Tony Tea

Gee! Don't we always look great after a bye. "Freshened up" must mean "ready to cop a flogging".

Smaller bodies; flogged at the clearances; not taking chances; outnumbered all over the ground; players not going hard enough; system in the toilet; losing out on the 50-50 decisions; missing targets by hand; missing targets by foot; Crow nobodies having a field day; game over in the first - just another day at SHAAMI.

Two steps forward, eight steps back. Very Melbourne.

It's not called SHAAMI for nothing.

Frawley might not be a "surprise packet" to us Demon affycondos, but he should definitely be in The Big Tip half-year all-Australian backline. Scandalous omission. I will write to my local representative.

Simon was the star of the Coodabeens and, like you say, he is missed. So is Tony Leonard. The show has lacked an edge ever since those two pulled the pin. But I still might even listen if they dump the dismal Greg Champion songs.

Simplistic article with a thrust that suggests that all a forward needs to do is get moving. Yes: very mobile forwards are essential. But. What about pressure up the ground? What about lack of space? What about being outnumbered? What about the large number of skilled on-ballers running the ball ALL the way down the ground through half-forward, not just off half-back? What about the inability of his teammates to hit a tight target. Blaming forwards for not finding space is like blaming a roof for falling when there are no walls to hold it up. Even the heading (courtesy of a subby, no doubt) is misleading? Forwards going backwards? Forwards find the most space when they have turned their defender and are running towards goal: Jack Watts last week; Miller against Port; Geelong all the bloody time. Steve Johnson is capable of running into space because Geelong bring the ball down quicker than most so the Johnson has more space in which to move, and Geelong are precise at hitting forwards in limited space because they are better kicks than most. The nature of defence has changed because ALL players are fitter and more athletic and able to cover more ground, which means they can get back into coverage. Garry neglects to mention that the best side in the competition has won two out of the last three premierships - and should have won three, except that the side which won the other premiership did it better on the day (and Geelong choked) - precisely by having its back-men zone off their forwards. When done properly, zoning off works. Melbourne's goal should be to get it working; combine it with a strong-running on-ball brigade; and run at the defenders, draw them up the ground, and hit the Melbourne forwards who will then have the necessary space in which to move.

Gary Lyon is right. Geelong paid Gysberts next-to no attention. Bartel is not "attention" and commentary like "Gysberts should be flattered by being tagged by a Brownlow medallist in his first game" is typical of a caller lost for something worthwhile to say. One) Bartel is not a tagger; and two) it was the last quarter and the game was cooked. Selwood got 30+ possessions. Nor is a parallel drawn between McLean & Gysberts valid, yet. Ask yourself how Gysbert might have gone had Geelong put, not Bartel, but Ling onto Gysberts from the start. A couple of years ago at Shell Stadium Brock spent a first half racking up possessions like Gysberts did on Saturday. At half time Thompson put Ling onto Brock and Brock barely got a touch in the second half. The advantage of Gysberts lies in numbers. When West Coast had Judd, Cousins, Kerr, Embley, Braun, Fletcher, etc running around the opposition could never tag them all. Tag Judd and Cousins would stack up the possies; tag Cousins and Judd would stack them up; tag Judd AND Cousins and Fletcher and Embley would knock up a lazy thirty. At some point in the future Melbourne will have a mature, talented squad of on-ballers (Scully, Trengove, Gysberts, Grimes, Moloney, etc) and the opposition will not be able to tag everyone. What's more. It would be staggering if Gysberts won a Rising Star nomination after one game.

I thought James Frawley & Jordan Gysberts were our best players on Saturday. So did The Age: On second thoughts, maybe they meant Jordon McDonald. (Apologies if this has already been mentioned somewhere.)

Yes. And, since it came at the tail end of a spate of fumbles, missed targets, drops, bungles and general stuff-ups under pressure, as he casually juggle the ball I screamed at the TV "Just grab the f***in' thing!!"

This match has the Collingwood and the Bulldog situation written all over it: work hard, take a good lead, but fail to kill off the opposition and have the game pinched.

Nice work. Even with the rose-tinted beer goggles.

