Lord Travis

Fritsch out injured. JVR in. Harmes or Sparrow out. Clarry in. If BBrown isn’t fit, then Petty moves forward and Tomlinson comes in to play down back. Need to maintain the three headed dragon down back. Half forward line to be rejigged. Kozzie stints further up the ground or played out of the square as a leading forward. Spargo potential in for better ball use to replace Chandler who is well out of form.

His goal kicking accuracy is the only thing stopping him winning the Brownlow this year. He’s a brilliant footballer who has struggled with accuracy this past 1-2 seasons after a great year in 2021. Even with the inaccuracy he’s a top 5 player in the game and a weapon around the ball. I’m not piling on like some here saying he cost us the game etc. if he didn’t have the game he did, then we wouldn’t have even had the shots on the first place. He’s not alone in his accuracy woes, but at least he’s contributing in other ways unlike a lot of his teammates. The club needs to help him with the mental side of it. He’s clearly capable, just needs help. Not sure if that’s a sports psych or someone else.

I don’t like watching Melbourne anymore. This past month has been excruciating.

Free kick count 14-1 in our favor. We’ve brought the paper bags this week! Expect that to get evened up in the second half and cost us the game.

On another note, Himmelberg isn’t worth 400k let alone the 800-900k being reported in the media. Absolutely bog average third tall at either end.

Since signing his contract extension he’s been poor. If it wasn’t for his potential you’d drop him.

If Trac can’t convert then he should be kept away from the forward line, not spend more time there haha

From most accurate team to least accurate team. It’s become a problem now and is costing us games. Need to bloody convert lads!

Sounds like Woe is really pushing for AFL debut. Has he been playing pure midfield today?

50/50 game today. As strange as it is, we’re not a good wet weather team. GWS have been good recently and their defensive setup has improved out of sight. Hoping for a big game from Kozzy. Would like to see Harmes played forward again. He’s a good mark for his size, applies a lot of defensive pressure and can hit the scoreboard.

You are correct. Because he was previously delisted (and re-rookied), he now qualifies as an unrestricted free agent come end of the year. Unless we match an offer and force a trade, then we get no compensation for losing him. Gut feel is he will leave for more opportunity at a middle of the road club like the Saints or Bombers and we’ll get nothing for him.

Why are people happy Essendon lost? We basically just lost our chance at a home finals you peanuts

After such a good fight back what a [censored] horrible result for us

Terrible results for us today. If we can close out the year strongly, best we can hope for is 3rd or 4th. Looks like we’re off to play either Port in SA or Pies first up. Gonna be tough!

Port firing up here. Looks like second place is gone for us if they hold on.

Starting to play like his draft position suggests and more like his underage form this past month. He’s a handy outside running type delivering inside 50. We could definitely use him between the arcs, though he’s pushing up his trade price now ☹️

Happy BBrown is back. Not happy JVR dropped. Would like to see them play together and ditch Smith.

They should forego free agency. Free agency sucks and the game is worse for it. It's essentially just widened the gaps between the strong clubs and the weak clubs. It's not worked as intended and has hindered the league. Everyone except the rich players and rich clubs would benefit from getting rid of free agency and rolling back to trade rules from the early 2000s. We've already got overly complex [censored] like point ratings of picks and trading future picks etc. It's convoluted unfair rubbish and more and more people are turning on what the "sport" is becoming. Being traded against their will would suck too. Imagine signing a contract to work for company X in Victoria, only to be told sorry pack up your life and move your family to WA to work for competing company Z. [censored] off the relationships you have with your colleagues and leaders, start over against your will and do it quickly. Players would rightly just say [censored] off and sit out instead. If clubs were able to trade players against their will and had a mid season trade period, I'd probably stop following AFL and stop supporting Melbourne after investing decades and $10,000s towards the club. Clubs would essentially just buy premierships. Imagine trading in stars like Curnow or Toby Greene from teams not in finals contention. It might be unpredictable and exciting, but it would be ****house and destroy any integrity of the competition. If a club did that and won the premiership, you'd look at that flag and put an asterisk next to it that they just bought it and it's illegitimate. If that became the status quo, then people would stop following clubs and start following players instead. Just because other sports in other countries have different trading rules, doesn't mean we should. Our game is better than theirs for a number of reasons, and the salary cap and restrictive trade rules are key positive differentiators to pathetic trash sports and leagues like the EPL.

