Adam The God

To be fair, that is what being politically correct is about. It's just been hijacked to have a negative connotation by snowflakes who also hijacked the term snowflake, when it was originally used to refer to people like them - people that want to be free to say whatever they like, without consequence. Funnily enough when we're children, we're taught that the words that we use mean something and have consequences. Eddie McGuire is of that similar ilk who thinks he should be able to say whatever he wants, without consequence.

I completely agree with this. He needs to stay forward permanently and have a role to play. I concur it should be as a deep forward.

I agree with all of that, mate. He's lazy and a show pony. I think if he puts it all together though, he'll be equal if not better, than De Goey.

I'd look at 2 or 3 small forwards. Bedford will be interesting to see this year. I'd also debate your point @Diamond_Jim that we haven't drafted in any superstars. Oliver will be one. He's already a star. In twelve months, Brayshaw will join him.

Kids bash Weideman for Christmas?

IMO people are going the early crow on Petracca. Let's reassess at the end of this year. Statistically, he's very similar to De Goey, but the Magpie is clearly ahead for goals. I'd keep him out of the midfield rotation for a few weeks and get him to play as a permanent forward. Keep it simple, because he actually makes the easy look difficult and the hard look easy at times. I reckon he'll be okay and I think given how close they are statistically, it shows you what Petracca's ceiling is if he can get it together, because De Goey is considered a 'star' and he is due to scoreboard impact.

Absolute crap. Nice and cynical world you live in, Biffboy.

Well, you need possession in the first place in order to get the footy into dangerous areas to pressure and creating scoring chances. We rely on our contested possessions to gain metres and then pressure the opposition into giving up scores in their defensive 50. Same idea as Richmond, except their play was/is based more off slingshot, given their centre clearance work was/is ordinary.

I disagree that we don't have the personnel to implement the control game style. Collingwood's kicking is pretty ordinary at times. This was even demonstrated last night at times and I don't think they could have played much better as a team. The key to the control game style is that the kicks are going to uncontested situations. It's far easier to nail a kick to an uncontested position rather than kick to the advantage of a team mate where there is less room for error. There is a tendency to bite off more tha you can chew with a contested kick and the contest can be halved easily if the kick to advantage is not precise. A lot of it's about spread IMO and that's where Collingwood's speed is helpful to their list and suited to their game style. Whereas, we've built a list around contested beasts whose contested possessions will stand up in finals. Given our lack of speed (particularly in the forward half), it makes perfect sense that we adopt a fast and chaotic style that can be implemented directly after winning the contested possession. The problem with the chaotic style is that it solely relies on much more taxing work rate to execute pressure and when it is non existent, as it was last night for Richmond, or even slightly off, the game style is severely compromised. The control game style however is less taxing on the team in possession of the ball and just requires spreading, but makes the opposition work overtime even to regain possession. I think we could play the control game style and we were playing it at times across 2015-2017. But given our lack of contested marks and our lack of speed, I would potentially still lean towards us playing chaotic football. However, given our seeming lack of fitness at the moment, it might actually be better to try the control game style (with less fitness needed) for a few weeks until we've gained some much needed fitness. Ideally, I'd like us to cultivate a third unique style. It'll be interesting to see if we change things up tomorrow.

I completely agree. I just think OMac is worse. I'm not actually sure what he brings.

He's in your gun, isn't he, mate? I don't particularly rate OMac or Frost, but I'd take Frost ahead of OMac. When Lever is fit, I think we should see Frost stay and OMac go out, but I suspect it'll be a week by week proposition, because neither are good enough.

Treloar is still a butcher; I'd physically target Aish and Cripps every time (both are soft); Howe is a so-so kick; and their defence is ordinary. However, their forwardline has now surpassed Richmond's for dangerousness. They have so many options and they don't rely on height (except for Cox), which makes them pretty unpredictable. I said over the off season that I thought Lynch would make Richmond more predictable. Let's see how that continues to play out. Richmond's pressure game was barely there tonight, which makes that tough to tell. It was almost like Rance's injury last week knocked all the air out of them for the rest of the season. It'll be really interesting to see how they respond next week. Collingwood, for me, are the ones to beat this season. Their midfield is in the perfect premiership age bracket too. They have the edge on West Coast, if only because the Grand Final will always be played at the G. If they get their chance against this year, I reckon Collingwood will take it. It's early, I know, I know. Let's hope they're peaking too early like Richmond did last year. I wonder how much Buckley will use that Hawthorn keepings off style in other games this year. I also wonder whether it'd stand up in finals. It reminds me of the way Klopp's Liverpool and Guardiola's Man City play in the EPL. It's about possession, possession and waiting for the opposition to break structure, before they try and go in behind you with pace. It suits Collingwood's speedy forward line too. And when that's not working, they have the high kick to 30m out to Cox. A fascinating season ahead I reckon. I'm expecting a lot more tricks from our mob this year, because we've got some innovators, certainly Goodwin and Jennings are. I'd like to see how we work on the smaller grounds and then like last year, how we adjust that game style to the bigger grounds like the MCG and Optus.

