Lord Travis

Agreed. ... so that gives us a month or so to dream!

Vandenberg at least another 8 weeks away and they're going to seek further opinions as his foot just isn't healing. He's gonna be gone a while, not sure if we'll see him in red and blue again as others pass him. Shame as we could use him as a marking option and for defensive pressure up forward at the moment. Poor guy. Great to hear Max is not too far off. He'll make us a better team instantly!

He's had a disappointing season. He was alright last year and clearly has some attributes that could make him dangerous. It's just not working for him at the moment. His attitude appears poor and he's clearly down on confidence. Last year he was smashing that nuggety frame into everything, this year he's not committing to contests. Even with his poor form he's still provided more than JKH did IMO. Definitely think he should be dropped and replaced by ANB. ANB, while not the most skilful player, was laying a heap of tackles and helping lock the ball into our forward 50. No-one else is doing that at present. Not sure on the form of Kennedy or Harmes, but they'd be next in line after ANB. Reckon Stretch should be back in the team also and might be the logical replacement for Salem this week.

Not surprised he is going to have time off again. Hopefully he can stay fit and healthy and return to the MFC to have a successful career. If there is any serious long term danger to his health it is better he walks away from the game, as sad as that would be for someone so young that we have invested so much in. Health always comes first. Good luck Gus!

He's a club captain and one of the best key defenders in the league behind Rance and Talia. We pay a first round pick and get him across. We have enough young talent to build around. We need leadership, mature bodies, mongrel. Our biggest hole at the moment is a quality key defender. We are getting destroyed by oppositions tall forwards every week. You have to pay to get quality. First rounder for May is fair. Take it and laugh all the way to the bank. He'd help us become top 8 straight away and give younger talls time to develop at Casey as they should be.

I'd recruit this bloke just so he can line opposition players up with his trademark big bumps. I'm sick of seeing us pushed around by mediocre teams like we did on the weekend.

No point appealing the Salem suspension. Watch the footage in the link I posted a few posts back. It was a stupid thing to do and a fair penalty. The North ones are a joke though. Intentional strikes that left players either dazed on the ground for 30-60 seconds or dry reaching on the bench for 2-3 minutes. Disgusting decision by the AFL and MRP, and sets an ugly precedent going forward. The game may get very ugly for a while until they change their tune. It's now fine to punch away!

Salem suspended a week for a stupid elbow to the head. Precedent has been set, fair punishment. North players not suspended for intentional punches to the head and stomach. Farce. You are now allowed to punch players in the head or stomach and expect nothing more than a fine. The precedent is now set. Time for football to get ugly and unfair apparently.

http://www.afl.com.au/news/2017-05-22/mrp-cunnington-escapes-with-fine-salem-suspended Salem should get a week. Stupid unnecessary thing to do. How Cunnington and Higgins escape suspension after intentionally striking is beyond me. Higgins was offered a fine for 'intentionally striking to the head'. Not even in play, just intentionally hit someone in the head. How is that not suspension worthy? The AFL and MRP should be ashamed of themselves for the inconsistency and stupidity. According to their rules it's now ok to punch your opponent in the head, jumper grabbed or not. The precedent is set after letting multiple people off in the past fortnight. Hopefully our club got the memo and next week they try to break a few jaws. What a farce!

These are excuses to try and rationalise our failure. Until we as a club stop falling back on excuses we will never achieve success. We have lost 4/5 at the MCG, yet we have won 3 out of 4 elsewhere, with the same players missing and no proper ruckman. We are failing at the MCG. Fact. Why are we failing and how do we fix it? The answer cannot be "get player x back and get player y back". The team is bigger than 1 or 2 players. Yes they are important, but the team has to be able to function without them or we fail. Personally I think our zone pushes up to high when we play at the G and we then struggle to close up the space we've created when the opposition is on the rebound (often after we fail to put on enough pressure in our forward line to lock the ball down our end).

