Nasher

I was one of those gooses (geese?) who thought he'd struggle to hold his place in the side. Stuffed if I can remember what the logic was now but I'm sure it made sense at the time

Today he put forward his case for forward line permanency. He is as good a contested mark as anyone in our side, and he's become a very reliable set shot for goal for someone whose field kicking looked not too dissimilar to my 5 year old's ball drop at Friday evening AusKick. He made the comment with Burgs post-match that simplifying his technique has been the main focus of his work (with Troy Chaplin) and getting everything straight is the key. His last four games have netted 2, 5, 2 and now 4 goals. Cam Pedersen, who gets a lot of love on this forum, and has been outstanding in key moments this year, has never kicked any more than 3, in a 70 match career predominantly as a forward. This is not intended to be a knock on Pedersen, just a matter of context. Players don't kick 4 or 5 goals often and McDonald has now done that twice in three weeks. Simon Goodwin had this to say when asked post-match against Carlton: "He looks likely to [stay forward], if he keeps marking the ball and kicking straight. They're hard to come by. He's done it again Tom, I think every time the ball comes in his area, he looks likely. He's looked likely since the time we put him down there, but now he's starting to turn that in to goals. In current form, he'll definitely stay down there. In some ways it was an experiment, but then we did some training with a couple of marking exercises. Our coaches are very good at developing some exercises for them to do their contested marking, and he just kept marking the ball." I read with interest @binmanand @ProDee's discussion on this during the week. I took the view (with no conviction) that this was temporary and treated the 5 goals against West Coast as something of a novelty, but his form down there is getting increasingly difficult to ignore. He wouldn't be the key defender in our history to go on to have an outstanding career as a forward, initially out of necessity. Interested in others' thoughts.

Stretch for Tyson and Kent for Watts. I'd like to see Smith get another week.

It's as open as ever IMO. Possible Watts and Tyson will return next week - if that happens, Kent is one of the most vulnerable.

Was probably the right call, but jeez that was a disappointing moment. Was great to see him really using the jets in the last quarter though. Such an exciting player.

Not sure why everyone's so down about Lewis' performance too. He made one notable cockup in the heat of the moment in the first quarter (the kick that fell short of Melksham at HF) but other than that, I thought he stepped up as support for Oliver in the way we needed him to. He was a battering ram in the middle of the field and won his share of contested ball. His play at the end, which had the double benefit of running down the clock and taking the heat off a junior player was a critical example of using experience to the betterment of the team. I thought he was great and in our top couple. I still think too many people see a player do one or two poor things and let it colour their view of the match as a whole.

I didn't see it that way at all. No doubt the match was a grind and about as far away from aesthetically pleasing as we've seen, but there were some bloody epic moments in it, borne out of a game that was a genuine contest. Lots of character and guts were required to win, and the team delivered. There's been a few of those "we were shit, they were worse" games in the last few years, but I don't rank this as one of them myself.

If Lewis and Vince can wind back the clock a bit, our midfield still looks strong. I hope Lewis spends time playing an inside role as Oliver needs some support in the absence of the skippers. I told myself during the week that our injuries might bring us undone, but I've moved past that somewhat. All the players we added are AFL quality including our best two forwards. Carlton have done their best impersonation of a decent AFL team recently, but they're 16th on 5 wins. We have to get this done if we want to be taken seriously.

Shiet, just saw the Saints Tiges scores. Get it done tomorrow please, Melbourne.

4th is possible, but very unlikely. Obviously we'd need to win, need West Coast to beat Port and St Kilda to beat Richmond. And we have to claw back some percentage against Richmond, but not much. 6th and a game clear of 7th would be a good result. A result where all the higher ranking teams winning would get that done. A loss would hurt and keeps us right in the pack. A disaster would be a loss with WC and St K wins - that knocks us down to 9th.

The existing midfielders already in the side, currently playing on flanks, are better than any of the midfielders playing at Casey.

So he has an easy role, which has suited him, in a well structured side. Got it. The Liam Jones I knew was a complete flop - was having a hard time reconciling this best (anything) in the comp talk.

I haven't seen Carlton play much lately. Has he actually been the best defender in the comp, or just the hyperbolic type "best in the comp" that people brand crud players with when they suddenly and unexpectedly become competent after a lot of years of duddery?

Yep - but this time it's only temporary. Normally he'd have Tyson, Viney and Jones sharing the heavy lifting. Really time for Lewis to up his game here I think.

Thought so. Didn't get the long term deal right but as if he was going to leave.

Wagner was poo last week, but has demonstrated AFL capability before. Happy to persevere - I think he and Smith are probably competing for a place on the HBF, with Hunt replacing White on the other. With Viney and Tyson out, we're short competent mids - Harmes, ANB and Kent (in that order) are going to have to spend time in there. Lewis and Vince really have to step up. Oliver needs to be able to spend 80%+ time on the ground as our contested ball battery is significantly weakened. If he has a poor game we lose I think. Our firepower forward looks heaps more potent with Hogan and Garlett back. TMac is in form and should stay there, playing deep in my opinion. He has marking power and has developed a reliable set shot - I'm hoping he's good for another 2-3 goals but at the very least, should force defenders away from Hogan. Pedersen to play the more mobile tall role Watts would normally play - he played one quarter of good football in this role against WC but has been down either side of that. Need more from him. Just excited to see Jesse back.

Stretch, Kent, Wagner, Smith for me.

Even as I was writing this, I was thinking "now that I've said this, it's sure to be wrong" and I was right. You'd think Smith will play based on that bench.

Wait, so Hogan isn't playing in the VFL?

Don't reckon it'll be this week based on the Plapp report - sounds like he still has cobwebs to be blown out. You would think he'll get another run sooner or later though.

You suck.

Hibberd says they've moved on quickly from the loss: http://www.melbournefc.com.au/video/2017-07-06/looking-ahead-michael-hibberd I thought this an interesting contrast to Pedersen's comments in this article regarding the Neeld era: http://www.aflplayers.com.au/article/players-voice-cam-pedersen/, particularly this: The morale is great. Gone are the days when the feeling fluctuates depending on whether we win or lose, which is a great sign of where the club is going. If we lost it was almost like a funeral and the meetings would go for three times longer and we’d dissect everything. Now, the weeks look the same whether we win or lose. Hibberd said they didn't spend much time on the review. Lewis said on AFL360 a while ago that it's totally counterproductive for athletes to dwell on losses too much because of the negative effect it has on your psychology going in to the next game. Goodwin, Jones and other club leaders are often repeating the words, "the way we want to play". The message coming out of the club is consistent: we know this match didn't represent the way we want to play, there's no point going over it repeatedly, let's focus on how we prepare for to ensure we play how we want to play against Carlton. There's the chance that circumstance will conspire against us and we can't get it done - nonetheless I am still optimistic about this match. If we don't, I'm confident those driving this club today will still have done everything they could to get the right outcome.

OMac appears to have found his feet at this level. If Hogan plays, there's a big chance Pedersen will be dropped.

There's no need to be a dick about it. I already said in the post you quoted that I agree with your clarified view. If I ever used the word "gun shy", it would have been how I'd described 2006-2012 era Lynden Dunn for example, or Cam Pedersen's first season with us. That's how I initially interpreted your comments, and you added nothing else to lead me to any alternative interpretation. That's not what you meant - fine. Got it.

I'm aware that subtlety is not your thing, but "gun shy" reads with negative connotations. It sounds like our view is pretty much the same.