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I don't really remember too many good Howe high HF games... As for taking on Freo with contested footy winning players and bringing in runners against Sydney - why would Roos attempt to take on a side by shaping his team in the way of the opponents league leading strength? Last Sunday we had to turn it into an arm contest and make it a s-fight, and not let them get 294 Uncontested Possessions...obviously we failed. This Saturday we have to run and get into space and back our counterattack because if we make it an arm wrestle we will be overwhelmed by the bigger, more established bodies in the midfield. I can definitely see the logic, even if I can't see it 'working'... But that is something that will take time, unfortunately, to rectify...

Surely Jamar is being rested as he has no decent back up ruck and is coming off a 6 day break. Grimes was not great last week, Michie hasn't separated himself from that group of players that can play a similar role, and Jordie still looks the same poor decision maker he has been. Some will laugh but this is what tanking is made up of; the net removal 13 years and 178 games of experience... I think the FD have a definitive idea of who will be at the club next year and this selection is geared toward next year as opposed to next Saturday. That being said - I would hope that Toumpas and Stretch are more adventurous and willing to run than I have seen from a few of those that are seemingly not apart of the future...

The first one is a saying about multi-tasking, and the second one refers to my earlier post.

I would say the midfield shoulder most of the blame and the forwards some of the blame, and the backs negligible blame. My point is that our backline is put under more scrutiny and pressure than comparative backlines. I know we can chew gum and walk at the same time but we are doing that in the backline with Salem being added for us kicking and aggressiveness. Garland, Dunn, Jetta, and McDonald are all proven AFL players (in various states of form at the present time) and have managed to not miss a beat after losing a formerly, supposedly, pivotal player in Frawley. I would be tweaking the backline, and looking at how we can support Hogan's acension at the other end of the ground but Suaron's eye, stmj, Sauron's eye!

Helmets won't prevent brain trauma and the movement of the brain after a blow. That is what people are referring to. It doesn't mean we are saying they don't do anything or that bikie riders shouldn't wear a helmet or drivers their seatbelts - that's being a tad disingenuous. The intentions have to be to reduce the amount of times the brain is forced to shock in an extreme fashion, not enable someone to come off 'slightly better' should they have an extreme shock to the brain.

There's not much a backline can do when their midfield gives up 59 Inside 50s (20 more than us) and 416 possessions (113 more than us). I get what you are saying; we are not a very developed list but the backline of late has been a comparative beacon. I would love to be in a position where we pick apart the backline but Sauron's eye is fixed on our midfield...

This one hurts. I hope it is an outlier, but it has blown out the numbers above to being very ordinary. When you are averaging 10 less clearances and 13 less Inside 50s than your opposition - you are not going to win most of your games. Breaking even in Uncontested Possessions until this game when we were smashed by Freo 190 to 294... Let's see how they respond against Sydney.

We have had this discussion before and UPs drive the modern game - the correlation with UPs and Margin is something I looked into a couple of years ago. Viney has been great this year with his spread and desire to run into space and get easier footy. He was getting 4 more UPs a game than last year. Last year we averaged 218 Uncontested Possies a game, so far this year we average 175, if I remove the two games in the wet, it moves the needle to 188 with the GC game our highest at 197. We are easily the lowest, with that 188 number comparable to Carlton and GC - two teams that define the word 'struggling' at the minute. The Bulldogs are 5th lowest but they have 208 - so the jump is marked from the lower teams to the teams who 'get enough uncontested footy' to regularly compete. Collingwood are an outlier with 198 UPs but they are kings of contested footy at the moment with 9 more CPs than the next best. Jones is down 6 UPs a game from last year (including only the dry games), Tyson is down 4, HL is down 3, Vince is down 4, and Matt Jones who was our 5th best UP getter last year with an average of 13.6 hasn't played a game.

What a pointless opinion. Let's say you are right - what do we do? Give up? Not bother? We will fight to keep getting better and it will come on in spurts and surges and we are 2 and 3 in the year 2015 and the end of the world, and indeed the club, is not nigh. I want to see how the team that currently represents the club responds from a thoroughly uninspiring quarter and a half from last week. Then I want to see it 16 more times and then I want to see how we make the team better over the summer. Rinse and repeat and we will get better.

We will get past 35k. Doesn't close till around QB IIRC.

