Fromgotowoewodin

With Dixon and King putting us out of the 8 you can pretty much lock us in now. Easy option to nominate the pies again but I think they’ll struggle to go back to back. Won a lot of close games last 2 years, could’ve lost any of their 3 finals last year. Pundits overrating them. That said we have a fair bit of work to do to stay in top 4 contention as other teams are coming (giants and swans worry me)

I think ANBs biggest strength is he’s aware of his limitations so he takes a lot of care to overcome them. When kicking he always works to get his body lined up to kick properly and is generally trying to hit a 30-40m kick rather than biting off too much. Trac knows he capable of anything so goes for the harder options and doesn’t pay enough attention to body position or ball drop. He puts in work on it but doesn’t apply it every time in games. I don’t mind connection so much as a term, it covers both sides being the kick and also the movement by the forward. It’s easier to hit a fwd moving into space (and there’s more margin for error) than trying to pin point a stationary target in a crowded area. As @Altona-demon has pointed out it seems like we’ve made some changes to the forward movement to create space, this makes it easier for the kickers and gives fwds a better chance at a mark.

My issue is that he’s not, or at least not all the time. When he gets it right he can literally put it on a 20c piece but he gets the ball drop wrong too many times in front of goal and shanks too many for a player of his quality.

I think this is the most promising sign out of the game. In wins last year we averaged 14.9 marks i50, in losses 9.1 so to get 20 is solid - obviously no Weitering helps there. 20 marks allowed us to get a goal from 23% of i50s (25% in wins last year, 17% in losses), and convert at 58% (goal from scoring shots, 58% in 2023 wins, 45% in losses). If we can play that way this year we will be in a strong ladder position at the end. We also held them to 8 marks i50 which is strong given they’ve got Curnow, McKay, TdK but I’m less worried about defence in general, hasn’t been our issue last 2 years, hitting the scoreboard has.

Fairly weak start by the Pies media machine but they’ll be working on some stories of Maynard adopting lost puppies and helping out at food banks etc to step things up

Can’t see how we hold on to the top 4 at this point. Forward line is still a work in progress, TMac and Brown don’t look like they’ll be back, leaves us with JVR as the key tall. No Gus. Reliant on Max to stay fit all year with no backup. May’s another year older. Oliver may or may not play the full year. I think the pies, lions, swans and giants are ahead of us, probably the blues. Port also potentially although they could drop like us. I think we still make the 8.

Clearly we should trade him or send him to Casey until he learns how to play or something 🙃

This is right and I have to admit part of the reason I’m so annoyed about another straight sets exit is that I overrated us. 2022 we clearly weren’t going well in the second half of the year but I talked myself around and convinced myself we were coasting into the finals and would hit the gas when we got there and go back to back. We had no gas left and I should’ve seen that coming. 2023 I had reservations again. We’d lost more games than ‘21 and ‘22, were sitting lower on the ladder, had injuries but I still convinced myself we’d come good when it counted. Yes if we hit some targets against the pies we’re in a prelim, yes if we kick straight one more time against the blues we’re off to the Gabba but maybe this is just where we’re at. Tiges hit the jackpot snagging Lynch and getting 2 more flags, Grundy was the only option we had in trade period last year - there was no one else to be had.

100%. All year when we lose games we should win or scrape over the line against bottom 6 teams we’re told “this team is built for finals” or “the game plan is designed to win finals”, well something appears to have gone wrong cos we didn’t win any finals.

If someone told me pre-game that we’d keep Curnow to 1 goal I’d have said we win, easy. No way we lose if we keep Curnow to a goal. How the [censored] did we manage to lose when May kept Curnow to a goal?

And unfortunately that’s the only stat that matters.

I’d prefer if he mentored the senior players and coaches to be honest. Rolling over and asking for a belly rub doesn’t win finals.

Rubbish. Did Cripps get the free reversed when he was chocking Salem on the ground? No. Plenty of jumper punches week in week out don’t get paid but they pulled it out tonight. You’re anti-Koz, that’s fine. No one else got anywhere near the line, timid.

Kicked 2 goals, 11 score involvements 3 goal assists. FMD everyone on here pre-game saying we want them to breathe fire and hit them hard and we need to smash them, Koz ruffles a few feathers and everyone sooks about it. McGovern flopped for the reversed free (rarely gets paid, surprise surprise they pull it out for the Blues). Flopped again in the 3rd when Koz massaged his ear and spent 5 minutes trying to sell it walking around holding his neck Iike he’d been in a car accident. Weak as [censored].

Could be worse, Port will be asking themselves later on tonight why they extended Hinkley on the basis of zero premiership wins

Yeah I should’ve been clearer that they were separate points. The marks i50 thing referred to my earlier post about hitting targets and converting i50s into goals not specifically Gawn/Grundy. We needed 2 rucks AND we also needed to hit targets i50. Gawn helps with the second one if you use him properly (took 2 tonight and kicked points) but overall we needed better ball use going forward again. Or better forwards who know where to be.

