Chook

I'm looking at the BigFooty game day thread and I reckon Melbourne are possibly the most hated team going around right now. The opposition fans' tears are so delicious after years of irrelevance...

Hate that goal. Hate it so much.

Trac exploding here in the last couple of minutes.

This is the kind of 1st quarter that a very very good side plays when they're just a touch off it. To be leading by 11 after everything Sydney's thrown at us is impressive.

roflcoptr we're in front...

Fantastic tackle by Hannan. Kick it buddy.

Our disposal is letting us down so badly. Sydney not taking their chances either.

We're getting on top a bit here. No coincidence that Oliver's on the ground.

Massive settler for our young side. Let's go boys! And Oliver's finally on the ground...

Plugger. Great mark. Kick it Tommy.

Someone wanna go to Rohan?

Started very poorly here.

Buggy's a moron. 5 weeks.

On Jack Watts, apparently he tweaked it again and will be out for another 2 weeks.

I thought the Dogs would beat us. I thought we'd get pummelled over in the west. I'm done putting a ceiling in this group. Demons to win it tonight against a Swans outfit that is on fire.

Challenge accepted. I even got us into the top 4 and Collingwood on the bottom of the ladder.

Agree completely, but it will still inhibit him. And as one of our most important players that will be a severe detriment to us. There are no softies in our team anymore, so what Sydney or any team have to do is to try and inhibit the most influential of our players...and Hunt is right up there. The only other player I'm a little worried about getting tagged is Oliver, but his contested ball winning ability renders him pretty immune to a hard tag.

If I were Sydney I'd target Jayden Hunt.

You've got to know the good from the bad though (no self respecting HS journalist would take on the best stuff. Only the worst for them).

The midfield is pretty much full-strength. Midfields win you games in modern footy. Everything else is secondary.

That's all well and good but right now I only care about the short term...like, this Friday night short term.

Spelling pedants make me pewk.

I was told on BigFooty by some very involved Eagles supporters that we shouldn't judge by possessions alone. I countered that this must surely mean that Schofield would have stopped Tommy McDonald's goal in the dying minutes instead of being completely unsighted. Not much in the way of a response.

Not me. Not during the halftime break. If Viney had done it during the quarter I'd disapprove but say "that's footy." Elbowing someone (let alone in the neck) as they're going to the changerooms is not on. Oliver shouldn't whacked Shuey either. The "dive" Oliver took when (was it Higgins?) got him the other week was much worse than this one because he should've expected it and was probably looking for a free. This one? There was no incentive for him to dive, and no expectation that he would get hit.

If there's anything this whole Clayton Oliver thing has taught me is that no matter what your club does, opposition supporters will start to get scared when the status quo begins to shift and the laughing-stock is no longer quite so funny. Draft picks, AFL "charity", Paul Roos being given to us by the AFL, "tanking", the premiership drought and associated irrelevance of the MFC, low supporter numbers, "staging" (during the halftime break no less).... The list goes on. The only people whose opinion on the MFC we should give a rat's tossbag about are Melbourne supporters. Everyone else is irrelevant.