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You dont need 2 power forwards to win flag. Look at geelong they are good enough and there forward line has one OK tall. Yes hawthorn have 2 but geelong are the best and they dont really have great big forwards. Midfield Midfield Midfield. If ya have a good midfield all a forward needs to do is mark the ball when is delievered on there chest

Firstly, we are not Geelong.

Secondly, the fact they only had one main tall forward option was not by their choice. They are continually developing Hawkins and Lonergan to be alternative options for the long term. It is called playing the percentages and it is also about redundancy in case you cop key injuries.

Thirdly, your midfield is going to have off days and there is no substitue for quality and (tall) options up forward to get you over the line in games throughout the season.

Forthly, you don't put all the pressure on one tall forward especially if they are young. It is no good for them and it makes your attack too predictable.

Fifth, having multiple tall options stretches the oppositions defence - they may have one quality medium/tall defender but do they have two?

If you have the option to make your forward line as dangerous as it can be then you do it.

Plenty of young kids in the comp laying strong tackles consistently every quarter of every match, look at Mitch Robinson & Daniel Rich. Our own Davey re-invented tackling in his very first AFL season.

Whereas our older players are some of our worst tacklers, Bruce is a prime example.

Absolutely spot on.

Another excellent example of a poor (senior player) tackler is Davey. Now before some of you lambaste me with arguements to the opposite, I acknowledge that he does do a few decent rund downs from behind and works his backside off all around the ground. Unfortunately rundowns from behind are rare compared to front/side on (general) tackles and in these situations Davey simply bounces of opponents - very ordinary tackler when the opponent is actually aware of him and is trying to evade him close in. Tackling is an art form with strength and technique components as well as reading the play and not enough of our blokes in general go for the hips, we get the run around too easily and too many close in broken tackles when we are tired.

Ok im so sick of this crap. One McLean and Bate will not be dropped its not bates fault the the forward line planning is pus In fact it is Josh Mahoney's fault. Two Sylvia yes he is a pain in the ass but he will not be dropped as we need to give him game time he is only 23 and yes he has wasted opportunities but when he comes good with some decent service and game plan it will be worth it.

Just because we lost does not mean we need to swing the axe. Blokes like Bate and Sylvia look like they have no clue because the side either does not follow a game plan or there is no game plan for the forwards. McDonald and maybe Maric to come in that is it, Spencer struggled in the VFL yesterday so give him some more time there.

I'm glad that you have mentioned the relevance of Mahoney as the forward coach. I had a raised eyebrow at the time we got him and I don't think there is any reflection up forward of an organised group of players what so ever. I don't want to trivialise this as there are many factors that aren't helping. The overall gameplan of the team is still a work in progress, our forwards are slow, delivery takes too long etc... We also lack crumbers up forward (Wona/Maric injured, other smalls not pushing forward) and we have moved a few players in and out already which obviously doesn't help the cause either. However if you look at the players we do have they don't seem to be leading correctly most of the time - the commentators mentioned it a few times during the Port game (not that they are gospel). Like the team game plan you have to give it time until we have better players to perform it and the current players improve with it I guess and it is only round 3 as well so it is pointless to make judgement at this stage but I have my concerns about him I must admit.

Its a good point. However, its also an achilles heel for Col. He will be exposed on the bigger grounds and opposition coaches know he has a short engine therefore they will make him run hard. When I think of O'Keeffe for Sydney and how hard he works, Col would be stuffed by quarter time!

Absolutely, that is the obvious question mark over him. His tank and ethic and that is where the if factor comes into it. Could Sydney improve his endurance? Would they use him in a smarter way as an impact player to not so much be the engine room but a complimentary player to the list? Would he improve his standards playing at another club with better senior players? Agreed it is highly doubtful but if there was a club that places value on one dimensional players and gets value out of them it is Sydney. As far as being found out on the bigger grounds I think Sydney have a way of countering opposition teams in their running and locking the ball up but this is more a theoretical generalisation and Sylvia definitely wouldn't be a 4 quarter player as you suggest. If given the opportunity for a reasonable trade to get him I still think he could be more than a handy depth player for a team that prefers to top up.

Personally I am giving Sylvia the season before I make my mind up (just on principle I suppose) but he'd want to improve majorly because he has had more than enough time to produce.

Carr probably instigated it as well.

