The morning after.. In some ways it’s even worse than the day of the event. If you’re a long term footy fan, you might get a handful of these embarrassing days in your lifetime, for us it feels like we’ve had at least 5 times as many as fans of other clubs. New lows, new embarrassing records, you’re never far away from this as a Melbourne fan. I don’t even know what my main thoughts are this morning. Whether it’s about the game itself, where we have found ourselves, long time club mentality, the life of a fan etc. I’ve been lost for words since the siren and am still lost for words. I’ve said this 3 times already and I apologise in advance for saying it again: Yesterday was never ever going to be a game where I stressed, yelled too much, got the heart rate high and so on. We’re in the butt end of the season with no hope for finals, no first round pick to tank for, very few kids to get a good look at. Out of all the teams in our position this year, we have next to no reason as fans to waste our time on these games other than to hopefully win or get some kind of hope. Whether we were going to win comfortably or close or lose comfortably or close, my stress level was not going to get out of first gear… Until there was an embarrassing 30 year old record that nobody wants on the line. I for the life of me cannot believe in a game like this, the thing that got me out of my seat screaming was the possibility of an impossible, ugly, smelly, grotesque record falling and being on the wrong side of it yet again. What football fan is regularly in a position where they have to worry about some bizarre thing like this happening? Not many can manage it as often as us. You can take it as a deranged positive that at least something motivated us fans but I am just so angry right now about that. It really shows the life inside an MFC fan’s head and it is the saddest thing ever. I can’t see any other club’s fans getting as nervous as us when those first 4 goals were kicked. If any of you feel the same way please reach out because I feel like I’m banging my head against a wall here. I don’t know why this had to be the case. Some home truths about the game itself: Loved the way we looked for 3 quarters, ball movement as good as it had been all year. Can we just acknowledge how easy the Saints made this for us though? Their movement was slow to a halt and they tried to play the kick mark game. You couldn’t wish for better conditions to get our style going against. The moment they put speed on the ball we were like frightened little rabbits watching a scary movie, instead of matching the running level we were in the cinema clutching the person next to us and telling them to hold us. It was a real ordeal and maybe some counselling is required. The players get no free pass whatsoever. We have lacked the killer instinct mentality and execution for a long time now, this is not a one-off but more of a culmination. Now that it has ended in ultimate humiliation for the world to see it will be firmly in spotlight. I can point to at least 6 games this year where the chance to wrestle back or gain momentum has been completely fluffed by bad execution in the moment or stupid behaviours leading to free kicks, 50s and more. That Port game to me was just like this last quarter when you had Oliver 30 metres out try to snap and not make the distance and then Viney on the wing with 5 seconds left give away a free and then a 50. The only reason this wasn’t plastered over every single place you can think of is because we lost that game convincingly in average and forgetful fashion. Small details matter, there is never a reason to give away a goal with the ball on the wing with 5 seconds left just like there is never a reason to give up 2 goals in the last minute of a game when the ball was at a stoppage in your forward line with 80 seconds to go. Poor execution, psychology in big moments, ill-discipline and not knowing what the hell we are doing when setting up for big plays is destroying this team. Talent doesn’t even come into it. Everyone deserves blame after yesterday, the players are the top of the list for me but coaching was sub-par at crucial times. Our rotations in that last quarter were nothing short of a joke, taking Kozzie out at 21 minutes into the quarter, even taking Fritsch off in the first quarter when he was shooting the lights out. The rotations guy needs blame and if it is Goodwin he needs blame. Sending Bayley Fritsch down back to defend the single spark of hope they had, playing Petty wherever the hell they were playing him. Actually playing Petty at all in place of Jefferson. Then the tragic 6-6-6 debacle. Of course you can’t do much as coach in that moment… Hello? Do we need reminding that Simon Goodwin coaches from the boundary? Nothing we want to yell out to anyone in that moment? I still haven’t heard a good explanation of why we approached that last bounce how we did. From my understanding we had too few players in the square. Why? Were they back defensive side? What was the reasoning for this? Were our players actually so scared to lose that we wanted to drop guys back? Why was one of our best contested bulls lining up on a wing? Is our team mentality that shot that we didn’t want to back our premiership ball winning machines at a centre bounce? Loser mentality. We’re always bemoaning our poor inaccuracy and then following it up with how there is no time to practice extra goalkicking at training because they have a million meetings during the week. So out of all those meetings there apparently isn’t one where they could a) Go over the 6-6-6 rule and b) Drill it in what we would do in that situation? If we’re going to cop out with the goal kicking excuse and use the excuse that footy clubs spend more time studying now than practicing, then bloody well practice what you preach and learn your jobs. If you claim to be a reasonable side, there is never a reason to go goalless in a quarter of footy. Let alone concede 9 goals and in the last quarter. All teams have blooper days but if you can’t achieve these check boxes then you aren’t even close to a finals team. It’s all mental. You don’t go from 9.4 at half time to 13.12 without it being mental, you don’t concede 23 x I50s for the first 3 quarters then finish with 43 without it being mental, you don’t concede umpteen marks inside 50 in the last quarter without it being mental. The way that game finished was like a video game where the other player dropped the controller and walked off. That last play was the equivalent of a soccer game where a 1 in 100 quick free kick was taken and they scored. That’s pretty much it, it is exhausting doing this. I’m sorry you all had to go through it as well.