Deenooos_

He is playing himself into some serious form over the past weeks when I and many were starting to doubt if his head was still in the game. He's so extremely valuable and will be the difference in going back to back this year. He's had 3 full years to build strong relationships within our playing group and I think it will be strong enough for him to want to stay, just my opinion though.

Almost identical to last year. It can only mean one thing; Guaranteed back to back flags🏆 🤪🥹

For anyone interested in our top 10 goalkickers in the H&A season this year and how they compare to last year here is a list. Top 10 goalkickers in 2021: Fritsch - 47 goals Pickett - 35 goals McDonald - 30 goals Petracca - 24 goals Brown - 19 goals Jackson - 15 goals Spargo - 14 goals Neal-Bullen - 13 goals Langdon - 11 goals Gawn - 11 goals Top 10 goalkickers in 2022: Fritsch - 50 goals Pickett - 38 goals Brown - 29 goals Petracca - 19 goals Mcdonald - 15 goals Weidemann - 13 goals Harmes - 12 goals Gawn - 12 goals Jackson - 11 goals Melksham - 11 goals Very good season by Fritta and Kozzy again with Kozzy kicking 18 goals in his last 6 games.

It doesn't matter, the dees will win the QF wherever it is.

Unfortunately winning it all from here isn’t garanteed. I do think however the performance yesterday would have beaten every team in the comp, and if we are truly gonna be peaking for the next 4-5 weeks I’d say lookout competition! Our kicking inside 50 and efficency for goal was elite, I just wonder if it was a result of a change in method due to higher fitness. It seems there was an active change in Goody’s message to the players to take on some riskier kicks to hotspots. This might be because he knows the players now have the physical endurance and output to be able to defend the turnover if it does happen because they aren’t as fatigued. We might not see them kicking it to the pockets as much for the remainder of the season which will heavily increase our scoring. And it seems as though the boring i50 entries was just a strategy implemented by Goody to cover for our fatigue in the last 2 months because without the required fitness we were more vulnerable to being scored against on the transition. It’s only conjecture but we looked a completely different team today when moving the ball, very similar to the way we played in finals last year.

Let’s take back top 2 boys!!

I just want to know if it’s anything serious. Could be H&S Protocol for all I know

Hitting targets inside 50, Melbourne is this you?

Oh.. is Salem injured?

Who has Bowey come in for?

I want to see a really strong all team defensive game, especially from our back 6, no leaky goals please. Keep the Lions to 70 points or below, Fritsch to kick 4 and Melksham and BBB to combine for 6. Dees by 37 points.

I don't think you quite understand what loading is but that's fine, it was one of the main reasons we were so dominant in the finals last year and won the flag. Imo we didn't play enough top teams from rounds 1-10. We were incredibly unlucky to come up against mostly good teams in the 2nd half of the season. Unfortunately you can't choose the fixture and who you come up against at what point in the season...

The fact that we are even still 3rd at this point is pretty astounding. Having played 5 top 5 teams since round 15 it has been an incredibly difficult draw in the second half of the season. The more I look at it the more I realise how unlucky we've been with our fixture this year. I can't help but think what would have been if we had played Freo and Sydney during rounds 1-8, we would have blown them away imo. Then, had we faced Essendon, GWS or the suns during our heavy midseason loading which obviously heavily affected our 3 performances before the bye, I think we well could have won them too. We could have potentially been 12-0 before our QB clash and gone into the bye sitting on top with a 12W-1L record. No-one would be worrying about potentially dropping out of the top 4.... I hate it how some stupid journos keep bringing up the "they've lost 6 of their last 11 games" narrative and use that to compare us to the formline of Geelong, Sydney, Brisbane or even Collingwood. They have had a pathetically easy fixture since r12 or even after the bye so it's really hard to properly assess or compare the dees to the other top 6 sides. Based on the "premiership" metrics where we sit 2nd overall, our interstate record, our wood over Brisbane and Brisbane's struggling form over the last month even against poor opposition, I have zero doubt we will win on friday, so get pumped everyone.

When I read the article I couldn't help but laugh out loud. It's so blatantly obvious and labelled "insane" that at this point I actually think there will be a switch up come finals time. This or that we will be able to win more 50/50 contests in the air and when it hits the ground due to better physical readiness as our mids will get to the fall of the ball quicker. We literally have a full FD of intelligent football brains and it's kind of hard to imagine that they would persist with an obviously dysfunctional way of exiting the 50 and moving the ball forward. It's either that or we're buggered.