As a mate said to me:

The match day report laid against Melbourne’s Colin Sylvia for striking Port Adelaide’s Josh Carr from Sunday’s match was assessed. The incident was assessed as intentional conduct (three points), high impact (three points), body contact (two points) and against Josh Carr (negative seven points). No further action was taken.

I actually had a chuckle at that one.

Carr has made a career on baiting players and also how many times did he duck the head in that game? - pathetic.

As far as I know Buckley is indefinite with OP - does anyone have any news on this at all?

Saying that, I would love to see Hird or Buckley come in as assistant coach. Possibly even Viney.

Would be a dream come true but Adelaide won't ever let this bloke go.

On top of what YM rightly said, we also have to remember the pure magnitude of new players that will need to be tried over a fair amount of games to evaluate them. Apart from the odd player like Grimes, it isn't as simple as giving a new kid 2 games and then either saying pass or fail. Bailey is in the unenviable position of having to rotate players throughout the season (at the expense of team stability) to give them all a fair chance to excel/develop in order to evaluate them. It's painful but it has to be done.

Your kidding me??

Rivers has been trying desperately hard each week and returning from a serious long term injury!! And Bruce was outstanding this week and was very good the week before.

Absolutely, including the games this year Rivers has played 11 senior games since the end of 2006. After being out for so long Rivers is now coming back to a defensive set up that is in some ways foreign to him although he played in small patches in the last couple of years. Gone are Brown, Carroll, Ward, Bizzell etc (and also Wheatley and Whealan injured). Rivers needs time to settle with a young up and coming defensive unit so that the understanding between players grows as well as his own game.

Even if they win, if we can go the distance and get within say 4 goals then Wallace will be judged to have failed in that game by their supporters I reckon.

I am not sure what Sylvia adds to Sydney on or off the ground.

If he played for them like with us then he wouldn't offer much. Off the ground, who knows?

However IMO there is a different scenario between Sydney and Melbourne. I think he would fit in with Sydney's playing dynamic better than any other team (in principle). He has shown in some games that he can lay decent tackles and exert genuine pressure (close in) when he actually tries and Sydney use more of a compacted style of zoning and football movement* rather than straight out run which I think he could be a valuable player in. I also think Sylvia is reasonably strong and is better suited to the SCG ground size - shorter runs and spotting up closer players as well as the half forward flank being closer to goal where he can run in and slot them.

I'm not saying that Sydney would definitley turn Sylvia into a better player but they outline player roles well IMO and Roos is good at capitalising on player strengths to aid his side and at instilling accountability. For those (arguable)circumstancial reasons I am merely saying that if Sydney gave him a go I would understand it given Sylvia is still only 24 this year and does have some talent to tap into. Obviously we all look at situations differently so I am not trying to convince people here, just a personal view.

_________

*They do try to generate run from defence however.

In: Maric, Spencer, Junior , Newton

Out: McLean, Meesen/Johnson, Bate

Very harsh on Bate IMO. He tried bloody hard yesterday and took some great grabs.

your joking aren't you???

our decision making is pathetic though, the number of times we kick or handball to a guy standing still or is surrounded by 3 opposition players is driving me nuts

That is a symptom of our lack of fitness and speed for players to keep pushing either forward or back and run to a space to create an option. Admittedly Bailey has to work on drilling these players on when and where to run to as well.

You take the opposition team coaches and footy department for dunces.

Opp team third round pick = Sylvia plus our third round pick.

The only team I can see having a minor interest in him would be Sydney. Roos can get players to perform and Sydney's game plan and smaller home ground may suit Sylvia and as we all know they seem averse to rebuilding from scratch.

Like you say though we would be hard pressed getting an earlier round pick (upgrade) for him but maybe we could swap him for an earlier pick within a round (better than nothing if it is close to say 10 picks gain). Admittedly going over this kind of scenario just after round 3 is kind of senseless - he may improve or get worse and become untradeable.

Here's mine:

Damn we're slow!!!!!

It's not their senior players that are winning them games. Lloyd aside, their win over Carlton was led by the likes of Lovett, Stanton, Watson, Dempsey and Monfries, who aren't the 'senior' players at that club. McVeigh and Hille are on the right side of 30 too. So when they lose their senior players over the next 2 years, the impact will be similar to ours. But they've got what we don't have: pace, skill and an ability to score goals.

