Adam The God

For mine he still plays his way, which at times exposes our zonal set up, but long time critic, so take with a grain of salt. Jordon's tackling was far more important for our first 11 rounds than anything Viney has brought this year. I also think Harmes' effectiveness is reduced with Viney in the side, but I acknowledge Jack can at times play a pivotal role in setting intensity levels amongst our group. I think some overrate his presence though.

Bowey has spent the entire year playing back. He won't suddenly be brought in to play forward.

One tackle is Fritsch level stuff average wise, but Spargo, along with the rest of the forwards and mids had a poor defensive game yesterday. I guess we disagree that Melksham would provide more. Unless Melksham kicks 2 or 3 he's a liability by comparison to Spargo whose contested work is good. Each to their own I guess.

You'd bring in a good ball user who doesn't tackle for a good ball user who does tackle? I concur on Brown for Sparrow, but if you want to get Melksham into the team, it has to be at the expense of Fritsch. Another guy who doesn't tackle. This week I'd give Fritsch and Brown another go as our deepest pair. Melksham should have to work really hard to earn back his spot.

The main reason IMV that the Bulldogs are judged differently this year to us is that they won the flag in 2016 and it's got a bit of the Hawks 2008 vs 2013-2015 about it. That's why the likes of King are trying to tip a Bulldogs dynasty. But as you say, the Bulldogs' defensive system and personnel isn't good enough. Their midfield is excellent, but there should be questions at both ends of the ground for them.

I posted this in the Time To Panic thread, but it's just as relevant here: We dominated the Bulldogs and smashed Brisbane in the second half. They're our two biggest threats at this stage. They sit 1st and 3rd. We're certainly not pretenders. Pretenders are football teams that smack the lowly sides and struggle against the top sides. I'd put Port, Bulldogs and maybe even Geelong in this category, based on their performances this year. We've simply not turned up mentally for our three losses to much lower ranked teams and yet we could have won all of them in the last quarter. Are we a chance to slip out of the top 4 at the end of the season? Yes. Do I think we will? No. I'd expect us to beat Port, so it'll be interesting to see how we go. As for the Bulldogs, they've had a dream draw and one of their toughest assignments was West Coast in Perth and they ended up playing to a vacant house. Very lucky. I think the Bulldogs will come unstuck. Every time they've been challenged this year they've crumbled.

We dominated the Bulldogs and smashed Brisbane in the second half. They're our two biggest threats at this stage. They sit 1st and 3rd. We're certainly not pretenders. Pretenders are football teams that smack the lowly sides and struggle against the top sides. I'd put Port, Bulldogs and maybe even Geelong in this category, based on their performances this year. We've simply not turned up mentally for our three losses to much lower ranked teams and yet we could have won all of them in the last quarter. Are we a chance to slip out of the top 4 at the end of the season? Yes. Do I think we will? No. I'd expect us to beat Port, so it'll be interesting to see how we go. As for the Bulldogs, they've had a dream draw and one of their toughest assignments was West Coast in Perth and they ended up playing to a vacant house. Very lucky. I think the Bulldogs will come unstuck. Every time they've been challenged this year they've crumbled.

I reckon Mitch is a chance to replace McDonald if he keeps kicking around corners. Ben Brown will straighten us up and take pressure off Tom and Fritsch. We'll be alright.

It doesn't make much sense to me. If they were only going to play Brown a half at Casey, why didn't they just select him for AFL this week? I thought they were holding him off as a loading exercise, but it doesn't seem to make much sense.

We were horrible in clearance today, but where it was lost was the ease of clearance against. In other words, our post clearance pressure was disastrous. No one wants to lose clearance by 15, but despite what some say, that doesn't have to be a big issue if our mids can immediately force the game onto our terms by pressuring the clearance and ensuring there isn't a clean takeaway. However, the number of times we let them get clean clearance was not good enough and it completely exposes your defence. GWS mids were very clean by hand today and we fumbled everything. Post clearance is the stat that really matters.

Given the top tier was closed off, I could have sworn there was at least 20k there today. Bizarre really to see 16k flash up on the screen. And as usual, we were loud for the amount that was there.

Although I think Brown should play next week, that's two weeks in a row that we've had 10 or more marks inside 50 with a smaller forwardline. So we actually lowered the eyes well on a number of occasions, particularly early in today's game. Our forwards couldn't convert. That was the problem. Petracca, Fritsch and McDonald all missed simple shots that they would normally get. A quick further word on McDonald. He is a supremely frustrating player. His confidence is clearly shot off the back of only one or two poor games. That's all that it's taken to have our best set shot kick attempting that stupid snap around the corner. He was never going to kick that. It was always going to the left. We're now in an unfortunate but near desperate position of needing Brown to take the first/best defender and allowing McDonald to play second fiddle and Fritsch third. McDonald is far too inconsistent and flakey to be relied upon in big finals. I'm sure others have already written such things this year about Tom, but I was hoping a guy whose career is on the line at 28, could put a consistent 22 game season together. He won't. And now we must rely on a Ben Brown, who might take a few weeks to get up to speed again, to take the heat so McDonald can recapture some kind of form. And damn we miss Kozzy's creativeness and forward pressure. When he's absent we lack forward spark.