The Age journo Emma Quayle, who spends a great deal of her time writing about the draft and young players, tweeted this about Matthew on Watts:

Hats off to Jack. It was a great sign that while so many Melbourne players were dreadful, and with the team completely lacking fluency, and with the delivery into the forward line being farcical, he manage 15 clean touches and some tidy contested grabs. Pity he dropped that mark in the last quarter because that will give the pundits something to harp on. Speaking of harping on. 3AW was utterly abysmal regarding Watts and Naitanui. BT in particular would not shut up about any perceived Watts' mistake, but started drooling anytime Nik Nat went near the ball. Bizarre and genuinely aggravating when you consider that Watts was clearly better than Nik Nat. Seriously, it was atrocious commentary. You got the impression that BT thought he could whip up an issue with his child-like barbs. Pathetic. How he does well in "favourite commentator" polls is one of this century's great mysteries.

Got a great idea! Let's call ourselves the Fuchsias!

Works both ways. When Bennell got his goal in the second quarter he charged through the pack and Jarrod Harbrow jumped out of his way.

Play Watts at centre-half back of full back and make him chase the opposition's key forwards. That will teach him about key forward running patterns as well as enable him to take some marks with the sit on his opponent, rather than rely on teammates up the ground to kick it to him.

Indeed: Copycat.

Was he as excited as David King on 3AW? Kingy absolutely loves the Demons.

Meanwhile, at the the ABC, it's 2007 again:

The sad part is that the NRL has never been better. The strength, the speed, the athleticism, the skills - the NRL is currently fantastic to watch. On top of that, the game is made-for-TV and the commentary, while still tending to the boofheaded, is enthusiastic, informative and far less pretentious and self-aggrandising than much of the AFL commentary. It has the sort of folksy, old fashioned tone that the AFL broadcast partners - a despicable phrase - are desperately trying to run away from. Also, while the Storm copped their right whack, you can see why they did it. All the Melbourne stars came to Melbourne as bit players and developed into stars here, which meant that their pay packets ballooned. Then, when they got good, the other NRL clubs and Super League in the UK came offering big bickies. Melbourne have already lost a swag of top-line players. Melbourne's thinking would have been "Why should we let the players we developed go to other clubs?" And there's another snag: how can the NRL operate with a salary cap when the Pommy Super League doesn't have one? Like I said: they cheated, they got caught, but I bet they aren't the only team to cheat. Obviously my perspective means next-to rock-all in an AFL forum, but someone has to put their hand up for League. May as well be me. Whatever the Storm's motivations, their experience is a salient lesson for the Demons, who are trying to develop a large batch of youngsters and at some stage will have to endure salary cap pressure.

I forget. Is that good or bad?

Good decision making and selecting the best options are products of a better organised team. Better than the opposition, anyway. If Bartram (and Dunn, and Jones, who was mentioned in another thread) are more consistently hitting targets, as they did against Adelaide and Richmond, it's probably because every time they received the ball in the last two games there were good options staring them in the face. You will get that against scrubbers, but as you saw against Hawthorn, a team capable of sustained pressure and closing down space, Melbourne's option-taking was severely hampered and we coughed the ball up looking for unrealistic options. That we are teaming better, and Bartram, Dunn and Jones are hitting targets, is a good thing. But we need to start doing it against the good teams. Also, if a player approaches the ball in traffic confident - the operative word here - he can pick it up and give it to someone in a good position, it markedly improves his confidence in his ability to pick the ball up. Call it the Cycle of Confidence. (As opposed to Carl Williams' Cycle of Violence.) We definitely DO look crisper, and we have played some tidy footy this year, but wait until we play the sides that put a clamp on the opposition (StKilda, Geelong and Sydney) to see how we have progressed. Having said that, let me now say this: our gameplan seems similar to those three pressure sides, so if it is Curley Bailey's intention for Melbourne to duke it out in traffic, then we will need to wait for our players to put on some beef. Despite a welcome strengthening (embiggening?) of our defence and on-ball brigade, we still look a way off physically competing with the likes of Geelong, StKilda, Sydney.

Bump:

Is this the same Kevin Sheedy who said the addition of Ben Cousins would enable Richmond to win the flag last year?