RalphiusMaximus

Very harsh on Petracca. Also very soft on Keilty.

I thought he was great. He had a direct assist for our first goal and brought the ball down in Hunt's direction against two opponents to score our second. There was another assist that should have been a goal and a number of times where he either won the ball or crashed in and allowed others to do so. He's not getting huge disposal numbers and his set shot was horrible, but he had a big impact.

Interesting discussion. For my money I will say this: Being disabled or mentally ill is not a free pass to do anything you like with no consequences (very much like the "economy" really isn't a universal justification for anything our politicians want to do, no matter how much they might wish otherwise). He is still perfectly capable of behaving in an acceptable manner in public. Being a mindless drunk thug is likewise not a free pass to do anything you like with no consequences. He is also still perfectly capable of behaving in an acceptable manner in public. Violence should only ever be employed to protect people. I don't think either of them are blameless, but I will never know the whole story, so I can't really judge.

6 - Harmes. Even with the two 50m penalties, he shut down the Rolls Royce and has 31 disposals and a goal of his own. 5 - Gawn. Dominated the ruck against a good opponent and his contested marking and defensive positioning were superb. 4 - Oliver. Was a bit messy in the first half, but once again he came on strong and dominated in the second half. 3 - Petracca. He made scores happen. His ability to impact a contest and get the ball to a teammate is phenomenal. If he could kick set shots as well he'd be dominating. 2 - Frost. Relished being the free defender. He was able to use his pace and power to full advantage. I think he's well ahead of Oscar at this point. 1 - Salem - Continues his great year. Could easily have been higher.

Only one pick sadly.

I think we really need a kicking coach. Someone mentioned trying to get Yze back to fill the role, and I think this game showed us just how badly it is needed. One of the things that the top sides all have in common is that they don't miss the basic shots on goal. We need to be much, much better at this skill if we want to consistently match the top teams.

I just want to get this off my chest. A Handball is where the ball is held in one hand and propelled the other hand's closed fist. That's quite important. It has to be propelled by the fist. I am sick to death of seeing players brush the ball across their knuckles as they throw it and getting away with it. I don't care that it's made contact with their fist, it's still a throw. This is one of the fundamental skills of the game. Why is it adjudicated so badly?

I just got around to watching the replay. I have to say I am very pleasantly surprised. Not by the win, but by the manner in which we won. What we saw here was many of the things we have been asking for implemented and actually working. I'm fairly certain I saw four Shepherds by Melbourne players at various points. One of them was unintentional, but that's still three better than in any match previously under Goodwin. We saw players staying out of the contest so there was an outlet when we won the ball. We defended a bit further back so that we weren't leaving a great gaping void for the opposition to run into and also creating a bit more space in our forward line. We had crumbers at marking contests. While I still saw far too many bombs to the hot spot, in general we were a bit more discerning in our f50 entries. Honestly, if our players could kick basic set shots like the other teams, we would have won by five goals or more. Points of particular note: The umpiring. Contrary to Eddy's effusive praise, I felt that the umpiring was monumentally poor. In particular the adjudication of Holding the Ball and Holding the Man was blatantly uneven. We had several holding the man frees denied close to the goals, while the Hawks were paid constantly, often when they actually had the ball at the time they were tackled. Of particular note were Garlett being pulled back when trying to crumb in the forward pocket and Hunt being held on the wing to prevent him getting a return handball and running into space. Then there was Stretch trying to run on to the bouncing ball with nothing between him and the goals... I really like the look of Lockhart. He made a few mistakes, but he just looks like he belongs. I think we'll have a pretty good player on our hands in a year or two when he bulks up a little more. Fritsch needs to play wing and forward. Enough of this crap playing him in defence. Jones needs to be in the guts. Let the younger faster players do the outside running. Petracca may not be hitting the scoreboard directly, but he makes scores happen. I think his contribution is being badly underrated. He was indirectly responsible for our first two goals and a bunch of other scores during the match. How good is Gawn's positioning? He reads the play so well and always seems to get himself in the right space to cut off attacks. How badly is Gawn treated by the Umpires? I don't think there is another player in the competition who gets fouled as often without calls. He was repeatedly bullrushed out of marking contests without a peep from the umpires. They are alway squick to pay frees against him, but give him no protection at all. Harmes giving away those dumb 50s was shameful, especially the second one. What's more shameful is that there were at least two obvious 50s NOT paid to us. The one in the last where the Hawks kicked the ball away was as obvious as they get. Better still was that the resulting kick into 50 saw Gawn once again taken out of the marking contest with a no call, then a Hawks player throw the ball through for a point. No calls on any of them. At one point they showed a little graphic of where our goals and points had been scored (I think it was in Q3). At that point there were nine points that could/should have been goals. There were more in the last. If we kicked straight, we won by a mile.

He did that for a bet, because he kneaded the dough.

Tell him he's dreaming!

We have a recruitment zone as well. All we need to do is use it.

Maybe he's saying that's what Freo will want for him?

Actually, I wonder what it would take to get Ratten back as our midfield coach?

I would love to see this happen. Get Yze in as a specialist kicking coach and Brad Green as Forward Line coach. Green was always very smart about his movement and getting out on hard leads. I have no doubt he could teach our current forwards how to work together and lead properly while Yze taught our mids how to hit them on the chest.

Obviously we're going to end up with a solid first round pick. We need to grab someone with pace and skill. Having seen him against Casey I agree with Rowell if we manage to finish last. For trading and other, obviously I'd love Coniglio and/or Martin. I've said that many times and I maintain that they would both be great additions. Sadly I don't see us getting either of them. GWS will re-sign Coniglio and Martin is going to wind up a Hawk (I have no evidence to base this on, but I've seen Clarkson having a chat to Martin on the sidelines more than once during Hawks/Suns games). I'd also like to throw Tim O'Brien into the ring. We've seen what he can do when he ripped us apart last year. He's been patchy and can't force his way into the Hawks' senior side, but he runs all day and takes contested marks. We need both of those attributes. I'm betting we could get him fairly cheaply from the Hawks if he said he wanted to jump. Funny you should say that. Nathan Freeman is playing for Frankston this year in the hopes of re-starting his career. He's been getting some very big numbers down there (Aside from last weekend). He's an inside mid who has a bit of pace and a very nice boot. Former top ten pick who spent time in Collingwood's system. I'd spend a rookie spot on him in a heartbeat if he manages to stay healthy through the season.

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.