Thoughts: 1) not making a prelim 2 years in a row after finishing 2nd and 4th is underperformance. 2022 was excusable due to injuries, we got run over the top of as key players were walking wounded. This year not so much, we should’ve won both games and choked. 2) window is closing fast, Gawn and May have 1-2 years left. Running Gawn into the ground while we had an all-Australian ruck in the 2s is a failure on the part of coaches as well as Max. Everyone can see we need another key forward but we also need a replacement for May. 3) key players need to look at themselves a bit - Max needs to stop trying to carry the team and share the load with another ruck. Trac needs to get off his food channel and focus on executing in games, blazes away at goal and bombs it on top of the forwards. He’s a freak but his freakish skills don’t show up enough in games and we get to see lazy wasteful disposals. Ditto Oliver but he was out for 10 weeks so gets a pass imo. 4) purely a vent with no logic or reason (I’ve been into the whisky): I’m sick of seeing [censored] football at the G. Yes the game plan is effective at grinding wins and finishing high on the ladder but scoring is painfully hard and painful to watch. It’s now 5 years since I attended a winning final in person and that pisses me off. Maybe this game plan wins us the next flag but I’d hoped to see us piling on goals and stomping on the faces of those teams that had thumped us and mocked us for so long. I want to revel in their pain, instead when we win it’s by 2-3 goals, or we lose in ****house fashion like tonight and I can spend the next 6 months getting kicked again. Men’s footy can get stuffed, hopefully the women go back to back.

I dunno about his commitment but Christ he was bad tonight. Fell over about 8 times, kicked it out on the full more than once, was the target of some kicks to the square (why I don’t [censored] know) and stood flat footed while a Carlton player marked both.. waste of space and I would say choked under the pressure.

May was unreal tonight but looked sore, I think he’s got 2 years left at the most but it might even be 1, same with Max - especially if we continue making him ruck solo against 2. FMD how did we not make better use of Grundy? How do we end up with 2 all Australian rucks and it’s just “oh sorry it didn’t work”. 10 i50 marks tonight, 5 short of our average in wins. Score of 71 points, 29.5 points short of our average in wins. Take more marks i50, kick more goals, win games.

Gut feel on seeing the names I wasn’t thrilled. I was hoping we’d go for Grundy in with Gawn 30% or more forward to drag in some marks. Was disappointed for Hibberd. With more time to think about it Tomlinson makes sense, takes TDK or Pittonet and frees up Lever to play on a smaller fwd and take intercept marks. If Jack Martin was playing Hibbo probably stays in. Spargo at least shows they know our delivery i50 was bad and someone needs to hit targets. Marks i50 are desperately needed. Whether he can do anything about that given his time out of the side is another matter but let’s hope. Jordan was the obvious one, no other option really, he’s not brilliant but he’s consistent. I think we win, half a game and 30-odd wasted i50s last week and we got close to the pies. Play 4 quarters and hit some i50 targets and we’ll have the blues covered.

