Adam The God

What? Read my post again. I said "if you don't have pressure or win contest you're not going to stay in the modern game". The reason we've not won those games where we win CP and clearance is because the other team has out pressured us. You're not old mate Steve are you? 🤦

This is literally every team. If you don't have pressure or win contest you're not going to stay in the modern game...

Yeah, we weren't consistent early in the game, we were poor at contest for large parts of that first half, but the aggressive forward handball that we saw last week was on show multiple times and we looked dangerous. But those Viney entries in the 3rd killed the game, and the last quarter we gave up... Nothing is ever as good or as had as it seems. Although it does feel like it today.

At one stage, the scoreboard said 8 goals to North from stoppage to 2 goals from us. So we were clubbed with our 1 wood...

Can't disagree with this. Given it was North, it was easily our worst performance in 5 years.

An appalling performance. We had the ball on slingshot repeatedly in the third quarter (when the margin was still 2-3 goals), and I reckon Viney had it 4 times on those slingshots and his entries were not AFL standard. Long kicks to the advantage of a 2 or 3 vs 1 in our forwardline. We then proceeded to have a starting midfield in the first 10 mins of the last that was Sparrow, Chandler and Viney. We are not going to win many games with those guys in there. Viney needs to play majority forward, bring his pressure and his surprising goal nous, but his ball use in the midfield is a killer. And the way we dropped away in the last 40 minutes of football was alarming. Chandler played well, Howes did a couple of good things, Bowey (aside from that clanger) was good, Spargo was handy at times, and that was about it. The missed tackles (particularly in the midfield), the poor groundball (with the exception of Clarry). The leadership group need to have a really good hard look at themselves. When momentum went against us not a single player stood up.

Crazy that anyone complains about being hard done by. I've already seen a bunch of Melbourne supporters say they're going to watch the game from their couch. You can't then complain that we get TV fixtures. More of us need to turn up...

Yep, super neggy around these parts. Looking forward to some wins and some posters disappearing again for a while.

Not sure I agree, clearly. One has played a season, the other had an Oliver R1 2016-like impact on debut last week. But when they were drafted is irrelevant to the point I was making. We have the cattle, it's a matter or.building synergy and refining other parts of our game (ie stoppage) to maximise our strengths, whilst developing our weaknesses (transition). Answered above, but again, I dispute this strongly. Last year we had McVee and Salem at half back. This year we'll have McVee, Salem and two elite runners and kickers alongside them. How many players do you need before you "have the cattle"? It's also irrelevant RE scores for inside 50 as we played probably 12 games last year with an early version of this transition game in mind where territory was less important than slingshot. As I've said previously, see the Geelong win in round 6 last year. We killed them on transition. That's the blueprint. They were unbeaten to that point in time. Add Windsor, Lindsay, more dare with ball movement, different forward structures, and what we did between 2017-2023 + part 2 of 2024 is irrelevant. Well, actually, the modern game is points scored from defensive 50 transition. But you're posting as if we want to play a territory game and bombard the opposition with repeat inside 50s. I've said our MO is to go for aggressive "perfect" centre and forward half clearances that lead to scores or rescind territory to the opposition, and thus allow us to slingshot back in. Every game is different as every opposition is different, but against the faster transition sides, this will be our go to Nah. Contest is always king. But modern footy requires speed on the ball from contest. Winning clearance, zones and repeat entries are no longer enough. That's important nuisance I think you aren't acknowledging. No list is every finished. Our approach has been to continue replenishing our list while our stars are still in the sweetspot. In 4 years we've added JVR, Jefferson, Windsor, Kolt, McVee, Lindsay and Langford. It's a significant injection of talent, and I expect us to continue. Have a good season and can really hit the FA/ pre FA market.

Disagree, we've got enough players to play the transition game to a high enough standard, where our scores from stoppages game will give us a huge advantage over most teams. Salem, McVee, Windsor, Bowey, Lindsay at the back are all beautiful kicks that can be relied upon to maintain possession and keep chains going. Spargo, Melksham and Langford at the other end are elite kicks, we want them connecting between wing and half forward. But the modern game starts at the back with slingshot, so load up there with beautiful kicks and guys that can break lines with poise. From there it's about our players becoming confident and knowledgeable in our transition that there is no second guessing because there's synergy. This might take time to build, but the more continuity we get with these above guys at the back, the more it'll become instinctive.