Here's our record against key forwards in 2017 Round 1 v St Kilda: Nick Riewoldt (4 goals, 7 marks) Round 2 v Carlton: Levi Casboult (1 goal, 8 marks, could've kicked 3-4) Round 3 v Geelong: Tom Hawkins (5 goals, 5 marks) Round 4 v Fremantle: Cam McCarthy (2 goals, including the match winner) Round 5 v Richmond: Jack Riewoldt (6 goals, 3 marks) Round 6 v Essendon: Joe Daniher (1.6 goals, 9 marks, could've kicked 6-7 goals instead) Round 7 v Hawthorn: Jarryd Roughead (4 goals, 6 marks) Round 8 v Adelaide: Taylor Walker (2 goals, 3 marks, well held) Round 9 v North Melbourne: Ben Brown (5 goals, 6 marks) We are getting destroyed by key forwards. Oscar isn't ready. Mac is being thrown around the ground to cover injuries and holes elsewhere. Frost is a decent rebounder, good when the ball hits the deck, but not the best defender in aerial marking contests. We need a strong key defender. It's our number 1 deficiency. I'd be offering up our first round pick for May and throwing in steak knives if required. He's a proven quality key defender, one of the best in the AFL at present. If he'd been in our team this year we'd likely be somewhere between 4th-8th on the ladder at the moment as some of those key forwards wouldn't have got a hold of us. He's also a leader and has some mongrel in him. If he was around when the North players were sniping behind play he probably would've lined a few of them up! Should be our number 1 target in the off season. Make it happen Dees!

In 2017 we've now lost 4/5 at the MCG. All of them were easily winnable, and the one win we had against Carlton was not convincing. We've won nearly every match away from the MCG, so what has happened to us at our home ground? These games at the G should be as simple as us rocking up with the right amount of effort and we bank an easy 4 points each time. Teams should always make the most of their home ground advantage. What is causing us to fail there? Is it all mental? Do the players feel expectation when playing there and then wilt under the pressure? Is it our gameplan? Does the bigger space spread out high zone too thin so we get cut up by teams on the rebound? If we can't win at the MCG, we can't win finals, and most importantly we can't win the Grand Final. We need to get back on top at our own home ground. Thoughts everyone?

Was at the ground and lost my sh*t at the Salem one. From what I saw, Salem was rugby tackled over the boundary line when he didn't even have the ball. His head hit the hard turf towards the fence so he was dazed. I feared he may have suffered another concussion but luckily he was ok. The umpire then called a free and advantage to North? After Salem was spear tackled without the ball?! Half the players stopped because it was an obvious free kick to Salem, who was winded and might not have been able to take the free kick due to the dangerous tackle he had just received. Ball then fired up the other end and North score. Madness. A blatantly wrong decision that effected the outcome of the game. The Hibberd deliberate out of bounds call was also ridiculous. He attempted to handball it while under pressure, the ball was hit over the line off the North players arm. Deliberate out of bounds called. It didn't even go out of bounds from a Melbourne player! Umpire nearby says nothing, umpire 50 metres away over-rules him and calls deliberate. How the [censored] that works I'll never understand. As if the umpire 5 metres away who saw it clearly doesn't say to the one 50 metres away 'actually the ball came off a North player and was in a pressure situation. We should ball it in. Also, you're a stupid bald c*nt with the umpiring skills of a dropped cumquat'. Then there was the illegal hits. Oliver was clocked in the jaw with no repercussions. Early in the second quarter Ziebell was going so hard at his guts while on the ground that I thought he was trying to give him a caesarean. Vince copped a smack in the jaw. He also copped a firm hit to the guts right infront of an umpire, who did nothing. Not even a free kick. The hit was hard enough the Bernie was vomiting on the bench moments later. The North player (think it was Higgins) who hit him should get suspended for 3+ weeks. If Lewis and Hogan got suspended for hits, then those North hits deserve equal penalty. Ofcourse they'll be ignored because it's all a crock of sh*t and the MRP are soft bias flogs who aren't held accountable by anyone. I'm not blaming the umpiring for the loss. If we were good enough from the opening bounce we would've won. The umpiring however was some of the worst I've ever seen and I hope the club query them about it. Things like the Hibberd one need clarification as otherwise players in pressure situations near the boundary line know the have to clear it towards the centre, as if it goes out of bounds, even from an opposition players contact, you'll be pinged for deliberate. The rule changes are ruining the game, and poor umpiring is effecting the results of matches.

