jabberwocky

Same. + Glass of cab sav.

The thread is about the game plan which this post has nothing to do with. What specifically is your beef? What exactly are you debating and who with? You are happy with the improvement yet it hasn't been a satisfactory season. Anything less than a flag is a failure yet you laud John Northey (a terrific coach). If we make the grand final next year and lose you will be [censored] off and believe that we could have done better? Other clubs are more hungry than us? What were your expectations before the season started? A flag? 100% wins? Do you gather that from the amount of questions in this post that I have no idea what you are on about?

Respect. There are some thread starters that won't be happy unless we win every game. Fortunately we have a football club that is far less jittery and are geared toward winning a flag. Its small picture vs big picture stuff. We doubled our wins in a year. We will enter the next stage of our development in 2011. If we double our wins next year I will be very happy. And on the game plan, it is a very good one. It asks a lot of the players and only very good, fit and strong players can implement it effectively. You can see now that the players know what they need to do. It is now a matter of lifting the team performance consistently.

I think it's important that the supporters of our club can decide whether there are any agendas in play here.

Newton cannot be traded, he is a rookie. We need to do our due diligence on Taylor Walker. If his head is right I believe we should go hard. IMO Adelaide players are worth a good deal less that thier true value due to thier under-performance as a unit.

No one is happy with mediocrity. I am not happy with unnecessary alarmism from flighty supporters. It was a bad game, we didn't play with the required intensity and they worried us out of it for most of the game. Lets all give Dean a call tomorrow and let him know that when we play [censored] it's unacceptable and as member's we'd really prefer to see a win. I am sure it will make all the difference. The bolded part, mate seriously....

Get a grip Chicken Little It was a poor effort. Several teams put in several of them each season. We will build on our consistency. If we continue to double our win loss ratio each year I will have a happy member.

We have excellent depth. Our intensity waivers fare too much as it often does with young teams. Really did not hit the ball or man hard enough. We played with fear.

Not what I am seeing but each to thier own. Not coping with thier forward pressure, struggling to win a close in contest anywhere. Zones not influencing this match.

No we are second to the footy and cant win a contest Nothing to do with the coach

cannot win a f%^ing contest on the ground

Not happy with the way we are playing, they are much more desperate. We are waiting for things to happen.

Imagine thier offspring. Big strong Rangas armed with gargantuan ear lobes that both mesmerise and knock over the opposition, expert snipers ... always moving forward, moving forward, moving forward....

I know it's small but I can only upload 500kb. Its A4 size and is now in a frame for posterity.

Post like this make me want to put my head through my screen No-one has written him off. Stop being emotive. It is the discussion about a Melbourne footballer who clearly needs a stronger body and better ball focus. We can discuss Bate's lack of agility and how we would like to see that improve but don't discuss Watts' flaws. I have no doubt that the kid knows he has them and is trying to address them. Stop being so defensive, he is a footballer on our list that needs to make marked improvement to make the grade. We all want to see him make it.

Hannabal is right. Those players perceived as soft are often those who are hyper-conscious of the players (be it opponents or team-mates) around them. It can cause them to take focus away from the objective...the footy. It causes confusion, slows reactions and leads to poor and non-committal decision making. This is clearly Jack's problem. Then there is the other side of the coin. Players who make the ball thier only focus and lack awareness of what is going on around them. Daniel Bell, Kosi, possibly Nathan Jones. I have a tendency to coach the young kids to make the ball thier objective first and treat what is happening around them as a secondary concern. Ie be aware of your periphery but focus on the ball when you know you can get it. I hope Jack will find that place between the two that good and great players find. Its not Watts bashing, it is a fact. Jack has some great strengths he must improve this part of his game to make it. I have faith that coaches far more qualified than any demonlander will be working with Jack on this issue. If I were caoching him I would put together a bunch of clips of Watts approaching the footy concentrating on the position of his head and eyes

Footy 101 - You give games to the blokes who deserve them. It pisses players off when they don't get games when they deserve to. And playing blokes who don't deserve a game can enable under-performance.

I agree with most of that except the bit in bold. When it started raining they played a simpler more effective style of footy and we were lucky that they couldn't capitilise. We did change that up as the game wore on. Also the rain meant more stoppages wich suited thier game style and slowed us down. When the rain fell they clearly gained the acsendancy.

Mistakes at crucial times. Clearances for the reasons as mentioned.

Agree with that, it's a common issue when discussing a player. One thing I have noticed is that the higher the draft pick the more defensive some are.

Moloney reported

Jones is under-rated by a few of the more learned members of Demonland. Those who say Jones does nothing exceptionally well need to have a re-think. He is one of only a few playing league footy at the moment who can consistently treat thier body as a battering ram and still make it up for the next contest. He does this contest after contest and week after week. This is often not truly reflected in any stat. Jones needs to find a level where he marries his urge to attack and create with his skill level. There are times when some of his attacking plays are team lifting. He is a lot closer to being an A grader than a lot of people here think IMO.

I would like to comment but I have been overcome by the strong waft of faecal matter from a male bovine.

I hate this nah nah nah nah nah I told you so crap. I think you will find all real supporters who come to this site want to see players succeed. Others are in it to beat a drum or self aggrandize. We have all made good calls and bad calls. Dunn clearly needed to improve a number of areas of his game. Dunn's game has improved out of sight since DB made him play a tagging defensive role which required him to increase his running ability and use his body positioning to influence a contest. He has really matured as a footballer especially.

Hypocrisy The footy dept are saying that currently Morton needs to work on his game, as do Maric, Bate, Jetta, Strauss etc. If they don't like it they "can f%^k of to Carlton or go where-ever." That is real, not warm and fuzzy crap, that is how it is. It will be harder to get a game at this club, a switched on young player who is after team success will know that the club who has a bevy of young talent coming through is a good club to be at. People will have to come to terms with the fact that favourite player X might struggle to get a game.