Preliminary Final against an interstate team, leading to a likely Grand Final appearance. That loss hurt more than any loss I can remember, perhaps since the 2002 Semi Final (which was one that got away). Unfortunately, tonight was predictable. Too predictable. Scores were almost level at 1/2 time, yet we totally owned the game in the 2nd half. The fact we could never get more than a goal ahead despite controlling general play almost entirely against a side that stopped running (for the most part) was the problem. Unlike last week where we couldn't get space in our forward 50, this week we could, mainly because the game wasn't played entirely in our forward half. On a dry night, we just botched chance after chance. To kick 4-5 behinds in a row late in the last 1/4, when most of those shots were getable, was nothing others than disgraceful. That was on top of all of our other missed set shots, when Carlton scored most of theirs. To have our captain miss two sitters and not sheppard the ball through when Oliver kicked at goal late - just mind boggling. To have zero composure in the last two minutes, despite all of our efforts to ice the game, you honestly couldn't make this up. When the dust settles, we will realise our game does stack up and tonight's loss had nothing to do with poor coaching (albeit it was strange TMac wasn't subbed off for Schache). If we won last week or this week, it wouldn't be questioned. I, like everyone else here, get a little sick of references to 'expected score' and 'key stats and takeaways' after losses; however, they are accurate references. Irrelevant to progress and winning finals, but they do show that we dominated two high pressure finals in front of big crowd. It all came down to goal kicking, which frankly is purely psychological and a little bit of luck (hitting the post regularly is just that). I've just never seen a team choke as badly in front of goal in consecutive big games - I remember North in the '98 GF, Essendon in the '99 PF and Geelong in the '08 GF as other bad examples, which were costly (probably costing all premierships), but these instances didn't happen 'twice in a row'. The old adage that the best teams have the best 'worst 6' in their team out of all contenders, in my view, isn't quite accurate. It's more about your top 6-8 players. They need to be stand outs. The rest are role players. We will see some turnover of our role players. We do need more precision and execution from our top line players. Two of our top 6-8 are arguably Lever and Viney, and they arguably cost us the game at the very end with poor decisions and execution. These blokes are on big coin and have leadership/responsibility, they need to accept that, embrace it, and stand up when it counts. Unfortunately my mind goes back to Lever late against the Lions last year being pinged for holding the ball, and his retaliation, when the game was on the line. He needs to do better. Last year, we simply couldn't run out games. We weren't fit enough. In almost all of our losses in the back half of the season, we were ahead at half time and progressively slowed. We started games off with a bang and relied on getting big leads and hanging on to win. In truth, there wasn't much difference between the Lions game in the last H&A round and the semi final - in the last H&A game, we converted just about every opportunity and got a big enough lead to knock the Lions out; in the semi final, our kicking at goal early was horrible, which meant our lead not enough to stop the eventual fade out (or take over). In hindsight, our finals bomb out was predictable, especially given we were pretty banged up. Was it a Premiership hangover? Were players unable to complete full pre-seasons? It's irrelevant because we unpacked that this time last year. This year was so much worse, because we were arguably the fittest side in it, the side that could run games out better than anyone else. Yes, we had a few players out, but nothing out of the ordinary, and not one of our AAA players (accepting Petty is very important for structure and Brayshaw's last two months have been sensational). This is the year that got away. Purely because of composure kicking at goal and smartness on the ground when it mattered. It hurts.

I don't agree. We had more supporters there than what we appeared to have. The thing with our supporters is they are dead silent. The finals last year against Sydney and Brisbane, we probably had 70% of the crowd, but the opposition fans appeared to outnumber us because they were still louder. I went to the St Kilda v GWS game last week and couldn't believe how loud the St Kilda crowd was. I honestly couldn't remember a Melbourne crowd like that, especially when the crowd was as partisan as you'd ever get. It could well be down to our supporter demographic. I'm totally guessing here, but I suspect our average supporter age is somewhat older than most if not all other Victorian clubs. The older someone is, the less likely they are to be animated and loud, I would have thought.

Was cringing of the idea of listening to this next week. Now i'm embracing it with open arms (and ears).

We admittedly had more than 3 good players. We lost the game through conversion, plain and simple. We controlled that game and had far more better players then them.

Give Tom Morris a break. He’s served his time. One of the few media people that don’t hound our club at every opportunity.

I guess it works both ways. Jordan Lewis played 90% of his career elsewhere but is now a diehard Demons supporter!

Our game plan is territory, so the long kicks will continue. We would only look for short targets in the forward line if players were one-out, and this will only happen if we win the ball on transition and use speed to get down to the forward line. Unfortunately we are just too slow, or risk adverse, to move the ball with any speed to enable this to happen.