Nasher

The more I think about this, the more it makes me seethe. They’d have a handsome contract with the MCC anyway; they raise an absurd amount of money through this mechanism for a ballot that costs them near nothing to run, that half or more of the entrants end up ineligible to win anyway. I might write the ACCC a letter. Or more likely, just go to bed and wake up finding I no longer give a s*** about this silly matter ?

I want my $5 back! How's the cheek of charging $5 to go in the ballot by the way, and running it a week out, forcing 4 teams worth of supporters through the system? Ticketek probably made a cool $500,000 or so out of that little stunt.

You should know by now that on here, if you're not homocidal/suicidal over the result, it must mean you're happy with it.

Don't think "miss the mark with handballs, slip over, don't bother tackling, and kick the ball directly to Hurn or McGovern every time" are elements of the game plan. The game plan to me is this: Have Gawn tap it down a running mid's throat Failing that, contest the heck out of it If you don't win the ball, make sure the opponent's disposal is under as much heat as possible It's a game plan that stacks up - in fact, it's what West Coast just smacked us with today. We lost today because we didn't deliver the plan and the very good opposition did.

Well, that was a bitterly disappointing way to finish up. We were beaten comprehensively in pretty much every element of the game. Every single player got pantsed in that first half. People can rant and rave about individual insipid performances, and there were plenty of them, but like it takes a big team effort to win big games, the team collectively flopped on this occasion. It's not possible for every single player to be individually to blame. They beat us at our own game early and we couldn't recover. All the players get made to look much worse when that happens. It's exactly the same thing we were all laughing at Richmond about last night. Anyway I understand people's mode of grief is to blame Lewis or Jones or Goodwin or the the umpires or whoever. I'm perpetually frustrated at the way people become irrational and grossly exaggerate the magnitude of the problem after losses (and get told I don't care as much or I'm a happy clapper or whatever), but that's how people cope so fair enough. I'm gutted, but at the end of the day we've shown we can play a finals brand of footy in the previous two rounds, we didn't bring it today, and we therefore got given an education by the team that finished second on the ladder, and not by fluke. I hate ending the season this way but we got further than 14 other teams did, and we should absolutely build on that for next year. Chin up people. Bring on 2019.

I’m no Collingwood fan but I have to say I loved that. The Richmond fawning all year has been spew worthy. Seeing them trudge off was the best thing ever.

They’ve gone for simplicity - defender for defender. It’s no surprise they’ve gone for Smith. There was an obvious need for another tall defender this week and Smith is the next best thing. I can only guess, but I suppose if they were decided on Fritsch or Tyson in the middle, they decided that the more imperfect disposal was outweighed by the superior contested game. Tyson has his issues and limitations, but at the end if the day would anyone be that confident Fritsch could deliver as a midfielder in the heat of a PF? I’m not that sure. Or maybe the option was never even on the table because Goodwin rates Tyson more than Demonland does. Who knows. Feel for Fritsch though. I reckon we can all agree that he’s bloody unlucky.

There is absolutely zero credibility on the line. Pull the other one.

Goodwin obviously doesn’t know anything about our players. Is he the right man for the job?

Premierships are hard to win.

That was like 8 minutes in to the game. If you knew at that moment you are a lot more optimistic than me!

He played 19/22 games, so it’s only a whisker over 1 vote a game on average. I agree it probably won’t pan out that way but it’s definitely plausible. It’ll be interesting to see his scoring average.

I noticed last week Geelong had a player named “men and gola” too, according to Bruce.

I consider myself both wise and passionate, just not quite optimistic enough to think a GF could be on the cards this year!

I knew he was an old fart, but not sure if that’s from some ancient memory of him revealing his age or just a hunch. Being around a long time does odd things to one’s memory.

The way I read it was the P2s would start being issued once all the P1s are exhausted, so it would depend on how many members of those P1 memberships there are. I tried to see if I could find any info on that, but couldn’t. My membership (aka annual donation to the club) affords me P3 in the ballot, so I assume I’m boned, but might as well throw my hat in the ring anyway for the sake of $5. We’ve got 40k members and there will be 20k or so seats allocated, so you never know your luck.

Like most I’ll be keeping mine, sorry, but even if I gave it to you, we’d still have about the same chance of getting a ticket as mine’s a P3.

Goodwin said “first half didn’t look like us”. The only other time I’ve heard him say that was when we were awful against Hawthorn the first time around. It’s a clear catch phrase the coach puts out there if you’re ever in doubt about how we played. We won though and won comfortably despite that. The thing about being a good side is that sometimes you’ll get away with an imperfect game and live to see another game. History says this version of the Melbourne Football Club can get its stuff together between matches. We won’t be having this discussion next week.

@george_on_the_outeris connected if I remember rightly.

How good is that photo? Looks freezing.

How about the torp from Frost? It nearly reached the circle. Didn’t know he had this in his bag of tricks. This had to have been planned - all of our “rover” group in Brayshaw, Oliver, Harmes and Gawn were in the immediate area to get the play finished. (Edit: Gawn ended up underneath it - wonder if he underestimated how far Frost could hoof it?) Great stuff. Replaying these moments are absolutely spine tingling when you’re free of the stress of the match.

I didn’t know who it was either.

I’ll follow the Casey game with interest, but I’m seriously doubtful that there will be any changes. The system we have works. I’m not in favour of any changes that involve shifting players positions (eg Fritsch), and since there are no obviously better lile for like replacements available, it points to no change.

I didn’t think he had the leg for it either, but he hit it perfectly. Great kick.

The trade included our 2018 first round pick. So as we now finish no lower than 4th, the final spot in the draft just went down one. It’s a huge stretch to say that changes the value of thr trade, but that’s the logic behind the comment.