Adam The God

Not quite true. I generally agree with @titan_uranus on Smith in that he's not a footballer, but he actually made a number of good spoils and rebounded off his man a number of times in the first three quarters. I wouldn't have him in my team, but he probably played his best defensive game ever today.

What an uninspiring end to the season. We don't deserve to play finals. Not only is there a mental fragility to this group, but Goodwin can't get them going. Fancy needing to play one good quarter of footy, going into three quarter time with a handy lead and then the running stops and we go safely down the line. If it's not the players naturally going into their shells, it's Goodwin's coaching. It was such a typical facile Melbourne performance. Petracca, Oliver, Langdon, May, Lever, Salem and Hunt were great. Fritsch struggled to finish off the good work up ahead of him and it almost cost us the game, until he finally finished off the goal from 10m out. Loved the few glimpses of Kozzie today. He just had a little bit more cleanness that was noticeable. Rivers is fast becoming one of my favourites. Not only does he show great composure for a guy who's played 9 games, but he brings the tackle pressure. That tackle at a crucial moment basically won us the game. Our outside run in combination with their lack of defensive set up was good for three quarters. Our tackle pressure in the first half was really good and then dropped away, as if we couldn't be bothered, and as if we know that the Dogs will win tomorrow. I think I've seen enough now. If the club wants to sack Goodwin, I'll back them. We have enough good players, but the team as a whole switches off and when it's not allowed to play the game on its own terms all of a sudden within games, our guys don't know what to do. We've managed to eventually get games on our terms that have started by not being on our terms, but if we lead a game and then the opposition makes changes, we don't know how to counter it by trusting our system. Max talked about 'maturity' at the end of the game. That wasn't maturity. We completely went away from trusting the system and almost lost the game. I think we need changes.

How easily did we break down then? No tackle effort from Viney at all, while Oliver never stopped.

Just kick it to Hunt or Petracca. Only two forwards that can kick straight at the moment.

How good was Oliver's second quarter? Sure, the Essendon midfield is laughable, but he is close to unstoppable when he takes the game on. Still my favourite player. Sorry Trac. ?

That's 7 now. Fritsch keeps his feet in the square and he can tackle. Really hate the way he plays.

Fritsch's kicking is embarrassing. He's cost us 6 goals now in less than two quarters. Disgraceful.

Shocking Fritsch. Brilliant again from Oliver.

Gee, I'd be disappointed if we've re-signed Jack Viney.

How much better does Clarry look when he takes the game on? ?????

No worries mate. I'd just prepare we keep the off field administration stuff going, but we do need to work harder on the MCC relationship. They won't dismiss us, but they won't go out of their way to help us either as it stands. We get a grant from the MCC foundation and we use that as cashflow. I think we need to be nurturing this relationship a lot more to ensure we can get the most benefit from it.

I thought Weideman had a really strong block of form in the middle of the year. He's been utterly useless in the second half of the season. He gets pushed aside by the weakest of bodying. Without him taking grabs or bringing the ball to ground, our forwardline obviously doesn't function. Oliver's disposal by hand was shocking that quarter. Essendon look thoroughly ordinary. We should win easily, but we find ourselves a few points down. Hopeless.

I'm not convinced that removing 6-6-6 would lead to higher scoring. What's to say coaches don't put more numbers behind the ball? Yeah, some teams would put players off the back of stoppages and go more attacking, but others would use numbers to close space and set zones. If Goodwin is to retain his job, I'd like to see him continue to innovate within the 6-6-6 set up. This is where scoring will come from IMV.

We definitely know how to run our media department these days. I mentioned in the Zurich re-signing thread the other day that we'd have to have signed up Jaguar already too. Made sense given we'd need financial certainty in order to plan for the million dollar fundraising campaign. I'd say the deal was done just prior to that being announced. It's great news and wonderful to see another major sponsor re-commit.

Thanks mate. Very excited to get a new Demon in this world. We need all the little Demons we can get. ;)

Not sure I agree with this. I think if we're being honest he's struggled this year.

I'm an MCC member, so I donate essentially $80 odd every year to the club to have a MFC/MCC membership. With the little fella on the way I might buy an extra membership for him, but it really depends on the MCC costs. They are exorbitant. With a Depression on the way next year, it might have to be a wait and see prospect on the second membership.

I'd be going Ben King, not Cameron.

We may well get to 100,000 members next year. ?

Fair enough. I don't think Jack is as good as people think and that losing him won't hinder us in the mid to long term.

Which bit do you disagree with? :)

I'm slightly circumspect on Saad's kicking and his defensive abilities, but if Essendon traded him for an injured Tom McDonald and our pick 22, that would be hilarious. He'd slot straight in off half back and Tom McDonald would slot straight in to Daniher's rehab group.

I'd much prefer we focus on tying Oliver and Petracca to long term deals than potentially sacrifice one of them for De Goey.

I'm fine with the approach of giving ideas room to grow, but Fritsch was Tom McDonald-like with turn overs at half back. I think it also ironically made him softer at the contest. Sure, he would show courage and go back with the flight occasionally, but he was often used as an interceptor/spare, thus not often tackling. This has transferred to Fritsch's game in the forward half IMV and stats would bare this out. That's not necessarily Goodwin's fault, but there's a bit to be said for not stuffing around with dynamics of inexperienced players. Fritsch had just started at AFL level and played as a forward at the top of 2018, all of a sudden he was playing off half back at the back end of 2018. That doesn't give him a chance to build the fundamentals in his game. Brayshaw should have been playing in the middle and not on the wing earlier in the year and Jack should have gone forward. A win win solution. It was rarely, if ever, tried. Then there's Harmes not attending stoppages at all, but playing defensive roles off the back of the square. I wasn't necessarily against this idea at first, but when it was clear our midfield balance was out of whack, Harmes should have been interjected at the very least as a shake up option. As soon as he goes in there in the last quarter against Sydney, he almost single-handedly turns the game. Bad call again. As for the Jones move, I don't have a problem with that move, but it should have been essentially the mirror move of Jack. Play both of those guys across half forward. But we persisted with Jack in the middle and then played him in a defensive role against St Kilda when we'd refused to use this sort of role player all year. Too many poor moves. And when I say pigeon-holed, I don't necessarily mean for the rest of their careers, but clearly Harmes was not used at all in the midfield this year. I agree with the idea that we're still not in the sweet spot RE age/experience or have enough experience/leadership, but I'd compare Jack with Frost. People kept saying how good Frost was and that he still had some learning to do, well, he was 26, the same age as Jack, and still hadn't changed the way he played sufficiently enough. Jack still has the same persistent issues in his game and at 26, it's time to cut our losses.

Hopefully Smith and McDonald will follow Frost. It's time to get Petty back there and invest in the trade market for another KPD IMO.