The midfield was fumbly and lacking in intensity and concentration, but the forwards were equally terrible this week. Our game resolves around those two areas of the ground paying pressure. It wasn't there. The mids failed to apply adequate forward pressure and the forwards failed to apply adequate midfield pressure. Really liked Petty's game, but Oliver and Petracca were dreadful. I don't care that they got the ball. They, along with Viney, had little influence on the game. I know McDonald took a bunch of marks and was involved in a lot of our scoring chains with good ball use, but when he doesn't hit the scoreboard and he's playing as the main man, we're not going to win too many games. Brown will come in next week all being well and he will allow McDonald and Fritsch to get the weaker defenders, as well as allow them to get up the ground. That will suit both of them. Brown'll also draw the ball and very likely kick two or three himself. The tragedy of today is I think we may just have blown not just our top 2 hopes, but the top 4. If we end up finishing 5th, it would be an utter disgrace given where we've sat for the majority of the season.

Potentially. He's super soft, but he's also played second ruck quite a bit this year and that takes a bit of physicality. I think he's just tired.

Yeah, but just remember, we made a prelim with an ordinary defence. They're not going to even make finals. I've done it myself, but I don't think it's fair to compare Essendon of 2021 with Melbourne of 2018. Sure, both sides play/played aggressive zonal defence and attacking footy. Both sides have/had midfields that won a lot of the ball, but Essendon don't have anywhere near the talent we did that year.

Fitzroy have played down there more often and they've been defunct for 26 years. What a joke.

They seem to be letting her analyse/talk more, which is excellent, because she's brilliant.

Cox shouldn't even be in the conversation. Sorry. He barely touched it last week and was deadset liability last night with his lack of physicality and lack of running. Will be a good player but has tired massively and shouldn't get near the RS.

Good East Bentleigh boys, that's why. ?

I'm really happy with Taylor's recruitment and our development of players, but what's enabling these guys to have the impact they're having, is the easily and clearly defined roles and the system we play. They're all role players. When all you need to do is work at your game at VFL level and then when you get your chance, play your role for the team, it must greatly reduce pressure on emerging players and clearly allows them to flourish.

He and Sam Day as first round picks. Just horrible. And FWIW, I really like the Suns theme song. Reckon it's one of the best in the league. The worst by a long way is GWS'. I have no idea who to barrack for tomorrow night. I hate both of them, but Geelong dropping a game is very handy.

I think we'll find the entire reason the 60 goal a year forward isn't in the team yet, is because he's not matchfit. Barely played last year and had an injury interrupted pre season this year. We gave him a few games to get a feel for the team earlier in the year and it was clear he needed to be fitter. I reckon he's going to slot in beautifully over the next couple of weeks and we have this luxury to get him right, because of the ability of our current forward set up to still get get job done. But as Goodwin continues to say, we want to continue to look for ways to improve and no douht BB will do this if fit.

I reckon Brown will come in against Port. Meanwhile, had we kicked straight last week, we win easily. McDonald and Fritsch need to get it done this week.

I'm not sure you know who the Left are. Australia has some of the most concentrated media ownership in the world and they're all right wing. Murdoch (owns most of the newspapers, including every regional QLD newspaper and Sky News), Costello (9 and Fairfax), Seven West and Rinehart's Channel 10 (her representative on the board now is Andrew Robb, you know, the traitorous Liberal MP that sold the Darwin Port to a Chinese company when he was in politics and then went and sat on that company's board after politics). Like conservatives in Britain that constantly attack the BBC for being supposedly left wing (this is the IPA playbook for privatisation - see the IPAs 'Why We Should Privatise The ABC and How To Do It'), conservatives here attack the ABC for a supposed left wing bias. All this comes out of the Murdoch/Rinehart think tank, the IPA. Single handedly responsible for shutting down the climate debate. Abbott implemented two thirds of their policies in his first year in office. Yet whenever independent studies into ABC bias are conducted, they usually always show a plain old centrist mix of issues and equal coverage of both the major parties (like here). The problem with the two major parties is one is centrist, the other is right wing, so the whole left wing right wing paradigm is played out on the conservative side. There's not a lot of left wing about Labor. They abandoned that in the 70s, when they abandoned the class conflict. They've been raging neoliberals since 1974. If you look at the Menzies Liberal Party, modern Labor sits well to the Right of that economically. Meanwhile, we've got the Murdoch media deliberately claiming Labor are some sort of Socialists.

Reckon Bowey is being earmarked as the protege to Salem, but if he does take Nev's spot that Hunt has effectively taken, having Salem and Bowey's foot skills back there could be huge. Might also allow Rivers to push up into the midfield in time.