Bring-Back-Powell

Probably isn't Laurie but I'm backing him into be our 2023 bolter.

Collingwood supporters are still livid we gave them Woewodin so they take great delight that Dawes, Kennedy and LaBamba ranged from average pickups to down right disasters for us.

I don’t think I’ve seen a MFC player not play for a Melbourne jumper as much (or as little) as Luke Jackson did in his final outing for the club on 9 September. His half hearted marking contests in a high stakes final was something else. If Paul Roos was still coach of Melbourne, Jackson wouldn’t have played the final few games of the year.

Unless the round proves to be an epic fail next year, then I think it's here to stay. Money talks and clearly cities around the country would love to have the round to boost tourism. But I see your point - there's really nothing in it from a Victorian's perspective.

From listening to Gerard Healy on my drive home from work since 2011, he has been nothing but supportive, encouraging and enthusiastic about the MFC and loves Nathan Jones. He predicted big things of the clubs since 2017ish - way more than other analysts. My only criticism of Healy is that he makes way too many gaffes on air - eg - referring to the wrong player, wrong club etc...

I personally wouldn't be going hard on a player that's kicked 114.46 over the last 2 years and worked hard on rectifying his accuracy issues. He also did the best he could in our disappointing finals campaign kicking 5 goals I'd be levelling criticism at another forward at the club who kicked a total of 2 goals and average 2 marks a game over a 4 week period which included those losses to Freo, Sydney and Collingwood. He also kicked 1 goal in total in the finals.

That's with a pre finals bye week which would take place in the first weekend of September. I originally thought the season would start a week earlier, but with the last Saturday in September being the 30th next year, that pushes everything back a week compared to 2022.

Given that they announced Magic round will be round 5 (Apr 13-16) I have round 1 starting on Thursday 16 March, which is basically the same start as last year. The grand final will be 30 Sep next year as opposed to 24 Sep this year so that essentially pushes things back a week. Fixture due out either Thursday 1 December or Thursday 8 December IMO.

Not a disaster at all if BBB misses the pre xmas training period, given it's only 3 or so weeks these days. Hoping for a better season from him next year.

Swallow 3 Anderson 2 Sexton 1 Umpires - Fisher, Johanson, Wallace

Very odd that only St Kilda players got votes in that round 23 game V Sydney despite being down by 3-5 goals for much of the night, and of course subsequently losing to Sydney With regards to Queens birthday, it was widely acknowledged that either Oliver (who won the medal) or Cox (who was marking the ball like he was Wayne Carey) was BOG. Instead Mihocek got the 3 votes and he would've been long odds despite kicking 4 goals. Imagine a full forward kicking 4 goals in the 1980's/1990's and then getting the 3 votes.

That would be one day more of a break than the 10 day break we receive between QBDAY - bye - round 15 V Bris this year. Hope you're correct in that we're on a Saturday or Sunday. I probably won't bother going if we're Thu night as there would only be 2 games over the Thu and Fri night and it would therefore defeat the purpose of attending a footy festival.

Awesome GIF from an awesome movie. Joe Pesci's character was pure evil.

You’re probably right. Given we finished 5th I’d say we’ll play two of Geelong, Sydney, Collingwood, Brisbane and Freo twice. The AFL will be keen (if possible) for Grundy and Jackson to face their old sides twice for box office attraction, so we could avoid Geelong twice on that basis.

No chance Hawthorn will be going there despite their projected bottom 4 finish. Geelong V Hawthorn is locked in for Easter Monday at the MCG. Therefore that leaves Collingwood and/or Richmond as the other teams that Geelong will host at the G. So yeah, the only chance we avoid Kardinia Park is if we play them once, as the home team.

Sounds like a horrible weekend.

I don't think it matters if it's a home or away game for us. We'll still have our 11 home games (10 at the G/ 1 in NT) and all clubs will get an equal distribution in the magic round regardless of home or away team.

The magic round is effectively replacing a week of practice matches that would've been shown only on KAYO with C grade commentators. I'm sure most football fans will come around to the idea.

Sure is. One comparison between Trac and Oliver is that Trac has polled brownlow votes in only 2 of a possible 30 games (when he's polled votes) when the Dees have lost while Oliver has polled in 12 of a possible 54 games (when he's polled votes) when the Dees have lost - over their respective careers thus far. This suggests to me that Trac is more of a barometer than Oliver in terms of us winning games, where as Oliver can play absolute top shelf footy in losses - eg - Adelaide 2021, Collingwood x2 in 2022.

Unbelievable that we’d play an injured Gawn and Lever against a team that had 10-11 of their best 22 out. It was a free 4 points on offer that day and they should not have made the trip. Kind of puts the theory to bed that you need a hardened run into the finals. The pre finals bye surprisingly didn’t freshen us up.

The skill set he brings to the club is absolutely irreplaceable and provides a point of difference from other small forwards. Whatever the club did to try and convince LJ to stay, the club needs to do 200% more with Kozzie. A critical re-signing.

During the finals I think we missed his intercept marking and the way he was able to take goal square saving marks on the last line. Gus played some insane games as a defender this year: 34 possessions - 20 marks- 3 votes V's Essendon 31 possessions - 13 marks 1 vote Vs St Kilda (when they were good) 29 possessions - 11 marks in a loss to Collingwood on QBDAY. Conversely in finals, he only averaged 19 touches as a full time midfielder (I think) which suggests we could've been better served by Gus playing in a different position. Overall, an excellent home and away season but a disappointing finals series. Be very interesting to see where he plays in round 1 next year.

I'm noticing a few posters are starting to exclude Ben Brown from our projected 2023 forward line.

Bulldogs are understood to be interested.

The only slight knock on Fritsch was his slight inaccuracy and unreliable set shots for goal at the end of 2020 into the early rounds of 2021. However, over the last 2 seasons he's kicked 114-46 which is elite. Easily our best forward and probably between the 5th and 8th best player on the list It was an excellent move at the time to get him to re-sign for 5 years fresh off a 6 goal GF.