No it's not. Oscar was thrashed down there in the regular season last year. Frost is a better bet on Hawkins if May can't get the job done. (Yes, yes, I know that's why we brought May in, but Frost is quicker, so as an alternative, he's handy.) I wouldn't have played Oscar, who I now concede may well not make it. But I'd probably take Oscar's experience over Hore. It feels a bit like shuffling the deck chairs circa 2013 after last week's performance. I know it's not that dire, but I can't see us being able to run this game out either. You don't gain fitness as drastically as we clearly need to, within a week. It just doesn't work that way. This is more likely IMO. I can. Frost can take a small forward and/or so can May. Ablett's too clever for Frost, but Frost would have him for pace. Ultimately though, I think we'll see May to Hawkins; Frost will start on Ratugolea; and Oscar will play interceptor. FWIW, I'd play Oscar on Ratugolea to start with (even though it's a dangerous move) and play Frost on a small, and use his rebound. I'd play Hibberd as the third tall/interceptor. It'll be interesting to see what we do though. Preuss' tank must be a concern for the FD. Given it's a night match though and it'll be cooler down in Geelong, he may well get a look in. When we beat Geelong down there in 2015 (a long time ago, I know), we played Max (in his break out game) and Spencer. We could well do something similar, because with the dimensions of the ground, we may not get exploited for pace as badly as we would on the G. This could well happen too. Good post. I thought Wagner could hold his head high, but he obviously didn't meet KPIs, otherwise he'd still be in the team. Players at Casey weren't exactly pounding the door down to get in the senior team.

There's absolutely no way Viney goes from what he delivered last week to fully fit this week. Not going to happen. But I hope he delivers a bit more this week. It wouldn't be difficult. It was potentially his worst game ever last week.

I wouldn't be surprised to see your bro get a go soon. You'd know more than me, but I wouldn't be surprised if he played as a back up ruckman and a KP swingman when he gets his go.

I'm on the Degoey train now. What a finisher. This is what he has on Petracca. I can't recall our boy kicking that one around the body ever. Degoey does it with his eyes shut most of the time. If Trac is going to reach his potential, which he certainly can, he needs to return to his 2017 finishing. Statistically they're similar, but right now, Degoey is a finisher and Petracca is not.

It's certainly got the spoilt brat, entitled football club about it. When Gawn was banging on during pre season about only being happy going into an off-season after winning the flag, I was thinking STFU and just concentrate on training and preparing for Round 1.

Haha, what a stupid little gronk. Don't contradict yourself in the same few sentences. Was it legal or was Jonas fined? If it were within the rules, there would be no fine. That said, what a whack. I hope that sparks us, because we were pitiful last week.

Our frenetic game style is perfectly suited to a quick deck. That's exactly what we want. It's the big grounds (like the MCG and Optus Stadium) that don't suit us if we don't work hard enough on the defensive spread. The dimensions of Geelong suit us nicely, like Adelaide Oval's dimensions.

We're terrible in the wet. Our game style breaks down really badly.

I reckon it's clear as day RE: Preuss. He couldn't get through more than a half in JLT1. He's a mile off, fitness-wise. I find it hard to believe given he's had more time than anyone to get his fitness up to scratch. To see that he couldn't even run out 3.5 quarters in a single match was deeply troubling and I suspect the FD feel the same way. I don't think he'll get a look in for a while and if he does, it'll say everything about Max.

I'm not sure it's an overreaction. I said a couple of weeks ago that we'd go 0-2. Going by the fitness of our best 22 on Saturday, I'd say it's highly likely we'll struggle to run out games for at least the first 3 or 4 weeks and if that's the case, we can kiss the finals goodbye. I'm usually pretty optimistic on my season outlook and have predicted (as many of us have), our incremental rise over the past 3-4 seasons. I hope we can make the 8, because with Rance going down, I reckon anyone can win it this season. The problem is we don't want to give our fellow competitors for those top 8 spots a month headstart. We were so far off the pace in JLT 2 and Round 1 that I'm not sure it's likely we'll turn it around within a week. It would be very Melbourne if we did, but I can't see it happening this time, simply due to the clear fitness issue. I'm still making the trip down to that hole this Saturday, but unlike last year, I'm not expecting a win. I'm very worried. I only hope the dimensions of the ground will help us and that Round 1 is the wake up call we needed.

Bizzell was okay, but geez, we overrate our own. And this thread is yet another excuse for Werridee to do another best 22. It's Round 2. Do we really need to be doing future best 22s? It's far too early to tell on 3 or 4 of those guys.

I completely agree. I can never hear our cheer squad and our members in the pockets were very quiet. The MCC were up and about at times, but not enough. It was certainly a horrible way to start the year after all the talk over the off season of making the MCG a cauldron (NO) and winning the flag (with that sort of performance - NO).

I know as of July last year we were ranked #15th In the competition for scores from chains beginning in the forward half. Perhaps, this is a telling stat, but I think it might be skewed by the bombing, frenetic inside 50 play that saw us accumulate constant forward thrusts, off the back of our clearance dominance. https://m.afl.com.au/news/2018-07-25/stats-incredible-your-clubs-quirky-numbers