The Taciturn Demon

Massive relief. Really good news.

I agree. If he's completely uncompetitive in the ruck, why is he an emergency? I wouldn't mind seeing him with Max in the team, to be honest. The season is well and truly over. We've done well to give Moniz-Wakefield and Tholstrup a try and get a good look at Turner as a forward. We've put a few different players through the midfield rotation. Why not take another step outside the conservatism of 2022 and 2023?

What was that? The first time in the NT was bewildering. This time it was just pathetic. Sorry, but Petracca and Gawn can't fix that garbage.

I don't understand how what we just witnessed then is possible. This is an experienced midfield - every player attending centre bounces has won a Flag and is over 23. They all presumably understood why the game earlier in the season against Fremantle was a disaster. And they're part of a team that has to keep winning if they have any chance of making the eight. Despite all this, they've been thoroughly uncompetitive. This is beyond disappointing. It's a stunning failure.

The United States: Yet another objectively terrible idea. Everybody else: We should do that.

I reckon there have been at least three. This one might be the most impressive, which is a fair effort given how good he was up until the finals in 2021.

A while back Tom McDonald talked about taking a completely different approach to agility during the pre-season and it paying dividends. I wonder whether Sparrow needs to go down a similar path. Seems to me like he can't go sideways. Players with any kind of step go past him so easily.

He's just an absolute pleasure to watch.

Probably a lovely person, and I can see how he's a fan favourite, but there are players who are "characters" off the field, and professional on it.. and there players whose "zaniness" translate into on-field stuff that gets an A+ from the "sport is entertainment" crowd but isn't great for people who like seeing their team win. Draper spends too much time doing "funny" stuff, and not enough doing the solid stuff everyone expects from all players, but especially ruckman. I reckon Petty and van Rooyen were solid on Saturday, but I also think Goldstein would have given them a bath.

For a while I've thought he looked like the eventual Lever replacement. But my goodness, that right foot - it gives me pause. If he can get the "craft" right, he might end up becoming a more-than-handy forward.

When we picked him up the line from the football department was that he was - very smart. Odd recruiting decision and even stranger public explanation of his value to the team.

You had me at this is not a good sign. Absence makes the heart grow fonder.

Stopped watch.

Elite. Has been dismissed as "good ordinary" and "overrated" from the very very start, mostly be Melbourne supporters.

I tend to agree. Although I do like the idea that one (maybe even two) of the four umpires concentrates entirely on off-the-ball rubbish, aiming to delete tagger scragging from the game. At the moment there's way too much leeway given to D-graders shutting down A-graders. I have no idea why arms around and not-looking-at-the-ball free kicks are awarded readily to forwards but rarely to midfielders and almost never to rucks.

I've moderated my opinion of umpiring, coincidentally since just after September 2021. But I still find those all-too-frequent instances of 'edgy' umpiring pathetic and embarrassing. By that I mean, the decisions made about infringements that have been free kicks for decades, and where rules, nuances or community expectations haven't really changed at all, so there's little room for interpretation... but a well-placed umpire decides to make a 4D chess call during a game of naughts and crosses. I love it when Essendon loses, but there was a prime example on Saturday night when Sam Draper got front on contact 25 metres out AND had his arm dragged, and the umpire called play on. This wasn't an honest mistake or a bad angle - it was an umpire being a massive smart [censored] and changing the course of the game.

I wonder if he's more important as a cultural glue than a technical tutor. We still look to me like a bottom 8 side for kicking (of all kinds), and have for a long while.

Probably stating the bleeding obvious, but when you smash a team at stoppages everything becomes easier. I don't think it's any coincidence that all of Turner, Petty and van Rooyen looked as good as they have all season. Really interesting to see whether we can do this again, or at least begin to break even again for the rest of the season. In the big losses this year we've been embarrassing at stoppages for huge portions of the game. I guess the other part is, can we dominate in the centre square while also stopping opponents from hitting easy 45s in the corridor as Brisbane did a lot in the last half.

Giving away 14 centimetres, but kept Andrews pretty quiet and looked dangerous himself. Good game from Fritsch.

So true.

I think this is definitely the way to go. Returning to "wily" plus-28 second-clubbers who at their best offer middling performance might be "best practice" when you're chugging along nicely, and clearly going to make the top 6, if not 4. We are nowhere near that. Sorry to be pessimistic, but the system at the moment is so broken, I can't see us winning more than we lose in the final nine games no matter who we put on the park.

I feel you'd get Parish understanding you were buying vanilla yoghurt only to discover you'd got natural/Greek - not a mild flavour; almost no flavour at all. I can't help but feel this is what Richmond did with Hopper.

Thanks so much! Love this kind of insight.

That sounds fair to me. I like Bowey, but he's doing very little at the moment. I also like the idea proposed by several posters on here of trying McVee in the middle. Early in his career to make the move, I know, but he has everything we don't have in the centre square: beautiful sideways movement, composure combined with good disposal and good decision making, and speed.

If May gets $1800, Xavier Duursma is about to get a $250,000 fine for his effort this afternoon.