I agree with all of this. That win and the way they played was a serious eye opener. They had pace to burn and they backed themselves - Carlton had their work cut out for them all night. They seem to have brushed up on the skills as you say and quite significantly they looked more confident in 1 on 1 situations as well. When they play us it will be a great indicator of where we are at. Two young teams with a few seniors in them - one has pace and endurance and the other is static and slow.

Totally agree. But it begs the question, what is plan B?

I think it is fair to say that we don't have a plan B other than the damage control that players go into when under siege. More to the point our plan A hasn't completely revealed itself either. When the opposition up the ante in the middle our plan A goes out the window. The point here though is as opposed to asking what is our plan B we need to address how we can better perform plan A under pressure because until we do then hardly of us will know what plan A actually is in it's most effective form.

a majority of the past 24 games, the opposition have been able to smash our gameplan, which has led to blowouts. Why, because as I've said all along, we don't have the cattle to sustain it over the course of an entire game.

I'm not convinced it is our gameplan that is being smashed. It is the inability of our players to compete and lack of talent and options which is taking us out of the game. Just because we need more talented players in our side to effectively execute the game plan doesn't mean that the gameplan itself is too complex. It is about competing against your opponents as much as a gameplan and when we have the ball we are bad but when we don't we are even worse - that is not so much gameplan that is lack of competitiveness and ability.

The problem is that when you lack foot speed then you limit your options and impulses - instinctive footy goes out the window and we hold on to the ball too much. Our forward options are too slow at leading, our wingers are too slow at moving out of a zone, our mids are too slow to make a centre break and the majority of our players are too slow to get a kick off to an unmarked player. We also have a group of defenders who still don't have the confidence (or instructions) to run outside of defensive 50 to give an extra player behind the ball to free mids up further down the ground or to take the offload from a small mid and run and carry. Even if you look at a team like Sydney, despite being less fluent as other teams they still value running backs to help the mids and is specifically Roos' reason for recruiting Mattner last season. Another attribute Sydney have over us is that when players like Goodes and Kirk play in the middle they are key marking targets. Sydney also have players who can kick long to break a flood like they did last night - we are quite limited.

It all revolves around our midfield. We have a blue collar midfield in McLean, McDonald, Jones and Moloney attempting to play a gamestyle that is beyond their capabilities. They'll never be able to break the lines, let alone baulk opposition players in traffic. So it's little wonder that the players readily lose confidence.

I agree, it does evolve around the midfield. Practically every team in the competition has players that can baulk and break lines except for us though. Even if they can't they at least have the speed and mobility for lateral or forward running link play as required where our mids simply don't. In my mind our mids lack speed off the mark and nouse and I actually think that holding on to the ball and over use in ring a ring a rosie becomes a comfort zone. Admittedly our positioning at times is bad and that is a structure issue but our mids lack penetrating kicks, they lack vision and they lack speed. Add to that our inexperienced wingers and running defenders and it falls down.

How about playing with a structure and system that gives us more options in the forward 50? How about allowing the mids to push forward and provide an option? How many goals have our mids kicked in the last 2 seasons?

Our sole goal scoring plan is to hit a leading target. What are plans B, C and D?

Yeah, I noticed this throughout the game as well. The daunting thing for me is that on the very few occasions where we had a running player approaching goal they just didn't finish. McLean's kick on the run went 20 meters to an opponent. Jone's kick had air but no penetration and Davey went for offloads to other players (to get them into the game) instead of shooting at goal. This is such a fundamental aspect of the game that has been missing in the opening 2 games - very worrying.

When a side starts to capitulate then players not only lack confidence in themselves but also in the team system and their team mates. What we saw yesterday with some long bombing was players who knew that any system we had in the first quarter had since vanished and took stringent measures. We went from a team and rolling zone to a bunch of individual players. Unfortunately if there is a perception by the majority of players that there is nothing they can do to restore system in the team then there is a sense of hopelessness and counterproductive gameplay. A few players did try to get the team thing happening but were severly outnumbered IMO.

Now, I am not an advocate for long bombing when nobody is home up forward or at least the talented forwards aren't there - I don't think that anyone would be. In no way what so ever should the long bomb be part of any teams main game plan. The fact still remains though that the long bomb is sometimes a necessary ploy when there are no other options. The thing about the long bomb that we all have to remember is that it isn't just a low percentage forward movement but a way of players under the pump disposing before being tackled. When we see a long bomb more often than not we cringe because it is low percentage but the reality is (in our current situation when the gameplan deteriorates) if players don't bomb it then they will be caught and the opposition gain possession and run forward from the centre for a goal. Lets not talk about it as if it was a premeditated team tactic.

