old55

There's a bit to like there with Laurie hopefully building confidence that he's too good for this level. Great to hear that Verrall, Brown, Sestan, Fullarton and Turner all had good games. There's a good spread of roles there. I'm hopeful for AMW too and I think it's good they are trying him at HB, I think there's more of a logjam of contenders up forward and we could do with some creativity in the backline. We need one of Adams or Jefferson to make it.

Oliver was incapacitated against Brisbane but was influential against Adelaide and delivered twice to Fritsch for important goals.

Jake Lever disagrees. He said Woey has been playing well at HB for Casey and he was "very good" against Brisbane. https://www.melbournefc.com.au/video/1527823/rd-5-jake-lever-post-match-interview?videoId=1527823&modal=true&type=video&publishFrom=1712842403001

Insightful analysis, thanks. Simon says we need to improve our game and win stoppage and i50 because while it's great that we have found other ways to win, it's not sustainable in the long run. It will be interesting to see where we go from here.

Maintaining the rage on the Maynard incident and advocating that Kossie avoids suspension are incompatibly hypocritical for me. Maynard should have got 4-6 weeks.

... reminded the boys that they're flat-track bullies.

We kicked for goal exceptionally poorly in the losses and exceptionally well last night.

Ben Brown just loving his footy. So wonderful to see.

We were fortunate to win IMO. Port were generally better across the match but we hung in which is no small thing. The Fox Footy [censored] were chipping Max about Goody talking about Expected Score in last year's finals - would he mention it last night when we clearly lost it? But there’s a lot of truth in that. I was as [censored] off as anyone to lose last year when we should have won, I'm going to eat my own dog food here when the boot's on the other foot. Very happy to win though.

We hung in and stole that one. Impressive...

I'm inclined to go for Petty back and Fullarton forward/ruck. We're defence focussed and Petty is far superior to Tomlinson and he makes for a better mix with TMac and Lever. Petty is likely far superior to Fullarton forward too, but Fullarton and JVR could take a bit more ruckwork and spell Max for the short turnaround.

I'm keen for you to explain again why retaining BBB and TMac was a terrible list management decision.

Far too inflexible and unable or unwilling to make in-game moves. Must have been Mini's idea.

McKercher and Sanders.

I especially liked the one where you said we might go well this year and win the flag but you were also worried that we might bomb out. Groundbreaking!