Chook

How often do you hear after a win "We had 22 solid contributors today"? If you don't have 22 blokes who can pull their weight in modern footy, you need a Carey or an Ablett to make up the difference.

I disagree . I think we were let down by not enough solid contributors. That comes down to good role players like Pedersen being left out for inexperienced youth.

He hasn't reduced the gap between our best and worst, but he has made our best better and our worst not-so-bad. Beat Hawthorn, lose to Carlton is about as big a margin as lose by 30 points, lose by 100 points.

Finals have been on the line for us since the Hawthorn game. We basically played in a Preliminary Final today…or something.

Possibly the only positive to come out of today.

Losing usually helps that.

Paul Roos set out to improve our percentage. He has succeeded. He set out to improve our win rate. He succeeded at that too. He set out to reduce the gap between our best and worst. He has quite clearly failed in that regard. And the shame of it is, even if we somehow beat Geelong next week, it will only serve to prove that the gap between our best and worst is just too large.

Forward of the play.

Whew! Lucky we dodged that bullet. It was a close one though.

You guys (and gals) are all nuts. Hogan has quite literally been our only forward today.

If anything has come out of today, I think it has taught us all a valuable lesson about who is in our best 22 and who isn't. EDIT: Also, Jesse…work on your bloody kicking. You're fast turning into a rich-man's Levi Casboult.

He's a young player still and honestly has been in our best dozen today. So many others have let us down more than him.

Why is Dean Kent our full-forward?

Pure 100% A-Grade idiocy there from Dean Kent. Hogan holds it up outside 50 because there's no-one inside to kick it to, so he hand passes to Kent, who proceeds to bomb it in to 3 Carlton players.

At this point the best thing for Melbourne if we don't somehow pull it out of the volcano would be: Lose to Geelong by a point GWS smash North. Let our boys stew on the fact that we could have been there. Only the combined might of Essendon, Carlton and St Kilda stopped us.

Vandenberg, Petracca, Hunt, Kent, Tom McDonald, Frost. That's even seven.

Amazing effort from Viney. To Gawn! OK now he needs to kick this one. He has missed a couple like this that meant nothing.

Lost this game at the selection table, cemented that loss in the psych-ward.

Gawn at full-forward, Hogan CHF, Frost as main ruck, Vince tagging Gibbs as he should have done all day. Kick it long and don't handball it so damn much. Also, bring in Pedersen somehow.

Rock paper scissors, if rocks were capable of underestimating their opponents.

Soul-crushing goal to Carlton inside the last minute. Such a disappointing day.

Whatever the opposite of a scapegoat is, Cam Pedersen may be that for me right now; but I'm going to keep harping on the fact that our forward structure has seriously suffered in his absence this week.

Apparently we got the quick answer while I was taking a wiz. Maybe I should spend the rest of the day in the loo.

Taking the urine surely. He's been one of our only half-decent players today.