Fat Tony

Better off taking a lesser pick for Petracca than paying him to play for another club. Cap space is more valuable than picks.

Hopefully Hawthorn lose next week and believe they are one big bodied midfielder away and target Petracca. My view is we need to shake up the midfield with a bit more polish and we are stuck with Viney and Oliver. The new coach should get a say in this decision but not the final say. The impact on our salary cap to trade Viney or Oliver would be crippling. May is another player we could look to move on from and potentially the Dogs would see him as the missing link for them. He was looking like he was done in the last two weeks and I am not sure he is in our window even if he is able to regain form next year.

Petracca is such a butcher by foot these days. Needs to be traded if we can get off his money.

Petracca is 4kg overweight and below average kicker. If we could get off his money, I would let him go.

Howes was defenitely tighter than May but was still too loose. The other thing was the trial of Bowey in the forward line threw out the backline. I can see why they were experimenting but I am glad they reverted.

The initial decision to play May on Gunston was a shocker. Petracca is 4kg too heavy.

Culley looks good but he needs to stop providing soft drop crumbs in the backline. He did that twice on the weekend and it cost two goals. That said, he looks like an AFL player.

The club might need changes but I don’t like sacking coaches with a year to go.

The final bounce of the ball before the collision was straight up and this meant Evan’s got there first. May obviously was expecting contact but a different bounce would have meant May was there first.

Jefferson is the antithesis of everything this club should be standing for. Poor in the contest and no second effort. The good elements of his game are below average.

Time to drop another premiership hero to send the senior players a message. We can't just coast through the season like it doesn't matter. Salem would be my choice. Jefferson must be dropped on complete lack of effort. Bring in some pace. Brown and Windsor.

Petracca fumbled and missed tackles all day. Jefferson is clearly a bust. No competitive fibre in his body.

I don’t think I’ve seen an AFL game with a team having more smothered kicks and kicks which barely hit the foot. Our first quarter was as poor an effort as there has been under Goodwin.

I love Kossie but I hate long-term deals and would prefer we waited given Kossie is contracted for another 2 years already. I think our list management team play it too softly with the player managers.

Viney will play AFL if he is fit. Shifting Rivers back is not about his form in the middle. He has been solid in the midfield recently. But Viney needs to play midfield if he plays. I think the roles of Petracca and Kossie are going well (with Langdon essentially playing on ball after the centre bounce). There are only 240 playing minutes for midfielders to go around. I don't mind Howes but this is the most logical solution IMO.

Surely a trip by hand where the tackle slips lower accidently (initially being legal) is not a sanction. Ridiculous.

If Viney comes into the side, Rivers needs to shift back. I see Langdon playing another tagging role on Butters and Petracca and Kossie playing centre bounces and then cheating forward. Howes likely makes way for Viney (even though he played a solid game). I think one of Langford or Lindsay starts as sub. Dees by 35.

I think we need to stick with Petty as a forward this year. We have six AFL standard key defenders (May, Lever, Turner, Petty, JVR and TMac) but no decent key forwards. (I am projecting on JVR.) It is hard to find good key forwards because it is much easier to play as a key defender than key forward because one-on-one contests are rare. In terms of average player ratings this season, the Pies have Mihocek (8.45), McStay (6.96), Membrey (6.22) and Cox (4.63). Melbourne have Melksham (9.09), JVR (6.83), Petty (6.03), so it is not much different.

Great effort yesterday. We just made a few crucial errors and e need to improve our accuracy. The Pies have only lost two games on expected score this year and we 'won' by 9. (I know we hate this stat.) Our best players are all in good form (Gawn, Petracca, Picket, Oliver and May) and our youth is quality. Fristch coming back into form has been important. I think we can still make a run at it but there is obviously not much margin for error.

The MFC gains nothing from Tassie coming into the competition.

It is definitely not worth the money when you factor in that it could be the difference between finals or not.

A star player would have been graded Medium contact rather than High but Johnson is the very definition of a henchman.

They all have weaknesses as forwards. Clearly recruiting AFL defenders is much easier than AFL forwards because the role is much easier. Personally, I think Petty needs to be played forward because our backline is too slow with May and Petty back together. (But there is no clear solution.)

We have seen enough from Johnson and Laurie to know they are not AFL level players. Johnson is a hopeless kick and Laurie is not athletic enough for his size. It is time to stamp their papers. Windsor is not the distributor we need in the back half because he is not a good enough kick. Time to get him into the middle because other than his lack of size, he has the tools to be a good inside midfielder. I think Rivers should go back. Lever looked to be struggling with agility and pulled up lame in the last quarter against the Swans. He needs to be tested more thoroughly (no trusted) because the gap in quality between TMac and Lever is negligible. (TMac should play anyway as a forward if necessary.) Kynan Brown has the speed/endurance to be given more AFL exposure. The biggest problem with our list is that May, Lever, Turner, Petty, TMac and JVR would all be better defenders than forwards at AFL level. Wanganeen-Milera got a lot of his possessions because we missed our shots at goal.