Adam The God

We played a far less aggressive zone tonight and it kept us in the game. The ball use coming out of our defence was atrocious and gave away at least 2 or 3 goals (if not more) and we don't lay any tackles in our forwardline (that's work rate and positioning). That said, I mentioned in a thread the other day that we'd play an extremely aggressive zone, be in it at quarter time and then lose by 7-8 goals. It was so predictable and kicking 2 goals after quarter time is unacceptable. The coaching is terrible, the game style needs a complete revamp, our leaders are non-existent and we're looking at a number one draft pick at this rate, because we simply don't play four quarters. Oliver, Brayshaw and Lever are the untouchables for me. I rate Harmes nowadays too. But as for the rest, we've got a lot of very average players.

Are you trolling? I think maybe you are. The most obvious examples last year were Brayshaw and Harmes.

Bit dangerous to post this. Is Charlie happy with this being out there? Jetta is the worst offender at this. He's a small that constantly goes up to spoil when he should be at ground level. I love him, but he rarely impacts these contests. Hibberd's the same. I can only think the instruction is to back yourself to kill the contest. The problem is, we rarely do.

Best way to respond is to thump Richmond. But it won't happen.

HH's avatar should pretty much be 'Jumping At Shadows'. He seems to know everything despite having absolutely no inside intel whatsoever. Yeah, but it's the most obvious piece of commentary. We've all been saying this for it seems like years now. We're so easy to coach against, because our players are told to hunt the ball. It's so rare our mids actually commit team acts like shepherding or blocking. The game plan from the contested situation has always seemed to be 'we'll back ourselves to win the CP'. It's why we regularly lost the UPs, but were happy as long as we won the CPs last year. The modern game surely shows you need a pretty good balance of both. Yes, but usually, this sort of stuff actually needs to come out. I remember when many on here said similar of The Age's reporting on Schwab. If it's causing such disharmony, maybe something needs to be done. Whatever the case, we need some bloody good leadership at the moment. We can't get it on the field, hopefully we have it off it. We coped extremely well in 2017 when we had a couple of really important outs. Our system that year was working. We didn't always bring the work rate and were inconsistent. Now, you look at the stats and watch our games, and you'd have to say it's the reverse. And the reason Collingwood could plug and play, is their system is far superior to ours. I know I bang on about system a lot, but it's so clearly the issue right now. Yes, fitness plays into it and work rate, but system is the chief villain in our woes.

Hmm. Not sure what to make of this. We've talked about drinking bath water for a while. Could our guys seriously be stupid and arrogant enough to think they'd done enough last year? Are you [censored] kidding me? Although I love him, I find it hard to rely on anything Roosy says, because his own legacy is tied up in Goodwin's success. It's a lot easier to put the blame on the players. Of course though, it could be both things. Roosy sticking up for Goody AND some players coming back unfit. I'd love to know who came back unfit. I hope they're not being played right now, when guys like Stretch, by all reports, are terrific, professional trainers and last a week in the seniors before being dropped again. The bloke himself was puffed out 10 minutes into the first quarter on Saturday.

Given you're one of the few who regularly gets to training though, Saty, have you witnessed any shifts? And the club aren't going to confirm there are internal problems.

Thanks mate. Jeepers. I presume 'Defensive' would mean 'team defence', particularly if Chaplin is 'Backline'. It's precisely our team defence that has been so woefully off this year. No wonder he's not happy.

Hmm, I find Jennings' position in all of this fascinating. Many of our innovative moves over the past 2+ years were attributed to him. Certainly the Demon Diamond and the mids off the back of the centre square, which the rest of the competition then employed. I'm not sure who was responsible for the no wingers versus Hawthorn last year, but we were innovators and pretty much since that Hawthorn loss, we've continued an aggressive press, but with very little innovation. Is he saving up the rest of his goodies for a senior coaching gig? I hope we see more innovation from our mob soon.

I have no idea why McCartney was ever moved out of simply being a development coach. He is the best in the business and we have seen incredible development in the likes of our midfielders Brayshaw, Harmes, Oliver and even Gawn under his tutelage. I don't want to lose McCartney, because we finally have a guy that knows how to develop talent properly. But why in hell is he a defensive line coach? It makes no sense, unless we have no faith in Chaplin and we've placed him there out of desperation...? Can anyone else confirm McCartney is actually the defensive line coach?

I know one Melbourne player who said McCartney is pushing the players so hard it's giving them the [censored], but who knows how deep that goes. The interesting point in this article is that McCartney is one of the men responsible for our defence.

We'll know come Wednesday 10.30pm. I'm betting we play a ridiculously aggressive and high press that Richmond break down by midway through the second quarter and end up 7 to 8 goal winners in a canter. If this is the case, Goodwin will need a jolly good flogging. Cue the big fella.

And if you turn it over by foot in your back half, it results in an almost certain goal against. McDonald's kicking is a liability in defence.

