mauriesy

So I gather no one is complaining about the 31-18 benefit Melbourne got on Saturday?

I don't accept that Tom McDonald is not in the 'heat'. The backline is about as stressful as it gets, and clangers are made by all players fairly regularly. It would be just like supporters here to take a strong, developed player with 80-90 games and want to trade them out for a draft pick. Like drafting is some sort of game. No team has a player who is 100% perfect.

I'd imagine with protective head gear of the sort Marc Murphy has been wearing, you could get hot. That may affect your performance, especially early and late in the season when the weather is warmer. Or in Brisbane, Darwin and Alice Springs.

We must be in a minority. I thought the free kick was there too. Clear block with the primary intention of stopping your opposing ruckman getting to the ball.

Why would that be? Why not 4, or 6, or 8? I'd prefer to see Trengove back in the firsts whenever he is fit enough. It seems to me his injury is done and dusted and it's only fitness and endurance that might be the issue.

You do realise Dunn is 192cm and Garland is 191cm? Dunn does have a weight advantage, but it's not as though we're swapping tall for short..

Another Etihad whinge ... It's terrible for buying a ticket and getting in. While I'm an MFC member and got straight in yesterday, previously I have bought tickets for non-home games. Buying a ticket at the ground is a lengthy, convoluted process. It seems to take, at best, up to a minute at the window for each customer, especially with a credit card. So one booth can process, say, 80-90 customers per hour. If each customer bought 2 tickets, that's probably around 160-200 tickets per hour per booth, at best. So selling 10,000 tickets would take 50 booths at least an hour. Even with a smallish crowd of 27,000 on Saturday there were lengthy queues, and some didn't get in the ground until well into the first quarter. My advice is to go much earlier than you think. Maybe it's a plot to get you to pay extra on-line.

It's not 'cheating out the back' to win the contested ball then kill your opposition in transition. If we won the contested ball better they wouldn't have been able to do it.

Good post fr_ap, pity you are being trivially criticised for the title and not the content. We could match up against the Saints at Etihad if we had much better defensive organisation. We were far too loose, and lacked another tall player to counter the marking of Reiwoldt and Bruce. Conversely we were too tall and lacked run in other parts of the ground. Plus our normal good runners such as Kent and Garlett were non-existent. I think at Etihad you've got to make defence a lot more of a priority, rather than all-out attack. It's a shorter, narrower ground than the MCG, and hard to counter a quick transition when the whole side zones so far up towards the forward line. We were killed by turnovers and the fast transition. We stopped it to some extent in the last quarter by not pushing up as far, and playing a loose man in defence, something we should have done in the 2nd quarter to (at least temporarily) stop the rot. Sometimes zoning just doesn't work.

A good stretch would help keep everybody out of harmes way.

Funny how Max says he has a long beard 'to stand out'. Like a guy 208cm tall needs to do something else to stand out.

I don't mind niggle. I don't mind getting in your opponent's face. I don't mind giving stick. I don't mind 'unsociable football'. I don't mind sticking up for your teammates. But I draw the line at showboating, and I especially draw the line at physical contact with an injured played who is hobbling off. It doesn't show 'character', it shows the opposite.

I thought it was in the GF. I stand corrected. Still don't like Bugg's attitude re the goal.

Carey criticised Bugg on Talking Footy last night. I tend to agree with him. It's arrogance when it's not warranted. I remember David Schwarz doing the same thing once, in a game we ended up losing dreadfully. BTW, Carey has also been talking up Melbourne a lot in the last couple of weeks.

I thought Lumumba's disposal was greatly improved over the last two weeks.

The Channel 7 coverage of the pre-game was really poor, even given the quick and inappropriate finger on the MKR ad-break button. The edited highlights package didn't portray the occasion at all well. Should have started the football coverage at 6.45.

Even the Oxford Dictionary in the 1970s listed 'typo' (colloquial).

We'll have to watch out for Collingwood on Queen's Birthday now. It will be their one day of the year ... like a premiership for them.

Think this whole thread is a little Ron Barassi.

Dank is just non-rocket scientist and a loose cannon throwing hand grenades, pardon the mixed metaphors.

Even as someone who hates drugs in sport, and the Essendon Football Club, this continual, droning 'drug cheat' mantra gets up my nose. The Essendon players fully deserved their penalty, for their naiveity if nothing else. But they were also badly deceived by poor management practices and unconscionable conduct by their club. At the end of 2016, they will have served their time and deserve to continue playing. We no longer transport people for seven years for stealing a loaf of bread, do we? I'd have Heppell in a heartbeat. Whether he wants to come to Melbourne, stay at Essendon, or go elsewhere is another matter. Anyway, what's a better continuing punishment for Essendon than losing some of their best (suspended) players?

Did North have a problem playing Petrie, Waite and Brown?

No, they are allowed to replace a player going off with the blood rule regardless of the number of interchanges. However they had used 90, so weren't allowed any more for the rest of the game and couldn't get Petrie back on.

No, they are allowed to replace a player going off with the blood rule regardless of the number of interchanges. However they had used 90, so weren't allowed any more for the rest of the game and couldn't get Petrie back on.

No, they are allowed to replace a player going off with the blood rule regardless of the number of interchanges. However they had used 90, so weren't allowed any more for the rest of the game and couldn't get Petrie back on.