Adam The God

And another thing, having Grundy is so bloody good. Sure, he's a good ruckman and elite at ground level for a big guy, but what makes his combination with Gawn so dangerous is that they're such different players and different ruckman. Teams tend to read Max's centre tap work much better than Grundy's, but when Max hits them pure, he's a cleaner tapper than Grundy. But their different approaches always give us options 'in game'. Brodie's follow up work has also added another dimension to our stoppage game. Not only do we have Oliver, Petracca and co at ground level, we have a 200cm+ giant in Grundy. If Gawndy can stay fit all the way through the year, we're going to be tough to beat.

So did Sparrow. I was critical of Tom last week when I probably shouldn't have been (felt he was very fumbly), tonight his defensive stuff was A+.

I thought we missed another small pressure forward in the A50. Chandler was really on tonight, he was great and ANB was his usual hard running self, but I still don't think the mix was quite right. Particularly, with Koz playing slightly higher up the ground. It's a tough balance though, because I thought JJ and Sparrow gave us really good outside run, as well as hard defensive running, but do you sacrifice JJ for another small forward? ie Spargo. Especially, if you want to play a territory game of locking the ball in. I reckon JJ will be the unlucky one. Schache as the more mobile option worked quite well though, with Max and JVR, and for the most part our talls did their jobs by not being outmarked. Schache is such a beautiful field kick. If we could get him the ball at 65m out 5-6 times a game, I think someone else would get 5-6 shots on goal. Anyway, I think these are ultimately good problems to have, because although the mix is probably a little bit off, we're comfortably the highest scoring team in the comp and don't have trouble scoring whatever our forward mix is.

And yet we managed 22 goals. Easily the most disappointing aspect of the night was the crowd, which I correctly predicted at quarter time (I'm brilliant) would be 29k. We need to be getting 30k ourselves, let alone the third lowest drawing crowd in North also bringing say 5k. Almost perfect Saturday night, at the G, 35k-40k should be the benchmark.

I'm excited by the fact we're in a no.lose situation with Josh. He either comes in ajd performs a role or he's a bust, but protects Jefferson's development and allows BB and Tmac time to gain form themselves. But there are a couple excellent posts on this thread that make me intrigued. I've always felt Schache gets pushed off contests far too easily, but Ben Brown does too. But BB and Schache are both excellent kicks and have a height advantage. The thing BB struggles with his ground level and agility, particularly at his age. Schache has him covered there. In tandem with JVR and Fritsch, with protection from Max/Grundy, Schache will hopefully be able to form a functional part of our system. And if he can, it's a stroke of genius recruiting. I also trust Mark Williams' development credentials to get the best out of him. Like @dazzledavey36, I hope they give him a bit of time / continuity.

Obviously I'd like us to kill them, but I'll be happy with any win and no injuries. Ideally, I'd like us to keep exploring this forward mix and getting some defensive cohesion at the back. May finding some form would be handy too.

And I don't want Brisbane winning any games either, so today is a tough one. I think they're definitely top 2 or certainly top 4 competitors with us.

Does packaging 16, 25 or 35 + a F1 get us another top 10 pick in 2023? On sheer points value, this package would easily be equivalent surely, but whether someone in the top 10 would do it, who knows...

It's all about whether we keep our powder dry on Kings Birthday and tag during finals or whether we try it earlier. I'm sure Collingwood will have plans for it, but you don't want to give them half the season to work out other ways around a Daicos tag. I genuinely think this is one of the most fascinating and pivotal questions of the 2023 season, because his uncontested work is so integral to how Collingwood move the ball.

Reckon he's been one of our better players this year. I'd have him in my top 3 or 4. Becoming really consistent in a very difficult position, but gives his all defensively and is really hitting the scoreboard these days.

Thanks mate. I don't want the physical membership card, just the scarf and thought I'd already selected that option.

This will sound strange, but having looked at the teams, I'm a little worried about this game. At the end of the day, if we can't beat North we should probably pack up shop for the year. That said, Geelong lost to the Suns, so who the hell knows what'll happen.

I'd say Richmond and Hawthorn are both the two biggest bandwagoners in the league, with the most fickle fan bases.

May is usually incredible 1v1, but when the ball hits the deck, he panics big time. He always has. His lack of calm in those moments usually flows onto his team mates. I think he's carrying an injury at the moment, because he's not great 1v1 and he's trying to zone off far too much. Part of this could actually be the move of Petty forward unsettling May and creating this psychological do I zone or play 1v1? I'd look at getting Turner into the team and keeping Petty forward. Turner will free up May and/or Lever.

