RalphiusMaximus

This is going to be The Year Of The Angus.

Harsh on Frost. He was good.

It's a move that requires no foot skills, no clean hands and no pace. Literally any hack can do it and contribute to their team winning the ball. How is it that nobody on our list understands this?

Funny thing. I just saw a player from the worst side in the VFL shepherd out his opponent instead of trying to pick up the ball himself. As a result his teammate was able to run through and take the ground ball uncontested and launch an attack. How is it that Frankston players understand this basic skill while supposedly professional players at Melbourne are unable to do it?

6. Gus - Our best mid by a mile today 5. Frosty - Our best back by a mile today 4. Salem - Continues his good form. 3. Viney - Fought like hell while being held without the ball, roughed up and generally scragged at every opportunity. 2. Oliver - Got a lot of the ball. Tackled hard. Set up that opening goal with a pass that was pure [censored]. 1. Preuss - He's doing what we need him to do, providing a tall target forward and rucking a bit. Even put in a few nice tackles.

But that's exactly the problem. Combine the forward press gameplan with [censored] poor ball movement and no real forward structure and you get a massively congested forward line. Once we have that, it's easy for opposition sides to run around us and get players out in the open spaces behind our defence. Haven't you noticed how every other forwardline in the game has room to move while ours is like the Monash at peak hour? Goodwin needs to abandon his forward defence and protect our goals. Not only will that make it harder for teams to score those easy goals, it will create space for our forwards to work in.

We've watched them do it for over a year now. If it's not what they want the team to do then there is a serious breakdown in communication going on.

OK, so what exactly is wrong with the coolaid our coaches are serving? They want to play a high defence where our whole team pressures in the forward half. Why is this bad? Because it means there are 36 players in our forward line when we are in attack. This makes it virtually impossible to get a player in the clear for a mark or an unpressured shot on goal. It also means that there are no players in the opposition's fifty, meaning that when they bring the ball out of our forward zone they have miles of open space to work in, meaning that it is very easy for them to get in space to take a mark or have an unpressured shot on goal. They want our forward 50 entries to be in the supposedly high percentage area 20-30m our directly in front of the goals. Why is this bad? Firstly because it makes us horribly predictable, meaning that oppositions defensive units can set up around this area with players waiting for the spillage and runners ready for the handball receive allowing them to easily run the ball back out of our attacking 50 if we don't take a contested mark. Secondly, because we don't have any forwards capable of taking big contested marks. Thirdly, because our forwards lack cohesion and teamwork, and so often go for the same ball and spoil each other, saving their opponents the trouble. They want everyone to win the contested ball. Why is this bad? Because unlike when you're eight years old, in the grownup game you can't have a mob of players charging around following the ball wherever it goes. We repeatedly see our mids all diving in to try to win the ball, get in each others' way and cause fumbles. Meanwhile, the opposition have two or three in the scrum against our entire midfield who often don't even try to win the ball but just knock it around and try to punch it to the outside where we have nobody and they can get an easy takeaway. The absolute lack of anything resembling team acts by anyone in our side makes this problem worse. If our players were working for each other rather than all trying to win the ball themselves, we could use those extra numbers to create space for one or two people to get the ball. I don't remember the last time I saw a Melbourne player shepherding for a teammate, but it must have been before Goodwin took over. Yes we have some skill errors. Yes, the umpiring hurt us today. But make no mistake, it's the coaching that is causing these problems.

Lyon and Roos were talking about the players not doing what the coach wants the to. I don't think that's right at all. I think they are doing exactly what they are coached to do and it's killing us. Our systems range from rubbish to non-existent.

I'm going to say it again. The issue is our inability to hit targets in the forward 50. This game is being played in our forward half. We get entry after entry after entry until eventually the saints manage to run it out and get out the back of our zone, then they can run into an uncontested goal. If we were hitting targets in our 50 they would never get the chance to rebound like that and the threat of us scoring would force them to be more accountable and not break early into space.

Even the commentators are getting on the umpires for ignoring frees to Melbourne and paying them to The Saints immediately after. Viney in particular is being held at every stoppage.

Some good players in that lot, oddly enough. I only watched a little bit of the game, but there were a couple of very hard at it mids with pace and skill running around out there.

Beat me to it. He and Taberner had big games. Walters had five score involvements in the last Quarter too.

Are the women going to get their own Wrecker?

Looking at our drafting last year I think they have seen where we are lacking. While Sparrow is a bit of a bull, the others are all more in the outside ball-user mold. I didn't mind the look of young Chandler at Casey this weekend either. He's got some skills and poise about him, but he's a bit on the small side.

What hindsight? Some of us called it while he was still playing for Casey.

I've been hoping we might find a way to get Martin for years. He's exactly what we need. He has outside pace, good foot skills and marks far taller than his height. As an added bonus, he can win contested ball when it's his turn to go. You can't judge him by his time at the Gold Coast. Nobody has really shone up there. But I think he could be a damn good player in the right side. Sadly, I'm pretty sure Clarko has been in his ear for a year or more. I'm betting on him moving to the Hawks as a free agent when his turn comes.

