RalphiusMaximus

Sounds like Watts will be lucky to play round 1.

James Sellar has some tricks to him it seems. Could be a good pick up after all.

Why do none of our forwards ever take a shot? I'm hearing a lot of people taking the ball at the hot spot and passing. Not a lot of picking it up and snapping for goal.

Magner and Bate are positives. I'm liking what I hear of them.

disposals 112 - 57. Not our way. Courtesy of SEN.

On the bright side, Magner is a clearance machine.

I'm also hearing a lot of us getting clearances and immediately turning it over. Unacceptable.

I'm very worried about our movement into the forward line. We seem to have reverted to the "bomb it long and hope for the best" tactic that served us so badly for the last few years.

This is disgraceful

I'll have to wait until tomorrow when I can DL the game, but from the sound of things it was a pretty bad showing. SEN are talking up Hall and from the sounds of it Bennell had him and was patheticly inept as a stopper. Watts had 1 disposal. Clarke could have won us the game if he kicked straight and the little information I got from the AFL website suggests that they did far too well in the ruck.

I'm devastated to see Aaron Hall scoring againt us. I really wanted us to pick him up.

I agree. We founded the league. We invented the game. If there is any one club that should be seen as a powerhouse in the game it is Melbourne. Our suburbs should all be seen as secondary.

Sounds like it will turn into an interesting test of our fitness and contested ball-winning.

Wet weather changes things a bit. 1 - Our tall forwards to play crash'n'bash to get the ball on the ground and into the hands of crumbers. 2 - Someone to stand up and play as a crumbing forward. 3 - Serious contested ball. 4 - No injuries. 5 - One win. Given the conditions and back to back games, I don't think two wins is realistic. Game one will really take it out of us. Nicely set up by the scheduling guys to make sure Brisbane gets the points I guess. We'll see how they really stack up in round 1. Edit: typos.

Their improvement last year is easy to understand. For a variety of reasons they weren't playing their best players fra couple of years, gaining some nice draft picks such as NicNat. Then, when they had topped up on young talent, they put out a full strength side with a number of premiership and all-australian players in it, topped up by some relly good early draft picks. Obviously this side is more than competitive.

I say Thrash the suns and cop the loss to Brisbane. The deck is stacked that way anyway.

The sad fact is that Eddie has a lovely forum at TripleM where he can have his say completely unopposed with no fear that a rival club president is going to get the chance to reply. He feels free to launch into thee little rants and portray himself as a tough guy because he knows that there is no chance of being called on it on air.

But this is the "Izzy Rule" where if a player has significant promotional value to the AFL as a whole the AFL foots the bill for most of their contract outside the salary cap. It's entirely separate from the "Judd Rule" which states that now that Carlton have secured massive outside payments for their stars all new outside payments will be counted as part of the salary cap. You really have to keep your AFL Special Rules straight.

For those of you saying it's all a beat-up, have a listen to tripleM. I'm sure they'll run the soundbite of Eddie Making A Fool Of Himself again. Something about "If you steal our staff we'll take your sponsors" or some crap. Apparently he's very attached to his assistant recruiter, so much so that he's running the risk of being sued over the fact that he is actively trying to prevent an assistant from obtaining a senior role. I had a good laught at Eddie when he was beating his chest on air and telling the world that if GWS tried to take one of his stars he'd ruin them. Now he's doing the same thing in our direction while his credibility rapidly dwindles. Perhaps it's time for one of the PR people to have a quiet word in his ear? Maybe something like making an idiot of himself on air isn't so great for the club and he shoud be a professional and separate his two careers or give one of them up. That would work.

Honestly, I am in no way worried by this. The article puts him at the head of it's "Can Get" list because he is the best of the players they put there. He doesn't actually meet the criteria they laid out, but obviously a way to lend your article credibility is to link it back to the trade week rumours from a few months ago. If they were to stick to the guidelines set in the article he wouldn't be there and this thread would not exist. Nitpicking aside, by the end of this season both we and the players will have an idea of what the new shape of the club will be. There is a good chance that a couple of senior players will be moving on, as well as some of the less senior ones. Id beamer chooses to be one of them it will hurt, but it will be because it has been established that he is a square peg and the club has nothing but round holes, so the loss will not be crippling. I am absolutley confident that if he does well in the new style and plays plenty of football he will be perfectly happy to remain a Demon.

The big question for me is about the schedule. Wouldn't it make sense for the team with the road trip to play first and last games since they're already disadvantaged by the trip? I can't see us beating Brisbane in the second game no matter what we do with the squad.

Feh. Why is it always on bloody Foxtel?

I was half an hour late once when some idiot rammed my car at an intersection. I'd call that a factor beyond my control. I actually think this is a pretty decent call by the PTB. It's not a massive sanction to miss a game of sillyball in the first week of NAB cup, but it sends a clear message to the players that there is going to be a hard line taken on discipline.

The real question is why are Melbourne copping yet another interstate trip? In an even competition surely the teams that travelled last year should be playing at home this year. We copped the road trip from hell to Adelaide to play against two home teams, and now we're being sent to the Gold Coast. When will the AFL lay off and let Melbourne play a game at home?

He'll be competitive at that level. It will also help his development. He's put on some good displays for Casey before, so I see no reason he wouldn't do well there. Obviouslt he's not ready for AFL yet, but it's coming.