Adam The God

So no real analysis, just another best 22. Thanks for that mate. FWIW, no way Woey is ahead of Spargo.

Agree.

You can see how two small forwards have transformed Adelaide's forward half game. If we end up managing two top 10 picks and not trading/being able to trade for pick 1, Watson in our forward half would be handy. And as @Nascent suggests above, Watson and Duursma would certainly improve our danger in the forward half. With Kozzy, Fritta, JVR, Chandler and Jefferson that's a promising forward half.

That'll be 3 weeks from the 3-4 weeks, mate. Where's the mixed messaging?

I watched Gawn live today and I felt he needed to take more contested marks, but completely dominated at stoppage. We need Grundy to manage him though. And Max knew this mhimself, hence his push to get Brodie to the club in the first place. And Jack is bursting for every minute he's out there, but it wasn't a flawless game either. Brodie Smith kicked his goal, because Jack basically let him wander off unattended after Jack had worked brilliantly to get it over the boundary for a stoppage. You're totally off on Max here though.

Jeepers, you're a bizarre poster mate. You have have some hits, but a lot of misses. If you were a footballer, I'd say you wouldn't make it.

Yep, I was one of them. Bad call. He's been great the last 3 years.

Interesting. I'd personally be happy to keep Clarry off one less plane than he needs to be on, but I'll back the FD. What does this look like do you think? Is it built around a particular player or two, or built around a different system or approach altogether?

I think we just need a better midfielder (ie Clarry) and then we can go one less mid. It looks like Clarry will only have to play 2 (or 3 at best) H&A games before finals, so I'd expect us to revert to less players rolling through the midfield. Clarry, Trac, Viney, Gus, Sparrow, Kozzy and maybe even Rivers is plenty. But each to their own.

True, but I said consistent performance, I didn't say irresistible for 4 quarters. We need to implement our defensive system across four quarters. That doesn't mean we have to play be brilliant for 4 quarters. Just do most things to a good standard with the ball, and defend well, make the right decisions without it. So when momentum is against us, we can weather the storm and then conversely take our chances when we have it ourselves.

Agreed, but I'd counter is by saying the backs do not like the run and gun, because on turnover we don't bring them enough cover. I hope we can strike the right balance. That's what the H&A season is for. 😉

IMO, Melksham played a very Melksham game. Which is to say, not like last week or the Carlton Round 21 game last year. Paging @george_on_the_outer...

It'd be ironic if Petty replaced May, Tomlinson stayed in and May missed out on a premiership. ;) Never gonna happen, but if we had a fit Petty, I would seriously consider giving May a week or two to rest. I'll look forward to this. A poster without less feel for the game or the team they're following, there probably isn't.

Great post, although I think people forget that we lost the 2nd and the first 15 mins of the 3rd quarter in the GF quite comfortably. We played a great first quarter, an irresistible 10-15 mins at the end/second half of the 3rd, which knocked the stuffing out of the Bulldogs, and then we hit them with a great last quarter. So I think it's really important to remember that even in that huge GF win, we struggled to play 4 quarters. I think if we can find 4 quarters of consistent Melbourne football this year, no team will beat us.

Agree with this. I hope we play the opposition in front of us @rpfc. For example, I hope we play Collingwood exactly the same way we played them on KB, but with greater accuracy. But if we're playing Brisbane or Port, I think we could allow the game to open up a little more and go more offensive as you suggest elsewhere on this thread. He didn't do his regular radio spot on Monday morning because he was too sick, so even though he trained all week, I wondered whether this was a factor today. Because he was definitely a little bit off at times.

Great post mate. ❤️🙏

Agree with most of this mate, but not convinced Hibbo gets a game anymore. Who does he replace? I think McVee was well beaten today, but he probably gives us more offensively than Hibbo these days.

Woey... Clearly Woey... Woey was even taking some wing minutes today as Spargo does. We are getting some games into young Woey and making Charlie earn his spot. All healthy outcomes. Yep, he's a really handy 1 or 2 quarter player. I don't mean to be too hard on him, but he does tend to fade after the first half in full games. Was a really great sub today. I think we've found our super sub. He's so versatile too. You mean like Collingwood in Round 15, who were 6 goals up just prior to half time? And on the same page you claim Collingwood as premiers. Big braining posting. 👌

I'd much prefer to win the close games that we lead all day than do what Collingwood do every week, which is get outplayed and outscored for 3 quarters and then play a great 4th quarter. It's unsustainable and you wouldn't want to be relying on it in finals too often.

