RalphiusMaximus

Not great, but he can't help having a face like that Gamewise it sounds like he's getting into it a bit.

Aaaaaand another to Hulett. 25 points up. I wonder if there's a wind advantage there?

Another to Harmes

Goals to Hulett, Harmes and Garlett so far. We lead by 12. So Sayeth the Twitter Feed.

Gawn, maybe Jetta in the extended squad.

Gawn vs three opponents: Gawn - 27 disposals, 31 Hitouts, 3 Goals 1 The 3 - 28 disposals, 33 Hitouts, 3 Goals 2 Bearing in mind that most of the time only one of them was directly opposed to Max at any given time. He's just absolutely smashed them.

Seriously? I was sitting there with my Dad watching the replays and we eventually decided it must have been deliberate. If not then it was a hell of a fluke.

Frosty just looks so much more comfortable and natural as a defender. He gets maximum benefit from his physical prowess and gets a little more time to organise himself with his disposal. The run out of defence where he fired off a pair of 1-2 hand passes was special, and should have resulted in a free kick and 50m penalty when he was taken out to prevent him getting the return ball (it's in the rules). Sadly the umpires were wearing black and white for most of the game, so it was only play on.

It was one of two plays he made that had me sitting up and saying WTF?!?! The other was the short pass to Kennedy off the outside of his boot. Ridiculous thing to do. It was awesome.

Hunt has a lot of involvements that don't show up in the stats the AFL give us. I'm pretty sure the club does have them and are taking note of the number of defensive acts he commits each game.

Trenners - Mr 1%

Pretty standard for the Pies then. Did you notice the suddenly empty stands as the game was ending?

He is almost there, but needs to stop bombing. Like Lamumba, if he can change from Run, Run, Run, Bomb to Run, Run, Steady, Hit Target he;ll be a huge asset to the side.

It's a great feeling to smash teh Pies, but they let us get away with some things that will kill us against the Swans. We need to be cleaner collecting the loose ball, hit targets better and stop bombing to the top of the square (yes, I KNOW the coaches are telling them to. The Coaches are WRONG). Other than that, jeez that was a good win. Great effort guys.

6. Gawn 5. Vince 4. Kent 3. Tyson 2. Jones 1. TMac

No change. A stable team is a good team. Reward them for smashing the Pies.

I don't think it's the sulks so much as the mud. The whole ground is mud and his pace is virtually useless in these conditions. The one time I saw him get into some space the kick fell short and was marked by one of the guys running after him. He gave up one chase that I noticed, but has also caused quite a few turnovers that his teammates haven't been able to score from. The big issue though is that he's hardly touched the ball. He can't pick it up in the mud.

Wow they've been bad today. Garlett looks a mile away from a recall.

Jamar is looking pretty poor tonight. I was hoping he'd put on a better show. On the other hand, Daniher has done some really good things. He'll be a great player one of these days.

And remember that there's someone chasing him.

I've now seen the first half of the game. Thoughts thus far: - We need another ruck option. Not so much because Watts is a poor ruck as because the moment he went into the tuck we lost all momentum. Watts was pivotal in us getting the first two goals of the game, including hurling himself into the bottom of a pack and dishing accurately from the ground while being piled on by multiple opponents (and who would have thought we'd be able to say THAT about Watts?). When we moved him to the ruck our structure fell apart. He needs to stay in his forward role, so someone else has to go into the ruck. - It wasn't so much the frees the Umpire paid as those they didn't that hurt. It seems that the Hawks jumpers are made of Teflon. [censored] doesn't stick to them, and the Umpires' RADAR can't see them. I'm convinced that if they had paid even the most blatant of the frees they ignored we would have been well ahead by half time. - Oscar is improving. He's not there, but I see signs that he'll get there. - We still overuse the handball. Once again I'm seeing players ignore a clear kicking option only to handpass to a teammate under pressure who is then nailed in the tackle. - Likewise, we still can't kick to forwards. I'm seeing far too many high bombs still. Especially when we have space in the forward 50 as we often did in this game, we need to kick to the advantage of the forward rather than give the defence an easy spoil and take away. - The midfield looks great at the contest, but we do need to remember that the Hawks are one of the worst contested teams in the league. It's not a good measuring stick.

I was at work while the game was on, so had nothing but the score updates to go by. I also saw a few clips on the news. From this I think I have determined a few interesting points. 1 - Apparently Melbourne are the most accurate goal-kicking side in the League. It was mentioned on the AFL site commentary at some point. 2 - We may be accurate kicking for goal, but we are disastrous at kicking to forwards. This has been a massive issue since The Reverend left, and it doesn't seem to be getting any attention from the coaches. We will never be a top 8 team if we persist with this high long bomb [censored]. 3 - The Hawks had a game very much like ours last week. The difference is that we were unable to capitalise on their poor work in front of goal the way Port did against us. 4 - Looking at the stats, it would appear that the Hawks were happy to let us have first go at the ball and backed themselves to take it off us before we could get it out. Is that accurate? Anyway, I probably won't have a chance to watch it until Monday. It should be interesting.

Freo. .... Carlton Collingwood. To be fair, Carlton and Collingwood I haven't seen in a while and they may have improved, but Freo will need to make major changes to let anyone even get close to their level of monotony.

I'm pretty sure his exit papers have already been signed. Roos has shown before that once he decides a player is gone they have virtually no chance of a senior call-up. I can see the logic in that, just because it does nothing for your team to give game time to someone who won't be there next year when it could go to a developing young prospect. Still I really hope they do the right thing by Jack and give him those last two games before showing him the door. Put him in against sides we have no chance against like Carlton or Fremantle and it won't make a difference if a few kicks go astray.

His form in the VFL has been very good. They have him in the best most weeks. I would say that he's probably next in line if a spot opens up, but because he's a rookie they may not be able to upgrade him until half way through the season or unless we have another LTI.