Probably our most important player after Jones and Tyson. I believe I posted that he was more important than Frawley a few years ago, I would search for that but I said some other dumb stuff I don't want to read again IIRC...

Freo were not great but their midfield was dominant. Their backs rebounded well but struggled when we moved it quickly and their forward line were well held by the backs but didn't get great delivery. I would say Freo were not at their best but their midfield and shape stopped anything we could get going and gave them first use so often.

No, it doesn't readily come to mind but now that I am thinking about it they would have had eerily similar careers. Both played a majority of footy across HF, both played some very good games without the consistency required to be a very good player, both struggled with a major flaw in their footy makeup (Watts - hardness and intensity, Bate - decision making and speed)... I used to always compare Dunn and Bate because they were drafted two picks apart and developed so slowly. When Bate was delisted, Dunn had a year left on his contract and I thought at the time that Bate had shown more than Dunn at the time and the Dunn was very lucky to have that year...

The difference between his best and worst is miles apart. I can see why they are trying to develop his outside game, as a pure inside mid he gets beaten to the footy and looks clumsy in a contest. I said after the GC game that was a 'poor mans Tyson' as a compliment but the way the both going it suits him but its not a positive...

You are entitled to say what you want, DA, as I said in the post. I am simply adding to the discussion. Adding that we are not occupying ourselves with "all the points of view," just the easiest one, and I find it out of line with the attention he deserves.

How was Watts' soft, yet hard working B-grade Round 1 game? It was good enough for you I recall. His issues of the last month, aside from a few highlighted passages, has been form related. And my point about the preoccupation with Watts, and you are entitled to it - he obviously fascinates you - is that Dees fans are, as Ethan posted earlier, throwing their snarls and vitriol in, seemingly, one direction. A direction that, as you constantly allude, is such a grand waste of time and internet...

lol Yeah I accept - him and a few of his more important friends were horseradish... Which one do you think concerns me more?

I love the attitude when Burgan asked him whether we were too far away from Freo to beat them; he said 'no we can beat them if we play the right way but we were terrible today.' He is one that has been instilled with confidence - he just has to take a few with him. And he was uncomfortable laying the blame at the mids - diplomatic but not required - it was fairly obvious where we were smashed.

If this kid is so useless, so pathetic, and such a waste of space - then why are you bothering? I mean, honestly, we played our third world midfield against one of the best in the comp and yet what are we stuck on? The soft HFF? I will play out the scenario for you - he gets dropped, whipped, beheaded, and spiked and we still have a third world midfield with no hope of beating a first world midfield. He is horribly out of form and on the cusp of being dropped - that's all that needs to be said - the rest is just gnashing teeth and snide asides.

Some of you are too preoccupied with the blonde kid. Frontrunners are only effective when the team is winning its share of the footy.

Try getting into form as a HFF with 39 Inside 50s... Most of which were headed to the more dangerous Hogan. The thread that we should all be in is "Melbourne's Midfield Sucks"...

We had 3 of the top 16 possession getters on the day. Think about that. Then think about what a team like Freo do when they have 100 more uncontested possessions like they did today. 20 less Inside 50s... Again, our midfield is still so poor that they struggle to create run but are also seen in such a light by their opposition that they are given little respect and are run off of at ease. We will never match it with teams like Freo until we have a better midfield rotation with cleaner skills and good decision making. Jones, Vince and Tyson were down and Cross, Michie, VandenBerg, and Brayshaw are over matched for the task today.

Love both players but a message has to be sent - even if you lose a game you can't send out your players to attempt to injure blokes the next week... Hodge's elbow was intentional, not reckless, he knew exactly what he did. He should see at least three games from the coaches box. And Lewis' one was a good ol' fashioned two week roundhouse.

This will be deleted soon, as well as my response, but what a ridiculous thing to say. You don't know him, and the situation we faced as a club a few years ago cannot simply be laid at the feet of Schwab and CC. They love the club as much as you do. And that little aside about the 'jokester' tells me you don't have much against him other than a bad joke that was jumped on by some bitter individuals to grind their axes on, that began the investigation into 2009.

God, you would have thought Jordie was to blame for the malaise of the last few years the way some are carrying on... I remember when we were lauding him the way we laud VandenFyfe.