Fair enough. Each to their own. I think had this been a regular season game, we'd have done a thorough player review. Or maybe not. We all have different opinions and strategies on how best to motivate people. When I'm coaching I focus on the positives but review the negatives in a game simulation setting and speak in generalities about how we can get better. If the players want to improve and get better as a team and feel that the review doesn't sufficiently answer their own concerns, it is up to them to take the initiative and seek further advice. That's where it falls on the players IMO. As a film producer, it is also my job to motivate people into delivering on time and to a high standard. In my experience, every team has a different dynamic because every person is different. I know the team that work for me because I handpick them due to their certain qualities. I know what makes them tick and I demand open communication both ways. Goodwin and co would know the players better than we would. They are on the inside and deal with the players day to day, week to week and effectively, have handpicked these players for their qualities. Sure, sometimes they could make the wrong call in terms of how best to motivate our players, but it's never as simple as one game. It's about a larger sample size. Given the importance of modern sports psychology and the evolution of society and what makes people tick effectively in a modern world, with the pressures that are thrust upon these players, there really is a lot more at play than merely the old toughen up, face your problems head on review. This particular loss was an embarrassing loss on one of the biggest stages of all. I'd argue very little could be achieved by making the players sit through the review after the season was over. I'd rather "come back better and more focused than ever, boys, to implement our system, the Melbourne way". However, what I would have expected to see is the coaches pour over the themes of our 2018 losses and pin point an effective way of ridding this from our game. The fact that the same errors are still occurring a year after the fact (and arguably getting worse), speaks to the notion that the coaches have failed to implement a system that holds up on the bigger grounds. Our only win has come on the tiny SCG, which enables us to revert to 2018 Melbourne. I'd say that lets the coaches off. Sure, it comes down to work rate too, but as I keep banging on about, our system is broken. So throw it out, Goodwin. I'd also debate the inference that our problems all stem back to the Eagles loss. To me that's rubbish. What we are seeing week to week in 2019 are the same glaring issues we were experiencing in early 2018. We are being beaten in a very similar way. Only this year, the wider competition has worked out how best to counter our game style and it's exactly the same way Hawthorn did to us in early 2018. Teams have always tried to nullify Gawn, Oliver and Viney. But what we showed ALL of last year is that we waste inside 50s and are incredibly inefficient going forward. Teams simply understand that if you take away our advantage by setting up to slingshot against our clearance dominance, our inefficiency going forward will play right into their hands. These signs were there all 2018 and it was up to the coaches to address them. They haven't. The majority of our woes come from poor coaching.

I hope they really honed in on what Collingwood were doing last year. Really, they choked in that Grand Final and I have them winning the whole thing this year. Their game style mixed with their list, remarkably given where they were in 2017, is the best in the comp. I can see why they like the West Coast comparisons though. Barrass and McGovern could be emulated by a fit Lever and May, but our forwardline is nowhere near as dangerous and our midfield lacks the flexibility of either Grand Finalist.

It would now seem that way. Of course, it could be bad luck. Jetta certainly came off second best early on in the game, but to me, he looked unfit to play the first time he went near it.

But I agree with him in that we didn't turn up that day. Yes, we were thoroughly outplayed, but if we had brought the same intensity to that prelim as we had the previous weeks, it would have been a much closer contest. I think psychologically it was important not to review the game with the players and risk scarring them. I have no problem with this, still to this day. The problem I have is our system leaves so little margin for error that it's unsustainable and if it hasn't happened already, the players will lose faith in this system. We have no idea how thoroughly the coaches reviewed the game, but it's hard to know how much would be dismissed due to the fact we didn't bring the required work rate or concentration to the game, versus how we were beaten. I'm certainly not going to be arrogant enough to assume I know how league coaches review a game. The biggest hurdle for us is Goodwin getting past the chaos game and coming up with a more sustainable system to take us forward.

It's pretty significant to go from limping around for most of the game (he didn't look fit from the outset) to an 8-10 week injury. Are we managing players here? It seems pretty incredible.

How the hell can you be missing for 12+ weeks with a groin injury? I'm loathed to speculate with innuendo, but I can't help myself here. Is there more to this injury than meets the eye? I was all for recruiting Lever and May, but given what we've paid for them, and their output on field, it's a diabolic fail thus far. At least, Lever turned up to training with professional standards, but WTF is happening with May? Does anyone have any insight into this?

He never said that. He said they didn't review it, which means the coaches didn't review it with the players, but of course, the coaches reviewed it. That said, we're stubbornly continuing to play a game style that doesn't work and has been shown doesn't work on the second biggest stage (a prelim).

Yep, agreed. And once he gets creative, he'll eventually get the confidence back in his kicking.

It seems I'm not quite as pessimistic (?perhaps that's not fair?) as you seem to be. This post makes it seem like we're in more trouble than I think we are. Although, I do see what you mean about Hibberd and Jetta, and having to replace them soon. Agree completely with the forward problems. But I reckon we've got our inside midfield set. We need to get some leg speed like Collingwood and now even Carlton have. If Lever recovers, which I think he will long term, we've got a real general there and someone to build a defence around. I'm more excited by Petty than you seem to be, but time will tell. I also think Weideman will be a good player, but there's no doubt that we have some holes at both ends of the ground and through our midfield given the lack of pace through there.

Particularly, as Richmond's midfield struggles to win clearances.

See, I don't think this is cause for alarm. What we have done is recruited players that allow us to control the midfield. That's the first pillar in any great team. If the game style is shizen though, your hard work at the coal face stands for little. I truly believe this can be turned around relatively quickly. I'm not convinced it can be turned around in-season, but in 2020, with some new experienced coaches to implement a new system, we can start to properly cash in on our continued midfield dominance.

Stretch needs to be given a proper string (didn't want a pun) of games to show he can cement his spot. For years now, Stretch has been in one game and out the next, yet others play terrible games and keep their spots, or do very little but are given a proper go at it. Given Stretch's professionalism, he can't be any worse than Jones or Lewis on a wing. The latter two are almost always out of position anyway, so I can't for the life of me, understand why Stretch is constantly treated differently from others. I presume it's an attack on the footy issue that Goodwin doesn't like, but give the kid a bloody chance, like you did with ANB for years. We're crying out for outside run and at least Stretch has a bit of toe.