Bring-Back-Powell

Anyone flying via Singapore to get cheaper flights?

Dear Geelong Cats, If you do beat us this week, can you please have the game wrapped up before the siren this time around. Best regards, MFC supporter.

Can't believe you'd play a player not 100% in the early rounds. Just baffling.

Burgan's gone?

high 20's/low 30's. Port aren't a good drawing side.

Finals are a pass mark for me. I'm more bullish about 2020 when Lever has a full season and Oliver, Brayshaw, Harmes and Petracca all would have cracked 100 games and Weideman's finally come off a full season of AFL. Compare that to West Coast with their GF midfield of Redden (188) (Shuey 177), Yeo (105), Hutchings (95) and Sheed (78). They had a midfield that was clearly ready and good enough to win a flag. We need to our address our small forward department. Is Spargo and an almost finished Garlett enough to go deep this year? Compare that to Collingwood and Richmond's dynamic small forwards. Furthermore, I think we'll have a slow start to the season (2-4 after Anzac Eve) due to our injury hampered pre-season. We'll be playing catch up from round 6 but should be good enough to win 12-13 games and sneak into 7th-8th.

But you can't deny the fact that all these injuries and surgeries will probably cost us in the long run. You don't hear of too many premiership winning teams that had seriously interrupted pre-seasons such as ours.

I'd take the punt with Preuss and play him, considering we got him over to assist Gawn when he's up against twin towers (ie- Ryder and Lycett)

Anyone who was at the game and saw him trying to do run throughs on the boundary line either before or after half time would've put Joel Smith's cue in the rack then and there considering it was a practice match. Play 1 man short if they must. Richmond did it in the JLT a couple of years ago. I couldn't believe it when I saw him hobbling to the goal square just before the start of the last qtr. It wasn't exactly a home and away game when you're down to 1 fit bloke on the bench and you have to trot the least injured player out there.

I sincerely hope the injury didn't become 6 weeks as a result of hobbling on one leg for 2 and a half quarters in a meaningless practice match. What a disastrous day that was - JLT 2.

Hard to fathom that they put his start to the season in jeopardy in a practice match. I know we were down on numbers but still...

Fair call with the Richmond game. Played very good footy in the first half and were missing half of our best 22. It was the ease of which Richmond cleared the ball out of our forward 50 in the second half that annoyed me about that game. If that's a feature of 2019, we're losing more games than we're winning. Sounds like we're in agreement with the Brisbane loss. Just a poor day overall in terms of performance, discipline, injuries and injury mangement (ie - Smith hobbling on one leg for most of a meaningless game) Lucky the game counted for nothing. Agree that we should be beating Port Adelaide by 30 points if all things are equal. However, given that we've had a heavily interrupted and later than normal pre-season, Port are a month ahead of us in preparation and round 1 always throws up upsets, i see this as a danger game.

Our JLT form or lack there of would suggest that the nervous nellies should be indeed nervous. And make no mistake our JLT form was near disgraceful with the lack of cohesiveness (hopefully can be fixed) and a lack of interest and desire (hopefully will be fixed) Throw in our absurd amount of surgeries, an un Melbourne like late start to pre season and the accumulation of injuries would suggest it’s a massive bannana skin game. Plus Port will have a massive chip on their shoulder and could be re-juvenated by their numerous debutants.

If last year's anything to go by, they better play without Daniher. Still, at least it's one monster forward we won't have to deal with.

I share your concerns. We've had a pre-season that is not conducive to a strong start with all our surgeries and JLT injuries. Reckon we'll be 2-4 to start the season (we have to play Geelong & Sydney away and Richmond) and playing catch up after that. Plus, in the JLT our impressive late 2018 brand of footy has been largely missing in the JLT. Can we just be expected to flick on the switch for round 1? Hope so. Hopefully we can be 3-3 and on the fringes of the 8, then make a charge up the ladder to top 4.

The difference is Dunn and Goldsack are old buggers who are nearly retired. They’ve probably pressured their club to come back as soon as possible as they don’t have much to lose. On the flip side apparently the Pies are going ultra conservative on Matt Scharenberg. We’re rightly taking our time with Lever. Isn’t he on a $1 million contract per year for 5?

12-16 weeks kinda makes sense for Lever. Recovery from ACL’s can take up to 12 months and Lever’s a prized asset that shouldn’t be rushed. He did his knee in round 11 2018 and round 11 2019 is in 13 weeks.

The problem is Frost is a spud as well.

And special kudos to May for putting us into this position even after the following incidents had happened: Preuss injures his groin. Probably out round 1 Viney cops a corkey Jones cops a corkey VDB throws a punch JFK cops a 3 month injury and probably his career Harmes appeared to (at the time) cop a 2 month finger injury Smith runs around with a sore groin probably robbing him of a round 1 gig Fritsch injures his hip. Oliver costs us the game with a stupid punch when we had momentum. and finally May’s 2 seconds of stupidity which will no doubt see Westhoff tear us a new one.

Aces! So we’re back to the Oscar & Frost much feared defensive duo

Ryder’s a chance to play subject to how his surgery went.

That was garbage by Oliver. Threw a cheap one when we were only 7pts down with 4 mins left and we had the momentum. They then kicked a goal to put it away. Summed up a filthy day for the club from a discipline, injury and performance point of view.

Can challenge and only risk $10k. May (pardon the pun) as well have a chuck at the wickets and try and get him off.

Everyone can remove May from their side. Copped an unsurprising 1 week.

Ins and outs from the high point of our season vs Geelong in the Elim final: in - J Smith, Hunt out - Tyson, Hannan So pretty much the same side as that night and we kind of performed well that night wouldn’t you think? Let’s not kid ourselves, May ain’t playing. The AFL are stamping bumps out of the game and we’d all be screaming for his suspension if he were still playing for GC and we were coming up against them.