drdrake

I will compare Brad Green to Yze, both through their careers fantastic by foot, then all the sudden turned unreliable, Yze developed a big hook foot and Green last year and this year his goal kicking has been bad, the issue is his field kicking this year. I like Brad Green but he needs to convert anything inside 40m and between 45 degree angle, he missed three goals, the first one when we needed it 20m out on little angle in the first quarter, then the Jamar dropped mark and the Sylvia play on, should have been 3 goals. Sorry to say Green is done.

We are to tall down back and lacking small mid size defenders. The team needs Bartram or Strauss fit. Looks like Clint may play for Casey Reserves and James had his first game back last week he will be 3-4 weeks away. I would like to think if Clint gets through he comes in. My team Bartram Frawley Sellar Nicholson Rivers McDonald Blease Sylvia Trengove Howe Watts Dunn Martin Clark Garland Jamar Jones Grimes Moloney Mckenzie Magner Morton In Bartram Martin Out Tapscott Green Time for Watts to play forward, but become that 7th midfielder, start at CHF then push up to the ball and mainly play between the 50m Arcs, he has been good down back but we need him getting the footy on the middle of the ground and setting the play from there. He has played well against some good teams now we have a weaker draw read through his draft notes, number one pick goal kicking tall forward, elite kick at goal good speed and overhead mark.

This is something we don't do enough and something the Pies do a lot. Yesterday the blocking in marking contests and off the ball was well outside the rules of the game. The Pies continually blocked our players and took them out from making a contest. It is the only thing Maxwell does, finds a player of the footy and taking him out of the contest. Yesterday it just kept happening and we just kept running into the block, to me if you are going to get blocked just push the blocker as hard as you can into the making contest, it will be a mark anyway but you may as well try to hurt someone, give the free kick but hopefully it causes the ball movement to be slow.

To me a club should only make small profits. All money generated should be pumped back into the club to hopefully make it a better club. When our figures are published it will show an increase in revenue and and increase in expenses mainly with money being put into our football department, this is where money needs to go, the better we become the more revenue we will generate. We start winning games we get bigger attendances, Better financial fixtures, higher membership, more free to air games which results in higher returns from sponsers. On the AFL hand outs, this is to balance the draw, this year we get home games against Brisbane, Western Bulldogs, St Kilda, Collingwood, GWS, Fremantle, Port, Adelaide, Richmond, Gold Coast, Hawthorn, to me that draw is a financila disaster 6 of our 11 home games against interstate clubs 2 against smaller Vic based clubs.

It is extremely hard to work this out. What we saw on Saturday was the first 4 qtr effort this year. Besides Sydney most games we actually competed well for 2-3 quarters, we just lasped for periods of the game and in those periods were scored heavily against. To me we play 4 quarter footy and we win more than we lose, confidence grows our forward line clicks we can win 6-8. The flip side is we dont play 4 qtr footy, we are not good enough to win games only playing 2-3 quarters of footy against any AFL team. So we could win 8 and we also finish with 1. What I don't want to do is worry about where we finish due to our draft picks and Jack Viney, win as many as we can we will still get 3 first round worthy players.

Agree with this, something that needs to be continually highlighted, we have had a number of early picks over 2007-2010 but rarely have we seen them play together and even more so play well together.

A lot of players out I would have them ranked on priority as below Jones, Howe, Blease, Rivers, McKenzie, Jamar, Jurrah, Strauss, McDonald, Garland, Batram, Bail, Moloney, Petterd, Davis, Jetta,Nicholson, Bate, Dunn, Bennell, Cook, Fitzpatrick, MacDonald, Spencer, Green On the Rookies keep Couch, Magner on the rookie list and I think you can nominate 1 or 2 that has been on your rookie list for 2 years that can remain, for me Evans and Lawrance would be good to keep as Rookies

This is the only week that it will be difficult to make a change, it isn't hard to find players to drop, the hard part is finding players to bring in. We will have 2 forced changes Out Green and Frawley In Sylvia and Davis I would love to add Moloney, Garland, Sellar, Bennell to the list of outs but we don't have the replacements. Sylvia is lucky but I still believe we need to add him to our midfield, to have any chance of winning this week Sylvia needs to play midfield and dominate. We line up Bennell McDonald Rivers Nicho Garland Grimes Bail Sylvia Blease Howe Watts Tapscott Dunn Clark Sellar Moloney Jones Mckenzie Magner Moloney Trengove Davis

I was lucky enough to attend a bit of pre-season training over the summer, what stood out it what we are seeing now,we only have a couple of midfielders with the running capacity to compete over 4 quarters. Jones was our most consistant runner through pre-season, he didn't miss a beat and this is showing in his performance, to me he is our only midfielder at the moment with the engine to remain in the game for 4 quarters. The other three have a bit to prove ability wise but Nicho, Morton and Bate are the only other players that consistantly ran in the top 2-3 groups. Trengove will be there in 2013, he is one that doesn't look to be coping with the current training loads. We must give credit to Sam Blease, pre-season he struggled in the last group looked bad, over the past two weeks he seems to be everywhere, still a long way to go with him.

