Adam The God

Haha, you beat me to this mate. Bizarre coaching.

Oh and then he even had him in the ruck. Maybe we should try Lever in the ruck... ?

Also, wtf was Hinkley doing with Aliir? Firstly, he starts his best interceptor on Ben Brown. That's a win for Melbourne as they lose his intercepting. Then he moves Aliir forward...? Mind blowingly poor coaching.

Oliver, Petracca, Jordon, Viney and Harmes. If they click, look out. I have a funny feeling it's not far off.

Is 19 tackles inside 50 a record for us? Well done, Redlegs. We forced the game on our terms constantly and Brown’s inclusion despite not kicking one, had a brilliant flow on effect to the rest of the forwardline. It wasn't a perfect game from Ben as he was pushed under it a few times, but I thought for the most part he was outstanding. Petracca probably could/should have kicked 5. Ended up being a mammoth game. Max's best game in the ruck all season IMO. Oliver was brilliant too. McDonald was clutch and put everything together tonight. Petty, May and Lever were terrific. Viney's pressure was up, but his decision making and ball use too many times is a real liability IMV. Harmes improved as the game went on but he is another Viney. I think we need to persist with Viney and Harmes in the team together, because if they click, our midfield is going to be unstoppable. I was confident going into tonight and I'm glad I was right. A massive massive win. Let's hope the Bulldogs and Geelong slip up this week.

We clearly set ourselves for this game, didn't we? JJ back up to 75% too, and this week it was time for Rivers, Spargo and Jackson to play limited minutes.

Any particular reason why?

I would have [censored] us last year. We didn't turn up in that Port game. He's looked decidedly average this year IMV. I'd back Petty to take him.

I watched the Port v Suns game a few weeks ago and saw Gray injure his knee. Hadn't realised he'd gone in for surgery though. With him missing and Boak in doubt, with Butters no certainty to come back in, at the very least coming back from injury, it has to tip the scales our way. How much do our guys want to make a statement about our 2020 loss to Port too? Given Port's forward set up is anchored around Dixon, if we keep him quiet, you'd have to think that'll go a long way towards us winning.

We lost by a point and Fritsch missed from the goal square.

Players seem to have a very myopic view of other teams and he may not have seen their decline coming...

Completely agree. We needed to handball and break lines to break open the zone, but didn't. To your point about our foot skills being poor in our losses, I'd say our goal kicking in all of those games has been woeful and is the key reason we haven't snatched those games when the rest of our game has otherwise been off. The Adelaide game Fritsch missed two from essentially the square and the Collingwood and GWS losses saw us miss regulation shots we were getting earlier in the year. I remember many of us, myself include, saying earlier in the season that our goalkicking would eventually cost us games this year. IMO, it's now cost us three wins and almost cost us the Essendon game too. That said, there's no doubt that Geelong and particularly the Bulldogs are wonderful kicking sides. Not sure Port are though. Brisbane have some wonderful kickers like McLuggage for example, but also have some pretty ho hums distributors by foot that are no better or worse than our mids like Zorko, Neale and Robinson. I hope you're right about the training loads, rather than it merely being just TOG management. There's no doubt we've struggled physically and intensity wise since the Brisbane game. I don't think it's a case of being the hunted, although maybe that's a mental and even physical toll that we're not giving enough weight to here. I think it was Salem who mentioned in his post match interview that it's good being a team at the top, because we need to experience this as a group. I feel like Goodwin has said similar things, so perhaps the mental has bogged us down too?

Didn't offer enough AUDs, hey? Brayshaw is very good above his head and structurally understands where to be now, and that took some timr. I worry that it might take Rivers some time to get back up to speed, let alone does he have the tank, and then is Bowey as good defensively as Rivers?

I felt Jack was poor defensively in the Essendon game. Not at stoppage, but in transition. Got caught in the wrong position 2 or 3 times that cost us scores. I'm sure this was down to a lack of fitness, but if that's the case, he should have been eased back. I'll trust the professional medicos, and it's extremely clear that internally he is rated highly by our coaches, but I find Jack a bit of an enigma. He can bring some excellent attributes to our midfield and he has played some of the great games I've seen from a Melbourne player in 30 years, but his great games might be 2 or 3 a season, and then the majority of his games are middling to ordinary performances around that IMO. Do we use Viney as more of a burst player now that he's 27 with a banged up body, or do we finally looking at playing him more forward? I'd love to know if he played more forward time earlier in the year. It felt like we'd got a bit of a better balance in our midfield in the first few games, because he'd rest forward and attend forward stoppages, but maybe I was just imaging there was more forward time?

I worry about Bowey coming in to a big finals like atmosphere, but maybe we could try him against a Hawthorn? Flirting with form, I know. I think Bowey is being groomed as a Salem back up, but Hunt's position is probably his other go to.