US losing to bottom 4 teams has propped up them up the ladder where they shouldn't be. It shouldn't be that close. Agree, even if you are 5% off then you can be beaten. The players need to rock up and just try. They have shown they are capable. These losses are down to them not giving required effort. Unacceptable. I hope the coaches can do somethingto change the players mentality or we'll be stuck in this rut forever.

No excuses for the losses. All teams suffer injuries. The Bulldogs managed to win a flag with bad injuries last year. Until the players are able to put in the required effort without an external motivating factor then we will foreve live in the bottom half of the ladder. It astounds me to these professional footballers can't motivate themselves to put in the effort for two hours a week. We've lost to two bottom 4 sides in 3 weeks now. No team who does that deserves to play finals. The players need to grow up, give a damn, and have some self respect. If I reckoned up to work and didn't do my job half the time, not only would I get sacked, but I'd feel like a guilty money stealing loser.

OP needs a ban. We need to make the 8 first and not get ahead of ourselves!

We're playing poorly today and the umpires are horrendous. Can't see us winning this one and its gut wrenching seeing us lose to these dirty campaigners agains.

If Oliver is struggling to win ball in the second half due to extra attention, I'd love to see him focus of just tackling and burying some of their players. Rack up 10+ tackles and make them hurt. Viney, jones, Tyson etc and more than capable of picking up slack around the ball.

He's ok. Just copped a lot of physical attention, often unfairly and off the ball, but he's ok.

Fire and and get the job done Dees. Time to end this losing streak against the Kangas. They're a rubbish team, dominate them as such and claim the 4 points.

He's worth that, but we have bigger needs. If I was going to trade a first rounder I'd spend it on a key position player like Steven May, rather than a small runner like Jones.

Dogs and Saints losing gives us an opportunity tomorrow to jump into the 8. If we account for North, Freo will probably beat Carlton, so we will likely finish the weekend 7th on the ladder. Let's hope the boys bring the same work ethic and intensity they did last week against Adelaide. Fire up Dees!

Zac Jones having another good game to continue his great year. He's become Sydneys main attacking weapon off half back. He's got decent pace and the same aggressive attitude as his older brother. Would be a good addition to our team but would cost a first rounder so not going to happen.

Looks like the Swans are back. Winning lots of ball and competing strongly again like we're used to. They'll knock over a few teams and move up the ladder now, not enough for finals though obviously unless they go absolutely berserk. Shame we didn't play them already when they were playing poorly.

I would lose it. I've talked a lot of sh*t in my time, but that is the kind of thing that would finally tip me over the edge! The idea that a team who has not been good enough all season to make finals, can have a good week or two right at the end and take the finals place of a team that has learnt if over the course of a full season of pathetic. A team should be rewarded for playing well over a full season, not 1-2 weeks. Imagine if Melbourne finished 7th, then played off in a "wildcard" match against 10th. Imagine 10th is West Coast and we have to fly to WA to play them. Under the current more fair system and fixture that is already in place, and we would've been scheduled to play Brisbane who are 17th in Melbourne. During that match we suffer injuries such as Hogan and Gawn going down, leaving us 2 men down on the bench, and then had an umpire makes an incorrect or debatable decision at the end of a game that gives West Coast the win. Due to that loss we could potentially go from 7th and playing finals, to out of the 8 and not playing finals. It's a sh*t idea used to generate hype and creates an unfair fixture. We need to keep the game the way it is and stop copying other sports to generate hype at the expense of a fair system. It's already unbalanced to favour certain teams/areas, we shouldn't tip the scales even further. I don't want it to degenerate into Baseketball (as fun as that movie is).