It is one of the most pain in the arse painful injuries you can have. Now it is cold every morning his first couple of steps will be painful, once warmed up you function OK.

Jack Watts the forward would love Jack Watts the defender/midfielder kicking to him, he is one of the few players in our team that can actually hit targets. I was unable to go top to the MCG yesterday but watched it last night, Watts like most our players was done at 3 qtr time. The way he moved in the first half was the best I have seen him this yearand I would like to see his GPS stats he covered huge amounts of ground. Jack will return to our forward line later this year and certainly in 2013, we will see the best of him once we can get an effective midfield that can kick. If we can't start winning more footy through the middle and have players that can kick to advantage a player like Jack Watts will struggle. This will change as he gets stronger but he is a lead up smart footballer, he will learn to work harder and be harder.

Not that it means much but I think the Boaks are Melbourne supporters. What the MFC has that a Geelong or Essendon will not have is teh possibility of 3 top 15 picks in the draft. Most likely Geelong and Essendon will be lucky to get a pick inside 18. No matter what Boak wants he will not get to either of these clubs. The other big advantage of finishing bottom 3 gives us pick 1-3 in the pre-season draft so you can threaten clubs accept this pick or get nothing for him and we take him in the pre-season draft. It will be a hard sell but it depends on his true desire to move back to Vic.

If you go back through the Coach posts we had when Gary was searching there was a clear target list that the club worked through, 1st Al Clarkson 2nd Mick Malthouse 3rd Ross Lyon 4th an assistant out of Neeld/Sanderson/McCartney, we jumped on Neeld and from all reports Adelaide also had an offer in to him. We have had an extremely soft environment at our club, we went through the 2000's Ok some finals but ND played his favourates no matter what, this team didn't have a defensive mind set it was plain kick a lot of goals and we win, but every year we had a run of games when we couldn't kikc goals and we could stop goals being kicked against us. Again with Bailey similar plan, so with Neeld we are trying something different and it is a mind set change along with new structures. Neeld will be fine and in 2013 you will see dramatic improvement

Bit shocked also with Morton being dropped I thought he had strung 3-4 goods games together and like most his team mates had a shocker on Saturday. You might find this is similar to Jack Watts again I thought his matches prior to St Kilda where OK and he was bad against St Kilda but didn't expect him to be dropped, in both these cases to me it looks like Neeld and Co are saying we know you are talented but if you cant hit these targets week in week out you will go back to Casey, we will not play you because you are talented you need to hit your targets. On the team Bail and Nicholson are in the top 5 runners at the club, Nicho is close to our best runner, we have got ridden of Davey who was close to our worst runner through pre-season and Sylvia that didn't reaaly have a pre-season and introduce to enduranced based players. Dunn has the ability to quick goals and can stop a player when given the job, Magner goes back into our midfield no more forward shut down roles this goes to Dunn and Dunny is a smart footballer he can shut down someone and still kick goals. Love to see Tapscott get a run of 5-6 full games, I thought he was one of our better players against Geelong then he was subbed off and dropped. This again shows me that the coaches are assessing a lot more than how many times you get the footy.

This has been a big problem and an issue I have had for a couple of years. Our development needs to come for the young players we draft and getting these guys playing footy together. I always ask the question how many games have Morton, Grimes, Watts, Blease, Strauss, Trengove, Tapscott and Gysberts played in the same team and to my knowledge the answer is none. All these players are in their 3rd to 5th season and due to injury we have never seen them all run out together. You can even ask how many weeks all these players played on the same weekend either MFC or at Casey, with out knowing it wouldn't be more than 10-12. Add in Jetta he can't stay fit, Poor Evans played a great couple of games last year was moving well preseason then we hear he will only start running again next week on a tread mill. Maric and Scully both missed extended periods injured.

Over the past 5 seasons we have turned over many players, coaching staff, Medical staff, a board, new Admin staff but one thing still remains the Bugler, it is time to place the entire blame of our poor performing club onto this constant, the Bugler is our problem not our players or game play.

