The Taciturn Demon

I'm interested to see what we do here. I'd have him in the middle as much as the fitness team say is safe. We desperately need everything he has: speed, precision by foot, evasive skills, tackling ability, quick hands, ability to win clearances, etc. But it seems like he's a certainty to leave the club. Does that just become a band aid? Do you keep him forward and try others in the middle, knowing he's not a long-term fix?

I think when your champion ruck and two of your gun centre square midfielders are either mediocre or poor by foot, your wingers need to be more Zach Merrett than Taylor Adams.

We recently signed a player for a further four years who can't, and has never been able to, handball. His kicking is well below average as well. He's beloved on this site and has finished top 10 in the B&F multiple times. As a club we don't tolerate awful disposal. We embrace it.

As bad as everything feels at the moment, this situation PLUS Houston but no Langford or Lindsay would be so much worse.

You might be talking about the Lachman test. You lie on your back with your knees bent at a certain angle and a physio or doctor holds your thigh and then tugs your shin bone forward, hoping to feel what they call an "end point". That's the ACL doing its thing: keeping your knee stable. If there's no obvious feeling of the ACL 'resisting', it could suggest it's ruptured. You're right. It isn't always conclusive. I remember when I did mine, the physio on the boundary said they felt something and thought I'd be fine. Then a week later, I went and saw another physio and they thought they felt something as well. But whatever it was wasn't the intact ACL - the scan showed I'd done it. But I still think letting a player run on it is unusual unless the medical team just don't suspect it at all.

It's true that you can often quite comfortably run in a straight line after rupturing your ACL. But as GS said, it's unusual for fitness staff to let you run on it if they suspect it.

I feel the same. I've never warmed to him, but I think he's a genuine person and I admire his refusal to resort to public tantrums in difficult times. It is, as you say, sad to see him front the media after such a bad loss and talk as if he is still in charge of an exceptional side.

Comfortably. Missing ANB terribly, but that doesn't account for just how bad we are when the opposition have it.

It's been a long time since I knew from the first five minutes or so we had close to zero chance of winning. The midfield has gone from brilliant to a concerning to catastrophically bad in the space of four years. Everything else is a mess - but it all starts with the midfield.

I'm a Petty fan, so this is biased, but I thought he was fine against North.

This was very good. I laughed.

I wish Damian Barrett's editors would take a tough love approach with his copy. Spout and sprout are two entirely different words. As verbs, they don't mean anything like the same thing.

Goodwin's love for Melksham is pathological.

Good [censored] lord.

Really good call. Yes, his chasing and tackling is below average. It always has been. It's highly unlikely to change after a stint in the VFL. His goals have dried up because our system for getting the ball inside 50, which has been suspect for ages, is now terminally bad.

Fair call. Seeking a change from the status quo is completely understandable. I just think he comes up an extraordinary amount for a player who, as you say, is 34 and injury prone. I would add that even at his very very best he has never been an intense, agile lock-it-in forward. There's no better example of absence making the heart grow fonder in footy fans than Melksham. They can play a huge part. I just don't think these particular injuries explain losing so badly to a team with the youngest average age and the third least number of average games in the league.

This is such a good point. Reminds me of the rapturous applause West Coast supporters gave Andrew Gaff every time he got the ball after breaking Andrew Brayshaw's jaw and knocking out his teeth.

I'm struggling to get my head around a few repeated ideas in this thread: 1. Rivers has failed as a midfielder and must return to half back. Rivers has attended 8 centre bounces over two games - 14 percent of all centre bounces. He was at zero centre bounces in the North game. As far as I could tell he played on the half back flank. 2. Charlie Spargo was rushed back in and was a liability. Spargo, a bloke who lowers his eyes, hits targets inside 50 and makes himself an option at half forward, is very close to the least of our worries at the moment. Did you expect him to get 25 and kick 4? 3. Melksham will make a huge difference when he returns. No he won't. 4. It all comes down to injuries. I'd love Windsor, May and McVee in the team (and Pickett makes a huge difference) but if you can't cover three or four best 22 players, you have a major problem with depth. North belted us without Logue, Wardlaw and Archer. Brisbane are winning without Coleman, Cameron, Lohmann, Doedee and McCarthy. St Kilda beat Geelong without King, Owens, Howard, Butler and Phillipou. The Dogs are more than competitive without Bont, Treloar, Weightman, Johannisen and Jones. Hawthorn haven't had Mitch Lewis since the end of the last ice age. They're making do without Calsher Dear. Injuries make it tough, but unless half your best 22 is out, that can't be an excuse for ten goal losses.

Gosh this is depressing.

My |d|ot's understanding is that instead of slowly moving the ball, kicking down the line, scrambling to create a stoppage and then getting the ball inside 50 by any means possible, the new system involves chipping around half back (or going the full switch) to move the opposition around and find an angle, preferably a player in the centre square, then using fast, aggressive forward handballs to break into the forward 50. I think we all saw the sideways chipping in the GWS and North games. Against GWS the aggressive handball chains weren't numerous but they seemed to work reasonably well. Against North they almost seemed almost accidental to me - when they happened it was messy and panicked and even big turnovers never led to easy goals.

Campbell seems like a trustworthy battler - someone you can rely on to keep contesting. I like that we went and got him. But I also think the FD hate the idea of playing two pure rucks in the same team (which makes Grundy acquisition seem completely deranged). We all hoped Max would be dangerous as a resting forward and he just isn't. Campbell has gone at half a goal a game as a career average at both AFL and VFL level. I have to admit I really liked the idea of Fullarton when we got him and while I understand players sometimes don't turn out how you'd like, I'm amazed by how far down the pecking order he seems to be.

I thought the same. They gave us chance after chance. Goodwin spoke about them in the press conference like they'd played a near-perfect game. They certainly went hard and didn't relent, but they were so sloppy.

Fullarton is such an interesting one. Clearly the FD think he's extremely suspect in the ruck, but he only needs to be at centre bounces for 20% of the game. He was recruited in part because he kicked goals at VFL level at Brisbane. His average has fallen at Casey, but Casey were awful in 2024. I didn't mind what I saw of Johnson against GWS, so no problems bringing him back in. I also understand if he's simply not up to it - but so are several others in the senior team at the moment. Are they seriously going to let Fullarton go a full two years without a game and then (presumably) delist him?

Yep. Those who thought we would finish top 4 (and there seemed to be a lot of them in the prediction thread) were always setting themselves up for major disappointment. At the start of the year I thought sneaking into the eight was extremely optimistic. Ninth to fourteenth more likely. But 10 goals against North surprised even me.

I'm pretty confident Turner will end up as a defender. And I think he may need to return there sooner than many of us expect. But probably not in the next few weeks. Van Rooyen? No. The list management team need to go tall crazy in the coming drafts.