Adam The God

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.

Great podcast as always guys. You did say a couple of times May didn't play last time against GWS. He did and got 20 touches. I'd still be happy to have Hibbo go to TG so May can zone off and he can be the plan B for TG if needed. If he can take Dusty, he can take TG.

I figure it's the merger

He hates us more. As does Dunstall.

Yep, Tim Wilson, MP for Goldstein. He and his partner have shares in the company that make AZ. The most corrupt government we've had since the Rum Rebellion.

You realise Fairfax is Channel 9, ie Peter Costello? They ran a multi million dollar Liberal Party fund-raiser in 2019. Are you trying to tell me Fairfax/Nine is 'leftie'? I suppose Andrew Bolt is a raging leftie too? Murray is a professional provocateur, just like Bolt and Credlin. They've no interest in facts, they just go on feelings. It's about stirring the pot and getting people riled up. Who are the 'leftie' provocateurs? And don't give me that egocentric centrist Waleed. The Overton Window has Malcolm Turnbull as a 'raging leftie'.

3 million per home game? The ground holds 50k odd doesn't it? Those numbers don't compute.

Given the AFL have got their SA teams on planes and into Victoria, the SA Government clearly expects the possibility of another SA lockdown or breach of their hotel quarantine set up again. It has to increase the chances that our Port game is played at Geelong or in Tassie.

Hang on, so we were a younger side than Essendon on Saturday?

As an East Bentleigh boy, not sure the Bentleigh Club is in the McKinnon zone. It's more likely to be in the Bentleigh Secondary College zone.

More like it'll be bought by ALH Group. They seem to own every pub in the land these days, which is good, because their menu is a classic and I find myself at one of their pubs at least once or twice a week.

I think our forwardline problems are being overplayed here. Our goalkicking is definitely a problem, but in that third quarter, we should have been 4 or 5 goals up at three quarter time. We lowered the eyes really well going inside and cut them up. But Harmes, Fritsch and McDonald, off the top of my head, all missed or failed to get the distance on regulation kicks at goal from 40-45m. Kick those goals and the umpiring fades into the background and everyone's talking about how well our smaller forwardline functioned after half time. It was the forwardline after all that had us undefeated earlier in the season. Instead, we kept them in the game. McDonald kicks those almost every week, so that was unlike him. Harmes kicked one from a slightly closer spot earlier in the game and Fritsch should be nailing his as well. If we go 4 or 5 goals up at three quarter time, who knows what Essendon do. Maybe we get a couple of easy ones that blows out the lead or we simply lock the game down and win it by 4 or 5 goals. I went into the match saying if we brought our work rate and focus, we'd win by 4 or 5 goals. We bought the work rate, that was clear from our all field defensive set up without the ball, but we didn't bring the focus with ball use (in the first half), getting sucked in to too many contests in the midfield and getting done on the outside, and we didn't kick straight. Otherwise, it's a regulation Melbourne 2021 win. That said, I'm happy to try Brown in the side and I'd be content for it to be at the expense of Fritsch.

Hibbo went to him at the stoppages after quarter time. And from Goodwin's press conference it's pretty clear our coaching staff were happy after quarter time. I'm not sure he had him at every stoppage, but he certainly had him at a few. Particularly the around the ground stoppages.