RalphiusMaximus

Obviously we all rate Jetta, but the AA selectors look for attack over defence so they are more likely to give Hibberd the nod and leave Jetta on the bench. I don't see Garlett getting in. He's been inconsistent this season and they like to fill the small forward spots with spare midfielders which will count heavily against him. Look for Dangerfield to be named as a forward pocket this year. Oliver probably has a solid claim based on his numbers. I'm one of the doubters who think he needs to get better balance between his handballs and kicks and I think that may count against him.

I was thinking something similar. All of our tall forwards like to roam, so play Trac as the deep full forward and let the talls roam through HF and wing. He'd be a horror match-up down there.

This is where we see if Watts really wants to be an AFL footballer. He'd better be breathing fire tomorrow.

He'd be an upgrade on Harmes. Has good hands and plays tall for his size. He'd add something to our mix, but not worth a top pick.

Best thing he's done for us was against the pies. He went to tackle Pendles, who saw him coming and dropped the knees and ducked his head into the tackle to milk the free. While many would have tried to avoid the contact, Vanders just said "fine, you want the high contact, you can have it" and absolutely HAMMERED him. Beautiful play.

Two wins should get us in, three make it a certainty. We should win all three based on form this year. If we fail to win two I will be very upset with the team.

The thing is, we're not as bad as people are thinking right now. Yes, I constantly criticise the forward movement and [censored]-poor offensive structures, but a month ago they were talking about us as genuine top 4 contenders and we had the second best form-line in the league behind the Swans. We're not there yet, but in terms of the gameplan the only thing we need to fix is that abysmal ball movement into our 50. We should win two out of the next three, and if we do that we'll play finals for the first time in a decade. We'll bomb out in the first round, but that's still a huge improvement. Maybe Goodwin will spend the summer drilling the team on how to score and we'll come out next year kicking bags and not conceding length-of-the-ground rebound goals.

They have Richmond, Collingwood and the Giants. That's two sides ahead of them on the ladder and they're playing without Selwood. Assuming losses to Richmond and GWS, they finish 5th. If they win one of those two then they jump ahead of Port due to the draw.

Could be Port over in Adelaide. That would probably be a better outcome for us to be honest. It depends on whether Richmond or Geelong win next week according to my results.

Looking at the ladder predictor, three wins should get us up into seventh. I think we've blown any chance of finishing higher than that. Two wins is probably still enough to get through, but then it becomes a matter of percentage rather than points, so that's a bit dicey. The bad news is that as far as I can see we'll wind up facing either Sydney or Geelong at their home grounds, so I can't see us going past the first week.

Commentator just commented on the umpiring "this is the twilight zone..." Not often the commentary team are willing to speak out on the umpiring.

Not a tall forward. A decent forward line coach.

Tyson had 76.2% DE. That's about average for the side and pretty good for someone playing in the guts.

The lack of skill and clean hands is concerning, but it's the complete lack of cohesive forward play that kills us. The only plan we seem to have is to bomb to the "hot spot" and hope for a mark or a crumber. Everyone knows we're going to do it, so their defence sets up to counter and they rebound the length of the ground and score almost every time. Beyond it being about the most idiotic tactic in the game, this plan is also killing poor Jesse as it's forcing him to stand under the high bomb and get mobbed rather than playing to his strengths and roaming about, running his man into the ground and winning the one-on-one contests. Quite frankly he should be looking for a trade to a club that's not going to set him up to fail like that. What we're doing is going to ruin him. None of our forwards are suited to that role. We need to sort that [censored] out and have an actual plan for creating space in the forward line and getting the talls working together to block and create opportunities for each other.

And now we see what happens when the umpires are making strange and unusual decisions all over the place. Players don't trust the umps and start doing stupid [censored] themselves. Multiple injuries hitting in rapid succession.

Wow. Treloar was just paid a free for a dangerous tackle where hit head bounced off the ground. Maybe a minute later Ben Brown was knocked out in a tackle with his arms pinned and got pinged for holding the ball.

Just saw a classic bit of North Melbourne umpiring. Cunnington got the ball at the centre bounce and was tackled. He wrestled with the tackler for several seconds before breaking free and was then tackled by a second player who brought him to the ground. He held the ball out to the side in one hand and let it spill out of his grip. Umpire calls play on with no explaination.

I can well believe it. They got to sit out half their list while they trialed a team of potential rookies, then kept the pick of their trial players when their missing stars returned and got the top draft pick to go with it. In terms of list-tuning, I think most clubs would be happy to sacrifice one season for that sort of benefit.

We didn't learn anything new here. We're a competitive team without anything even resembling a plan to score goals. Until Goodwin admits that he has no idea how to structure a forward line and gets a real specialist in to sort out our structures and ball-movement we'll continue to be a competitive team without anything even resembling a plan to score goals. We actually won the inside 50's, but only converted at 21.8%. That's insanely poor for an AFL side. GWS converted at 50.9% by comparison. The only thing that kept this from being a monumental thrashing was our freakish accuracy.

Interesting if you look at the points n the AFL site. Gawn's total is exactly the sum of Daw and Preuss. Clever trick I think.

I was at work.

Actually, I think corruption is exactly the right word. The MRP are paid by the AFL. The AFL has a vested interest in keeping their drawcard players on the field. It's a pretty simple equation. Keep the big names playing, more people go to the games and watch on TV which means more money for the AFL, both in terms of gate receipts and in the ammunition they take to the next TV rights negotiation. Add to his the betting markets that are impacted by suspending brownlow chances and you have another vested interest in the betting partners. It's been pretty obvious for a number of years that the MRP let the big names and the big clubs get away with murder and hit less well-protected players with disproportionate penalties to demonstrate how seriously they take punches/head-high contact/sling tackles. It's a simple matter of following the money to see why.

Where did you get the metres gained stats from?

The Darwin game was a factor. We normally finish games strongly. A n7mber of our wins this year have been big finishes after we let them jump us early. Today we faded badly. It was a good thing that we torched them in the first half. Speaking of that first half, I was furious with the umpire assist on two of their three goals. We could have hadva 50+ point lead at half time had they not interfered. Disgraceful. Still, overall i'm pretty damn happy about this.

So Jack has been named and will actually play?