layzie

Let's all relax with a few beers.

Kids will like who we tell them to like 😛

His role on Mccartin has been a tad overblown. Went with him in forward 50 to an extent but seemed to changeover when he got outside 50. Reasonable defensive job but a lacklustre game I thought and needed a lot more from him.

They just keep em coming too!

Wonder how much a year out of the game at this age hurts him as well?

Let's get this guy a new contract

We all need some chicken soup for the soul I think.

Yay.

There will be plenty of hard EFC members if it happens, dont worry about that.

Commanders, Bucs, Colts. Needed all day to think about it.

Should be a good 7 news over there tonight.

Are people saying Collingwood will pay part of his contract working under the assumption that they will do so each year for the 5 remaining? Never heard this happen for this kind of duration before.

Nailed it.

Eep.

I didn't hate the idea of sitting on a lead once it was established and tightening up like a boa constrictor. The philosophy is clearly to pressure, lock in the 50 and deny the opposition scoring opportunities. If we go the other way we might score more but we do open ourselves up to being hit on the rebound and then more points conceded. It’s the age old ‘chaos vs control’ argument and it can be easy to say things like “They just should have kept attacking”. It is also a very fine balancing act and you quite often see teams go too much the other way and over correct. I for one will be extremely disappointed if we come out next year and decide to go all out attack and we start leaking goals left, right and centre. I’m proud of our ability to keep teams to low scores and I think we shouldn’t venture too far away from it, we don’t have the personnel to win shootouts every week and we aren’t going to acquire said personnel in one off-season. We do need to tweak things though and this is all part of fine tuning the balancing act. We do need to decide internally what is considered a good enough lead to sit on because 4 goals is not as big of a lead as it used to be with 6-6-6, rules for defenders constant 50s which can really swing the momentum in an instant. There is a point when the opponent drops the heads a bit but that is easily over the 5 goal lead mark for me. Obviously the FD would have had this in mind and they would prefer we don’t miss so many opportunities early but the facts are that teams miss opportunities and our plan can’t rely on coming out and starting with 6.0 every week. So we definitely need to tweak structure, ball movement but overall psychology but let’s not pretend that this method was complete crap in 2022 either and we need to follow the leader word for word. Look to improve our cutting edge in front of goal, keep working on the locking it down stuff especially once the lead is established which means constant running and pressure. If guys aren’t running hard long enough or doing much else, drop them and reward VFL efforts with players chomping at the bit. Add some more footskills to the side to assist with our ball movement and get creative with angles of movement and stuff. I could keep going but I really need to start working.

That makes sense, I think our pressure was ok in these games but just not consistent enough when it counted. That and the fact we were really out pressured by the opposition.

Think it's just the nature of this injury and him being on the verge of 30 that worries people. He does otherwise have a pretty healthy record.

The first few days of trade radio is such garble. Looking forward to when it ramps up though nexrt week.

Was going to say I don't think you'll catch BBB chowing down a steak anytime soon!

I like the thinking and it's something different BUT there is a big difference between Max dropping back a kick behind play to take a relieving mark across half back and Max joining the back 6 unit and being expected to do everything that May, Lever and Petty do like killing air balls, playing zone and structure on a consistent basis. These guys clock in and work the boilermaker from start to finish and the cohesion like this needs to be built as a unit. To me there is a lot more homework and studying that needs to be done in defence and our defence in particular than up forward. I do feel Max played his best footy as the drop back ruckman with the occasional stint up forward and maybe for another team dropping him back regularly might be an option but specifically for our defence I think it's a bigger ask than having him play more time up forward which I'm not really the biggest fan of either. He would need to spend a lot of time training with the back group and this would be a lot to ask on top of continuing to hone his ruck craft I believe. Just my take on it.

Yeah it's pretty strange. I would say most great key forwards come from the first round but when it comes to that top 5 or even top 10 they strike out a lot. I guess Under 18 level flatters some attributes and masks weaknesses a lot when it comes to tall forwards and therefore they become much more speculative when it comes to the draft. Then there's the added pressure of being 'the great white hope' for any club that drafts them as they usually expect success a lot earlier than a team that is willing to put the time in. This could easily happen with Cadman so there is a bit of luck involved here too and nothing is a sure thing. Risky business.

100% We need someone with killer instinct, someone who dreams of kicking a goal and is always waiting for that next opportunity. Someone who if they miss a set shot can forget about it quickly and move on to the next one which they will dob through. Seems like a dying breed with everything else coming first and that part being figured out later these days.

We have an amazing skipper, keep it up good man!

All for this. Kept up our pressure all game in that one, was definitely a different side to now.

Let's go Hirdy