Adam The God

"To me... to me... to me..." He was insightful, but he's less inventive than me with his vocabulary.

Because it's gonna rain mate. That completely takes away our intercept ability in the air and also helps nullify their talls in the air.

Here he goes again, shouting away. Pretty much every one of your posts these days, mate, I think of Abe Simpson shouting at the clouds...

It's ironic that we've gone back to this after Goody said they liked the three talls and wouldn't be reverting from this again. FWIW, I actually think it's the right call on this particular occasion. May and Lever rarely do well intercepting in the wet, just like Max, so having to worry about another tall around them potentially fumbling, is not something we need. Instead, we have smalls and mediums to mop up at ground level and hopefully keep their smalls at bay. I think this is a complete horses for courses move. If we were playing Brisbane this week, I suspect we'd have three defensive talls. What's unusual is we didn't try two talls on KB, we went with three. And it worked very well, but they were minus McStay. I presume we're banking on winning CP and territory, and on slow plays defending inside 50s, we'll drop Max behind the ball. While on fast plays, we'll be better with quicker smalls, rather than cumbersome talls, and the Collingwood talls are unlikely to clunk a lot in the rain/greasy conditions.

Yep, as I said in the Trades thread, I'm happy about this. More pressure on Chandler's spot and those other high half forward roles is a good thing.

Reckon he has x factor and pace. We need more pressure for spots there. We genuinely had no competition for Chandler for weeks when he was just nowhere near getting the job done. The game is going this way and I'd say he'd be on small dollar for more years (takes him to 31). Seems like a classic MFC move. For needs and they've targeted their man and got him.

McAdam is a gun. I'm stoked.

I wonder if this is why we cooled on Kozzy's mate...

Love it. Perfect fit for us I reckon. Thanks for the goss mate and since you're SA based, I'm gonna say you've nailed it haha. 🤞

That's all lovely, except Grundy is an AA and isn't going to hang around in the magoos until Max gets injured. We will not keep him unless something happens to Max during this finals series. We've told him to look around. Listen to Goody's presser today. He was asked what he thought of Brodie exploring his options with a competitor of ours and Goody said our list management team were across it.

I was joking haha. Not a very good joke. Meatloaf's voice was shot.

Nah, Meatloaf also mimed his. Was just a poor mix. Wasn't Meaty's fault.

The Carlton game was the perfect dress rehearsal for this game. Wet and we were up against two rucks. We played Gawn and Grundy and the FD didn't like what they saw. He won't be selected.

FWLIW, Alison O'Connor on AFL.com.au is tipping us to win this by 7 points. Interesting... https://www.afl.com.au/news/1024726/mega-preview-magpies-v-demons-the-stats-that-matter-who-wins-and-why Yet the odds are still slightly favouring Collingwood. I suspect they might come in again (as they have today) with the announcement of the teams tomorrow night.

Fascinating. I wonder if that would be unusual. The tail wagging the dog, but in a good way. Player empowerment. @Engorged Onion, from a psychological perspective, would this be a risky paradigm to set up?

That's fascinating if only to show that Whatley knows full well about player load management and even saw it with his own team last year. I no longer watch AFL media, but has he at all referenced this on 360 this year?

I reckon we'll go TMac for Melksham and Hibbo for Laurie. Not sure who plays sub out of Smith or Hibbo. They may go with Smith as sub.

Deadset ridiculous call.

IMV, it was always the plan to give him CBAs again later in the season. I've written about this multiple times now, but for the first 9 rounds, he had high CBAs for his standards, and when people were calling for him to go back in there during clearly a heavy loading phase, I was saying he'd go back in there once he started to taper. Sure enough, the last 5-6 weeks of the H&A season, he has gone back to having strategic CBAs. Small forwards don't tend to dominate finals series' but that's why it's great to have an outlet to get him involved if needed. There's been a bit of talk on Demonland about playing Kozzy deep out of the square in this QF. Will be fascinating if we try that. Pretty hard if you're winning territory and it's always in there though. 😉

Yep, I only really know what I read on here, but those two seem the most tantalising players for us IMO, outside of Reid anyway.

I'd give our natural first rounder if the fitness team sign off on his body. It's a no brainer IMV and yeah, I'd shift Grundy's wage to Lynch.

I reckon we'll have the cap space to pay it if necessary. Few guys will leave this year or go on lower money, and maybe Lynch takes a haircut as well...?

He loves hedging.

If you look at the two weaknesses when it comes to finals intensity, I know which weakness I'd prefer over the other. If you can't win contest and the team you're playing against is the best defensive team in the league, you're going to have to feast on every turnover by foot, but given the strength of the defensive system you're playing against, the odds are not in your favour. While finals pressure tends to reduce all DE.

We've spent most of 2023 illustrating that we can win in different ways. Slogs, shoot outs, slingshot contests etc. So the suggestion that we rely on May or Lever to intercept or our game falls over is nonsense. We can be utterly dominant if those two get going, but that's the 2021 model, we no longer need them intercepting to score and in fact are more about all our mids ands defenders winning intercept possessions and going back the other way. No doubt our ability to neutralise/defend ground ball contests inside defensive 50 is the biggest threat when wet weather arrives, but the opposition has to deal with the same threat. In other words, I completely agree.