drdrake

Like your post. AFL is a job to the players and staff. Like any job it is different from other jobs, different skills are required as you point out, outcomes can sometimes be taken out of your control as you are chasing an oval shaped ball for a living, this uncertainty is in most industries just different variables. It is a job and with that comes certain levels of expectations, you are expected in all jobs to execute the skills of that job at an acceptable level, you need to show the required application at you work place, adhere to certain work place standards. The members of an AFL club are shareholders of that club. When you have an underperforming business the shareholders need to question why. The club makes statements to in a business sense push their stock market price higher, when those statements are followed up with the required performance they need to be questioned. Agree with you yelling and screaming are in the past, most younger people these days put up the brick wall and you get nothing out of them. The bottom line is we are an underperforming business that needs to lift its results. The fear is we don't have the right staff to take the club forward. The next 6 months will show us which direction the club is heading.

Yep, more words. A few years back they would have sold memberships but I think any Melbourne supporter is sick of words.

The hardest thing being a Melbourne supporter is going to games not knowing what side will turn up. We are either on or we are off and the gap between the two are a mile apart. Every club has bad games, the good clubs don't go from looking like a top 4 team one week to a bottom 4 team the next, their good and bad aren't that far apart. This isn't just the Bulldogs and Richmond games this year, this is basically been a massive issue for our club for an extended period of time. We have turned the personal over players/coaches/administration/conditioning/medical, we have seen periods of a little light that we can be a successful club but this is short lived. Jackson had us on the right path with assistance of Roos the future looked bright and now we seem lost again. It can be turned just takes the right people at the top, look at Richmond was a powerful club in the 70's, it was us and them the laughing stock of AFL, one club is still being laughed at the other will be in contention for their 4th flag in 5 years.

I agree with your comment about the intensity and this should be a non negotiable, we are very hot and cold with our intensity levels. On Skills, I can't believe that we have so many bad kicks in our side. How can one club draft so many players that fail to execute a fundamental skill of the game. Our recruiting team went over board for 3-4 years drafting contested ball winning players and to me it was more important to be able to win the ball at the contest then disposal. Top level players should be good to elite kicks, I reckon we only have a handful of players that would be rated as good AFL kicks, we don't have any elite kickers on our list Salem would be the closest we have, most would be poor to average. Once a player hit 18/19yo it is bloody hard to improve kicks especially under AFL pressure. Is drafting the wrong players culture, no it is mismanagement. Our drafting was extremely poorly managed for so long and then the development once they got to the club was poor. We should have 10-15 top 25 picks that would all be 25-30 years old running around for us over the past few years but we don't as we under developed and drafted the wrong players.

Only on Field performance can silence the negative noise directed at our club.

Our club is getting great for making big statements off field but not backing it up on field. It is well past the time for all our coaches/players and officials to shut up and deliver. A strong performance yesterday would have seen all the fans turn up at the MCG in a couple of weeks time. Now I bet the AFL wished they could have switched the games. The biggest concern is the injuries again. We heard all pre-season how healthy our team was, it gets to the start and we are severely depleted. On the game it is what you expect when you have 8-10 players out V a pretty good side. We tried hard in the first half then fell into our bad habits once tired in the second half. The concern is the forward line, where will our goals come from whist our 2 KPF are out. Jackson doesn't kick goals, Tmac is cooked, the smalls have no talls to create crumbing opportunity so we need them to hit up and lets face it Caleb Daniel ran out yesterday and felt tall against our small forwards. We need to hope Bayley Fritsch stays healthy he looks like to only dangerous forward we have. Have to be massive alarm bells ringing at our 2 training sites plus our admin office.

No game plan will matter if we can't keep the football. We don't have a contested marking forward means we need to hit up players on leads. We don't move the ball clean enough and will turn it over that will lead to opposition scoring. Until we can get out disposal up to scratch we will not be contenders. We can keep composure for small parts of the game, but like the third quarter yesterday as soon as we lose it, bad kicking spreads like Co-Vid through our side everybody starts missing targets.

This article is nothing that hasn't been posted on here for the last few years. We are a see ball get ball team, all our players are drawn to the football even when we have it and more so when we don't often we have 2-3 players going for the tackle. Our mids don't work for each other, our forwards don't work for each other. Our defenders are starting to really work well as a unit my feeling is they will have to especially in the first 3-4 rounds. Max needs to stop tapping the ball behind, we don't play a defensive sweeper at centre bounces as we leave that space for Max to hit the ball and mids to run onto this. The issue is our opposition know this and also work to Max's tap it is an easy clearance for them if they win first possession, if we win we either look to feed it to a HBF running through or rush kick around corner.

And the one we have can't kick, great runner and can get the ball just can't hit a target

Our best midfielders struggle against the Bulldogs big body mids, our second/third string had no chance. Really surprised by the negative comments to Jordon, I thought he and ANB kept us in the game in the first half. Drifted out in the last half but should some ability. I thought Bowey looked composed was under enormous pressure playing down back but looks OK. I hope he can play on a wing as we are dire need for another wingman. As posted before really worried about the injury list, starting to look like 2019 all over again with so many of our best 22 out. The team we put on the park today would finish bottom 2. The other Brown has to be a chance to replace Tmac. The third quarter we just went back to missing targets, that really killed us. Hard to take much away with the players we are missing. Who will be ready to come back, Oliver, Salem, Brayshaw, Melksham, Pickett? Hopefully Casey have a game next week for these guys to have a run. Not sure about Hibberd, Viney looks out with Brown and Weiderman still 4-6 weeks away.

