Adam The God

Yeah, probably. It'd be nice to have both and another Brown.

It seems likely Cadman will be an answer to the TMac type forward that gets up the ground and allows a Brown-type to play deep.

GWS will.

Some will think this is a strange thing to say, but I wouldn't be surprised if our FD are fine with almost pushing out LJ, providing we can plug multiple deficiencies on our list with the capital his trade will hopefully provide.

He's a turnover merchant. Harmes is better.

Jeepers. You can do this? Wowee. Interesting, but dangerous.

Yes, but you have to acknowledge that this is a delicate balancing act. Bring more dare and you may no longer have a defensive half considered the best in the business, but rather one that leaks too many soft goals on slingshot or turnover.

I guess it doesn't necessarily mean Freo couldn't push him out the door, it does give them the whip hand with Sturt and I wouldn't put it past that nuffy Bell to think in these terms.

I reckon it's either Salem, Bowey or Laurie, or all of them. More speed off half back wouldn't hurt us either, so maybe Bowey needs to stay behind the ball.

I just hope we don't go for Williams, because he is the sort of player off half back (on a smaller contract, with more consistency and younger) that would make us better.

Nonsense. Have you been paying attention? We're about to do this with a player called Luke Jackson.

Salem to the wing in my book too. We had Charlie and Harmes running through there this year. We can exploit Salem's kicking up the ground, freeing up Langdon on the opposite wing.

I think it also depends what other trades and recruiting we want to do as well. If doing a deal quickly for Grundy enables us to move quickly for someone else that is going to be best 22, then maybe we need to look at the whole picture post trade week. I'd prefer we didn't go Grundy at all, but I can see if we compliment him with other best 22 walk ups (I have no idea if we will - just spitballing here), we get deals done quickly and don't risk holding up trade week and not optimising our list as best we can during an important time in our window.

See my post above. No goal posts changed. Only those inside the club know how much of an impact the loading had on those games. The claim from TU seems to be that since we didn't see an uptick in performance (like last year - although R23 was pretty good evidence of it) and our coaches haven't come out and said we were loading, it didn't happen. This is a ridiculous position IMV.

TU said "there is no evidence to support the argument that we lost those mid-season games because we were loading." I disagree with this. They're not mutually exclusive positions. We were loading during those games *and* the loading didn't pay off... I'm not saying they were the only reasons for the losses. Losing personnel in key moments IMV had huge impacts in the losses to Freo, Sydney and Collingwood. But loading was a key factor too. It's not a myth. It doesn't need the club to come out and admit it. Loading is a well known industry practice.

The marketing department was constantly telling Melbourne fans they weren't loud enough...

You really don't understand what loading is though do you? Just because we didn't see an uptick in performance doesn't mean we didn't load... You're one of the best posters on here, TU, but this is a strange position to take. Loading didn't happen because we were banged up. What?

May, Lever and Langdon. FMD, what are you talking about?

Wowee. What a hot take.

You're entirely speculating with no facts. "If" is a pretty important word in your post.

That isn't what I said. I said he didn't set his own wage demands...

Yep, first 15 minutes was daring and had we kicked straight in that time we'd have been 6 or 7 goals up and it'd have been game over. We reverted to safer ball movement and they got on top of us in the second half of that first quarter.

How does too much speed of ball movement gel with the defensive back 7 though? That's the balancing act. I think it's giving licence to a certain few (as per my recent post in the game plan thread) and allowing some flexibility with the ebb and flow the game to take the game on more with the corridor.

It's probably a bit early for this as whoever wins the flag should be looked at very closely as to how they achieve it. Our FD will also be looking at likely trends in the game and how to exploit them, and how to ensure our weaknesses are minimised. But I've been thinking about our ball movement specifically. It's clear we tried to use the handball more often in the second half of the season, but it wasn't used in game to try and get players into space (except from centre clearances) or break lines. Geelong, Collingwood and Sydney tellingly all use handball to break lines and move the ball quickly. Had we been on this year, our pressure up, I think we probably don't allow the handball to break lines against us and it turns into a dump kick to our likely outnumber behind the ball. If you look at Collingwood they've got some good kicks in the Daicos boys, but the rest are certainly not elite. We have Salem and Bowey that could be employed in a similar way, and essentially I'd argue we employed Salem and Bowey at times in this way last year. I think maybe one of the factors I was wrong about this year and I think posters like @Lucifers Herowere spot on about is our pressure rating meant we were vulnerable to this faster, line breaking ball movement, and the pressure rating meant we were vulnerable to conceding scores in ways we didn't last year (minus that Collingwood game in 2021 when our players couldn't get out of first gear). It's likely we'll still have the best defensive set up next year, so having a fit back 7 with continuity could go a long way, both to improving our scores against, and our own offence. As strong defence for us turns into offence. However, there is no doubt in my mind, and there seems to be a bit of a consensus on Demonland about this, we need to move the ball quicker. Even if we had Curnow and McKay in our forwardline, we move the ball too slowly and I think we have to be prepared to give up a few more slingshots, back our defenders to stop them and be more daring going the other way to increase our unpredictability on game day. But if we're going to be more daring, we have to be smart about who has the capability to hit those kicks. May, Salem, Bowey, Petracca and even Petty if he stays behind the ball are about it I reckon. What do others think about improving ball movement?

How do you know LJ is demanding anything other than potentially wanting to go to his home state? He has no say in what Freo are willing to offer him contractually. Come on, let's not be nuffies about this.