Nasher

It’s not just that he tackles though, it’s that his tackles prize the ball loose so much more than other players (as distinct from a tackle that causes a ball-up). I can’t name another player in our side I could say that about. The next best flankers such as ANB certainly can’t say that, and aren’t going to be so much better with the ball to justify the loss of that attribute.

Lots of theories around why Goodwin and Burgess didn’t mention the injury when given the opportunity, but isn’t the simplest and most likely explanation just that they didn’t know about it at the time of the reports? it seems like the type of injury that a player could probably attempt to conceal and not alert the club staff until a few days later when it didn’t seem to be getting better?

Beat me to the punch, I just came to post this. Great question from Gibson, who obviously reads Demonland (hi Ben) and great explanation from Goodwin about the need for calm and clarity in the box. It’s these types of answers from the coach that convinces me Goodwin is a high quality leader. Stuffs me why supporters would prefer a coach who loses his cool and cracks in high pressure situations.

Confirmed out for two weeks after cheekbone surgery. Bastards in the MFC social media team headlined it as “surgery for vandenBerg” and my mind immediately went to the foot.

He leads by example, AND he’s relatable to players and supporters. I listen every time he is interviewed, we always knew he was good for a laugh, but he’s also extremely insightful, which is extremely rare. As a grown adult I don’t throw around terms like “favourite player” much, let alone “favourite ever player”, but if I had to nominate one, Max is a contender.

The higher you are on the ladder, the more you tend to beat teams below you.

It’s only Victorians who are pissy about not being able to the footy who think there’s an asterisk. I’m invested and want this flag as much as any other.

Pleasantly surprised, I was fully expecting this to be a post bagging him. A poster on another forum mentioned that vandenBerg’s tackles hurt more than any other player because they frequently cause turnovers. I don’t reckon we’ve had a player like him at the MFC since I’ve been watching. A medium-tall with an extremely solid build whose greatest asset is defensive work. His tackles hurt in both the physical and footy sense. I’d be afraid if I was nearby. Hopefully he is able to get a decent run at it - he was important in the finals in 2018 and has been so far this year.

I hope you’re right, but as you are also the OP of the Goodwin thread, I think you are riding the roller coaster a bit. I can’t remember the origin of this quote but someone said things in footy are never as bad, or as good, as they seem.

I’m shirking selection this week. Who comes out for TMac is too hard a decision. It would be a very brave decision not to select him. I think he is going to be in. Make no mistake though, the TMac question is the only one being asked. Melksham and Brayshaw aren’t going to be dropped for Jones or any of the kids, those suggestions are just laughable. The only player whose place in the side is tenuous is Lockhart, and they won’t make a pointless change like that after such a big win.

Fair enough. Over the years I have formed a pretty healthy disregard for what “sources” say on matters like this which are completely subjective. Even if Troy Chaplin himself was my best mate and told me that the newfound success was because Goodwin started listening, I’d still treat it with skepticism because I know if I asked Goodwin he’d say he’s always listened to his assistants. Perspective and facts aren’t the same thing, so I think we shouldn’t treat them as such when we’re so far away from the situation.

This is just inventing what happens in the box, just to suit narrative/agenda. Goody’s started listening to his assistants and now we’re good. Or Goody’s stopped listening to his muppet assistants and become an authoritarian, and that’s what has made us good. Or, the most likely thing, the relationship with the assistants is the same as it always was, and they’ve arrived at the right chemistry by chipping away at the problem together. We don’t know though, so we shouldn’t guess. In my view if we’re prepared to unreservedly put the blow torch on Goodwin when we’re struggling then we have to be prepared to give him all the credit when we’re flying. Anything otherwise is complete double standards. For the record, I do neither.

Jeez, they’re a bit slow off the mark on posting All the Goals (with thanks to Haymes Paint). Surely that’s what the media team start working on the minute they start work on Monday morning - if not, they have their priorities all wrong!

Petracca. Gawn. ❤️?

He was a decent player who filled a need at the time. I don’t know why people feel the need to whack club and player for no reason over ancient history.

On a scale of 0 to 10, my desire to go watch Hawthorn play is about negative eleventy billion.

@Skuitwill be happy!

Wish someone would have told me that before I made 13,000 of them!

Welcome to Sunday morning boys!

No Tassie either. We’ve just ticked over 60 days with no cases. Perplexing.

Agree LH. We could have won by 100 points had we only kicked about 15 more goals. You can't make a sliding doors projection based on what-ifs. If the first behind of the game had been a goal, everything that happened after that will be different to what happened in the real game, because the ball will be back in the middle rather than being kicked out. The outcome becomes undefined and unknown. The only valid scenario to ponder is the one that actually happened.

I reckon that’s rough. It’s true that he didn’t want to leave Essendon (evidence by the fact that he went back) but he had his moments at Melbourne. I don’t agree with the implication that he didn’t put in. The problem was that Heffernan was overrated to begin with. He’d played well in an extremely strong Essendon team and that created expectation, but there was a reason he, Blumfield and Caracella were selected as the sacrificial lambs when they had salary cap issues. The perception was made worse by the fact that we were crap in 2003 when he came on, and we all know how rationally fans view things when they’re not going well, and once the minds have been made up, there’s no changing them. When he went back to Essendon he didn’t magically become elite again even though he should have been in his prime; by then they had descended back to mediocrity and he looked the same journeyman than he was at MFC. He was finished by 28. Moorcroft on the other hand was clearly out of his depth. Not quite sure what the MFC were thinking with that one.

Same. Very unpleasant injury. I was surprised at how long it took them to patch it up for him, he was sitting on the bench for ages with nothing but his jacket hood covering up the eye. Taping the bugger shut is the only way to get any relief.

How about Jordie McKenzie’s handball in that passage? MFC were definitely taking the .... when they gave Oliver no. 13, they look exactly the same.

This type of discrepancy would be because the opposing coach will be assessing on different criteria to the coach assessing his own players. The player's coach knows the role the player was supposed to play, how well the player performed it vs prescribed, and how that exact role impacted on the result of the game. The opposition coach doesn't know any of that and will just be determining how much hurt factor the player delivered. Of course, we still don't know which coach is which.