Nasher

I’m not angry, I’m just disappointed. Although to be honest, I’m not even that disappointed. It was a hot contest, we were below our best, and it was bound to happen sooner or later. Bring on the Dogs.

To be fair hardtack, the form line is WWWWW vs LLLLL. I don’t reckon they’re any good. We haven’t yet shown the capacity for giving teams a hiding, so that might not be on the cards, but I give Adelaide absolutely no chance whatsoever of beating us. The boys will be preparing for Adelaide’s best though, and rightfully so. Goodwin talks about how they’ve reset after every win. It’s self evident and they’ve earned my trust that they will do that, and take this challenge completely seriously. If they do, they’re a vastly superior side to Adelaide. That’s why I’m so confident about the result. The only way we can lose is if we’re complacent, but that’s not this version of the Melbourne Football Club.

I’m experiencing this odd feeling about this game. I’ve never felt it before. A strange sort of... relaxation. Like I’m not worried, at all. There’s no incoming calamity. I’m even a little excited. Is this the elusive... “confidence”?

I loved the way Cornes scoffed every time Brown opened his mouth and more rubbish escaped. I listened to Cornes interview ANB this morning too. He’s articulate, asks good questions and knows what he’s talking about. It’s a real pity he plays the role of hysteria-generator so much; he has the potential to be a legitimately good footy journalist if he cuts that out, in my opinion.

It’s a dangerous thing to assume supporters of any club know what they’re talking about though. You only have to look at some of the garbage that gets posted on here. For example, you might actually work with the Geelong equivalent of Dr.D.

We don’t know what the basis was for Melksham being left out in the first place. Everyone’s assumed it’s for this, that and the other behavioural type stuff, but it could have just been a horses for courses change. Perhaps with the different mix of talls, we thought we also needed a different mix of mediums and smalls; now that the tall mix is more like before, we put the medium-small mix back to how it was. If that’s the case, the message to Bedford and whoever else is plugging away at Casey is that Goodwin and team will pick the team that suits whatever we’re trying to deliver, so make sure you’re putting your best foot forward. We can only guess the reasoning, but if this change is mystifying in the context of your guess, then maybe the assumptions around why he was left out in the first place need revisiting.

I was going to suggest bringing Melksham for Chandler in but was legit afraid of the Demonland lynch mob. There’s absolutely no doubt in my mind Melksham would have offered a lot more than Chandler on the weekend. Didn’t see the Brown change coming though, but I’m pleasantly surprised. Thought they’d prefer him over Weideman, but I’m stoked to see the young bloke get another look at it. Can’t wait for this game now. Both changes make the side stronger.

My son’s basketball team (second on the ladder) played their arch rivals (top of the ladder) on Tuesday. Having lost both recent clashes narrowly, they found said rival team had turned up without their best player. My son’s team we went on to deliver one of the biggest beltings they’ve ever been part of. Obviously u12s basketball isn’t AFL football but I think the principle still stands. For all we bang on about depth, top players are completely irreplaceable. Our 23rd best player can’t cover Petracca. Majak Daw can’t cover Max Gawn. Richmond are much weaker without Dusty. Best players are irreplaceable. Depth is an illusion. A couple of key injuries to crucial players and we will be right back to mid pack. Any premiership coach will tell you that one of the key ingredients to a premiership is luck. It’s been on our side so far this year. Let’s hope it continues.

I'm not really either to be honest. rpfc's take on this is my favourite so far; to paraphrase: how about we support the umpires to officiate the game better, and the coaches mind their own business?

Goodwin. We don't call him Goody - he wasn't our mate back then. Just watched the vid again. Leoncelli was just casually walking in to position when he realised he was all on his own in space, then suddenly turned around with some urgency. Great tap forward by Schwarz. Awesome stuff.

As above - the players would still prefer to have the ball than have their opponent have it. If I pull up in a contest and let you gather it, there’s no guarantee the tackle I lay will stop you from getting it away to your teammate, or that I’ll even be able to lay one. Coach will be super pissed with me if I pull up in a contest and let you get away with it. If I’m that worried our contest would be too close and I might get tackled, I’ll just boot or paddle it away until I or my teammate can find a cleaner possession.

I get what you’re saying and I think it’s got merit, but is that what would happen in practice? Picture two players competing for a loose ball, and they arrive at the ball at the same time. Are they both going to stop and say “you get it”, “no you get it”? It’s a silly example but the point is, in the heat of the moment and only having a quick second to decide what to do, I think most players would still choose to try and beat their opponent to the ball, even if there’s an increased risk of getting caught holding the ball. It will also increase prevalence of padding the ball away and soccer kicking instead of trying to gather in congestion, which I don’t think is a bad thing. I don’t see players electing to be second to the ball as a plausible outcome in a game where territory (current buzzword) is king. The opposing risk is the player who does get the ball gets away because you gave way to him in the contest. I doubt the coach would be real happy with that in the match review.

