Chook

Did you ever think there's a huge gulf between "doing awesome" and losing to the ladder leaders? The performances of Port Adelaide and Essendon over the past five weeks have given our own performances a bit of context. We all know we're not setting the house on fire, but don't pretend that a big loss to a team that's 5-0 is the same as a big loss to a team that's 0-5. Interestingly, I'd say that our worst quarter has come against WCE in Q3. I really wish we hadn't been slaughtered over that thirty minute period, because the rest of that game was relatively good.

They are Giants in name only.

If I understand you correctly, you certainly have a high opinion of yourself.

Uhh...I don't think that's what he meant.

I watched 'em all this week. I wanted to see our stoppage setups and things like that.

I rewatched the Port Adelaide game today and thought that Jordie McKenzie was really good. Can anyone remember why he didn't play the next week? Was he injured or dropped? Either way, I'm excited to see him back against the Lions.

And the transformation is complete. Just like Range Rover in his dying days, stuie has now become little more than a caricature of himself.

Says the man who has a vendetta out against our coach. If it's a choice between lynching an ex-player and lynching our current coach, I know which one is more destructive.

This is a man who was shopping himself around halfway through last year. Good riddance.

That's a terrible story, but surely Jeff Gieschen should have taken the burden of choice out of Jordan's hands. If it were me, I would have appointed a different umpire and let the Bannister family grieve in peace for a week. From a professional perspective, having an acting umpire who's going through all that would surely impair his umpiring ability. Either way, I wish the Bannister family all the best in the days and years to come.

I was joking.

He's quick, but I doubt he's that quick. Something is amiss.

Byrnes and Davey have handled themselves well so far this year. It's Rodan and Blease we have to worry about, but there's a chance that the legspeed they bring us might really be helpful this round. Who knows.

This thread is very likely to be locked quick-smart, so before it does let me just say that I had no idea of Whispering Jack's relationship to Demonland. I would hazard a guess that most don't, and I would even go so far as to say that there's a reason for that. One of the great things about the Internet is it allows some measure of anonymity. Let's keep it that way, shall we?

I was just about to say the same thing.

While I tend to agree with you, we must remember that Melbourne failed to get near a Premiership despite the fact that the Sandringham Zebras went back to back to back. We did however make the finals during those years, which would be nice to experience again.

Yeah, that was brilliant. But it was only one act for only one goal. Much of the rest of his game on the weekend was dominated by giving away free kicks. The reality is though that when you're a forward, you're either kicking goals or you're wasting your team's good work. Usually Mitch kicks goals and makes the best of our bad work. Last week he missed goals and messed up a lot of our good work, and that's part of the reason why we played so great in the last quarter. How often did we really kick it to Gawn last week? All the times that I remember resulted in goals, so the fact that he's still in this week is great. Still, I hope they bring in Spencer to ruck and allow Gawn to spend most of his time at full-forward this week.

You're dealing in hypotheticals. Of course we MAY have beaten them by even more if Clark and Viney were out there, but they weren't out there. You can't use what might have happened as an argument for anything. The fact is that Clark and Viney were out, causing us to have one less rotation slot (thus mitigating a lot of fitness advantage that you say we had), and we STILL had our best last quarter ever. You use GWS's last quarter statistics, but fail to compare them to ours. Excluding the GWS game, I'd be interested to know our last quarter score differential average this year. I'm willing to bet it would be pretty similar to GWS'. On the fitness front, perhaps Viney's youth and Clark's interrupted pre-season were actually one of the reasons we weren't performing well in the last quarter in rounds 1-3. Their absence might have been fortuitous, since they are probably quite underdone compared to our other players. This is just speculation, but Viney and Clark's absence might explain why we seemed to run out the game so well; our other players had the chance to really take advantage of their increased fitness.

We kicked a lot of goals through our midfield, and that would not have happened if the status quo of long bombs to a pack had continued. I don't see it as a positive that Clark is out. I see it as an opportunity to play the way we did in the last quarter for the entire game. I also think another reason that we played better in the last was that Jack Viney was subbed out. I ranked him and Clark as our worst two performers against GWS. Believe me, I know it sounds strange. But both those two were off the ground in the last quarter, and even with one fewer rotation we absolutely destroyed the Giants. People are saying that we're half as good with Clark out. I'm saying that the evidence doesn't back that up.

I'll bet it was due to a whole host of factors, but if you think Mitch Clark was our best player on the weekend then you're wrong.

People complaining about Mitch Clark being out don't seem to understand that our greatest ever last quarter performance came when he was warming the bench. Such a dramatic turnaround can only be explained by the fact that our dependence on him in the first three quarters was self-defeating. Of course I'm not happy he's out, and he was one of our best performers in the first three rounds, but all he did against GWS was kick it out on the full and give away free kicks. Again, how could losing our star full-forward coincide with our greatest quarter of the year? Think about that.

Coincidentally, the past two weeks have heralded a great turnaround in Garland's intensity and overall form. Perhaps he had somewhat of a falling out with the coach (which has now been rectified). Hell Gates certainly had some bad things to say about Neeld. Perhaps he got some of his info from Colin. At any rate, it's clear that the longer we give a tough-as-nails footy nut like Neeld, the better he'll get. I mean, the guy has kept every handout he's ever gotten as a coach. Clearly he's motivated to get as good as he can.

I rewatched our GWS game and noticed that Mitch Clark was TERRIBLE ... and yet we still kicked 150 points. If the rest of our team carries on the form they showed in the last quarter, Mitch Clark's absence might not be so bad.

I think Sellar is still in our best six backmen. I rate him fairly high there. He's not a forward's booger, but I reckon he's our best option for the very tall forwards we come up against from time to time.

You are assuming (without even seeing Dawes play for us) that Collingwood never make any mistakes or that they might have different needs than us. They needed a forward who could play in the ruck. We don't. The role that Dawes will play here is therefore very different to the one he was asked to play at Collingwood. Time will tell if we got value or not, but remember that he wasn't delisted or anything. He was simply traded because he was not needed. And let's be honest; when you have Travis Cloke at full forward, most other players aiming to play that position would not be needed either.