Nasher

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.

I assumed the calling it touched was more about getting set up defensively because he knew it would be revealed to be touched anyway, and keeping everyone focused instead of wasting energy getting around him. He knew he wouldn’t get away with claiming it. I’m happy to give him the sportsmanship credit too, but I think he was just applying common sense.

The mark on 3/4 time (for a behind) was a clear one-grabber. I’m not sure if I’d “demerit” a mark for not being one-grabbed anyway. Surely the fact that he marked it is the most important thing.

Looking at those heat maps, McDonald is already playing a high role anyway. The last two weeks have basically been 50% forward, 50% midfield. And what wing is he going to take? Brayshaw might be a poor kick but he's defensively crucial. His positioning when defending our own 50, the way he blocks the opposition from switching, and his push in to the back half are all critical. And obviously it's not going to be Langdon's wing. Assuming Jackson and Viney aren't ready, I'm going with no change. If Viney's ready then Chandler goes out. If Jackson's ready, I'm reluctantly putting Weideman out at this stage.

Happy to have backed Petty in last week. I think it's totally reasonable for a young KPD, playing in a system defense, to take a game or two to find his rhythm. It's silly to think he'd be playing at the top of his capability in game one. He's never played any more than 3 games in a row as a defender, the writing off of him was nuts. I'm a lot less convinced about Kade Chandler, but I'll give him the benefit of the doubt for the same reason. I reckon Melksham would have offered more, but if Goody and team want to give Chandler a few weeks to settle in, I can appreciate why.

I would mute it, but it sucks listening to the telecast in silence. I like hearing the sounds of kicking the footy, bodies on bodies and the crowd. I get goosebumps when I hear the MFC faithful go up. Unfortunately the price for getting all that is having to suffer BT. Years ago Fox tried a thing where they gave you an option of turning off the commentary. Don't know why that didn't stick, but it was awesome. I would 100% do that every game if that were a choice I had.

Addendum: please Footy Gods, let it be Essendon. I would settle for Collingwood.

Hence ratcheting up the bar too high. We will smash someone. It’ll come. It was never going to be this game though. The current incarnation of Carlton don’t have a huge number of wins on the board, but they don’t get smashed. We delivered, for the 9th time in a row. I’m feeling smugly content.

I actually thought it was a great win. There were long periods of the game where there wasn’t much scoring - that to me says the game was a genuine arm wrestle. We scored heavily in the periods where we had ascendency and defended like Demons(!) during the period where they had it. I reckon the “meh, just a win” people are ratcheting the bar up a tad too high.

As usual, if I only looked at the match day thread, I'd assume we were 30 points down.

Really enjoying Weid's contribution at the moment. He's hanging on to his marks, which is an excellent sign. Can't wait to see the boys get around him when he kicks one, which is inevitable. TMac has been immense, again. I'm stoked for him.