Fairly handy goal from the coach to nearly snatch it, too. Easy to forget how much of a gun Goodwin was as a player. Not good enough on that day though!

I think it’ll just be Weideman back out for Jackson. Chandler was the clear 22nd best player, however I don’t think Jackson for Chandler being a realistic exchange, it’s way too tall. In Goody’s presser today he was at pains to say the talls all knew the situation and were clear on where things stood; I read between the lines that he’s getting ready to tell one of them they’re back out. Weideman played the role Jackson would so it makes sense to me.

Haha. If Watts and Melksham were/are whipping boys on the forums, Chris Lamb was whatever the opposite of that is. He had a serious following about these parts and 'ology, which was arguably unwarranted on actual output.

Absolutely no correlation whatsoever between free kick diff and ladder position, shock horror. Maybe we might eliminate the culture our sport has of relentlessly complaining about the umpiring and blaming losses on it? Nah, of course not.

I'd settle for that too, but with the passage of time, I've devalued 186. The whole club just laid down that day because of the incompetent meddling of the board. I don't think it was reflective of where we were at, at the time. It was an anomaly. A complete own goal. I rate the 148 point loss against Essendon in round 2, 2013 as a far more soul destroying loss. The front running, injecting mongrels absolutely humiliated us. It was a clear and obvious signal that we were clearly in a lot of trouble. Dean Terlich made his debut. Tom Gillies played his second and last MFC game. It gives me nightmares thinking about it.

I suspect Brayshaw is being measured on KPIs around defence and selfless acts rather than polished ball use. We missed this badly in the North game where he didn't play on the wing; North used the inexperienced Baker's wing repeatedly on exit. He needs to eliminate the unforced errors out of his game. The two OOFs in a row were particularly bad, but the fact that they kicked it straight down his throat three times in a row (couldn't quite hold the third mark) says something about him parking himself in the right places a lot. The errors are the difference between being a solid contributor and being really good, though. They're not going to get him dropped or moved to a different position.

Probably - I suspect I might have been ruined by that exercise of watching all the centre bounces last week, where I didn't see him lay hand on the ball in a ruck contest once. Need to recalibrate my views once I see him play a full game again.

In TMac's interview during the week, he made the interesting point that as a key forward, it takes weeks to get in to a rhythm with regards to marking. He reckons it's normal for contested marking players to mistime and two-grab at beginning of seasons and after returning from a layoff. He would know - he couldn't get in to that rhythm at all in 2019 or 2020. I reckon this applicable to both Weideman and Brown at the moment. 8 rounds in before injury, Jackson hadn't either - he's less experienced so it will probably take longer, but I've no doubt it will come. Maybe we can't play with three talls in the forward line, but one thing I'm confident of is we'll never know how potent it could be unless we let it play out for a bit. TMac is the only one of the three that has found his rhythm. If one of Brown or Weideman can find theirs, we're going to be extremely difficult to stop. If both can, look out.

Wasn't until I watched "all the goals" that I realised we only kicked one goal in the last quarter - total score was 1.7. I felt at the time like we were far more on top than the scoreboard suggested; this confirms it for me.

I still think Weideman can hold Jackson out of the side. Jackson's best work is at ground level, but how important is that really for a player of his role? Weideman competes aerially - that's a weakness in Jackson's game at present. I think if Jackson is fit for Adelaide then he'll come straight back in, and most likely for Weideman, but if not, I'm backing Weid to play well enough that it'll leave us with a conundrum.

Yes, sorry. I’m referring to the one where Lever was actually called for HTB. The one where he got the kick away clearly wasn’t HTB (because he got the kick away), BT incorrectly called it as HTB and is an idiot.

^ exactly t_u. Another example was when Petty was front-on tackled on the wing. BT called it a throw; umpire called play-on, which was the correct call under the no-prior, ball spilled out adjudication. The non-HTB against Carlton was the umpire judging no prior. That’s a completely subjective judgement call; these are always going to vary because no two umpires will share the same judgement. I thought it was the correct call. I also thought the HTB call against Lever was tough but correct. Ump’s logic is if you’ve got time to raise your hands to free them up, you’ve got time to dispose of it. They pay those all day long.

High pressure hose and a squeegee and it’ll be sorted in minutes. They’d have to go through the rooms and do that anyway - the floors in there would be gross after a game. It’s still a dumb tradition though. Pouring milk or whatever that stuff Salem and Oliver had wasn’t cool and I’m glad Hibberd and Trac called it out. Great leadership. Time to move past the Gatorade showers I think.