layzie

Yeah but then we'd have to put up with the media circus around why the clean-cut, good little Italian boy from the suburbs suddenly became a thugster.

Oh, that I can get around. No problem at all.

It basically comes down to one thing: Running, it's hard. And bloody hard doing it for a long period of time.

Usually so pumped for draft day but February knocked the stuffing out of me. You get to a point where it probably doesn't matter who you draft if you can't make big play calls in big moments. I do believe we've taken a lineman that can play all 5 spots though, promising.

Just saw the T-Mac article and can't wait to check it out. Fountain of youth is an understatement.

I agree Deever but will give him another shot. We'll likely make changes for Carlton off a short break.

What more can a coach do if his medical staff have cleared a guy to play and he's ticked all boxes? Sometimes the only thing a recovered hamstring injury is susceptible to is another hamstring injury.

No-one is doing anything stupid or getting suspended. Get a grip.

And Lever's little scare. And maybe not nail-biting but Max's 5 had me on the edge of my seat with excitement, does that count?

Port really are flat track bullies

Houston we have a problem. Allergic to tackling.

GG

Miss after miss after miss

Pressure gauge up

Not a great score review. Should have gone back more

No change is good by me.

Yeah what's the deal? I have it too

Takes a pretty bitter and asinine jerk to head into the MFC cheer squad area and pull something like that after a game?

Sounds like a wager to me.

First point a good one. Second point hmm...

Great player but wouldn't be upping his salary at us.

What stand was this in? Should be handing out 12 month bans for this straight away.

This is what is annoying, it's just a game of musical chairs. I'm a bit like this as well in that I want the remaining Victorian clubs to stand shoulder to shoulder even at the expense of a Tassie team that may or may not work. I'm aware this is one of my rare moments not based on logic or business sense but that's how I feel.

Firstly, happy to see this thread back in action as it’s one of my favourites. I was asked last night by a fellow fan this question: “Do you think our game style this year suits the list we have? I’m not sure if it does” Not a terrible question but one that definitely got me thinking about it. I think right now it’s an easy knee-jerk response to say that it doesn’t but looking at it week by week probably isn’t the way to go. It’s clearly a work in progress and in my opinion a tweak that needed to happen to go to the next step. These things take time and I’m sure the FD weren’t planning on losing two of our best distributors to injury so early on in the season. Yet we sit 5-2. As the others have said, our game under Goody will likely always be about defence and contest first. It’s the layers of a gameplan that make it what it is and can be hard to explain to people who feel that a contest game is purely about winning the ball in the middle and getting first use of it into the 50. This ‘Route 1’ style of football is what we all love but we need to give credit to AFL coaches and accept that the sport is indeed a much more complex and tactical one than many give it credit for and is the reason why the Sam Newmans of the world have no place commenting on the modern game these days. While many were unhappy with the performance last Wednesday I thought our defensive positioning and structure was spot on and in terms of scoring chances generated a lot by form of intercepts. I fully agree with Binman that score from turnover is the one we care about (although I was surprised to see us so high in scores from stoppage). This method in some ways puts much less importance on the personnel of our forward line whereas the previous one may have exacerbated any potential issues. When you see a stat like 26 scoring shots from 50 I50s you have to stand up and take notice. Taking the space when it’s there and taking any territory you can get when it’s not. Hitting up a lead when we can’t go fast is more often that not going to be better than blazing it into 50 and having to repeatedly work our rears off getting back to defend the rebound. I am hoping we can back this method for a period of time and embrace any imperfections that come with it. The likes of Collingwood in the last few years have challenged other teams to up their transition game and if you’re standing still with your game you’re going backwards (See Lions) so we just need to trust the process and see it through. I do feel Binman’s PA is onto something with Petty. I think we missed a trick not playing him up forward in a negating role last year on Stewart and this could give him a different focus other than marks, kicks, goals for a week. Providing that the fitness is there of course. We’ll see exactly where Melbourne are at in the next two weeks but I’ll be looking much more closely at the manner of performances than the results. Though it would be nice to nab a win out of the two.

Now these are the stats I care about.