It’s weird that Trac is classified as a forward. While he spends some time forward, he’s clearly a midfielder. He averages nearly 30 touches a game, approx 7 clearances a game, spends most of his game time around the ball and averages less than a goal a game. We’d love to have the flexibility to play him more forward at times, and we’d love for him to improve his scoring accuracy (28% and worst in the league!), but fact is he’s a midfielder and shouldn’t be part of these rankings. On another note, these rankings are dog****. I’ll eat my hat if Mitch Lewis is better than Jeremy Cameron, Tex Walker, Hawkins, Finlayson etc. Larkey being down the bottom of the list statistically equal with Hipwood is also a laugh. Credibility of these rankings is zero. There’s gathering data, then there’s analyzing data. Champion data can perhaps gather data fine, but their analysis is as accurate as a blind 4 year old [censored] themselves while watching Teletubbies and ranking things based off color.

Stats back up the eye test. He’s plateaued. Five seasons in with a mature body and midfield opportunity and he’s still below AFL average. If he doesn’t improve over the next 12 months he’ll be out of the best 22 permanently you’d think.

Loved him in his draft year and he’s obviously talented. He’s struggled at afl level so far, but he was very good off half back on the weekend. Out of contract and hasn’t performed so shouldn’t cost much in a trade. I’d be all for getting him in as we need more players with pace and skill to compliment our one paced overly inside midfield.

Sadly Rivers is the only bonafide best 22 player from last year that's improved. Everyone else has gone backwards or plateaued and is not performing to expectation with the exception of Petracca. Viney and Lever are having decent seasons, but not their best. Chandler started the year well but has been ineffective the past 6 weeks or so. McVee has been good for debut season. JVR has had a good debut season too considering his role as a tall forward target. Without tall support around him he is struggling to impact games though. Biggest disappointments with form drops this year considering potential and previous output have been Gawn, Kozzie, Petty, Langdon, Brayshaw. I would've put May in here too, but he's had some decent patches of form. Brown and TMac I wouldn't bother rating as they're injured and cooked now. The Gawn and Grundy combo hasn't worked and as a result Gawn has gone from a top 5 player in the league to a below average player. Statistically he's having his worst season since 2014 and I'd say the stats line up to his lack of impact as either a forward or ruckman. It's a weird season. We're still top 4 and could potentially contend, but it feels like we're going backwards and all players are down on form. Given our good injury run heading into the season compared to last year, this season has been more disappointing than last IMO. It feels like we're wasting a big opportunity to claim another flag as this is probably the weakest season in living memory. There isn't a single team I'd consider a strong team when compared to previous years. Whoever wins the flag this year will be remembered as a weak team IMO.

It’s a very even year because most teams are 💩. Pies are top of the ladder and if you put them against most premiers they’d rate as very weak and a forgettable lucky team like the Bulldogs of 2016. Whoever wins this year will be a weak premier IMO. We could definitely steal another flag.

Agreed. There’s first round picks and then there’s first round picks. Early first rounders are much greater opportunity to get a club changing superstar like Trac or Clarry. Late first rounders and you hope for a Bowey type who could have a good career but far less likely to be a superstar and change a clubs fortunes. We tried trading three first rounders in the teens for pick 6 last year and got knocked back. We’d need a top 5 pick out of Freo to have any chance to move up the draft board for Reid or an elite talent. Talk of chasing Oscar Allen is misplaced also. Contracted for another two years. West Australian local lad. Already on $800,000-$850,000. His next contract will be a million plus that we likely don’t have and we’d be convincing him to move away from home too. More chance of landing a King brother or basically anyone else in the league!

That's not even including the missed shots! The past 4-5 matches our accuracy has tanked to become worst in the league again. The whole forward line needs an overhaul but unfortunately we just don't have the players on the list to fix it.