I understand the part regarding not being able to defend opposition i50s due to lack of defensive running from our mids but I'm still surprised at how poor our clearance work has been, which is inevitably causing us to lose field position more so than usual. King mentioned that at this time last year we were scoring +5 goals from clearance/centre clearance compared to opposition. Right now it's just the +1 point. I wonder what the reason behind this drop off has been because it probably isn't fitness. We have strong midfielders and coming up against a depleted Carlton and weak Collingwood midfield you'd expect us to dominate this area but it hasn't been convincing as of late.

For anyone interested in David king's updated assessment of the state of our game, have a listen to the podcast. Discussion on Melbourne starts at the "29min". https://player.whooshkaa.com/episode?id=1032250 I for one find him a good analyst. We were ranked 1st for moving the ball end to end from r1-10. Since r16 we are ranked 17th in the comp. We are poor at defending the ball once it gets inside 50 which has seen a massive drop-off over the last 6-7 weeks. Given how so much of our game is "lacking" key match winning components, it's remarkable how we are still winning according to him, basically just on sheer talent, brilliance and coaching. If you listen to how our game has changed since the beginning of the year it's hard to attribute that solely to how teams are playing against us. Much of the elements we are lacking or have dropped off in have nothing to do with being "worked out" and more to do with us not doing them. I just hope we can improve our stoppage game and our i50 defence game on Friday.

Thanks for this. Last year we played 3 bottom 10 teams and 1 top 4 team in the last 4 games. This year we've played (going to play) 3 top 4 teams and 1 top 8 team in the remaining 4 last. As periodisation is such a calculated science we could still be on the upsing and have only looked so vulnerable in the last qtrs because we are playing solid opposition who are naturally going to go with us. *Obviously a plethora of our problems remain with or without fitness; the most obvious one being forward cohesion. It really frustrates me because today you could see just how ordinary Collingwood is when they can't deliver all that pressure for the whole game. They were "one trick ponied" by Sydney and they couldn't score, lol. I just worry now, top 4 being on the line, if we can still bring enough on Friday against the Lions. They aren't going so well themselves but will be playing like their life depends on it so we'll see.

At this point beating Brisbane by 30 points won't be enough for 2nd. Sydney will belt the saints.

I think MD means that in comparison to last year we've had plenty of players returning from injury in season such as Salem, Lever, Gawn, Jackson to name a few plus being 5-6 players affected by the flu including Petracca. It seems even though our injury list is small our players out there aren't 100% I also think given the timing of Gawn's/Jacksons injury and the flu running through the team may have impacted our loading program. We might not have nailed it this year but who knows, just seems we're still being overrun somewhat.

The only change we need this week is Harmes in for Sparrow to play a negating role on Neale. Everything else stays the same.

This is really encouraging. Based on this we have been extremely dominant this year contrary to popular belief. I wonder what we were ranked in these stats from rounds 1-10, I'm sure we were ranked #1 in many of them. Anywho this makes us clear second favourite for the flag based on these metrics and Collingwood is nowhere near premiership standard... there are only really 3 favourites with a profile that stacks up. Hope we can sharpen up some of our lacking key areas. For those concerned about facing Brisbane next week, they are really poor defensively and we match up well against them, winning 7 of our last 10 encounters.

I did seem to pick up that the cheers were a bit louder for the blues fans, especially after a goal the "yeahhhh" is really pronounced. They have one of the loudest crowds though. But proud that we didn't get outnumbered, big tick.

Unfortunately not being able to attend last nights game I can't fully judge how the turnout for our supporters was. On TV it seemed that we actually outnumbered the Carlton supporters or maybe broke-even at the very least. Can anyone who went confirm this? It seemed like a good crowd from our bunch!

If it was working I wouldn't be questioning it but we aren't/weren't winning ground balls or 50/50 contests in order to prevent a turnover and d50 re-entry. So why continue to do it? Surely Goody would tell May to switch it up if we aren't on top of the contest during that patch of play, but no reaction at all during that patch in the last qtr. There's too many ridiculous parts to our gameplan that just continue to be repeated even if there is enough evidence by now to suggest they aren't working. The thing is teams are only barely able to beat us and they play out of their skins, that just shows we are a seriously good team. Just imagine how good we'd be with a bit more zappy HB ball movement and more directed f50 entries....

In all seriousness though, why are we losing clearances against a team missing 3 of their inside mids with the likes of Gawn, Oliver, Petracca, Viney and Bradshaw, it's embarrassing. This should not be an area in need of improvement, we have enough of those. Again the backline being exposed very often once ball hits the deck and easy goals out the back. That Silvagni goal should never be so easy, 4 defenders ball watching.