He's apparently even more highly touted than JVR... @Pennant St Dee

Howe has had multiple pings at Melbourne since leaving and I hope he never wins a flag.

I wouldn't be surprised if it was the fish bowl of WA mentality, which had Lobb being a traitor in the papers all week.

Absolutely no way.

Rivers did play midfield, but only 1 CBA and a little bit around the ground. Agree on Kozzy though, but without Spargo to play alongside ANB and Chandler, they probably thought the balance would be too off up forward without Kozzy. I think it could have got him into the match though. He was quite sluggish and only 10 pressure acts, which was just about our lowest.

I wonder if we should be rotating Fritsch and JVR as the deep forwards leading out from the square/deepest forward and the other playing from 40m to high half forward? We ideally need another tall as you say to play that link role (our game tends to breakdown onnthe slower plays without it) and leave Fritsch as a dangerous proposition on the 3rd or 4th best defender, but until Jefferson has more build and tank, and until TMac and BB are in form, we're probably better going with this set up. Very good signs. Got an amazing temperament. Gets angry with himself, which is fine, shows high expectations, which in turn feeds into his competitiveness, but has an ability to reset and go again. He's a beauty and I reckon JT has nailed this pick. Reminds me of Charlie Curnow. Less springy maybe, but good in the air, great follow up work on the ground. Give him a partner like Curnow has, and even Max could do for the moment, who draws the defenders, leaving the opposition not knowing who to put their time into, and possibly giving JVR the second best defender and we're away. He could very easily kick 30-40 goals this year, which would be an incredible return for a second year (first year) KPF.

What hasn't really been mentioned is that along with giving that silly goal away when May took the intercept mark, Cumberland kicked his three on McVee. When Hibberd went to Cumberland, he barely touched it.

Not to mention he took at least one of those marks on Bolta...

That was deliberate every day of the week. Players know that unless you are spoiling a marking attempt and you don't keep the ball in play it will be paid deliberate. It was a ground ball and Gus punched out. I agree, little else he could do, but the free kick was there. I thought the umpiring both ways was dreadful, but particularly towards us. And you could tell there were a lot of nuffies that don't often go to the footy supporting Melbourne last night because they were getting angry at very text book free kicks like the Gus one. Some were definitely there, but majority were just terrible decisions and some of the 'even ups' to us were laughable.

If I brave the replay, I'm keen the check out how often we did the following... we seemed to do something different with our zone tonight and I couldn't work out if we were letting the zone accidentally go this way or whether Richmond were using it against us, or if it was a legitimate tactical tweak. I noticed it in the third quarter. When we were defending a stationary kicker at half back, for 30m or so, we went 1v1 and behind it we played zone. One of my St Kilda mates reckons St Kilda were doing something very similar early on in the season. 1v1 defending inside D50 and zone when defending the corridor and the higher parts of the ground. I wonder if we're taking cues off Ross Lyon or if it's something we've come to ourselves? Because it means if you can prevent the running handball off half back and hold up the kicker, the little short angled kicks into the corridor and along the boundary, are made into legitimate 1v1s, so it forces the kicker down the line and plays into our intercepting hands (literally, hopefully). It is vulnerable to the switch though, which would mean the defensive team would have to implement a zone in transition rather than 1v1 or simply play 1v1 right across the ground from certain plays. It would seem flicking the switch between the two modes would be way too difficult to coordinate.

It was actually pretty much a 50-50 split. Gawn had 15 CBAs and 35 ruck contests, while Grundy had 14 CBAs and 35 ruck contests. I suspect they wanted to give Grundy a lighter load this week given he's run solo for a few weeks, so it was probably more about protecting Grundy than anything tactical. I actually felt the game turned in the moments when Grundy was at the centre bounces. Max's tap work remains far too predictable, but equally Grundy doesn't quite have the chemistry yet with the mids, so room for improvement. I worry sometimes about the aggressiveness of Max's ruck work too. He often taps defensive side in a D50 stoppage, which really puts pressure on our mids and defenders. But don't get me wrong though. Very happy to have Max back, as I'm sure Grundy was too. It's certainly a trend in our games isn't it? That's 3 out of 6 matches where we've really, really struggled for ground balls in our defensive 50, and just generally struggled for ground balls. In the first quarter, Richmond were +10 in ground ball gets. If we can't mop up ground balls, our game falls over, as would anyone's. I reckon we're still really struggling with when to go and when to play tempo and possession. Tonight, we went too fast and too often/at the wrong times. I'm hoping it'll come together the more we practice it. After all, it took Collingwood 10-15 rounds for it to click last year and become instinctive.