Bring-Back-Powell

Can sure kick a sausage. Let's see how these Geelong kids are going when the whips are cracking in August and September.

5 win season if tonight goes South?

Well this Friday game day thread's a bit flatter than the previous couple we had last September.

I’m looking forward to the 80 page special about West Coast going from finishing 3rd (2007) to second last (2008) and being rewarded a priority pick which just happened to be a bloke called Luke Shuey. Or an investigation into Collingwood’s round 19 performance against North at the formerly known Telstra Dome. 40 points up in the third quarter, 5 wins on the board, another win and they lose their priority pick. They end up getting rolled, lose their remaining 3 games and score Dale Thomas and Scott Pendlebury. Happy days for them and not a peep from the media.

That’s a lot of Wagners.

Hibberd was an A grader in 2017. As far as I'm concerned if you're an All Australian you automatically assume the title of an A grader for that particular season. He became a B grader last year, and is looking D+ ish this year.

Goodwin's not under a cent of pressure. He's re-signed until end of 2022.

Essendon changes: In - Zac Clarke, Kobe Mutch Out - Mitch Brown, Kyle Langford. Good news is no Hooker. Bad news is Clarke is coming in to partner Bellchambers to run Gawn off his feet, per Port game. What's our answer to this?

He, Hibberd, Jones and Jetta have been the 4 big disappointments of the season so far. Senior A graders (on their day) that are all horribly out of form at the same time.

Those 2 have inexplicably chosen a fantastic time to suddenly become out of form. Are they missing Lewis who has been a fixture in our defence? Mind you Hibberd's gone backwards since his 2017 AA.

The problem is we've taken a ton of risks at selection by playing under done players (Jones, Viney, Melksham, May) and most of them have failed spectacularly. I hope Garlett plays this week, but I also don't want him being a non-entity because he's played 1 quarter of football since March 1.

I saw Smith undertaking a fitness test of sorts during the second quarter on the boundary line at Casey Fields. He could barely jog and looked terrible. The club should've put a line through him then and there. Not good enough from the fitness department to allow him to return and not good enough from the coaching staff by not exercising some caution/conservatism in a meaningless practice match. I know we had other injuries during the game but you ca't jeopardise the home and away season. I thought we were over amateur hour at the MFC.

I'm not an expert whatsoever but if any punter out at Casey Fields who saw Joel Smith being put through a fitness test on the boundary line, and barely being able to jog, would contend that there is no way he should've returned to the field in a practice match. There's a chance the injury may not have been further aggravated by Smith returning to the field, but there's no way known it would've helped either. Now 'Smiley' Misson has no idea when he'll play footy again.

^^

He's got a point about us supporters claiming we're on the right track just because we won the inside 50 count. On what metric is an 80 point loss an improvement from a 27 point loss? I can't believe Goodwin was upbeat after the game. At least against Port we didn't have someone like Tom Hawkins pick up the ball in the goal square, wait 20 minutes because none of our defenders were in the same suburb as him and then handball to a rookie for his first goal.

One of the journos (Guthrie) mentioned that he wasn't far off a game last year before he got injured.

Home games against Essendon since 2000: Round 9 2000 Round 8 2001 ROund 17 2003 Round 1 2005 Round 15 2010

Round 15 2010. Tipping a draw to continue the miserable start for both sides.

They're not on their own (T Mac and Jones says hello) but is there any reason why these two high quality defenders have chosen to be in career worst form at the same time? What the hell is going on at the club?

Our lack of depth has been exposed when your scraping the barrel with the Wagner brothers, Stretch, Keilty etc... Missing our forward role players such as VDB, Hannan and Garlett (yes I concede he fell out of our best 22) who all know where the sticks are. No wonder our forward line is a shambles.

And what about the embarrassing ease with how Geelong got their 20 goals in the wet.

Fritsch hasn't responded well to last year's omission from the prelim. Either he's down on form (like 75% of our side) or the recruiters were justified in overlooking him in earlier drafts.

Harsh but fair. He only looked good last year when we were beating up side by 50+ points.

He won't be under an ounce of pressure even if we go 2-20.

How Goodwin can say an 80 point loss is a step in the right direction has me stuffed. The opposition were taking the Mickey out of us to the point where we may as well have been witches hats at GFC training, despite the wet weather. It was a shameful and disgraceful performance.