praha

I think there is more to it. Obviously we're gonna need fresh legs for Essendon. He'll be a good in on a faster track. Our entire forward line had a poor day.

Our best team for the year imo. Fritsch probably unlucky.

Don't disagree with any of these posts, but it was mainly the way in which they gave up from midway through the 3rd that really worried me.

Completely pointless comparing Hawthorn's or anyone else's performances to ours. Lool at the context. 1. It's not that we lost, but rather how we lost. 2. We've beaten Hawthorn once in a decade. 3. We should be well beyond those sorts of performances. There's nothing wrong with losing. It's how we lost.

Those teams including the Melbourne 2000 team had runs on the board. We knew that those loses would be merely a blimp on the radar for those teams. Carlton lost to St Kilda and Sydney in 1995 -- two perennial loses at the time -- by 10+ goals, their only two loses for the year on the way to the flag. Melbourne has yet to demonstrate that big loses are just that: a bad day at the office. The reality is that these loses have proven to be part of and are arguably the catalyst towards the wheels falling off for an entire year. We have got to stop finding a means to justify these loses until they became just as they are for the aforemention teams: aberrations. There is absolutely nothing to suggest last week's loss was just a bump in the road. Much has been said of this playing group just "expecting" things to happen. If we fall into the trap of saying, "Oh well richmond lost by 80 points last year and won the flag, no stress!" then we're feeding into what is already a soft culture. I fully expect them to bounce back this week if we're any hope of playing finals.

Shhh we're not allowed to admit failure or talk about the past. Too negative. We might trigger the playing group's PTSD.

IN: Weeds, Tyson, Hunt OUT: Lewis, Vince, Bugg

Hawthorn is not great. They are well coached, but they made a point of making a mockery of us last week. Clarkson toyed with us, and our players gave up.

North is a finals smokey. They play good team football at times and have a smart albeit arrogant coach. They would respond quickly after a loss like we went through last week. We won't. we're set for a 6-7 goal loss.

So Sydney, Adelaide, GWS, and Richmond are probably the only sure things. Geelong, WC, Port are likely. That leaves Pies, Melbourne, Hawthorn, Essendon, Freo vying for the last spot. Then you have smokies in North, Bulldogs, Saints also pushing. After last week, and seeing the way North is destroying Hawthorn, I think we're a 30% chance of making finals right now. After this round, likely we'll be 14th after 5 rounds. I am so disheartened after last week's game. It was 2011-esque in the team's revolt against the fundamentals. We won't get within 6-7 goals of Richmond. I think we should prepare ourselves for a very tough 4-5 game losing streak now. The wheels were loose during the pre-season. They're set to fall off now. I seriously think we're set for a 6-8 win season ala Richmond in 2016.

This severely understates his contribution and improvement imo. He stood out in a very poor team on Sunday. He's been a consistent performer since mid 2016 and many supporters refuse to or just can't see it. His performance on Sunday was as solid and consistent as we've seen from him over the past 20 or so months. Every defender has a "shocker". Rance has one once a month. Oscar has been as consistent and as influential a player as we could hope for from a developing key defender.

Would LOVE if Carlton win.

Nah. Not in those circumstances. Maybe in the first quarter. He should have taken it at the first grab anyway.

They didn't, but they did play finals.

I actually think the best way to counter Dusty is to not tackle him at all. Defend the space ahead of him and force him to the boundary

He's always been a great contested mark. No stress with bringing him in to contest. It's the chase and defensive side that is the issue.

I lol'd

http://m.afl.com.au/news/2018-04-21/demons-drill-down-on-dustys-dont-argue aka. The Dusty Rules. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jordan_Rules

I swear I've read this before: http://m.melbournefc.com.au/news/2018-04-20/keep-the-faith-says-melksham “I think you’ve just got to stick behind us. It’s early on in the season and there is still a lot of footy to be played,” “We didn’t play the way that we wanted to and the education around that was really helpful,”

who isn't playing lol

6-7 goal loss seems reasonable at this stage. Clearly in a form slump and given the modern game I'm not convinced we can turn it around in a week. It's one thing to have an "off" week and go down by 4-5 goals. To get pumped by 70 as we did on the weekend is indicative of a form slump. In round 4. lol only Melbourne.

He was a good get, a nice decoy that actually allowed us to play a more consistent brand of footy going forward. We could use a player like him now actually.

You should see some of the comments on the facebool groups. nauseating. every week you have nuffies calling for him to be dropped.

I think we'll lose, not because we're Melbourne, but because Richmond is just better than us atm. I'll be ecstatic if we win but I just can't see it. We were so far off it last week. I'm not angry anymore, just disappointed. I don't think Richmond will lose games like these anymore for a while.

Actually we won plenty of the ball. The problem was rebound 50s and Hawthorn's transition. Which is an ongoing issue.