The going theory seems to be that it’s just our game plan and there’s no other way around it, we just have to accept the junk i50s and hope we snag a couple of extra goals through better conversion – doesn’t seem like a sustainable way to win finals and I doubt that’s what the coaches are staking their careers on. It is actually the connection (Goody hasn’t been lying to us). Yes, our disposal & kicking efficiency aren’t great, both are below the AFL average (DE% is 70.9% vs AFL average 72.7%), however in our wins we’re up at DE% of 73% and our losses we’re at 67%. Oppositions also only average 71% against us overall, and 69% in our losses indicating pressure is up on both sides in our games. Our defence is rock solid, 49.4 i50s against us over the season, 47.9 against us when we win, slightly up at 52.3 when we lose. Points against are 71.7 all year, 69.9 against when we win, 75.1 against when we lose. Hardly any difference, under a goal. What does make a difference is our forward half. I50s don’t vary that much, season average is 58.2, in wins we average 59.4 and losses 55.8 – a difference of 3.6 i50s, but when you look at scoring in wins we average 100.5 points and losses 65.5, so how does a difference of 3.6 i50s equate to a difference of 35 points? Is it just goal kicking accuracy? No. If we just converted our 19.9 scoring shots in losses at our season average of 54% (goals per scoring shot) we’d kick 11.9 – 75 points which is a draw against our opposition’s score against us in losses. Over the season we average 13.11, in wins 15.11, losses 9.11 – 6 goals better when we win, 6 straight that is. It’s not conversion of behinds into goals, its conversion of i50s into goals. And why the difference? Marks i50 – we average 15 marks i50 in wins, and 9 in losses – there’s that difference of 6 again. 6 more marks i50, 6 more good chances at goal, 6 more goals. In losses we average 55.8 i50s, which we convert into scoring shots at 37% (vs 41% season average). If we converted i50s at the season average we’d have 23 scoring shots instead of 19.9, and at our season average conversion we’d kick 12.11.85 – enough to beat the average score against us of 75 points without improving our conversion beyond the overall season average. If we had converted our 69 i50s into scoring shots at our usual 41% we would’ve had 28 scoring shots and kicked 15.13.105. Easy win. Now yes repeat entries only happen when you don’t score goals, so if we’d been hitting targets and kicking goals we would’ve never got near 69 i50s, but nor would we have needed to. We beat them convincingly on KB in our second worst goal-kicking effort of the year with 59 i50s (+10), we didn’t need +32 if we hit targets. We can afford to open up the game more and create space i50 – we’ve done it at times through the year and Brisbane and Essendon are the only teams to get 100+ against us. But what we have to do is find targets. We don’t have targets you say? Everyone’s injured? Yes Petty is out (premiership CHB, not a longstanding pillar of our forward line, though it’d be nice to have him). Yes Melksham is out (who only came in from the cold in rd 16). BBB out, probably not coming back – he’s the only one of our premiership forward line or our first choice early season line-up unavailable. We need more out of TMac who is coming off an injury, and I think Gawn needs to go forward with Grundy in to do more rucking. But Max needs to move. Standing 20m out waving for the ball isn’t the way, he’s marked on the lead before and he needs to do more of it. Defenders will panic if he’s on the move, they aren’t so worried when he’s standing still as they’re seemingly allowed to hold him and jump all over him without any penalty. We need the forwards to move and create space, and the mids to move it quicker but slower, quicker ball movement but slower thinking, they’re panicking with the ball and dumping it i50 because there’s too much hesitation going from half back to half forward. Hit targets and we win this week, and would win a GF against the Pies or Giants – the challenging bit now would be Brisbane who’ve unlocked our defence twice so we’d need an above average score to beat them, but we can worry about that after we beat the Blues.

So we’re all soft? Except for you of course. Not as passionate and rusted-on? Sorry I think you’ll find we’re pretty rusted-on after waiting from birth until 2021 to see a flag. If you’re so envious of those 4 clubs there’s an easy solution. We’ve all had a lifetime of snow gags and other [censored] hung on us for supporting Melbourne and you’re on here doing it because you imagined we might not turn up to a game that hasn’t happened yet (and has now sold out). Spell please.

I’m still lost, what price do you pay for being the most dedicated of our 70,000 supporters that the other 69,999 of us fairweather supporters don’t pay?

Please. 93k last week and they finally got started about half way through Q2. We did our bit. And the price YOU in particular pay for barracking for Melbourne? That you’re associated with the rest of us flakey supporters? Dial it back a bit matey..

How crocked is our forward line? Despite the drama through the year personnel-wise it’s actually not that bad. Our Rd1 forward line as named: Chandler, TMac, Spargo, Koz, BBB, ANB. Grundy on the bench, Fritsch out injured. Rd2: Spargo, TMac, Chandler, ANB, BBB, Trac. Grundy and Fritsch on the Bench. Koz suspended. Rd3: Bowey (?), JVR (debut), Trac, Chandler, BBB, ANB. Gawn our injured so Grundy in the ruck, Fritsch and Spargo on the bench. TMac was dropped, back the next week for BBB who got injured. Why am I wasting your time with this? Well if you look at the teams selected when we had a full list the key one missing last week was BBB. All others are available (noting that TMac and Fritsch are only just back of big layoffs). Yes Petty has come and gone, as has Melksham but aside from Brown we have our first choice forward line available for selection. So if we aren’t that injured what’s the problem? It really is connection (as Goody has been saying for 2 years and seemingly unable to permanently fix). BBB when fit gives us what we’re missing which is a forward who knows how to lead and create space. TMac also leads up as goes JVR, but they’re not as persistent at it as Brown. It’s also hard to be persistent at it when your leads get ignored in favour of bombing to the hot spot. The mids need to move the ball quickly, we seem to wait at half forward for the perfect target while defenders clog up space and our forwards stand around at the top of the square. Yes we get a lot of repeat entries with the theory being that builds pressure but against good teams junk entries aren’t worth anything. 69 entries for 7 goals is a lot of junk entries. The forwards also need to move and get out of each others way, work to create space for teammates and accept you’re not going to be on the end of every pass. Watching Brisbane last night you hardly ever saw Daniher and Hipwood on screen at the same time, when one was close to goal the other was up the field. Cameron one out in the square, have we ever seen Koz or Fritsch or any forward one on one in the square this year? It’s not rocket science and it doesn’t require players we don’t have, it requires working for each other instead of for themselves and it requires the mids to take risks and move quickly.