Adam The God

None of those midfields were having the same dominance that we've had though. I reckon it'll work. Jason Taylor has been building to this since he arrived. Except, unless we could trade those two top 10 picks that'd be a terrible deal for us. Lose a young gun CHF for two kids that take years to develop, while we're inside our window. Dumb list management IMO.

Only a Melbourne supporter would put it this way. ?? I think the point about all three of them offering something slightly different is a great one. I also concur that we'll set up with three talls next year too. Players like Harmes and ANB, coupled with a new speedster or two at the feet of these guys will be pretty deadly. We may well be able to get away with not having speedsters and rather just hard runners, given the mobility of the three talls we have. Hogan and Tom need to start tackling more in the forward half though. Weideman, when switched on and confident, is really good at this. Particularly, as it allows me to develop and ultimately shine, by getting the third best defender. You beat me to it, mate. Spot on. If I were Melbourne I'd still be saying, look, Jesse, if you want to play in flags and dynasty's like Geelong and Hawthorn, they all took pay cuts to stay together, so you do the same.

Equally, it might be better to play more pressure smalls in that situation. It'll be interesting to see the rule changes and the evolution of the game from there.

I reckon we can play them all in the one forwardline and we showed this earlier in the year. Jesse switching from a wing, midfield, CHF and deep forward. Tom switching from ruck, CHF, CHB (this bit will happen, despite him not being a good defender) and deep forward. Weideman switching from ruck, CHF and deep forward. The beauty of all of them is that they are mobile beasts. Weideman is terrific below his knees as he demonstrated on multiple occasions against GWS and the other two have never had a question mark over them in this regard. In fact, it's probably their key asset. I think we'll look back on Jesse's injury at the end of 2018 and see that it enabled Weideman to gain some confidence at the top level. This will be invaluable for next year when all three play together. I'm pretty sure Goodwin would have kept playing all three together in the same forwardline had we not had injuries and Weideman struggle with form. Richmond changed the face of the modern forwardline last year out of necessity and it may well snag them another flag, but I think Goodwin and his set up will transform the modern game again. Our sheer weight of numbers as we win it at the contest infused with three mobile talls. It's Adelaide 2017 on steroids.

How about Geelong v Melbourne, 2015? Get you chilled out significantly before watching us smash them next week.

Lovely guy is Luke. Some of his family are still Melbourne as he started with us. Then went to the Bulldogs and on to St Kilda. And yep, his father John was St Kilda's recruiting manager for many years.

He's immature but that's the point I'm making. He hasn't broken out yet and kicked 3 and could have easily have 5 or 6. l reckon he's almost there.

He's had a renewed team focus in the last few weeks because he played quite selfish footy at times earlier in the year. They clearly had a word with him about being focused on the team and he's probably gone too far the other way now. I hope he can adjust in time this season to really find that balance.

It's interesting. I've watched the Magpies last few games and De Goey really draws multiple defenders, leaving his team mates free. Against the Giants, it was the first time that I remember Petracca doing the same thing and drawing multiple defenders at once. It happened a few times, where 2 or 3 defenders would be drawn to him. Petracca's ceiling is higher than De Goey's, but it's all about whether he can reach it. The signs in the last fortnight are there and I hope he has a break out game in finals.

Lewis handballs to him, he drops it and GWS gain possession. A chain of nice intricate handballing comes undone when Jones handballs straight to Ward, who laces out and it ends up being a GWS goal. There's at least two off the top of my head... I'd argue it's your bias that's at play here. As with so many Demonlanders, you fail to see the mistakes and only hold onto the fact that Jones stuck by us through the crap. That's not a good reason.

I don't think I got that email...

Yep and my sis was saying that on one of the Facebook pages MFC supporters were saying 'how do we use our free tickets'. So apparently the club gave out some freebees yesterday. Did anyone else hear that? Either way, bloody brilliant that we got 37k there. I'd estimate 1,000 or so GWS supporters. The bandwagoners are back on board, which is great. When times were tough I used to say I'd never welcome them back, but get as many in the gate as possible nowadays. 50,000 members next year if we win a final this year and add Gaff. I reckon that'll all happen.

I don't hate Jones. He seems like a really good bloke and I applaud him for sticking with us when times were extremely tough, but he's just about done. Even when we were flying yesterday he was fumbling and failing to execute.

