The Taciturn Demon

But Treacy's hands are incredibly good.

I agree with this, particularly the bit about Brayshaw and "it's injuries" excuses. (ANB is a massive loss, as well, and I think Joel Smith would be extremely handy at the moment given we keep blasting it high into the forward line, but there's no point lamenting the loss of either of them. Every team has unexpected or 'unfortunate' list upheavals.) Some of the talk after 2021 was well-intentioned but a bit silly, while some of it was just plain arrogant. I actually think Petracca is going OK. Oliver and Viney have been genuinely shocking to me. It's happened to Viney before and he's come back - I'm not sure if he can do it this time. But Oliver is an eye-opener. I knew there was a very good chance he wouldn't ever reach his best again, but he's an absolute mile from where he once was.

Well said. Burgess seemed to give Melbourne an edge in the Flag year, but he wasn't a magician. He went to Adelaide and since then they've finished bottom four twice and were unlucky to miss the eight once. The shocking last quarters may look like fitness. They may even have a fitness component to them, but they look to me more like a team incapable of dealing with the natural changes towards the end of a game as both teams fatique. We have really poor skills. They get worse. We have and massive problems with pressure around the ball (numbers to the ground ball, tackling, making space for teammates). That drops off further. We can't hurt teams on the turnover. That becomes more crucial (and theoretically easier) at the end of the game.

I find it almost impossible to believe I'm saying this, but I agree. Close to our best and most consistent player until the Essendon game where he started OK and then fell away. Give him another year and hope someone like Adams tears his spot off him.

Yep. I think Goodwin has improved his press conferences (from an admittedly low starting point) And as I've said before, I admire him for never resorting to aggression towards journalists when things are tough. But this was a shocker: a series of platitudes ("we weren't at the level") followed by what amounted to a promise the team almost certainly won't fulfil.

Complete delusion. He said that it will turn soon and we'll be on our way. That is simply not happening. We might pluck a couple of wins out of the blue against decent teams that have a shocker on the day or are devastated by injury, but this team is not about to find any kind of momentum.

...not be remotely surprised. We're clearly a really bad football team. Injuries barely begin to explain what's happening with us. The fact that the coach, media and many fans thought last week was a significant step forward is damning.

I can honestly say I would never have thought of that again unless you'd mentioned that here. That was a memory I had left to a part of my mind I never return to. Got the number 27, too! Wow.

Done it again!

Melksham and Billings would be at the very top of my outs list. Teams are waltzing past us. Too many players aren't going to another gear when it comes time to defend - this has to change. And for lots of players it can change. Billings and Melksham, however, don't have other gears.

If you're willing to try Langdon, you're surely willing to try anyone.

Well said. Trading is now a kind of industry within the industry. Huge parts of the AFL media is heavily biased towards a kind of "player movement is inherently good" ideology; for that reason you very rarely hear talk about trades going badly for either the player or the clubs involved - but this is common. The much-talked-about "win-win" is relatively rare. The industry LOVES a counterfactual, especially when it comes to the draft, but refuses to entertain them when it comes to the question of "What if a player decided to stay?" I wouldn't say NEVER trade Petracca or Oliver, but I very much agree with RIF that it's a decision bubbling with danger.

Isn't Allen's knee more buggered than Ben Brown's was?

Definitely. We can't go too much worse than we are at the moment. There's no need to be conservative or cling on to hopes that what worked previously will suddenly come good. Petracca makes that easier because he's genuinely dangerous in the forward line. As others have said, Viney can work as a forward as well. Oliver seems far less adaptable. The good thing about Pickett and Lindsay (I'd add Chandler and Windsor - who isn't quite as good a kick as the others - as well) is that they can all tackle - pressure when the tap doesn't go our way is disatrous at the moment.

I think stairs are woke - as a man you should be able to just climb up any incline, no matter how steep, without the intervention of engineers or builders. Stairs remove things like the possibility of landslides, thistles and venomous creatures, and that's pathetic. But you're right: escalators and lifts are on a completely different echelon of woke. Also, magnets are woke.

YES! Hook this to my vein. Flexibility is woke. Shaking hands is woke. Amino acids are woke. Stairs are woke.

If pride is the deciding factor, why didn't we win last week?

Pictured here gently trying to prise himself away from a naughty eight year old who ran onto the field after his first goal.

I don't think this gets underscored enough. It's not just for theatre when you see videos where the coach is participating in list management discussions.

Barer still if Petty would still like to return to South Australia as a free agent.

I thought the same, which would explain what several others on the forum have raised concerns about: the relatively gentle approach to the list last year. On the face of it, eight out and eight in seems like a good prune, but that includes Brayshaw from a year ago, two retirements, Joel Smith and a seemingly unexpected trade request from ANB.

Without doubt. I just wonder exactly what those expectations were.

I assume clubs privately talk about serious and reasonably specific expectations for what their list is capable of in the coming season. And what they determine presumably informs all sorts of decisions - list management being at the top of the list. First, am I wrong? And if not, what do you think the honest consensus would have been inside the club in October?

Yikes.

My apologies. I thought you meant accepting we're completely buggered and basically starting again. You're talking about not standing in the way of very good players wanting to leave as Richmond did with Bolton, Baker, Rioli and Graham, so long as the price is right. Although, I would argue they did that because they realised they were completely buggered and needed to start again. I generally agree that if a player depserately doesn't want to be at your club, forcing them to stay becomes more and more unproductive as the years progress (and the resentment builds). I do think, however, that if all the cards fell a certain way, and as you've suggested we ended up trading out Petracca, Oliver, Pickett, Rivers, JVR and Fritsch, we'd then be relying on mostly kids (Langford, Windsor, Lindsay, McVee, Turner, Jefferson and some high picks from the coming draft) and players very close to the end of their careers to keep us competitive. This may be unavoidable and even preferable to dabbling with mediocrity for five or ten years, but the 2008 to 2014 period taught me that throwing kids into the deep end doesn't always work.