Tony Tea

Tanking is playing Frawley at full forward and Howe at full back. You know, like last week.

Interesting contradictions in yesterday's and today's commentary and reports. I kept hearing what a good job was done by the Bulldogs on various Melbourne players. Wallace did a "great job" on Jones - Jones 23 and consistently at the bottom of packs. Picken on Howe - Howe close to Melbourne's best. Someone (I can't remember who) on Vince - Vince 24 and a big part of our comeback. Minson on Jamar - Jamar (and Gawn) had top games. And, for the record, Viney mugged Libba. There was a time when a tagged Melbourne player was reduced to single figure stats. Roos has clearly enabled our on-ballers to still contribute. (Hello, Travis, Beamer and all your FTB mates.) The reason we lost is not because our backs and on-ballers were stopped, it was because we were unable to find clear and present threats to goal. While we struggle to score, we will struggle to win. Roos has made great strides getting us physically competitive, but he has a long way to go to enable us to score easily enough to throw the opposition out of whack. WIP.

Any chance Dawes can bring his hands together and grab the ball when going for a mark? Best he can do is wave his mitts in the general vicinity of the ball.

Trouble is there were two mandatory replacements, but no one at Casey really deserved a promotion.

We had one.

Paul says "G'day, Bruce."

Of course the tank is alive. It's just a matter of how alive. The medical name is "album procuratio". Most clubs exhibit minor symptoms, but Melbourne was covered in a self inflicted livid rash.

When Frawley was out with his pectoral injury, Ralphy said he was our "most important player". Injury, form and circumstance appear to have sliced into Frawley's worth.

Effective kicking is all about having someone to kick it to. Yes, there are superb kicks out there who can hit the most minuscule of targets, but most players can only hit targets when there are targets to hit. Yesterday North had us sussed, blocking off any space forward of centre for our players to provide those targets. Also, Roos (Paul, not Norf) has stated his first goal is to get us playing competitive AFL footy and when that is sorted will work on tactics for moving the ball forward (which I assume will be based around "two way running"). WIP.

The good news just keeps getting gooder.

The ad's been going for ages. I can't imagine any Demon fan stupid enough to bankrupt himself parking at the airport.

So Denham thinks Frawley is gone. That's not exactly news. Thanks, Scoop.

Yes, that's about what I would have thought.

Watts is in the 10 best field kicks in the AFL.

Would you trade Frawley for Pick 1? Yes. Would you trade Frawley for Pick 20? No. So where is the cut-off point?

I have always been puzzled by this: I assumed most every club was doing something similar to Essendon, so what has Essendon done that marks it as a team to prosecute?

Can't beat this.

Slamming Sam. The Oracle has spoken.

The AFL will soon bring in a rule which forces teams to play attacking football so that the opposition can kick easy goals. How dare Paul Roos makes it hard for Melbourne opponents to score goals.

We were okay today. Nothing went our way. The Muppets butchered us. But we kept at it. The biggest problem was turning defence into attack. Too often we came through the centre and had no one to kick it to because we had overcommitted to defence. And that's why we kept turning it over - we had too few targets to kick it to. We need to find a way to get players in attacking positions without compromising our defence.

"Technically" is the new "literally", metaphorically speaking.

The video says "gone" to me.

Oddly, every game we win reduces Frawley's trade value. If we finish bottom we get pick 1 and pick 2 as compensation. If we finish 10th we get pick 10 and 11 as compensation. Etc. There must be some happy medium value at which point we try to keep Frawley because his trade value has been too greatly diminished. That said, Roos seems to think that there is not a whole lot of difference between picks 1 and, say, 10. So the Dees might just feel consecutive picks anywhere in the top 10 are too good to knock back. (Disclaimer: Other clubs' compo picks may throw out the rankings.)

Barrett is upset he has been relegated from the Second Lady of Football to the Third Lady of Football.

Bootsma's d!ck was taken out of context. He is sorry if it offended anyone.