Bring-Back-Powell

Doesn’t sound like Lever’s a certainty at all according to the injury report.

Perfectly acceptable suggestion. I thought with Kozzie in a small forward goes out, but yeah you could easily drop Billings.

Has had a terrible fortnight. Absolutely so far below his standards it's not even funny. His ball use is rock bottom and has had 3 clearances in 2 games. For reference he had 9 clearances in round 23 last year V GC when he played a near career best game. Needs to step up as a leader of this club.

In - Lever, Pickett, Windsor, Turner Out - XL, Henderson, AJ, Howes Unfortunately JVR to second ruck. AJ not up to it IMO. Fritsch, JVR, Billings and even Viney should be on notice, The latter having a sneaky terrible start to the season with his ball use and the fact that he's had just 3 clearances in 2 games. For reference in round 23 last year he had 9 clearances in the one game (V GC)

Just needs to work on his awareness as I reckon he got done holding the ball 3 or 4 times on Saturday. Otherwise, it's fantastic/terrible that Langford's rising star nomination and Lindsey's ACL escape and round 1 performance have been the only source of happiness thus far. You just knew that as soon as the ball left his foot that he'd nail that goal. He deserved a better celebration than he did from his teammates but they'd all checked out at that point.

Probably scenario 3. We're not quite at Fitzroy levels or Melbourne circa 2013 to allow a 120 point loss.

Four scenarios I can see happening: 1) There are five golden tickets in the world and we found one of them (without the help of Veruca Salt's Dad buying 90% of the chocolate bars). We somehow pull off a ''backs to the wall'' miracle win. 2) The performance I was expecting against Gold Coast and occurred in round 1. A well fought out 4 quarters with the lead ebbing and flowing all day, but we just fall short. A performance they can take confidence in with 3 bottom 6 sides coming up in the next month. 3) A replica of rounds 2 and 3. A mistake riddled 3 quarters and then give up in the last. A 50-75 point loss with no signs of improvement. 4) the players make a 2011 like statement. A vote of no confidence in the coach, the game plan and even off field leadership as we simply don't try on the way to a 130 point loss. The coach's role becomes untenable.

We have less members than St Kilda and Bulldogs and 2,000 more than North who’ve won about 3 games in 5 years We should be ahead of those 4 clubs all things being equal.

Likely to be our only one and only for the year aside from maybe Collingwood in the last round.

It's genuinely shocking that we're miles worse with Trac and Oliver back into the side. Every Melbourne supporter pinned their hopes on these two. My expectation was 11th -14th due to our forward line on paper. So I'm not shocked we're going to miss finals. I am shocked about how bad we could potentially be this year, and how bad our talented players such as Gawn, JVR, Fritsch, May and Viney have been. If these players can lift to somewhere near their average, then we'll start winning a game or 2.

On the assumption Kozzie, Lever and Windsor are in..... So the only certain outs for Friday night are McVee and ANB from a team that beat the then undefeated Geelong to be 6-2 and be 4th on the ladder with the 4th best percentage, and only 1 win off the league leading Sydney. How can you now be talked about as a bottom 2 with minimal turnover?

Some sample quotes from the Adelaide Bigfooty forum from today’s game: “ANB been poor.” “Even ANB trying to do too much.”

Chris Scott did a very similar press conference tonight to the 2021 prelim with respect to not revealing potential excuses to the loss. I wonder if he was referring to the humidity you pointed out. So Geelong have gone from having a bye and being fresh into this week (per the original fixture) to now coming off a 6 day break in punishing humidity. Not that it matters in the scheme of things…:

This is such 2012/2013 loser talk but if we can contain the margin to around 6 goals, then maybe we can instil a bit of confidence heading into Gather Round and maybe jag our first win of the year. Geez how we’ve fallen off the cliff since that Saturday night in April last year when we beat the then league leaders Geelong.

Agree with this. Aside from a couple of howler moments it was the best of his 3 games today, and a positive that he had 3 set shots. People automatically think Fritta is a dead eye but he’s definitely had moments in his career where the radar’s been off. I think in 2020 he kicked more behinds than goals and in rounds 1 and 2 of 2021 I think he kicked a combined 2.6 or something.

Listening to Goodwin’s answer leads me to believe it’s a genuine line ball outcome in terms of ACL.

Not one thing has gone our way on the injury front this year, so let’s hope we finally catch a break.

Sadly. Yes.

He’s the only player that looks like a half competent league footballer at the moment.

What’s the over/unders margin line for a sacking after the Geelong game? He’s on the Friday night stage next week so the whole footy world will be watching.

Kozzie to come back via the 2’s. We don’t want to upset the chemistry of our forward line which is humming at the moment.

Good choice of sub. Was calling for this earlier in the week.

Anthony Hudson eloquently described tonight’s come from behind inspirational Bulldogs win over Carlton as this: “Such a Luke Beveridge performance” Can anyone here describe what a “Simon Goodwin performance” looks like?

Essendon and Carlton have both brought high pressure into their games after their week of scrutiny. Hopefully we can do the same and it will serve us well.

And not giving 1 second of playing time to a starting sub in a semi final while the opposition’s sub is instrumental in their game winning passage of play. The head coach should not be kicking own goals in a final.