The Taciturn Demon

*sigh* Sadly, entirely true.

If you buy a GA ticket to The [censored], can you sit on the top level?

Forwards needs to be able to bend down. I'm going with no.

I'm not a big fan of using stats to make solid determinations about gamea, but if I was going to mention one it would be Max yet again absolutely dominating the taps and Melbourne once again getting comfortably beaten in clearances. I thought the centre square stuff was mostly good - better than a lot of last year from what I saw. The rest wasn't.

Booo! I wanted him to go full Jayson Daniels.

Yep. Thought the same. Worth a try as a final roll of the dice. (If I'm being really harsh, I think Caleb Windsor would have been a better choice than Ed Langdon, who in his 11th season of AFL football is finding a way to get comprehensively outmarked by Darcy Jones.)

He was so good, wasn't he? I still think Ricky Petterd's is the best debut game I've seen from a Melbourne player, but Lindsay's was very close.

This is me when people talk about Billings and Melksham.

I agree. It was fun to watch us go forward with hands in a way we really haven't for a long while. I'd have loved to see Windsor get onto the end of a couple more chains. I honestly expected them to beat us comfortably and probably carve us up in the same way they went past Collingwood last week (I know this is precisely how they kicked the winning goal, but we seemed knackered). Kicking 11 was pretty good. Keeping them to 11 was excellent.

How many were you expecting?

Kozzy is obviously a major out, and it seemed like AMW was having a good pre-season, but who else? I like these inclusions, but I think they're a clear sign that our existing depth wasn't cutting it.

The forward handball absolutely tore Carlton apart.

Nah, nothing woo woo about the law of attraction.

Good LORD! I had no idea he was that high.

Got away with being nasty West Coast's inoffensive cousin for too long. They're unbearable.

Has he improved as a forward? I remember being astounded by how good he was in the ruck and how skilful he was around the ground but underwhelmed by much of what I saw of him as a forward.

The moment Fremantle signs anyone during trade period, the Curb Your Enthusiasm Music should play as a matter of course.

Wonderful explanation. Thanks so much. Interesting. I've shared a very similar frustration, but have never realised it was a problem of deliberate tactics. For quite a while now I've been perplexed by how often I watch Melbourne on a Friday and on a Saturday watch an objectively worse team consistently kick FAR easier goals than us, even in bad losses. The best example is exactly the one you've mentioned - even the teams that finish 17th or 18th seem to take advantage of really bad opposition turnovers. We seem not to - or not as often as we could. I've always put it down to us being a good (sometimes a very good) team that happens to be mostly poor by foot. Your explanation makes more sense but is possibly even more depressing.

This is super interesting. I never realised the whole wide entry thing was very deliberate. It explains a lot from the past few years, namely how boring we are to watch (which is fine by me as long as we're winning) and how often we seem to squander inside 50s (which is not fine by me, because the 2023 Carlton semi final still fuels my nightmares). I think it was you mentioning in the Fremantle game thread that one of the reasons the Dockers (on the weekend and multiple times previously), seem to walk through us and kick shockingly easy goals with one, two or three blokes free inside 50, is because we press very high, which makes us helpless when a team gets a quick turnover and moves the ball fast. It sounds like hugging the boundary inside 50 is directly related to that. I was frustrated on the weekend by how the way we move the ball has obviously changed but the inside 50 squandering hasn't. Do you think Goodwin is keen for us to change how we get the ball from deep in the backline to 70-odd metres out but will still stick to wide entries and a high press?

Duplicate.

I used to mention this in surveys. Technology advanced to a point where systems could show who is attending and how often years ago. Seemed like such a simple thing to reward frequent attenders, especially for a club that gets (often unfairly) bashed for low attendances. I remember once mentioning it publicly (maybe on Twitter) and a few people suggested it was unfair to people who wanted to go to games but couldn't. I disagree - but that may be a reason it's never been done.

The sub-editor at News Corp is that up-and-down novelty bird that Homer uses to work remotely, leading the power plant to the brink of nuclear meltdown. Mention impossibility of trade? Y Mention impossibility of trade again? Y Mention impossibility of trade again? Y Reiterate implication of trade impossibility: subject not changing clubs. Y Re-reiterate implication. Y Mention subject's desire to be part of team's "first premiership"? Y Mention subject's desire to be part of team's "first premiership" again (but use word "flag")? Y Mention lifestyle? Y Mention lifestyle again? Y Mention subject's age? Y Mention subject's age again? Y Employ non-sequiturs? Y Explain connection between new relationship and Victoria? [bird falls over]

I've sooked about our inability to win clearances for years, so I was pleased to see us comfortably beat them in that part of the game. But there's been a sloppiness about our team for a long time and based on what I saw yesterday, a significantly different way of moving the ball hasn't magically fixed that problem. I assume that part of the reason you go for a game plan that involves more chipping around, switching play across half back and linking with handball is that it lets you find angles and opportunities forward of the ball not available to you when you go long down the line. But the number of times a medium or long kick forward went to a contest or outnumber was shocking. Surely the whole point of this new style is that you're always lowering your eyes - it's much less about gaining territory and forcing a stoppage and much more about finding a target and either carefully moving through the opposition defensive system or, ideally, moving it so quickly, the system has no time to solidify. But we keep hoofing it. Or just hitting garbage passes to blokes on a long lead. I don't get it.

Oh this is interesting. Seemed like Culley was odds on until Henderson got home like Kingston Town. Do they see Culley as completely different - taller, more of a pure midfielder, not an ANB replacement - or do they class Henderson as a midfielder and lean towards a different kind of player entirely?

Depends on whether you rupture it completely or just strain it. Three weeks all the way up to half a season.