Adam The God

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.

Completely agree. But within that gameplan, things can still be improved. Allowing easy exits, IMO, goes against the entire philosophy that Goodwin promotes. I'm almost certain they don't want us to allow easy exits from our forward 50. Goodwin has banged on all year about it being 'a territory battle' and if you 'win the territory battle', it goes a long way to winning the game and ultimately placing your opponent under as much pressure as possible. Yes, this may not have mattered had we kicked straight against Geelong and Sydney, but it wouldn't have helped us against Hawthorn for example. We weren't winning the rest of the battle enough to allow easy exits.

Okay, I can get on board this sentiment further, but disagree with how many guns we need. I'd say we have three, maybe four guns on our list at the moment. Gawn, Oliver, Lever and Viney. In the not too distant future though, Brayshaw will sit alongside them (and arguably already does) and Hogan. That's six and the spine. Add Gaff and Hibberd to the potential of Salem and Petracca, and we'd have guns across multiple lines. If you look at Richmond, they have four guns. Riewoldt, Martin, Cotchin and Rance. The rest are of similar ilk to Brayshaw and Hogan at this stage. They've won a flag and will probably win another one. I don't think our list is the problem here. Sure, Gaff will make us better and maybe one other of anything near his quality and we'll be premiership ready sooner. But I think in the meantime, it's a matter of waiting another 20-40 games and we'll be in the sweet spot. Further, I'd argue we're not overrated, but just rated slightly earlier than where we're at. I suppose you could term that being overrated, but I think our core have shown enough to say we'll have the second best list in the league. If we can hold onto our talent and keep adding the likes of Lever and Gaff, we will be able to compete with GWS.

One of the best 1v1 players and the leading assister in the league is missing from that list in Melksham. Harmes is good enough now IMO too. I think you're harsh on a few others as well. Namely Neville Jetta (who has clearly been playing with an injury since the Port game), Oscar McDonald, Fritsch (despite being overrated) and you could argue Petracca also. Your post insinuates that some of those guys on our list who are not on your list above, won't get there. Petracca, like Salem, will get there in time. However, it is a problem when one of our captains is nearing our bottom 5 or 6 players, having only just turned 30 though. If you look at those who are probably in our bottom 5 or 6 players, we have Garlett, Tyson, Frost, ANB and Spargo. Jeffy can be a match winner on his day. Tyson can be close to one on his day too. Frost may become a half decent role player and would get a game for quite a few clubs. ANB can be an important contributor on his day. And Spargo is young (had a shocker yesterday), but will be a beauty in time. I think you're underrating our list now. With the exception of GWS, in 2019 or 2020, we'll have the strongest list in the competition.

A good coach has a back up plan. If you're failing to kick straight, why would you also not try to prevent easy exits from your forward 50? I don't understand why you wouldn't try to fix areas of your structures that are not working. On this point, I'd also argue that preventing easy exits from our forward fifty would further contribute to our want to lock the ball inside 50/get repeat inside 50s. If we're pressuring those exits, there's more likelihood we can set up defensively down the ground and be ready to counter straight back inside 50. Yeah, Goody didn't lose us the game. Our kicking did, but he still hasn't addressed how to play teams on the MCG when they play us that way. Yet, it's been happening pretty much all year against good opposition.

And not to be that [censored] who quotes his own post, but on point 3, the only reason Sydney didn't handball their way out of defensive fifty like the other sides had done, was because they don't have the leg speed. The scary thing is Longmire showed the competition how to beat us even without leg speed.

There are similarities between all our loses at the MCG against good opposition this year. They've actually been almost carbon copies. 1) we've dominated games early but have squandered our dominance in front of goal (Hawthorn, Richmond and now Sydney). 2) given up really easy stoppage goals and failed to arrest the momentum by creating or taking chances. 3) we've allowed the opposition (Geelong, Hawthorn, Richmond and Sydney) easy exits out of their back half. All of those teams have followed the same exit strategy. Short chip to an unmarked player in the pocket and then another chip to fifty and handballed out or kicked long to the boundary and reset. That we haven't been able to prevent this or put anything in place to stop this is staggering. You could see it was a problem with our forward zonal set up literally an hour into our Round 1 game. So whilst Goody and his coaching staff aren't responsible for our players choking in front of goal, they are culpable for failing to address issues in our system that have been present all year. I'm not going to highlight any one players performance, but for me, we've not only thrown away a top 4 spot, but we've most likely thrown away our finals chance.

They rate what he has. That much is clear.

What is Carey on about? Is he the worst commentator going around? What's he basing Parish becoming an AA on? Handball receives off half back?

Richardson's gone, surely...

Hang on. Why are we trading out Tyson simply for a pick? Gaff would come in as a FA. Unless you package a pick you get for Tyson to get a real 'need' onto the list, I'd be holding on to Tyson as depth.

How was Parish's attempted tackle again there? Butter Parish.

Despite those muppets talking up Parish, gee he's soft. Went back with one hand before. Okay on the outside, but soft on the inside if the heat's on.