A reminder of what we've missed. ❤️

How do you know he's underdone?

Who are the two big forwards that have turned the tide for Hawthorn? It's not forwardline personnel, it's ball movement and system. Lindsay, Windsor, McVee and Salem are the guys to change our fortunes with greater dare and ability to execute.

Spargo has been hugely underrated on here, although I sense the tide is changing and many are getting on the same page vis a vis his importance to our team. Looking forward to seeing him back out there. And happy with those changes. Langford is gonna be a gun, let him bang down the door at VFL level and get some continuity there. He doesn't have a position at the moment.

See Collingwood 2023.

I wouldn't send Sharp there because I don't trust his disposal. We have enough guys we can run through there at full fitness. Lindsay, Salem, McVee and Windsor. I think @binman may have suggested this previously, but we could also play Fritta at half back. He's not slighter than Lindsay or Windsor. My only question over Fritta's disposal is when he seems to play higher up the ground (and this includes the back end of 2018?), he seems to have a lot of his kicks intercepted, which is obviously poison at half back. The point is, I think we've got our guys that can slingshot now that have pace, poise and skill.

Yep, you've gotta be able to win it at the contest, if you can't, you rely on adding numbers to the contest to outnumber, pressure and force a turnover and sweep it away after winning ground ball (ala Collingwood 2023). We have a big advantage if we can break even in scores from turnover. As you've said, we don't need to be the best, we just need to be good at it. Our 1 wood is scores from stoppages. As I wrote prior to the GWS game, I'll be happy if we go for aggressive pure centre clearances that lead to scores (utilising forward handball, blocks and our power in and from the contest), because this will mean we'll lose our fair share of clearances too by positioning ourselves aggressively at centre stoppage. This then means the opposition has it in our back half, and we can look to transition off the back of that. It was obvious we were trying this in the first half of last year, but without a fitter Oliver, we struggled to get bang for buck from aggressive stoppage set ups and we'd end up losing too much territory, which goes to Hoyne's point. You don't want be camped in your back half, so breaking even with inside 50s as the ball moves from one end to the other is more the goal. And when you sweat that opposition turnover, and it's anywhere near D50 corridor, you have to score from it. We did this beautifully against Geelong last year, but the rest of the year, we were very hit and miss. This is why Windsor and Lindsay have the ability to completely transform our game.

Perhaps there is a time and place. You certainly don't want to overpossess by hand in the wet, but I think generally we still want to play the same way in all conditions, otherwise the way you want to play is vulnerable to externalities. Obviously, there are situations where you don't want to overpossess but if you're maintaining possession with uncontested kicks across the back half, I think that's still an acceptable move in the wet. Certainly with the right kickers. In all conditions, there'll be certain players who are instructed to kick longer to contests and other backs who will be expected to maintain possession with shorter kicks when the kick down the line isn't on. It's a great way of controlling tempo, even in inclement conditions.

I think Goody is ahead of the curve here, although Mitchell's team displayed a similar approach last year. Our plan seems to be: 1) get it in to a less crowded forwardline as quickly as possible on turnover or via (centre) stoppage. 2) if not, play keepings off at the back and pull the opposition higher up the field, leaving space in behind. This is basically the Man City playbook. Where we have an advantage if we can improve our ball movement with the likes of Windsor, McVee and Lindsay is we score a lot from stoppage. This year, like the first half of last year, is learning to score off turnover with slingshot from our defensive half, and continuing to beat our opposition with scores from stoppage.

But we've done this for 8 years. Repeat entries. I don't think that's what he's saying. He's saying the opposite. As long as you break even (roughly) with inside 50s, it's more important how you slingshot from your half back / ie how fast/clean is your ball movement. It's not about just getting it in there. It's about the ball movement being "ballistic" enough to break lines and zones and deliver quality entries as opposed to the quantity of entries. Ah, sorry @binman, you beat me to it.

I think we'd be saying something different if Hogan played. TMac beat Cadman a number of times, but Hogan killed TMac last year. Without May, we'd have been in strife I reckon.

Opinion.

White will be a Melbourne player.

Oxdee has to be Fritta himself... On ya Fritta.

lol sounds like the AFL. The amount of rule-making on the run is incredible.