His game against the Giants was the perfect exhibition of the good and bad Petracca. He's too much of a hero at times. A lot of his kicks were those dinky, fancy kicks and often they're too aspirational. He'll lack intensity and fail to cover territory to tackle or lock down space. But then he'll attack the contest and scare opponents with his strength and intensity. He's got a nice vertical leap and can take a solid overhead mark. So there's good and bad there. But ultimately, he's a much better player when he does the simple things well. With the right development he'll become an important player. Fortunately, we have a good development team.

He missed a quarter of the season didn't he? He would have walked in the Coleman had he played the whole year.

What an incredible win. Clearly the best win under Goodwin. We were missing just as many important players as GWS and we creamed them. Some of our ball movement was champagne. The passage that lead to ANB's goal was simply awesome. Gawn is getting better every week. He played a real leaders game. Those two chases and his ability to drop back and take important defensive (eg on the quarter time siren) was terrific. Upon reflection, I find this game exciting because I think even though we played patches of brilliant footy, there's still a lot more we can do. But for the majority of the match we applied great frontal pressure and our press was working on the bigger ground, which was nice to see. Brayshaw loves playing on the wide expanses of the MCG. He really gets into space well. Weideman finally put together a full good game of AFL. Really contributed. I reckon we've clicked. It's a bit like Richmond last year. Even if we fall over in the finals, 2019 is looking really exciting. Add a Gaff and we become scary.

May well have played his breakout game today. Is building really nicely. Was always in front, brought the ball to the ground when he needed to and took some nice marks. Well done, Sammy.

He was as solid as a rock again today. More than you could say for Jones. If it comes down to a decision between Lewis or Jones next season with an Andrew Gaff coming into the midfield, I'd be going Lewis almost every time. He rarely makes mistakes.

His best game for the club today. His improvement has been phenomenal.

Decided to catch the red eye flight out of Perth tonight in order to get back for tomorrow. Don't let me down redlegs. ??

I know this was in jest, but it's an interesting point. I'm not saying Jesse isn't in our top 5-10 players, he's a star IMO, but... does anyone know what our record is without him in the last two seasons? In a way, having him out makes us more unpredictable, particularly with Melksham in the side, who is great 1v1, quick and a beautiful kick.

It's great to get that monkey off our backs. I'm hoping this now releases the mental shackles and allows us to really attack GWS and Week 1 of the finals. We tried our best to throw it all away again though. However, I thought Gawn was outstanding. He's not necessarily dominating in the hit outs every stoppage, but his influence around the ground has been better in the last fortnight or so, than it's been for the entire year IMO. Jake Melksham was also vital as usual and our ball movement looked really dangerous and crisp. The Eagles allowed us to play it this way, which is interesting. I think Goodwin outcoached Simpson this week. We knew exactly how to beat them, executed and the Eagles had no answers - particularly, after Darling went down. Jones is a big worry for mine though. The opposition sag off him on the outside, because they know he's not damaging and then he's too slow on the inside. When Brayshaw improves his defensive running (which is almost non existent and at times costly), he will become the leader that we lack to support Max and Clarry in the middle. He has a knack of kicking clutch goals. Getting Viney back in this side, alongside Oliver, Gus and Harmes, and we will be very hard to stop. I think a lot of today seemed to be mental though. They had Kennedy, Gaff, NikNat and then Darling out - probably 4 of their 5 best players - yet we almost let them kick over 100 points. Now that we've made finals, I think the psychology of this will really enable us to take that next step. Meanwhile, Nev Jetta, take a bow. He's struggled in the second half of the year, but he was superb today. A real leader's game. Other highlights were Harmes' continued improvement (I'm loving that - completely unexpected - he's becoming a very good footballer) and Salem's poise was important all the way through the game. He's such a good decision maker and executor. Unfortunately though, ANB can still not handle the pressure of a hot footy. This is worrying. But, at least he was cleaner on the outside. I'm in Perth next week for business so I'll miss my first game in Victoria for many years. It's disappointing, because I reckon we could pinch it next week.

He's no De Goey unfortunately. I hope he proves me wrong in the next season or two, but he's not a match-winner like the former.

Agree with this sentiment as well. It seems the most obvious move, but as soon as a side gets two goals in a row, where the momentum is clearly against us, we should be reverting to man on man. I would back just about every player in our 22 to win a 1v1, with the exception of JKH. We need to revert to this set up a lot more regularly if we want to dig our heels in when the going gets tough.

Good point mate. Tough to know. But they have certainly not fixed our zonal set up from opposition kick outs. I know that much and that's what's staggering to me.