Adam The God

You can probably guess my position on this. Good move. If Max goes down, we'll be able to cover. This could help us land a pick that might prize a Saad from Essendon.

McClure seems to be folliclly challenged (sorry Demonlanders who are), so that's where I'd be directing my wrath instead of kicking him in the balls, but he definitely has some smarm about him.

I'd give the game up if we lost Oliver. So just putting that out there.

Right, so you're implying that Petracca wants to be traded. There are five guys contracted to 2022 (ie two years left on the contract) and only one of them is represented by D'Orazio.

To be fair to @Lord Nev he actually mentioned it to me earlier today, so prior to Footy Classified...

As I said the other day, we should be putting a 4 year contract extension to Clarry this off season and putting a similar deal in front of Trac too.

No proof, OD, just reading the tea leaves.

You've still got two guys that don't tackle at all; Spargo and ANB are inconsistent in that area; and Kozzie and Bedford hadn't played an AFL game before. This impacts upon consistency obviously.

See, this is why I wonder whether we need to revert potentially to a stronger more aggressive press like the 18 man press we used in 2018. We managed to lock teams inside our forward 50 a lot that year. 2017 as well. We thoroughly dominated teams for large portions of the game. I like the idea that we do have a second way of playing if we want now. And that is to sit deeper and press in the middle of the ground and zone across the forward half, rather than everyone pressing. It may well require us to play the more aggressive press where appropriate and then know when to revert to the second system. To me this is the plan B that we've lacked for so long. I don't think we're particularly good at the three zone midfield press, but with time and another pre season, who knows?

Good post mate. Ultimately, we are trying to play a game that won't really pay off unless we have a lot of forward half pressure. Problem is, as you say, we don't bring enough forward half pressure. IMO this is down to our terribly unbalanced forwardline, where half the guys we select don't tackle. I'd be going all in on pressure forwards with good goal sense. See if we can shake anyone loose from Richmond or Geelong.

Another lefty too. Very Hawthornesque.

This is a furphy. How does running power help you win a centre clearance? Explosiveness might, but not running power. IMV, it's a stoppage set ups issue. Oliver is the best in the league at winning clearances, particularly around the ground clearances. But we don't do enough at centre stoppage set ups. We're not inventive enough. Take a look at some of the more unconventional stuff Geelong and Richmond have been trying. By comparison, we've become really predictable and static at these stoppage situations. Oliver has a rare blend of explosiveness from a standing start that enables him to win clearance, he's a freak, but the rest of the team are often too flat footed with these set ups. If there's anyone we absolutely need to target it's a good midfield / stoppages coach. I think Matthews has been reasonable over the journey, but I think it's time for a fresh pair of eyes. In 2021, I think we need to remember: 1) to play a stopper at every stoppage, whether that be Harmes or Viney. It needs to happen. 2) Viney should never be first possession mid if we can help it. So play him defensively or in the forwardline or off the back of stoppage. At least bursting off the back of stoppage could be predictable to his team mates. 3) we have a nasty habit of using Gawn to tap at his feet. Naturally, we don't do this all the time, but we get no separation in our set ups from centre bounces, because I think we're fearful we'll get done on the outside. But this works both ways though. If we force the opposition to man us wider of the contest, not only can Max get more creative with his tap work, but our mids can hit the drop of the ball at speed, instead of taking the ball as it's dropped on their heads and then being tackled straight away. Separation in the midfield is just as important as separation for a leading forward IMO. We should be looking for ways to maximise this separation. I'm not sure if it was me mate, but I think there was some discussion the other day that we've potentially gone far too control orientated and tried to slow down the game, when our players are perhaps better suited to the faster contest, getting it forward and playing territory. I don't necessarily agree with this, because I think teams will try to slow us down and we've got to be able to move between different modes of play and speeds. Transitioning from attack, to defence and back again to attack etc is an art and the formation of this is what I thought we'd witnessed in both the Collingwood and St Kilda games, albeit the ball use entering 50 versus St Kilda was shocking. Had we used it better that game, I think we would have won more easily, however I think this comes with time. We seemed to completely abandon this system for the last 4 rounds. It's this system that is very Geelong, which was to often lose centre clearance, but win the around the ground clearances. Oliver led the way here, but Petracca also won a stack of contested possessions and finished just behind Oliver there. Viney also won a bunch of CPs too. However, I think with a dominant ruckman like Max and dominant contested mids, we should be looking to attack from stoppage far more. It feels to me like we've conceded our biggest weapon because the better teams haven't allowed us to play ultra attacking and slowed us down. When we played aggressive 18 man territory press in 2017-2018, we actually dominated the likes of Richmond for large periods of games, but our old foe, forward 50 efficiency, let us down. I wonder if it's merely a few tweaks to the 2020 system (3 wall press), plus more attacking stoppage set ups and more balanced personnel as described above?

I don't think we should predicate the idea of value on what we would receive in compensation for Jack. I think we should be looking at what removing his presence from our team brings to the midfield balance (cleanness from stoppage, ball use, predictability to team mates etc). So I'd argue it could be a case of removing the ball and chain from the ankle of our midfield and enabling it to move with more freedom and agility. It sounds like Jack has re-signed anyway, so it may well be a moot point.

Loved May's year, but agree that he started slowly and IMV wasn't rock solid until after the Port game.

Agreed. I'm not saying Max will rest on his laurels. I'm just saying he's too easy to play against.

Oliver and Viney were both in the top 20 for clearances (and Petracca was a stand out in there too), so I think the problem rests with Max just as much as the mids. His tap work is too predictable.

No idea. I tend to steer clear of the MFC Facebook pages.

Fair enough. I think we have a lot of work to do to maximise our midfield dominance and Max is an integral part of that, because he's too easy to play against.

They've clearly been trying to find the balance with Jack for a long time. It took Clarry last year to change his game from predominantly handball to something resembling a balance between handball and kick. This year, at 23 years old, Oliver's continued to develop his game. Jack is 26 and has been making the same mistakes and playing the exact same way for 131 games. He's had more than enough time to change his game and hasn't IMV.

He surely won't get a jacket this year anyway.

Couldn't disagree more. Demonland groupthink.

Nik Nat is neither here nor there IMO. I'm talking about Gawn. There's no way he was in the top 2 ruckmen this year and if so, the position (as I have said many times) is a joke.

You say that, but Grundy had more hit outs to advantage than Gawn. Despite playing more games than Gawn, Grundy also had 97 more hit outs. So Grundy barely getting going was still statistically better than Gawn.

Jeepers. Max is becoming overrated for mine. Max broke even with two rookies this year, missed a few games and his influence had no influence on many results. I'm sure internally Max would be demanding much higher standards of himself and should be. Was an ordinary year.

Oliver is an out and out star. Criminally underrated around here. Continually improves his game. A grade without doubt. He is 23 years old. Two years younger than Cripps, yet Cripps is rated by most commentators as a star (and rightly so), but Oliver rarely gets mentioned in the same breath and has just as much influence, if not more, on games. Get around these league wide numbers... 1st for pressure acts. 1st for contested possessions (Petracca finished 2nd, 11 behind Clarry). 1st for stoppage clearances. 1st for total clearances (9 ahead of Cripps). 3rd for ground ball gets (Petracca finished 2nd, 1 ahead of Clarry). 3rd for tackles. 4th for centre clearances. 5th for disposals. 5th for handballs. 7th for effective disposals.