He then claimed he was attacked by Nathans dad. I made sure the cops were aware exactly who started it and he subsequently got arrested. And contrary to what the papers say the bloke did not lose his shirt in the scuffle. He was walking around without the shirt on screaming obsenceities

Good work, that was probably you in the red hat that we saw at the end - takes a fair bit of balls to take on crazy people like that especially the shirtless thug who was pretty built and pumped. The problem is when we arrived and saw you guys we had no idea of what was going on so you can't just jump in otherwise it is chaos. What you said on 'ology makes complete sense, that shirtless thug to me didn't seem intoxicated (not to say he hadn't been drinking). When the cops arrived he spoke ok but his body was shaking a little - he was definitely pumped on some sort of upper/s. I couldn't really distinguish the other thugs from the group, fair bit of confusion.

Anyway this incident is something I'll leave alone from now on and just wish the Jones family all the best in recovery and justice had better be done.

Can we keep this about the Cheer squad and deal with the other issue on the other thread? thanks.

BTW, full marks to the Cheer squad, I thought they looked very impressive.

Sorry about that, didn't know there was another thread at the time.

Back on topic of this thread I was pretty surprised at how good our cheer squad looked today (ground level I was on). It was a shame we didn't kick too many goals today because the red and blue haze of flags and scarvs etc looked worthy of a MFC promotional add on tv. Also for a Collingwood home game I thought their cheer squad was pretty tame by their standards - this is probably related to that sacking the cheersquad thing perhaps I don't know. Either way our cheer squad kicked ass from a visual perspective and made a fair bit of noise too - it certainly added to the feel of the game as I was at that end of the ground - well done!

What the hell were the crowd doing? Barracking? Pathetic.

Nothing like that at all. As we approached we could hear people yelling words to the effect of "leave him alone" etc. When we got there it was a violent scuffle of about 5 people and I had no idea who was who or who was really fighting who. There would have been a couple of people in there trying to break it up (I take my hat off to them because it was full on). Seriously one of the Collingwood guys was absolutley built and could have passed as an amature boxer - absolute head hunter. IMO the psychology of many people wasn't just that they may get seriously hurt but also that it if they did go in to break it up it could have just turned it in to an all out brawl because as more and more people approached they would not have understood the situation and just joined in. As I say, we only got there about a minute before the cops and luckily 1 or 2 people did seemingly try to break it up. TBH I was still surprised at how many people were standing around, I think many people were in shock. Going by when the lady told the police as we were coming out the gate (5) I reckon it would have been going for at least a couple of minutes. The cops got there about 30 seconds after us but I think they just wanted to get a few numbers together as they didn't know what they were dealing with. Just for the record, the main Collingwood thug didn't appear to me to be intoxicated but more just a headhunter but the mods may wish to edit/romove this post for legal reasons. Also this wasn't (to me) a Collingwood supporter stereotypical thing, this transcended club alignment - even though there was a little bit of pandemonium it seemed like some of the Collingwood supporters were also yelling at them to stop (Melbourne supporters definitely were). This was just a disgraceful event within Australian society.

according to the news, nathan jones' dad john was bashed when he was with his youngest son.

disgusting and disgraceful news

Yeah, I just saw that on tv and also the other thread on this site where I read the report just after my post above. I am just gobsmacked at it all. I genuinely hope that poor kid doesn't get effected by this experience and obviously hopefully Jonesy's old man can pull up ok out of this.

I saw the last stages of it, already a big crowd there and it was sickening at how they were laying into him. As I said in another post, I did't know how it started but given this clarity of the report I now know what was actually happening before my eyes in the very last stages of the brawl - scumbags!

Have to admit it did look prety good.

On a sour note, there was a pretty full on punch up outside the ground between supporters after the game. When we exited the gate a lady ran up to the cops to tell them. It had been going for a while by the time we got near but as well as the blood and black eyes and kicking and fists we saw a kid sitting on the ground crying while all this was going on - just a terrible site. I don't know how it started but I think one of the guys getting bashed may have been the kids dad - just guessing though.