Adina88

Mopping up the taps to take full advantage isn’t Max’s job - that’s for the mids to be in the right position. They know where they have to be.

It depends how you define the 'NT project'. Is the objective to go in with tunnel-vision to play a game of football and ignore the context and take home 4 points? Or is the objective to grow the game by extending it beyond the eastern states? I'd argue the investment the club is making by doing so much community work is kind of priceless. Maybe going up a day early and taking minds off football is 'the problem'. But Max has already said that the hour of Footy 4 Life clinic they had the day before the game was the best hour of his life (ok, probably an exaggeration but obviously demonstrates the personal impact it had). You can't quantify the impact of that on a footballer. It's incredibly myopic in my view to reduce the whole Alice trip as 'a loss of 4 points'. As Max says, there's a greater good at play.

I'd say it's almost entirely psychological. There's a reason they drill their practice shots in the warmup and then miss during the game. If you're saying to yourself "don't miss it, don't miss it", because we have a reputation of missing, then you're going to miss the shot. Max has spoken freely about how he hasn't yet mastered the art of not overthinking his set shots. He absolutely knows what the problem is - fixing those psychological bugs is haaaard, and I don't believe for a second that the club aren't working on it.

I'd also assume there was enormous self-imposed pressure on Koz to perform well, in this dad's Indigenous guernsey, in community. It was clearly not the day he wanted to have.

It's Reconciliation Week. Call me old fashioned, but I reckon an Indigenous elder from Alice Springs is allowed to make a statement in their language for the local community on the subject of reconciliation.

Yep. I'm worried for Jack's health more than I'm worried for the team missing his presence...

Something that I haven't seen discussed in the 2025 season so far is one contest where greater minds may correct me, but am I wrong in my observation that Max is yet to lose a coin toss?? I believe he's 11-0. (Well, technically 10-0 but Kozzy won last week, so I'll give it to Max). A good omen, for mine.

I swear one of the reason we lost the first 5 was Goody was upstairs in the box. Once he returned to the bench, it all turned around. I rest my case :)

Langdon got whacked in the eye in the 3rd qtr (?)and went off for a bit.

Goody's relentless optimism is something he's always bagged for, but he believes it, and so do the players. Bloody marvellous.

There's no way Melksham is a placeholder. His delivery into F50 this year has been elite. He's a valuable asset for his footy smarts alone. As long as he's fit, he's an automatic selection for me, every week. Jefferson also has a place, but it's not to replace Melksham (*this year).

'Managed' could easily mean that massive gash above his knee from a few weeks ago isn't fully healed.

It's all such bs that it's fairly laughable. I took Clarry's 'who knows?' to the car park question as sh*t-stirring, just to get the media frothing a bit more.

It's easy to be angry at the media because it's been declared that Clarry took the week off under medical advisement for mental health issues. Cue the media to start up another round of baseless speculation about how unhappy he is at Melbourne - FFS, just leave him alone. It takes absolute guts, even in this day and age, to put your hand up and admit that you're struggling mentally. Why the media take the opportunity to sink the boot in, just because it's Clarry, is beyond me. It's such a cheap shot. Clarry has put in an enormous preseason, and his role in and around the middle has slightly changed this year - people expecting him to produce what he did in 2021 is kind of unfair to him.

Because Indigenous culture is diverse and MFC has many different links to it.

Oh boy, this is fantastic. We're either never letting him go, or this is the last hurrah before he leaves... Either way, brilliant design, and brilliant to get Kevin more involved in the Club.

"Against a nowhere team"? If supporters are calling for a coach's head because we're not winning every single quarter or every single game, then half the Club's supporters also need to go for having such little respect for the opposition. NO-ONE in this competition is a 'nowhere team' - not even WC. It's almost an effing miracle to get to a GF these days, let alone win one, and on any given day, any team can beat another. Disrespect them at your peril.

Shoutout to Adelaide's leafy East because I lived there for years, but with those straight wings and that brick wall? Yeah, nah. Langdon would run into it and break a bone.

6 - Max 5 - May 4 - McDonald 3 - Langford 2 - Melksham 1 - Kozz Props to Chandler and Bowey

Also worth noting that the train has a replacement coach service coming back to Melbourne - be prepared to leave just after 9pm or wait until after 11pm to get back to Southern Cross by 2am. Thanks VLine.

I see a team totally lacking confidence and playing with anxiety. And you can’t blame coaching for that. When you’re terrified of failure, skills go out the door. I don’t know what the answer is - I don’t think the internal fractures of last season are as fixed as even the players thought. Oh and BTW - I just saw Trac doing a cooking demo down at Chadstone - somehow I had no interest in sticking around to get his thoughts on pasta. I’m more interested in his lack of effort on the footy field.

This, and Max was on the bench as well. Roo needed to 2nd ruck, and everyone's been calling for Goodwin to 'mix it up' and throw Trac into FF. So he does. I'm not sure Trac took it too seriously, having a laugh with his opponent and offering him a sip from his water bottle at one point (?), but it was clearly a move to cover rotations. Didn't work on this occasion...

Norfball might turn out to be 2025's HokBall. Yesterday was a great example of not underestimating the competition - they monstered us out of the centre, and just applied a pressure that gave the entire team the yips. That's concerning - psychologically keeping it cool is a skill as important as clunking marks and drilling kicks. Shoutout to Chin and Clarry for their efforts, ditto Lever, but seriously raised eyebrows at Fritsch... Not impressed with Trac's efforts, nor Goodwin's presser that just fed a giant chunk of red meat to the media over Max. Whatever is going on for him, that just made it infinitely worse, I'm sure. I'm not writing anything off until we get a fully fit team back.

The difference between what the rest of players do and what CP does is that other players post/repost just as much about the club they play for, as they do their external sponsorships. I can't remember the last time CP posted anything on his Insta that was MFC related. Wanna show off some fancy watch or headphones you've been gifted? Sure, go for it. But next time a player retires or hits a milestone, repost it like the rest of your teammates do. It is a team sport, after all.

Pretty sure that everything bad this club will experience over the next 6 months will come under the heading 'Christian Petracca' - for all of our sanity, it's time to close this thread down.