This is where Goodwin is falling down. Statistically, we should be scoring. Across the AFL, most teams have scored from around 50% of their inside 50s. This year it's more like 40%. In the last couple of years, we've been a little over 50% when we won, and down closer to 30% when we lost. This year so far, we are on exactly 30%. We went down to 22.2% against Geelong, while against Port we hit our season high of 35.6%. So yes, if we were an average side moving the ball into our forward 50, statistically we would be winning. Unfortunately, we are the worst side in the league at this skill. Unless Goodwin stops looking at statistics and starts looking at forward structures and kicking skills we aren't going to improve. For reference, here are the numbers across the league at the moment. They are a little off because the Sunday afternoon games haven't been included yet. Cats 77 from 154 = 50% Dockers 54 from 114 = 47.4% Hawks 49 from 104 = 47.1% Lions 81 from 174 = 46.6% Giants 79 from 175 = 45.1% Eagles 65 from 145 = 44.8% Crows 73 from 164 = 44.5% Tigers 69 from 159 = 43.4% Pies 66 from 153 = 43.1% Saints 46 from 110 = 41.8% Swans 65 from 156 = 41.7% Suns 68 from 168 = 40.5% Bombers 65 from 159 = 40.3% Power 75 from 190 = 39.5% Blues 60 from 155 = 38.7% Bulldogs 76 from 200 = 38% Roos 34 from 90 = 37.8% Melbourne 54 from 180 = 30%

I agree with some of Joeboy's work, but others are a bit off to my mind. Jones - Playing dumb football Viney - Starting to spark T. McDonald - Not a #1 forward O.McDonald - Kept losing man Jetta - career worst game Hibberd - just a shadow Brayshaw - only shining light Gawn - should have dominated Harmes - Puts in effort Oliver - Take the shot! Hunt - Brave and threatening Fritsch - Must play forward Petracca - Take The Shot!!! Lockhart - Lively but limited Salem - Only decent kick Melksham - Terrible hands Weideman - Can kick straight Kolodjashnij - Brave. Getting better. C.Wagner - Not the worst J. Wagner - Hopeless. Frost - [censored] weak contests Neal -Bullen - continued underwhelming season

Our biggest issue is the kick into the forward 50. I have no doubt that this is a team rule given how often we see it happen. Petracca from the pocket yesterday was a classic example. He's a forward, he was 30m out, he should be taking the shot. Instead, he followed the team rule, kicked it to the Hot Spot and it was taken the length of the field for a Bombers goal. Goodwin's entire gameplan is based around weight of numbers. The ball is in dispute in the middle? Get more players to throw themselves in there than the opposition and you'll win it. Marking contest? Have more players fly for the mark and the opposition won't be able to mark it. Goals? The best place to score from is 10-30m out directly in front of goal, so let's keep putting the ball there and if we have more inside 50s than anybody else we'll score more goals. Last year that plan worked enough of the time because teams tried to play us at our own game. West Coast showed the entire competition the way to handle it. You concede the extra men around the ball and have your players waiting on the outside. You set up your defence to cover that zone 10-30m in front of goal exclusively. You send one person up to compete for the mark against three demons knowing that they'll get in each other's way and you have the advantage of more crumbers. You have pacey outside runners who break early to the space knowing that their defence have it covered and will get the ball out to them. We're going to see this from every team this year and unless Goodwin has a plan B hidden somewhere that none of the players have found yet it's going to get very ugly.

I'm liking the look of Brisbane. They have some really good young talls who are starting to get their act together and have drafted a raft of fast hard mids with good foot skills. Hipwood seems to have pulled his head out of his [censored], McInerny is standing up as the spare ruck/resting forward and Stef Martin is continuing his good form. Bringing in Fagan seems to have been a masterstroke.

I don't Trust Pert because of the way he left Collingwood. I don't trust Goodwin because his gameplan has glaring flaws of which he seems completely unaware. I REALLY don't trust our forward line coach because our forwards have no system, no particular structure and don't operate as a unit. I don't trust our backline coach because every single player in that unit has gone backwards over the break. I DO trust Rawlings. I think he's a bloody good coach and will be getting a senior gig sooner or later. It's not so much a trust or not trust thing with the players as I think we have a good list that needs better direction to be successful. If we had better coaching on gameday and a better structure/gameplan I think we have the list to go all the way. However what we have at the moment is one-dimensional and easy to pick apart. After last year every team in the competition has put the microscope on Melbourne and they have all seen what the Eagles saw last season. Every single side is going to try to do that to us and so far they are 3/3 for it working.

Reminds ME of the Daniher era. Up one year, down the next...

Free kick Geelong... This Umpiring is getting beyond a joke.

Sack Goodwin. Everything that's gone wrong was blindingly obvious last season and he did nothing to fix it.