Bring-Back-Powell

Carlton to finish top 6 and win a final. Lock it in.

Round 1 2019 wasn't much better. We must avoid Port in round 1 at the G at all costs!

I give Port a sniff over Brisbane despite everyone going for the Lions. Port have a fantastic round 1 record including some excellent unexpected wins on the road.

Ok well at least English will spend less time forward with Martin out. English can certainly take a contested mark up fwd and is a nice kick for goal.

Lever’s a terrible loss. We looked genuinely disorganised down back against Carlton without May and Lever together.

Tomlinson not in according to Ch 7. Hunter is in for them.

Not great that they're both under a cloud though. If Lever was to miss, I'd be tipping the Dogs due to us having too many first choice defenders out.

Concerning that the 3 out are from the one unit. Would much rather have a defender, a mid and a forward out like we did against North.

I would say Max is more on the money with Tomlinson over Smith. Both played the entire pre season but you'd imagine they'd go with Tomlinson who has had more runs on the board and is probably more dependable than Smith. Hunt would need to dramatically improve his performance from the Carlton game if he's selected. However we need a medium sized defender to replace Rivers. Jordon would have to be some sort of chance given he's always the 22nd/23rd player in the mix?

Might be partly in reference to Oliver and Trac over celebrating goals against a midfield depleted North in practice match week 1.

I like Jack Lonie as a top up player. A known goal kicker who was almost picked up by another side (can’t recall which one) in the off season.

Sounds like my prediction of 55K looks on the money. Whenever Q1-Q12 is GA it’s never a good sign for a monster crowd.

Anyone else more excited about this game than last years GF?

I know it's only pre season, but he had a poor practice match series. Perhaps his late start to pre -season in Melbourne has him a bit rusty and underdone? Be interesting to see if he can lift his standards when the real stuff begins on Wednesday.

Or, looking at it at another angle: Perhaps after the third 50 mtr penalty we gave away during the first quarter, one would've thought that the players may have picked up on a trend that was evolving throughout the night whereby the umpires might have been applying less tolerance to backchat than normal, as directed by the league. Instead we gave up eight 50M penalties by 3 quarter time? Anyone know how many Carlton gave away? or did they actually exercise a bit of discipline on the night?

We won the free kick count against Collingwood We drew the count against Adelaide We lost the count against GWS and the Dogs. Thus 1-2-1 in losses.

Yes please. The top sides who start pre season late might be disadvantaged, but they’ll deal with it.

Lyon and Watson also interviewed him today. Too busy talking about fishing, the price of petrol etc, than tackling the big issues.

If we were playing Richmond or Essendon I'd give us a hail Mary's chance of 80,000. However Dogs have a small supporter base and many of them simply won't turn up to an away game on a Wednesday night. That will reduce the crowd by a good 20K and neutral VIC fans that want attend multiple games will have 4 other choices of games to attend during round 1. 60,000 tops for this one. However, we'll get a bigger crowd for the Essendon round 3 game.

I want to see us win one first at the G (as opposed to watching lockdown in 2021) and experience it first hand before I start getting magnanimous. After that, I'd choose GWS or Gold Coast as no one in Melbourne would really know or care it actually happened. A tumble weed went through the CBD on the night of West Coast beating Collingwood in the 2018 GF. Then I wouldn't mind St Kilda finally jagging one for their supporters.

A couple come to mind. I'd have to rewatch every game to get a total. Remember when hit the post Vs Freo last year (round 1) at the punt road end when the man on the mark was 6 metres out from goal? Or the GWS game where we down for most of the day, and we needed Trac to hit a 30 metre set shot goal directly in front in the 3rd quarter to get us within 2 goals, but couldn't nail it. Champions of the game are relied on to kick those straight forward goals in a time of need. Every player is entitled to a weakness, and set shots from close range are an issue for Trac. That's fine. However my argument is that I disagree with the claim that Trac is easily best player in the league if he can't execute elementary set shots such as the one we saw last week.

Trac needs to work on his elementary 30 metre set shots if he's to be considered the best player by some distance. Thursday night was another example of him making a meal out of an easy set shot. For the record he kicked 0.5 across the pre season games. Martin, Neale, Bont, Heeney, Wines, Steele etc..aren't missing the set shots that he does. Not saying Trac isn't as good as those above, but he needs to honor the work done up the field by nailing regulation set shots.

Absolutely agree with your last sentence. Gawn is the one bloke at this footy club that busts his [censored] every single game from pre season game one to the grand final.

Those that are crying foul about the 8 fifty metre penalties, did Carlton give any away? You’d think our boys would’ve gotten the hint after say the 3rd infringement.

Unless Goodwin comes out today and confirms that the club had no intention to go full rat power, concede 7 consecutive goals, get smashed -23 in clearances, give away an equal record 8 50 mtr penalties and show a compete lack of detail to the 6-6-6 rule that’s been in the league for 3 or 4 years - then we ought to be disappointed with last night. Aside from Gawn, Fritta and Sparrow (2 nice goals) basically every premiership player that played last night was below their capabilities. Really disappointed in the talls in BBB and Jackson who both couldn’t grab a thing last night. T Mac looks a shadow of the T Mac of round 1-17 2021 but at least snagged 2 goals. Petracca cant execute a regulation set shot goal for someone of his talent and is yet to really turn on his engine for 2022. Would like Viney to be a bit more crisp with the footy. Hunt failed his rehearsal and for a bloke of his pace, he gets run down way too much (refer GWS last year). As mentioned by others, having 5 premiership defenders out no doubt upset the entire system whilst Carlton’s missing guns were spread over the field. At least they all stuck to their task in the last quarter to only concede 1 goal. A lot to work on including discipline and narrowing the possession and clearance differential, but hopefully we’ll be ok. Carlton looked slick last night and might finally be ready to take a big step. I can’t believe someone here bagged Cripps earlier in the thread. 38 touches, 4 goals and a class above any of our mids on the night.