Adam The God

I thought our intensity was off in the first 5-10 minutes of the game, otherwise it was pretty good. But each to their own.

If he's not too sore, I'd play him. I reckon they just might. That seems to be the philosophy.

Sure, watching live is a completely different thing, but I found myself very relaxed watching today. I expected us to win and win well. We did. I expected us to strangle them and then have a devastating patch and today we had two devastating patches.

Agree, although I read Goody say Harmes could play next week, which means no change IMO.

I haven't read the game day thread, but apparently people aren't happy. Bizarre. It wasn't flawless and I generally agreed with much of what Jordan Lewis said in terms of forward entries and blazing away at goal when we should have lowered the eyes, but FMD, we played some brilliant football at times. Was it one of Fritsch's or TMac's goals in the last where we chained off half back by hand under real pressure? It was champagne football. As good as that TMac team goal against Brisbane last year in Sydney. Our offence usually comes from our defence, so as a side we tend to strangle sides rather than blow them off the park, but if a side manages to stay with us over 4 quarters, we can win games in 5-10 minutes of burst football. I reckon as supporters we should be happy that we won by 12 goals and could still play much better, and Harmes aside, have a list that can get out on the park every week.

I reckon you're underselling our ability to kick goals off turnover. ie punish turnover. We still have many gears to go to, but in the 1st and 4th quarters we punished turnover like a good team should. Our forward entries from stoppage wins however left a lot to be desired.

This is why, for me, despite today's performance, Freo are our biggest challenger. Their brand will stack up, it's just whether they can bring it consistently. Fyfe in will be huge for them I reckon and I wonder if they tire in the second half of the season. Brisbane have a great midfield (that can be exposed for pace) and probably the best forward half in the league, but their defence is not as good as ours, so I tend to live by your last phrase when analysing footy. A great defence will beat a great attack, and since our attack comes off the back of defence, I'd be very surprised if Brisbane beat us in a final.

Sorry, but they're blatantly tanking. Sure, they look unfit like we did at the top of 2019, but we never rested players like they're doing. It's absolutely ridiculous. Kennedy out now as well. They don't need to rest players, we'll beat them anyway.

Cripps is playing, but those other 5 are offensively massive outs.

I like both of these lists so far. Neither of the King brothers work hard enough yet, but I would love Ben King and I still think he could be gettable in the near term. I know it's not really the point of the thread to go realistic, but planning a future post McDonald and Brown is important, particularly to keep our window open. So King would be at the top of my list. Dream scenario is Walsh, but equally, having Tom Green partner Oliver and Petracca is an incredible prospect.

I really like the framing of playing a back 3 and a back 4 in front of them. So any of the back three can hand over to each other and any of the front 4 can hand over to each other. I've noticed Bowey playing the back of stoppages like Salem does, but Jake is doing such a good job, I wonder if it'll be a case of having both of them roll through that quarterback role at tue back of stoppage when Salem returns. It makes us so much harder to plan against having another elite ball user that can sit at the back off the stoppage.

Thought it was a brilliant move to play Gus on Hill. Gus ran around by himself for almost 4 quarters, exploited Hill's unaccountability. I think Gus at half back is working so well it may change the way Salem plays when he comes back. Or Hunt goes out and we lose a bit of pace back there. Our mob completely outclassed Ratten and co in the coaches box though. Some really bizarre coaching from St Kilda. Sure, they only brought a quarter and a half of pressure, but Hill at half back, no real moves with King to play him up the ground or into the ruck to get him involved. We didn't allow him to jump, but surely the coaching instruction needed to be don't grapple with May. Lead up to CHF. I went with a St Kilda mate who was pulling his hair out at the coaching and the St Kilda play in general. It was interesting to hear someone be so critical of their team as I am watching us live. But he was right. They were dreadful in the first half. It really was training drill type stuff for us. The lack of accountability, intensity and intent was marked. I actually thought St Kilda's first half was as bad as we were in the Neeld years. Truly insipid. Guys not chasing, us easily breaking tackles, no blocks being put on, rushed disposal under little pressure etc. Then you could see their energy in the third quarter. We were fumbly all day, but we fumbled more when their pressure came across our half back line in that third. Fortunately, they missed some very gettable shots. I suspect our set up behind the ball simply spooked St Kilda who repeatedly slammed it on the boot from the contest and the slingshot situation, to our set up behind the ball in the first half. Gresham was a major culprit. Given this it was weird to note late in the last, they'd had more intercept possessions than us. It's great leaving a game and going 'we can play so much better but we just beat someone who was in the top 4 at the start of the round by 6+ goals, and we're on top'. Incredible time to be alive.

