Nasher

@praha- it’s also within threads. Nathan Jones should apparently stand aside cos this dude thinks he isn’t worthy of second place on our all times games list.

He’s not used to the speed of the game yet - has been done for holding the ball at least once per game and isn’t in games for long enough. I like his attributes, but in my view it’s unrealised potential with a few cameos per game at this point. Would be developing in the VFL ideally if our first choice flankers in Hannan and AVB weren’t out.

Essendon fans cementing their spots as the most disgusting supporters in the game. Outstanding response by Buckley.

He was a leader in forward line pressure last year, which made his uncleanliness with the ball bearable. Adds nothing to the team if he’s not doing that.

Why do you still follow the club WYL? I wouldn’t be able to bring myself to watch games or log on to Demonland if I thought the situation was irredeemably hopeless.

How were you feeling after the first quarter, where we were leading? Were there really no positives? Not one single thing worked well at any stage? I think the last line I’ve quoted sums up where my view differs from most. I don’t take anything the coach says personally. Unless he looks down the camera and addresses me by name, I can’t be insulted by what he says. It’s not his job to soothe upset fans, as grown adults we need to be able to do that ourselves.

Give me an example of a successful coach who didn’t give trite, repetitive platitudes when the team was playing like crap? Actually put up a clip. What were Clarkson or Hardwick saying to the media in the years their teams were struggling? Can anyone remember a pale Neale Daniher sitting in front of the press in one of those down years after a woeful loss, mumbling “we’re tryin’ to build a spine”? Hindsight tells us Daniher was a very capable coach. Coaches in press conferences are on a hiding to nothing. I put it out there that there’s absolutely nothing Goodwin could say that will please everyone. Someone actually said in the post match thread that he wanted to see the coach “irrational” - that’s the last thing I want to see and will know he’s cooked as soon as he is. His message has been steady and consistent. It’s hard to hear when we’re so angry and disappointed, but nothing Goodwin has said is wrong or suggests incompetence.

Agree, TMac played tight on Lynch and nullified him. I thought it was a good demonstration to his brother and Frost on how it’s done. It’s easy to sook about TMac’s ball use coming out of defence, but honestly that’s such old news I’m amazed anyone still bothers. He’s a 100% known quantity as a defender; we all know what the tradeoff is, and we got what we paid for last night with him.

Depth is overrated. Our biggest issue is our most important structural players are playing like crap. Depth players always look great when the team is flying and ordinary when the team sucks. They are the effect, not the cause.

If we drop Weideman for Preuss, our tall forwards are Preuss and Smith. Preuss was going alright before the injury but I’m still pretty unconvinced he’s any good as a forward. If he’s not marking it there’s not much else he does - he doesn’t know when or how to bring ground players in to play, and he is too slow to do anything about half backs who want to escape with the ball. I liked Smith’s game last night, but he’s a medium sized forward who is borderline AFL level. He tries his guts out though, which is hard not to love. We’ve definitely got a problem at the moment as Weid was hopeless again last night, but I’m still confident he’s got the right attributes and will come good. If you drop him now and go with a makeshift Preuss/Smith forward line, I see that as giving up on the forward line before the game has even started. At least with Weideman in, there’s at least some prospect of the miraculous happening and they start to fire, no matter how minute it is. I hope the TMac back thing is only temporary. We desperately need him to return to last year’s forward marking form.

You want to see the coach irrational?

I’m not sure it’s skills - I think we generally hit the player we’re pointing at. The problem comes when we kick it without having pointed at anyone. It’s as if we’re expecting a player to be there, but the only player there is Dylan Grimes, who always seems to know where our kicks will go before we do. It’s exactly the same as it has been all year. We’ve addressed “easy to play against” though, thank f. Hopefully we can find an avenue to goal.

The Neeld years felt like losing to Essendon by 120 points.

Skills are crap because intensity of the game is through the roof. I’ll take that.

Melksham in the middle looks like the most effective of all the moves. Tim Smith took that mark because he didn’t fly for the same ball as Weid. He has been excellent so far. Jack Viney is a bull.

Disappointed they didn’t pick [rookie listed VFL player], who is obviously vastly better than [other rookie listed VFL player]. Fair dinkum.

What’s the difference between TBA and indefinite?

Demonland becoming collectively homocidal/suicidal is usually a sure sign we’ll pluck a miracle out of nowhere. That’s about all I’ve got to cling to at the moment because all signs point to this being really bad.

Is Jetta right? He got up a couple of times holding the knee that was strapped up and looked very ginger. Looks a long way off fit to me.

Oddly enough, those rambling posts that always make out that the club is rotten to the core always make me feel a little bit better. I would hate to be so damaged that every time we went off track that it felt like it was just part of some huge, insurmountable problem spanning decades. It’s not. If it was, I’d probably have given up long ago. It’s just this year’s problem.

So many candidates this week to go out, but Spargo is definitely the low hanging fruit. A player who so obviously adds nothing at the moment. Happy to swap him for any of Lockhart, Garlett or Stretch. After that, dunno.

He kicked it straight over the goal umpire’s hat about 45 seconds after the miss.

I know, but honestly. He was one player who had a bloody go today and it frustrates me when there’s about 15 targets well worth potting that people just resort to their usual go-tos whether it’s warranted or not.

Fair suck of the sav. Petracca close to the 6 DL POTY votes IMO, if I could be bothered voting.

How can you possibly pinpoint which coach is directly responsible for this problem from the outside?