Adam The God

I'm definitely on the King train too mate if we could convince him, but who would you be happy to trade to get him?

Whilst I generally agree it's too early to comment on Jackson, you cannot dismiss that our tall blokes (with the exception of Hogan) seem to take longer than some other teams. Oscar and Weideman are two very good examples of players who may well make it, but have taken much longer than say Curnow or even King to come on.

It'll be interesting to see whether he, Lever and May can get some continuity together. My feeling on the 'all defenders up' problem is that we never get enough continuity in our defensive unit, so there's no trust or understanding yet. Despite what Max says about Oscar's reading of the play, to my eye, May and Lever are much better readers of the play, but Oscar is deceptively quick. Where he really struggled in 2018 was his body strength, which usually comes with time. Another pre season would certainly have helped him. The sample size is too small at this stage, but the Suns game was a good bar for Oscar. If he can aim for that and consistently get there, and the defenders get that continuity together, I think our game can come alive again. We've so lacked intercepting and in turn, rebounding from defensive 50 in the last 12 months or so that if we can rediscover that key defensive trait of 2018, our side will become quite formidable with our clearance team. Then we just have to get forward of centre working!

Yep, my source was wrong RE: stage 4 restrictions today.

Be interested to know if we planned for the event of a written off 2020 season after the shut down in the first place. Reckon COVID still has a bit to go and I'd be very surprised if the 2020 season is completed at all. I just can't see COVID not spreading across the country again. Stage 4 for Victorians tomorrow (yet to be announced) and NSW won't be far behind. I hope we had a contingency after the first stoppage of play to deal with this in the event that there was a second wave.

I reckon Spargo will be okay. He's still young. Not convinced ABN will clean up his disposal, but I hope he proves me wrong.

ANB was involved in a lot pressure acts in that finals series and Spargo involved in a lot of scoring chains. Lockhart looks lost to me, but I'm hoping he might click and eventually fulfil Nev's role. I reckon we have to be a lot more creative and bold with our ball movement than we have been, if we want to beat Hawthorn. This game will tell us a lot. Have we got our backs up and can we continue the momentum for the rest of the season or do we fall short again and end up being a bottom 6 side.

Thought he was spot on all night.

I thought our best centre stoppage clearance team was Gawn, Oliver, Gus and Petracca. And Gus received a couple of nice handballs on the outside and got clean clearances away. That's his go for mine, but in the contest tonight he was as soft as butter. Young Suns players waltzed passed him too many times. Needs to be tougher and his legspeed seems sluggish to me. Reckon he's still a goer when he plays in the middle, but needs to be stronger.

Lack of forward pressure has dropped in the last 5 mins. Need to keep that up.

Can I quote myself? Get the ball out of Max's hands. Your goal, skipper.

This is the reason Hannan yoyos in and out of the side. He's so inconsistent.

4 turn overs before it and completely changed the momentum. Thw most important factor in modern footy.

Petracca again. What a terrible game he's having.

Less of Max with ball in hand, please.

Some horrible work from Harmes and Gawn in this first quarter too.

Petracca 5 touches, 4 turnovers. And people bang on about Oliver.

Fair enough. I'd just want my best ball winner in the middle and as I say, he won't learn anything about his shortcomings from playing forward IMO.

I don't mind being held by the hand in sports commentary, as long as what is being said is constructive and insightful. I think what you propose here is far too chaotic, but each to their own and I'm glad there's a fellow filmmaker on DL.

Agreed. I think Viney plays mostly forward and rotates with Clarry. They compete for the same ball but Oliver is a much better decision maker.

What a great article. I agree with DJ in that they should simply provide more camera angles to their audience. Fox used to do it on occasional games and given what we pay for Foxtel, they should certainly do it now.

I'm not saying Clarry can't improve but bloody hell, he's got a record as good as Cripps (but much younger), he mauled Cripps when we played them and Cripps is considered a star of the comp. Meanwhile, Clarry's 'defensive game' isn't good enough and he 'doesn't hurt opposition enough'. [censored] off, David King. He's the extractor of just about all our clearances. If our players are so fit, then their defensive deficiencies are either laziness/mindset or poor coaching/lack of constructive instruction. It'd be like taking Chris Judd's clearance dominance out of the middle and saying he needs to work on his defensive game, so let's play Juddy at full forward. It just doesn't stick for me. By all means rest him up forward occasionally, but he's got to be our #1 starting mid. He needs to work on his decision making (which I think is mostly a coaching instruction) in the heat of the midfield. Playing him forward is not going to help that at all. Each to their own, mate. I disagree on the more regular move forward.

I don't mind the direction you're heading in but the vital component of our 2018 surge was Oliver's extraction. The anti Oliver sentiment is absurd in the media and on here. He's definitely mid #1, with support from Petracca and one of Gus or Harmes, with Viney and Melksham for bursts.

But you don't want Tommy Mac playing back do you mate? My heart couldn't handle it.

Only just saw it mate. And Morrison's clearly intent on killing the economy. Since the Libs took over in 2013, they doubled all national debt since Federation (since Federation!) in 6 years, in strong economic conditions. But you'd never know it because Costello runs Channel 9 and The Age, Murdoch still has the largest circulation of newspapers and Sky News, the ABC has been gutted (turning into the Government's mouthpiece as Tony Abbott said they should be), Channel 10 have Joe Hilderbrand (need I say more) and 7 West Media may as well be the official mouthpiece of Gladys' State Government. There's multiple instances where countries have defaulted on loans and the CCP have stepped in (see Sri Lanka), which is why Andrew Robb's deal for the Darwin Port to his new Chinese company that he sat on the board of was so traitorous. But in terms of our club, in the short to medium term (the next decade), we'll survive because there's money at stake and the AFL is a multi billion dollar business. But in the long term... unless we start winning, I don't think we'll survive.