It was a funny old game. We were scintillating for patches of that game, our best ball movement since the first 9 rounds, completely cut them up. Our handball through the corridor and our runners forward of centre is what I hope we see more of across 3 or 4 quarters in the finals series and the lead up, because it's utterly devastating football. Topped off by accurate kicking. That's our blue print. But on the flip side, we had patches of really poor football where we failed to defend the runner (that handball receive game that Collingwood love), lost critical 1v1s repeatedly (May has had his two worst games for Melbourne two weeks on a row, a deadset liability in the contest and ball in hand most of the time) and gave away silly free kicks (think Melksham in the last - we had them pinned in for a forward 50 stoppage, he gives away a silly free kick, then mouths off and concedes a 50m penalty - pressure valve released for Adelaide). I thought Max's ruck work was superb for most of the game. I'd argue it was his best connection with the mids all season, but around the ground he dropped too many marks/was spoiled too often. And to me, this is where Grundy has huge value in being able to give Max longer chop outs in the ruck and provide the team with an additional tall target around the ground, so it's not Max being clobbered every contested marking situation. I'm not totally sure whether they'll go 2 or 3 KPFs at the pointy end, but Grundy probably gives us a similar contest to both JVR and BB today. And maybe that's fine if we have a firing Fritta? I thought Viney was great (I know he was buggered, but Smith's goal in the last was a direct result of Jack not being able to go with him though); Trac had a funny game, very dominant but also sloppy at points; Kozzy and Chandler were a terrific 1-2 act, and doesn't straight kicking make Chandler look like a completely different player? Tomlinson was also solid and Rivers explosive off half back. It was probably Gus' best game for the year too IMO. But back to the forward set up, I felt the balance was off last week given how easily Brisbane kicked some of their transition goals from the back half, and again, this week, we allowed the runner off half back to repeatedly get handball receives and move the ball through the corridor. My feeling is it's either personnel or what we're trying to do with our ball movement. By which I mean, we seem to be pushing quite a few of our forwards up the ground, so that there's then space in behind for our forwards to slingshot back into. The problem with this is, there's not enough defence from behind the opposition kicker at their half back. So we're seeing handball receives or simple uncontested possessions from half back and it's setting up scoring chains against us. Would be great to know how many points Adelaide scored from back half chains too. And for large portions of the game, we actually lost the territory battle. Unusual, particularly given we won CP and stoppage. I don't want to have a go at Woey Jnr, because he's a young player and I think he'll have a good future (kicked a great goal and did a couple of nice things too), but the last two weeks in particular, he seems to have been really lost in our zone a fair bit, and I wonder if just one chink in the chain at half forward for us is enabling the opposition to score from defensive half chains in the manner they have. I think ultimately Spargo will replace him, whether it's next week or the week after, but is that enough to fix our inability in the last fortnight to defend transition from the back to the front? Anyway, very happy to take the 4 points, and I hope we get Clarry back soon, because I felt JJ faded quite noticeably in the second half and struggled at half forward. Top 2 is still a shot, although I think Brisbane may well go ahead of Port now, and with Brisbane's superior percentage to us at this stage, it's going to be a hard road finishing top 2 unless we have some big wins (North and Hawthorn?) and win every game from here.

And without Walker, we win the game easily. I think Jack was just buggered. He put in a huge shift today. So much so that he couldn't go with Smith for one of those last goals.

Conversely, Collingwood have only beaten Port twice and lost to us and Brisbane. I agree though, top 4 teams are very evenly matched and then there's daylight between the rest of the comp. Geelong would lead the rest of the pack, but away from Geelong are very middle of the road.

I'd like to see it too, but I'd rather we started rolling him through the midfield first.

He did some nice things, but was completely lost in the zone more than once. I thought he'd be dropped this week, but I'm glad they're persisting. Only one way to learn your way through a zone. It's to play in it more often. It's not like small forwards at Casey are really pushing their case strongly.

I very rarely listen to footy analysis outside of the Demonland podders. This is why. Stop doing it to yourself, Binners! 🤣