Adam The God

I really hope they don't drop Bowser from that back 7 to fit in Hibbo. Bowser is solid 1v1, a beautiful kick and a great decision maker. Hibbo is our best lockdown player and McVee should be playing every week (kid is a star), so with our three talls, there's no room left. The two guys that turn it over most in our defensive set up are usually Rivers and Gus. Both are good interceptors and understand good positioning though. Smith does not. If it's not forward for Smith, it's not in the team otherwise we're in trouble. That said, I wonder if they're thinking Smith on old mate Cameron next week...? As for the rest of our back 7, we need to ensure Petty has continuity back there, because at times this year he's been all at sea. But Petty is still a young player in KPP terms and the move and forward and back has likely played with his continuity. We need him going for intercept marks like 2021 and 2022. That's him at his best. He did get a few last night, but in 1v1 situations he's struggled this year IMV. If we could bring in Howes though, maybe that releases Salem into the midfield mix?

The big question for me going into the Brisbane game is will our midfield hold up without Trac to allow him to play forward? JJ had the most CBAs last night and we ended up losing centre clearance by -2. It's not all down to JJ, but he's not Clarry or Trac. St Kilda's midfield is nowhere near the level of Brisbane. The thing about the Lions midfield is that it can go missing and be exposed on the outside for pace. Trac has kicked goals against Brisbane in the past from the midfield, so I wonder if it's a 50-50 split for him? I think the other factor that often sees our midfield overawe Brisbane's in the size of our mids and the hardness. Without Clarry, we need Trac's size to exploit this. Be fascinating to see how we balance up our midfield against them. We have to win territory and therefore, likely have to win clearance well to win. The positive sign last night is we started to chain and transition the ball better than we have for quite a few weeks.

Wow, this is telling. Collingwood's accuracy from general play is deadly. Very interesting.

Sure, that's fine. I'm more concerned with the combined output of the two, because they're both having to sacrifice their game's for the other.

May didn't have an opponent. Yeah, it's all mindset when your dangerous opponent goes down in the first minute of the game. FMD. I'd like more offence out of Kozzy, no doubt, but his defensive game is strong. And I didn't pot Abysmal. He asked me why an earlier post from someone was terrible. I told him. As for Gawn and Grundy, where did I say they need to equal the output of another ruckman? The claim I was disputing was Marshall dominated Gawn and Grundy. Factually incorrect..

Grundy was not poor. 7 clearances and his follow up work at ground level for a ruckman is elite. But I'll leave it there. Your mind is made up.

There we go. The eye test is not great. We had a screen right in front of us at the game and at one stage late in the first half, the top 6 ground ball get players were St Kilda players, so maybe we levelled that up or we weren't as bad in that area as I felt. Anyway, thanks Wheelo.

Because it laid blame at the feet of Grundy and Gawn. I've already talked about Grundy's game, our leading clearance winner, with strong score involvements. Grundy had 1 less clearance than Marshall who was arguably St Kilda's best, and Grundy played 67% TOG versus Marshall's 95%. Our rucks at the very least drew even with Marshall... Marshall's stats were 8 clearances, 7 inside 50s, 3 contested marks, 299 metres gained, 30 disposals, 7 tackles, 15 hit outs. Grundy and Gawn had 11 clearances, 6 inside 50s, 3 contested marks, 364m gained, 29 disposals, 6 tackles, 38 hit outs. Hard to mount an argument that Marshall 'dominated' them, but that's what you get when your 'analysis' is based on blind emotion. Then the post claimed our second best pressure player playing close to 90% TOG should go to Casey. That's not a good post, but I'm sure you'll disagree with absolutely nothing to back it up with except you're a bit annoyed and neggy.

St Kilda did what most teams try against us, which is the chip game from half back. It got them to the wing, and then they had to go to the contest. So we've made adjustments there since last year. We played quite a high line (to use a soccer analogy), often we were able to intercept or create a contest at their half forward to prevent an entry from there. What I found interesting is that despite the luck of King going down early, which freed up May, we never played a goalkeeper in defensive 50 stoppages. We played one, usually Lever, at the back of those stoppages, but part of the contest, not a spare. This is definitely a tweak from earlier in the season, and I wonder if this is part of tightening up our goals conceded from defensive stoppage. And further, I wonder if this set up will change with the inclusion of Clarry.

Kozzy is playing higher TOG than most because presumably we have a plan for him. When you're playing really high TOG, you're going to lose your explosiveness, particularly as a 4th year pressure forward. It's logical. The point I make about Kozzy is that this is clearly his program and we're asking him to do a power of work now that is blunting his offence, but he is bringing great defence. Third most pressure acts on the ground. As for your post, @Garbo, it isn't the finals, it's July and Kozzy's pressure absolutely created scores, turnovers and gave us possession. St Kilda dump kicked it to our +1 behind the ball multiple times due to Kozzy's physical and inferred pressure.

I think the bookies don't read Demonland and get caught up in the hyper critical groupthink that has started to go on here. Kick straight the last 5 weeks leading into tonight and we'd be top of the table. And Brisbane lost to Hawthorn on the G a month ago. They get exposed on the bigger ground. No Oliver for that game is huge, but if we can match them for contest, we very likely beat them.