Have to be worried about our injury list. A lot out for march

Kicking, same old turnovers by foot.

Pretty much sums up the entire club over the past 20 years. I can't see why if you had a development coach why they wouldn't be used for the entire club. Or at least have WIlliams mentoring the development coach from the AFLW side. To me the club identified that the list wasn't good enough and needed to trade out a number of players to inject young talent. Like any 18/19 year old player it will take a couple of seasons, there are exceptions to this but generally most will take a some time. Hanks is an example of this, by far our best player yesterday and looks like a natural footballer. The younger players coming into AFLW now are more skillful and talented then the ones that have been around a few years, especially the code jumpers. With the players that left the club at the end of the 2020 season, the team was always going to be a middle of table side. Saying all that though, to win a game you have to kick goals, 20-30m out no real angle you have to kick them, you aren't going to win many missing 6-7 shots each week from that range.

You always want to see improvement from the next batch of players. Spargo played well, Chandler, Rivers, Jordon, Sparrow, Jackson add in Laurie, Bowey, Petty, Bedford and a few other from game 2, we can be positive that there is going to be some really good improvement from these guys in 2021.

Tomlinson has been OK, playing a role that allows Lever to zone off. TMac has been OK up forward. I think the balance of our side looks good

Loving how clean our younger players have been, Chandler/Sparrow/Jordon/Spargo/Rivers.

Agree with this add in Jetta and Jones as well. They will be either past it as we should have got rid of them end of last year or fantastic to see them back playing well legends of the club. For me though Oliver has the potential to be both, if he continues on not kicking the football and picking up 20 flick handballs a game he is my whipping boy. If he gets the kicking to handball ratio right and more importantly start hitting targets by foot I might even consider him a midfielder bordering elite.

Have to say 98 was amazing. The backend from the games we beat West Coast at Subiaco, this Richmond game, then the finals smashing Adelaide, St Kilda only to fall to North in the prelim. Some of the most exciting free flowing football that you will every see

I remember they had a couple of weeks paying everything, coaches complained, then a few weeks later they went to paying nothing again coaches complained. It has always been a hard game to umpire, they just keep marking it harder. Don't forget most rule changes also get passed down to local footy as well.

So you can stand someone 5m to the right or left of the mark. If umpires paid holding the ball and incorrect disposal correctly you would have a much better game. Adding rule changes is a band aid solution as coaches will work a way around the changes. Pay the old fashion laws of the game correctly and you will have a faster free flowing game. When the umpires went whistle happen on holding the ball last year the games got better. Shame they only did it for a couple of weeks

This is the issue, they changed the rule to allow for natural arc, essentially if a player standing the mark can't move left or right using your arc you don't have to kick over the man on the mark. Buddy or anyone that wants to use an arc should have to start 1-2m outside the line of the mark and as soon as he crosses the line of the mark it should be play on. This is a bloody stupid rule, it is natural to follow the kickers arc and also cut off the handball. What sides might do is have 2 -3 players on the mark, one standing the mark the other 2-5ms either side

Yep, makes sense. Like I posted get rid of AFL clubs in the VFL, go smaller with AFL list sizes have Werribee, Williamstown, Ballarat, Albury, Port Melbourne, Coburg, Casey, Geelong, Frankston, Sandringham in the VFL. 10 sides 18 game season top 5 gives the VFL clubs the chance to develop the region they are in. Get rid of Junior Interleague, leagues are assigned to VFL clubs and the players represent the VFL club at 13/14/15/16 level in round robin format to Divs 4 games each top 2 of each div play off. This creates a pathway, at the moment it is to adhoc and sports like Basketball who absolutely milk the Rep program are a mile ahead.

Do you know what the worse thing is, the AFL will appoint a private firm to do a review cost millions and nothing will change.

The AFL has severely neglected junior boy programs for a number of years. It is about money, female participation at present brings in more government money, sponsors want to be linked to Female participation. You look at every add for sport on TV it is all about female participation. AFL has hid this issue with the drop in Male participation, they have been able to do this as over all numbers due to massive female growth keeps this hidden. Take out Auskick numbers, from what I was told the uptake from Auskick to Junior footy in Metro Vic is something like 20%. There is something like a 35% drop off between the age of 12 to 16 years old. VFL has been completely stuffed up by the AFL. As a kid you get elite coaching at the private schools, elite facilities to train at. Local footy you get a dad and you hope that they have some idea on what they are doing, good kids wont develop heading back to local clubs to play. The AFL should be the elite level 30 odd players on the list only. Allow top ups for long term injuries. Then state leagues Run seniors and U19s both male and female, VFL/WAFL/SANFL/TFL/ NSWFL/QFL, no AFL clubs, players who miss out on AFL go back to original club or in case of interstate recruits go to a nominated club. It is simple, the AFL is just making it so complicated. You put a Basketball/Football/Soccer ball in a play ground at most schools in Metro Victoria and I will bet the Football will be the the least played sport on the oval.

The massive advantage of living on an Island, which is a long way from most. The only way this virus is getting in is through hotel Quarantine. On the Footy, will be interesting is our lockdown is extended if the AFL impose the same training restrictions across the entire competition. From memory they did this last year.