When we look our best, we definitely have Rivers, Hunt and even Hibberd running off half back, but we can afford to hold those guys deeper if we can use our wingers quick enough, particularly Langdon. I'd love to know if the opposition are playing closer attention to Langdon. It's felt like it the last two weeks in particular. When we don't have his run, we don't tend to move the ball quickly. I agree with Leppitsch though. This was a big problem on Saturday. We constantly needed to handball to break the zone open. The few times that we did, we scored or got easy entries. If we're on against Port, you'll see us use handball a lot more to break open the zone.

Yep, exactly.

I've been a long time Viney critic, but I wouldn't be writing him off just yet. I reckon he'll play higher TOG against Port and lay 8+ tackles.

Didn't someone post that Cerra has agreed to terms with Richmond already? If he has, I wonder if he's rethinking those terms after the last few weeks.

Being at the ground, it seemed to me that if he was looking at the goals in order to kick towards them, it would have been hard to miss Trac standing there.

Yeah, which goes to my point about his decision making. I reckon a better decision maker gets his head up and spots up Petracca.

I don't think playing Petracca in the middle less will help our stoppage inconsistencies though. But I do agree that he's better as a burst mid like Martin. I'm not sure defending is his go at stoppages. Not for large portions of the game anyway. Maybe I've contradicted myself there? :P

Yep, good stuff. I think I agree RE mids tiring. I'm convinced we're using our carefully managed TOG to load within games though, rather than loading during training. I was going through the TOGs of all our young players (Spargo, Jordon, Sparrow, Kozzy) at quarter time on the weekend using the AFL ap and they'd all played approximately 50% of the first quarter. Looking at the stats by the end of the game, they looked like this: Sparrow (55%), Jordon (65%), Kozzy (67%), Spargo (71%) and Rivers (73%), with Harmes (72%) and Gus (75%). Viney had 77% TOG, having had 74% his first week back, so they're ramping him up for a big game this week, I'd say. In Round 10, Jordon had TOG of 59% (the loss to Adelaide) and still managed to lay a staggering 9 tackles. His TOG in that game seems to be a strategic decision in the lead up to the Bulldogs and then Brisbane games. In Round 9 against Carlton he played 73%. Against Bulldogs he played 70%, then up to 86% against Brisbane (as a wingman) and then back down to 57% the following week again Collingwood. We then had the bye and he played 62% (our second lowest TOG that day) against Essendon and 65% against GWS. Going from how we played him against the Bulldogs and Brisbane, and off a 5 day break, I'd expect him to play 70%+ this week. And while I'm on Jordon, his tackling pressure around the ball was super important through the first 11 rounds (he didn't lay a tackle against Brisbane, playing 86% TOG as a wingman, which I'm sure was more about keeping his width) and has plateaued since, only laying 5 tackles since the Bulldogs game. He was getting 5 or 6 tackles a week earlier in the season. Whilst Viney gives us good tackling around the ball, he's not as smart or as clean at Jordon and I think this is really impacting on our midfield as Jordon's dip in tackling numbers have coincided with lesser performances against Collingwood, Essendon and GWS. It's not all on JJ of course, but his tackling support to Oliver, Petracca and Harmes/Viney is vital and made us the defensive beast we were earlier in the season. But back to the TOG stuff. We've been managing Rivers in a similar way to Jordon. Against Adelaide he had 74% TOG, down from 81% against Carlton. For the Bulldogs match, he was up again at 85% TOG (I'd suggest we wanted to keep continuity in our back 6 for that game), and then against Brisbane he was back down again at 71% TOG and 67% against Collingwood. We then had the bye and he played only 70% against Essendon and 73% against GWS. I reckon he'll be up in the 80%+ this week against Port. It seems clear this is how we're managing 3 to 4 players a week from about Round 13 onwards, so it could point to our patchy form since then. Sparrow is playing very low TOG. Jordon, Spargo and Rivers are all being managed through this middle part of the season. Add the inclusions throughout the middle part of the season with Weideman, Brown, Viney and Harmes (who all had interrupted pre seasons or early injuries this year) who have all had carefully managed TOG. This means that Lever, May, Langdon, Gawn and Petracca are playing very high TOG every week to compensate for these younger players and the guys coming back into the team. It could well be impacting their performances. Even from a concentration levels perspective. If Gawn and Petracca are regularly playing 90% TOG as mids and resting forwards, I wonder if it's impacting on their focus at stoppages? Who knows, I doubt even the players can be quite sure what impact their TOG is having, but it's no doubt that we're managing loads throughout games. Apparently Goodwin has said we haven't been managing loads, so I presume he means training loads, so it'll be interesting to see whether Jordon, Spargo and Rivers can return to some form over the coming weeks. We desperately need them to if we're going to finish top 2 or top 4.

He burnt him. He was going for goal and the kick was nowhere near Trac who was in the other pocket. He just didn't see him or decided to take it on himself.

Surely you're not saying Jack has a high footy IQ? His decision making is repeatedly ordinary. In answer to the OP too, I'd be playing him 70% forward and 30% midfield, but I've been saying this for at least 12 months, and I doubt it'll happen.