The funny thing is our game style from the past few years is half of the modern game. More teams are back using the coridor and have the attacking flare, the difference with those teams are they attack hard but also defend very hard, we now have neither right. We have focussed on defending hard that we have forgotten how to attack and when you can't attack you are constantly defending and your defenses will crack. We are so focussed on finding our man we lose focus on the footy which is why we dominate the hit outs but get smashed in clearances. I don't think we are as far off as many, you can read many posts in the pre season most people picked we would be 1-10, 2-9 and at best 4-7, we all knew that our midfield was our weakest link and our senior players go missing against good sides, nothing has changed. The issue remains with keeping our young players fit, we need to see Gysberts, Blease, Tapscott, Strauss get fit and play good footy in the back half of the season. We need these four plus Watts, Grimes and Trengove to really improve as AFL footballers. I don't hold much hope in luring any decent player to us in the off season, we will need to develop more young players, add in Viney with another 2 maybe 3 first round picks midfielders and maybe a running half back. I was happy with Tynan and impressed the Taggart at Casey he can at least kick the footy well. We will have a min of 6 changes to our list at years end, start with Green, Davey I expect one of Moloney or Jamar to go as a free agent, one of Bate or Dunn delisted or traded, on of Fitzpatrick or Spencer delisted and either Morton or Sylvia will be traded. One thing we have to do is stop comparing us to any other team, the rebuild that we have been and still are required to do is builing a new team with little foundations. The players that should be the pillars are just not good enough.

Two changes only Davey and Jurrah out, in Martin and Tapscott Line up Bartram Frawley Garland Bennell Rivers McDonald Blease Sylvia Grimes Howe Watts Green Tapscott Clark Martin Jamar Jones Magner Moloney McKenzie Trengove Morton We play these guys, we have to put Col into the middle, he is no good up forward. I was big on the point last week that Sylvia and Moloney should be played until after Queens birthday give them 3 weeks to show against good teams that they want to play for the MFC. Over the next three weeks if they put up more of the same send them to Casey and don't let them beat up on the young midfields that we wil play in our back 11 games. Don't start the match with a defensive mind set, start Watts up forward but give him the licence to run getting him working hard between the arcs, I would rather use him in that role than a loose man in defense, our biggest problem is our transition from back to forward, it was good for Jack to get 34 touches but all in our defensive 50m arc, we need him getting the footy from HFB-HFF setting up attack.

I couldn't care less what it teaches them, they both need to pull their respective fingers out start playing good footy against good teams or get on their bikes, these two blokes should be setting the tone for their younger team mates if after all this time in the AFL system they can't move them on why they still have some sort of currency.

I don't have an agenda, I have my opinion on both Col and Brent neither will help this club go forward unless they can produce there best footy each week and not just when we play weaker opposition. I have already stated CoL and Brent should be left in our team till after queens birthday, if they can't start playing well against good opposition don't give them games against GWS, Gold Coast and Port

Sometimes facing the truth hurt, I wish it was garbage.

At least Col has had great games in the past against Collingwood and Hawthorn, Moloney goes missing when we play good teams. They both need a rocket to either fire them up or fire them out the door

I was impressed with Taggert kicks the footy low and hard, has confidence to hit a target. No need to rush him give him a game with Casey reserves this week a week rest another couple of games in Casey firsts if form hold up bring him in against GWS. Our next four games are Sydney, Carlton, Essendon and Collingwood we should leave Moloney, Sylvia and co in for these games see if they can show something against good midfields if not drop them for our matchs against GWS, Port, Gold Coast, I don't what to see everyone jump back on these guys when they smash up on the young midfields.

Taggert is two games back from injury, did you watch the game Watts, Green and Jurrah are to good for VFL level and everytime they had the footy no one could touch them. Martin was rusty early but came into it later in the game. The question I have is will Martin, Green, Watts, Jurrah and Blease offer more than Blease-Davey border line to me Davey is offering little but can Blease offer more he has the speed and talent Watts-Bate Bate has offered little over the past weeks Watts has Class Jurrah-Bail No question here Jurrah is a freak Bail is a work horse that is struggling Martin-Fitzpatrick Once again no contest Martin just is a better footballer at the moment Green-Petterd Tuff contest Petterd gets one more week

I am a big believer that Col Sylvia is a midfielder not a pure fowarder. He just doesnt impact the game playing as a forward only, put him in the midfield for the next 3 weeks rest him up forward but 75% of his game time in the middle.