Nasher

The gist of the message was that he’d been working his butt off to get in shape since arriving. I reckon “public bake” is overselling it; it’s more “we’ll give him the benefit of the doubt, but only once”.

I’m not going to try and establish the root cause of our current malaise - I worked out a long time ago that the view from TV (or the stands, sorry guys) without knowing the strategic context is too narrow to be able to do that. Nor will I pick out scapegoats (be it players or coaches). I understand why people like to single out the likes of ANB - I doubt there’s a more unclean player on our list and that dropped mark gave me flashbacks to the Dan Nicholson era. But he was also in our team last year when we were flying, so the idea that replacing him in the side is magically going to fix everything is fanciful. He’s the sort of player who will always look worse when the team sucks and better when it’s flying. The current problem is deeper and system-wide. I will say though that I’m deeply disappointed and hurting over this start to the season. I hate that flat, almost hungover feeling on Saturday/Sunday morning following a disappointing performance. We’re all feeling it and we all thought after last year that this was behind us. The odds are stacked against us now even for making finals. That’s obvious even to the greatest optimist. I’m still hopeful we will turn it around though. I think we’ve got a leader in Goodwin who can and a playing list who are up to it. It’s just a bloody shame that we’re talking about “turning it around” three weeks in to what was meant to be a promising season. I hate footy.

Loving the game of both Wagners tonight but especially Corey. Not hard to see why Goodwin liked him - he definitely plays the Goodwin brand. Hopefully that quarter is the moment we officially “click”. First one I’ve genuinely enjoyed so far this year.

When Melbourne are called upon for the media work their healthy salaries require them to perform, I’d prefer they just responded with stone silence. Better yet, take a footy in with them, so they can let their footy do the talking.

They’re just the names he dropped off the top of his head in the press conference. Indicative at best.

The old “he has a neat haircut so he mustn’t be tough enough” argument. I wonder if anyone under the age of 40 still thinks “mongrel” is a key ingredient for a football player.

Yep. The trade is a bust because we haven’t had much value in the first two games.

Let’s drop Jones and replace him with Corey Wagner ? We have at least two players who don’t look AFL ready in Sparrow and Lockhart and another who looks way off AFL pace in Kolodjashnij. May also might need covering if he’s injured. However, I can’t see any magic panacea waiting in the wings at Casey. Stretch might be a minor upgrade on Sparrow, but by and large we’re stuck with what we’ve got until the glut of injured half-forwards we have come good. I think there will be fewer changes than people think, and what changes there are won’t involve senior/experienced players. They will be backed in to come good.

I missed the second half, but the Bombers were absolutely garbage in the first half and I enjoyed it a lot. Hopefully the final score just reflects St Kilda taking the foot off and not Essadon getting their shizz together and actually playing it proper football in the second half.

I hope you told them it’s fine though cos Eddie didn’t know.

I don’t reckon he did it on purpose like others are insinuating Red, but I don’t buy the argument that he was completely oblivious to what was plainly evident in front of him either. I’m quite happy to settle for the middle ground position that it was just a case of engaging mouth before brain and he said something thoughtless and insensitive. Experience notwithstanding, it fits the Ed profile in my view.

You don’t think the walking stick might have been a bit of a clue?

I set up Kayo last weekend after turning my Foxtel box on for the first time since last footy season to find it dead. I’m used to watching footy in SD due to being too cheap to pay to upgrade the already excessively expensive subscription (and I hate that threatening their customer service people is the only way to get reasonable deals), so this was a nice improvement. Reckon this service is more than good enough to justify cancelling my regular Foxtel subscription - it’s actually better. The only downside I can see is it introduces a dependency on my NBN connection which can occasionally crack the shits - if that happens I could watch on my 4G phone service. The likelihood of both being down is unlikely enough to more than justify the reduced expenditure. Nice of Fox to finally join us in the 21st century!

Ah well. 99% of the time the mantra of “things are never as bad (or as good) as they seem” is correct, so I’ll assume it probably is this time. In the mean time, I won’t rush to watch the replay!

Hah. Unfortunately the sport of choice in this case is swimming, where you sit around for six hours for a total of about 10 minutes in the pool. And my son got DQ’d in one of his three races. Sounds like I’d have had about the same amount of fun watching the MFC.

So thanks to the joys of junior sport, I didn’t see a second of this game and haven’t had a chance to jump on Demonland until now. How’d we go? ?

Remember when Jesse first came to the MFC and the plan was to have him move in with Mitch Clark?

I thought a forward running under the ball would normally be the fault of the kicker. Forwards are taught to hit their leads at full possible pace. If they do that then it becomes pretty difficult to pull up if the delivering kick is crappy.

He was a tough full back for a period through the middle of his career.

"Respected AFL figures" included: Karl Langdon Kim Hagdorn Garry Lyon Gerard Healy Jonathan Brown Mark Robinson I can't wait for the day when some actual journalists start covering AFL. How ironic is it reading Slobbo's incoherent rants about players with alcohol problems?

It never seems to amaze me how much energy people have to spend on issues from the ancient past.

Has the date of that video published by The Age been confirmed? If not, it is trash journalism at its worst.

You do have to love how when a player has a problem, clubs paint it as “just” being alcohol, as if alcoholism isn’t a serious problem in our culture as it is.

Neville Jetta stumbled through a career of being almost-good enough to just survive for almost twice as long as JKH has so far. Like many on here I have no idea what they see in JKH, but I didn’t with Jetta either. I can only assume they know what they’re doing; hopefully we get a similar pleasant surprise.

Only saw the first half, so can only comment on that. Midfield nucleus of Oliver, Brayshaw and Harmes looks to be picking up where it left off. Pleasing. Happy with the half of Salem and Petracca also. Hore and Petty can play key defender roles if need be. Looking forward to May being in the mix though. Forward line looks to be functional. Probably the biggest question mark going in. Preuss for me was a stark reminder of how much we rely on Max. He was decent but we’re accustomed to far more than decent. I’d be interested to see what Preuss was up to when Balta got off the chain in the second quarter. One of the things you can’t work out from TV. I assume from the scores that the second half was more of the same. If so, a good enough first hit out.