Deenooos_

What an absolute legend Clarry is!

Goody's such a nervous talker haha always fiddling, bless him

Either this or I am of the belief that we over trained ie. overdid it with the loading this year. It may have partly been because we pushed clearly injured players through the same program rather than not doing it. This can cause chronic fitness problems for multiple months after you mess it up. We should be a different team next year in terms of running ability.

I'm convinced we got "overtraining Syndrome". Our injuries around the bye [censored] with our loading program and maybe Selwyn lacked the wisdom in recognising we had to adjust on the run. I don't doubt we trained really hard in the preseason, we looked a million bucks fitness wise in the first 10 rounds... We never faded out in the beginning, only from r11 onwards.

Sydney will fall off a cliff next year. Way too early for them. Better for us, one less contender to deal with

With a good injury run we are winning it next year. Swans no where near it, Collingwood won’t have a nother miracle season and Geelong wonmt have another pissweak draw like this year and alot of players will retire.

Anyone thinking we would be down this much if we were plying are kidding themselves. Even with how banged up we are. Sydney are way before their time..

This just proves unfortunately how ordinary Sydney are. They need to kick the next two

We wouldn’t though.

Sydney are pathetic

Terrible game so far. We would do better right now.

[censored] this is depressing. Oh how different an MCG Grand Final is… Our boys need to do it next year! They are in a 5 year window. Anyway let’s just enjoy the great game of AFL today!

1. We will be fitter. We won't suffer so many injuries to key players, touch wood* 2. We will tinker with our method, I refuse to believe our coaches won't change things. They know our stars are in the window for 4 years and won't take any year for granted from now on. 3. We will blood youth

If Geelong lose it will be so sweet as it may be their last chance to win it with their current core mob. I'm hoping they will drop down the ladder in the next 2-3 years needing a mini rebuild although knowing Geelong it is probably wishful thinking. Your Selwood's, Dangers' and Hawkins' will be nearing retirement as much of them will be 32-33. On the other hand I feel Sydney have overachieved and peaked a little too early for my liking. There is so much young talent on their list and they'll be seriously good for the next 5 years.. I want us to be the dynasty club!

This kind of injury can be career-ending for many, hard to imagine bringing him back so early was wise.. Let's hope he can fully recover.

I'm sure this was exactly what went wrong. I think the coaches took Burgo's philosophy a little bit too literal and we really should not have replicated last year's program when so many players were cooked by injury this year. I was worried too because I knew how fine the line between overtraining and sufficient recovery is. If loading is done incorrectly athletes can develop "overtraining syndrome" which leads to chronic fatigue. It occurs when prolonged excessive training is combined with other stressors (injuries) and insufficient recovery time. Unfortunately once you develop it, it take several months for your body to return to normal fitness capacity. Just speculation so there's no way of knowing if we developed "OS" as opposed to simply not being fit enough but it begs the question as to why only the bottom two teams performed worse in second halves than us.

Collingwood have so many fast runners in their midfield and backline which we lack other than Langdon. And they play on so quickly which opens up so many options, I feel like we did that last year.

This proves to me we are still one of the best teams. A few tinkers with our gameplan, better fitness, some new found hunger after being embarrassed in front of our home fans and wanting some redemption for our performances, less expectation will all go a long way in enabling us to contend up the top again next year. Surely this will be a huge focus in the off season.

It is time to regroup and implement those cultural changing ways again like we did in 2021, we seem to have gone away from that a bit this year. Too much was against us, expectation, being hunted, embarrassing May incident, key player injuries. There won’t be as much expectation on us next year and that should suit us. People calling for Salem to be dropped are mad. He was impacted too severely by his injury all year. A full preseason and he will get back to his 2021 form. Same with Lever, the amount of times he’s rolled his ankle this year I can’t even count lol. We are still one of the best teams in it, we just couldn’t get a break this year and it all caught up to us. Roll on 2023!

Yeh well this season will surely be a wakeup call, probably the reason teams fall away after a flag. We could come back even stronger next year in a similar way to 2021 now that 2022 is out of the way. The only concern is with Goody, I hope the coaches come to their senses and switch up the way we attack because it just isn't efficient enough and fix up our defence off opposition transition, killed us all year...

Yeh I agree. I really hope the club is smart enough to ensure we recruit the players we need for the positions where we are lacking. I think JT is reliable and will get us what we need. We have Turner to come in for May when he retires (I really hope May doesn't drop off a cliff next year at 31 and hope he play until 33, he's just too good). Anyway we will have JVR to come in as the pack crashing marking forward which we need so badly and TMAC has another 2-3 good years in him. I would just drop BBB next season, his knee is cooked and he won't be better than JVR or TMac next year. How good would a forward line be with those two contested marking forwards? In terms of injuries; I'm convinced we had at least 8 players out there under a significant injury cloud: - Max (cooked syndesmosis ankle, and groin) - Lever (multiple rolled ankles in the last 2-3 games) - Petracca (fractured leg) - BBB (cooked knee) - Jackson (ligament sprain in knee needing surgery) So when you look at it, we are completely banged up and it shows. Gawn's syndesmosis has a recovery time ranging from 2-6 months but is this recovery slowed when running around on it for months on end, probably. Many others including Pickett and Fritsch with knee issues too. If we don't make at least a prelim/grand final next year we will be a complete laughing stock. I can't accept that we come out next year with everyone healed up and not cause the comp some serious problems. We will learn that our 2021 style won't win us another flag as we will have learned this year, so they will go to work in the off season to make us better. We are too good for that not to happen. In the end the premiership hangover did hit us I think, and the pressure and expectation of it all was too much. It was embarrassing that we couldn't at least make a prelim but it is what it is. The better days are not over.

Yes I agree. We are a very strong team with a good spine, the fact that we were sometimes so fumbly, wasteful and predictable, it was still not easy to beat us in many games including both finals and the opposition had to be at their best.

This was such a Melbourne to end the season and completely blow it. We seemed so distant as a playing group and you could see it on the field in the 2 finals. It was a shame as some of the old 'Melbourne of old' habits came back. They need to get it right in the off season. Get all of the youngsters in early and [censored] it, bring back more of the attacking kind of gamestyle of 2018, I think that kind of game suits us more and can compete with the upcoming contenders. We also need to get the fitness program right, Goody can say all he wants about that not being a problem but I'm convinced Griffith failed to prepare them properly. Let's hope going out in straight sets doesn't send us into a spiral, although I think we are stronger than that and can use this to motivate us for next season. We have built a solid environment. On the positive side, we now get a longer break and the amount of 19 and 20 year olds in the 2's could really lift us next year. We have a very strong team, that was proven all year that even with our dysfunctional gameplan at times we still weren't easy to beat and teams really needed to hustle to get over us. I see more upside than downside.

We are the epitome of "All duck, no dinner" (all talk no action) Too much blabbing on about going back to back and learning from our losses, what a load of rubbish. We have given the whole comp a reason to [censored] on us for the way we've gone about things this year.

Unfortunately I can see us diving off a cliff in a few years. What the hell were they doing out there, the whole footy world watched as we embarrassed ourselves with May, Lever and Spargo raging like a baby with a tantrum. We are fake tough guys and everyone knows it. Petracca almost best on ground with a fractured leg, we don't deserve him and Oliver. If the FD can't squeeze another 1 or 2 flags out of this group then it'll be a waste of talent. We gifted a side who hasn't won a game at the MCG for 8 years and has an awful finals record a game to the prelim where they shouldn't even belong..