I'll eat my proverbial hat if Kozzy is dropped to Casey. Won't happen and shouldn't happen. He needs to start hitting the scoreboard, but in the meantime, his defensive game is strong.

The dreaded groupthink is strong on this one. 26 pressure acts, 2nd most for us and 3rd most on the ground. He's playing high TOG, I hope so that they can start to run him through the middle again like they did in the first 10 rounds.

Yes and no. Tonight we got some of our slingshot ball movement going again that's been missing since Round 10. Coast to coast goals have been rare in the last 6 weeks, but we got a few of them tonight.

Dreadful post, but good on you for your opinion.

Helps when you play mostly forward. If Sparrow and JJ can stand up again the next two weeks, we can afford to play Tracfprward for longer and he becomes a dangerous proposition.

We'd forgotten how to win, so very glad to get over the line. The biggest area of our game to improve is ground ball. We were smashed in that area. I'm sure @WheeloRatings will give us those numbers in the stats thread 🙏. St Kilda's run for pretty much the entire game was incredible given they were down to one on the bench by the end. Some of the commentary on the Facebook pages are deadset ridiculous. People constantly going Kozzy, when he's played another 87% TOG game (6th most for us) and had the third most pressure acts on the ground with 26, behind Gus on 27 and Steele with 30. Some nuffy called up 3AW and whinged about him as well. Tony Shaw stuck up for Kozzy. When Tony Shaw is speaking more sense than you, you know you're in trouble. Meanwhile, people having a go at Grundy, who was probably one of our better players, and certainly not a long way behind May and Trac. FWIW, Grundy had the most clearances for us with 7, 4 tackles and 5 score involvements. Too many people have absolutely no idea about the modern game. I heard people still screaming out 'man up' like it was 1996. We got the win, move on to Brisbane.

Hill, Higgins and Membrey? Fair dinkum. You don't reckon our best goal kicker and the best contested player in the comp would even that up? Nah, of course not. FMD. Were you at the game tonight?

Last time around (Round 8, 2022), we smashed Saints from stoppages, scoring 49 points to 13 from that source. Now that we've got our stoppage game back, fast deck, I'm hoping (even without our best stoppage player), we can score heavily again from stoppage, because I think it'll be heavy going from turnover tonight, as St Kilda will look to get numbers behind the ball.

I'll tell you I'm glad to be going to Marvel and not the G tonight, Bitters. Should be an interesting contest, if not an arm wrestle.

This is unfortunately an attitude of many Melbourne supporters I know...

This is what I was implying in my post. When Channel 9 used some data from one of our recent games, they didn't compare it to our shots across the entirety of the season, they used one game earlier in the year as a comparison. That's not a big enough sample size, and they basically used a small data sample to fit the narrative that we're suffering forward connection and taking harder shots from more difficult angles, hence inaccuracy. It's a really shallow, lazy analysis. Further, many Demonlanders have bought the line that we don't go central and are too safe with our ball movement. Our problem in these situations I believe (as you say above), is that we go too slowly to the central hot spot, but we're still taking risks by going centrally. As you and @WheeloRatings have pointed out, there are more exits for the opposition to expose on turnover in these situations. Compare this to last year in the second half of the season, and I reckon the data would tell us that we went to the pockets far more often than this year. Therefore, I'd argue Goody has changed this too up, but managed to maintain defensive integrity behind the ball even when we do go centrally. Part of this is likely allowing the opposition the +1 at the contest and using our player as an interceptor across the forward 50 for dump kicks, and to potentially prevent the opposition chaining out.

Funny thing is half the people whinging that we don't play an arousing enough game style, would be saying the complete opposite if our team was Collingwood. They'd be saying all that matters is premierships, playing an exciting brand during the H&A season that falls over during big finals means nothing without flags!

St Kilda have 'significant' outs? You're an A grade hedger, Steve. Already laying the ground work for a lose-lose situation for the MFC. Binners has responded in a kinder, less inflammatory manner than I would have managed, but he lays out my thinking. There's a huge contradiction in your constant complaints and criticism of Goody. Binman and I both said we'd beat Collingwood in the lead up to that game, and sure enough, despite not winning by 5+ goals due to ordinary accuracy again, we beat the media darlings that you seem to rate so much.** We and others have pointed out their vulnerabilities that 3rd and 4th placed teams have now exploited in 2023. Whilst these results don't necessarily say anything about their chances of ultimate success at the end of 2023 (look at Hawthorn's 2015 record against 1st, 2nd, 4th and 5th during the season), it's more the vulnerabilities in their game plan that have been repeatedly exposed in big games now. 2 of the 3 big finals last year and the two games against contenders this year. At what point is that enough evidence to suggest their game style doesn't stand up in contested, pressure games? You're having your cake and eating it too btw. If Collingwood are so great, reckon it might be reasonable to show a bit more humility towards Goody and our team, given we beat them. ** And before you go on again, I've constantly said I admire McRae for what he's been able to do in a short period of time, but the fact is their game style is a huge gamble, every play and it leaves them open on every play...

Not sure this is what Goody ever said. Happy for you to cite your source though. He said forward connection at the time was the least of our worries. And frankly, forward connection is not our issue at the moment, although we could always do better at everything. We are generating enough shots on goal, we are not converting them.