Still hasn't worked with me, mate. But at least I get a text from my wife saying Go Dees nowadays.

Laurie won't be sub. They wouldn't do that to a player yet to debut, but then I thought the RBA wouldn't lift the cashrate target this week either, so what would I know?

I wouldn't have either of them. Bit we do need to bring in a pressure forward and it shouldn't be Melksham.

Jack Riewoldt's poster in the second (?) was a direct result of Smith getting his positioning completely wrong. He did a couple of nice things and a couple of ordinary things. Our defenders these days rarely do ordinary things, so it sticks out. May's handball was cut off on the wing, which ended up rebounding to Riewoldt. Smith simply handballed under little pressure to Lynch, who turned around and kicked a goal. Not really the same thing IMV.

I like Buckley all of a sudden. What a good bloke.

So this is what I'd go with: In: Chandler, McDonald, Viney, Lever Out: Pickett, Jackson, Sparrow, Smith I think they'll go for Bedford over Chandler and Dunstan gets another game.

Carlton are also toast for this season as Pittonet is out for 3 months. Of course, they could always change their strategy for the better to compensate, like we did when Max went down in 2017 (we became less obvious from clearance), but in both games where Pittonet effectively hasn't played, the Blues have been nowhere. They struggle to win clearance without his taps to advantage.

As going fast is basically the only way to beat our zone. Which puts us in a good position to create turn overs. You could see it with Richmond the other night. They'd chip to about 50m, then another quick chip, which if they then went quickly, could actually enable them to kick over the top of the zone or to a leading forward between centre wing and half forward. I felt our transition was a little off in the first half and they were actually able to hit up three consecutive passes from the kick in to their half forward by moving it quickly. When we tightened this up in the second half, they had to look for the riskier in board option rather than kick it to our numbers down the line, and they turned it over quite a bit. Eventually that will happen over 2 hours of football, and weight of numbers gets you. It's the genius of our system. It requires occasional bursts of anaerobic defensive transition to get into position, and then anaerobic bursts when we turn it over, otherwise it's mostly standing in holes waiting for the opposition to pull the wrong trigger or literally kick it back to us.

I'd add after this that the alternative is to kick it high to a wing near the boundary, a flank or a pocket. Langdon often does a deliberately skyed kick to a contest as it gives our guys time to swarm the crumb. It's straight out of the Richmond playbook too.

Be interesting to see if Mitchell tries something different or just goes with the manic forward pressure. They really are a very small team, but they do have a bit of pace to them. Surely Brown would be far too big for Frost.

Tomlinson more realistic than Turner, but different player to Smith and Turner. Interceptors versus lockdown. But yeah, I'm being slightly facetious. Against a top 8 or top 4 team we cannot have Smith playing in that back 6.

This.

One of the strangest, if not the strangest games I've ever watched. Had we kicked straight it would have been near 100 points. We were that dominant, hey? And Richmond were lucky they took their chances, otherwise it could have still been 5-6 goal win. 30+ scoring shots is insane. And yet with 5 minutes to go there was a slight pang of nervousness amongst the MFC crowd. Bizarre. I had one concern going into the game. All I'll say is I hope Jake Lever is back next week. Alternatively, Turner might need a game.