whatwhat say what

how on earth is that holding the ball? it was bobbling around and then the minute he got tyson had possession he was tackled. crowd free kick.

anyone who calls dawes a lousy footballer needs their head read. his workrate is outstanding.

that looked like a goal to jamar to me - was over the line?

solid start. dawes with a dislocated finger; put straight back in.

and that's absolutely why we should be targetting him. no guarantee that jamar will play beyond 2015, no guarantee that gawn / spencer will push to be #1 ruck. i think the unfortunate thing with ruckmen these days is that you can only really run one at a time, as a primary ruckman, and the likes of gawn have never had a clear run being 'the man' (so to speak) as when jamar has been injured he's been injured. when spencer got a go at the start of last season he was reasonably okay. not amazing, but okay.

Would not be the worst free agency acquisition, as long as we don't overpay.

Let it go, daisy cutter, let it go.

Shame, cos we are seriously lacking midfield depth. Is Mckenzie the closest to a like for like replacement?

thats basically how one of my tigers mates feels about Hardwick too, George. He can't understand how you can have a full forward like Riewoldt who spends an inordinate amount of time pushing up to wing and half back as opposed to playing from the goal square and expect to win games.

if we nominate him and no one selects him then we effectively draft him with our last rookie pick. a lot of water to go under the bridge yet tho.

for a while there i thought a broken leg was one of the hardest things to come back from. now it appears it's feet injuries. ricky has been diagnosed with a lisfranc injury after 'pulling up sore' following the loss to footscray. such bad luck that kid. i liked him when he was at the dees.

The Bont is an absolute freak of a footballer. Rivals Robbie Gray and Fyfe as my fave non-Demon.

I saw lots of positional changes from my vantage point on the couch - none made a difference. In the last term alone we had Howe forward, Watts back, Jones forward away from middle, Salem into the middle, Lumumba back, Vince subbed for Brayshaw. It was deck chairs on the titanic.

If Grimes Is to come in it has to be a part of a midfield rotation. He can't play off half-back as our back six - McDonald, Dunn, Garland, Howe, Jetta and Salem - is settled. One of the key changes in the way we are setting up early in 2015 is we are not playing a seventh defender, and if we do have someone rolling back it's Lumumba. To be a contributor in 2015, we need Grimes as a mid, something that he's bee trialled relatively unsuccessfully at in the past.

oh wow. what a win that was.

bombers back in front. their attitude is just fantastic.

bombers play a good brand of football tho - very tough at contested ball and have an excellent group of runners.

cheers dude. vb comes out as he can't roll thru the midfield at this stage, whereas jkh can / does push up very effectively - and creates space. viney to sloane for mine. like another poster said, i'm hoping smith doesn't play. he and jaensch are brilliant at rebounding, so much be stopped.

looked like a pec muscle injury to me.

don't mind that henrietta. i think one thing that really stuck out is that we don't have anything like enough numbers rotating thru midfield. admittedly gws are a bit of a rarity in that they effectively roll over half their side throughout the midfield - ward, shiel, treloar, greene, griffen, coniglio, whitfield, kelly, smth, palmer, he who will not be named, plus mummy in the ruck. by comparison i'd say we had seven or eight midfielders yesterday - jones, tyson, viney, cross, vince, newton, lumumba, brayshaw, plus jamar in the ruck. if probably left us quite top-heavy down back - mcdonald, dunn, garland and howe all 'play tall', so their 3's and 4's - which would be most side's 5's and 6's - were able to roll up even more effectively as they were so dominant winning contested ball. we desperately need toumpas to actually come on as part of the midfield rotation, plus the likes of trengove and petracca to recover from injury going forward. adelaide don't bat as deep in the middle as gws, and also play more 'standard' 3 and 4 forwards - walker and lynch as 1 and 2, plus jenkins makes them more typically 'tall' down forward, with betts also effectively a key forward, albeit a small one. mcdonald and dunn take the first two, garland the third, and jetta gets betts. that allows howe to rotate on / off the 5 / 6 and play the sweeper role that suits him so well. i don't think we'll see massive changes this week. my best guess: IN: jkh OUT: vandenberg sub: kent

frawley's pec muscle gone?

dropped motlop and withdrew bartel vs freo. tanking.

has become our defensive general.

there may or there may not be an overreaction to the gws smashing on here itt. their midfield simply slaughtered ours. our defence was okay, i thought, our forward line had virtually no opportunities to do anything after midway through the second quarter, but our midfield was pantsed. coniglio, shiel, treloar, ward, griffen, greene, whitfield, kelly, smith, and yes, even he who will not be named, were brilliantly fed by mumford. comparatively we simply don't have the depth to compete - viney did okay (ostensibly tagging griffen, i actually thought he drew even or was beaten by his man, but that was more sheer weight of numbers than anything else), jones and tyson had barry crocker's, vince looked unready for senior football, cross was down and looked so slow compared to his opposition, newton looked shaky after copping that hit, lumumba is an outside midfielder / sweeping defender who was trying to play an inside role for a while yesterday, while jamar tried hard but was slaughtered by one of the premium ruckmen in the competition. it wasn't the first and it won't be the last time that the gws' midfield 'clicks' and absolutely destroys an opponent. they looked scary good. it just firms in my mind that we have to chase super hard this off-season to get one of shiel, treloar, greene, whitfield or kelly to come 'home' to melbourne. the worse thing is that they'll all command our first round pick - which will probably be in the top handful - and extras, meaning that gws will simply replace top end talent with top end talent. they're going to be so strong for years to come.

well we're going to need some more midfield options next week!