Adam The God

I agree with everything you've said in this post. It's not political correctness though. And as I've said multiple times myself in this thread, the fact we're still talking about Jesse having a ciggie is pathetic.

Anti-smoking is political correctness? Nah.

He's still playing too much hero footy for mine. He doesn't have the same sharp footy brain that tells him when to give off instinctively like Oliver does (players rarely do - Clarry is a special talent). Jack reminds me more of a young Jones. But we've gotta be better than that hero footy stuff - Moloney was another terrible proponent of it. I've noticed Jack get caught a lot with the ball this season (as was the case pre-2016). Whereas, I felt last year he was keeping things simpler. The other thing about Viney is he's seen as potentially damaging by opposition teams, so they're putting more work into him this year. I can't imagine there's an instruction for Viney to hold back from the contest and having a designated primary extractor seems to go against Goody's philosophy too, which is back in our guys. I'd say we'd be all for Viney seeing ball and getting ball, although there may well be an increased focus on defensive efforts either during the contest or once the stoppage is completed. It might be this process that is leaving Viney second-guessing? The dominance of Oliver and Jones this year is enough to put our midfield on top most weeks. If Viney can find some early 2016 form this year, we'd be pushing for the top 4. He averaged 26 disposals last year as a 21-22 year old. The difference between Oliver and Jones is that unlike Viney and Tyson, their disposal is fantastic. Jones continues to improve his disposal. His kicking on either side is terrific as of late. So there may well be an increased focus for Jack on purity of disposal too, which might lead him to second-guess his instincts. If Jack can continue to improve his disposal and keep it simple, much like his co-captain has learnt over the journey, he'll be a much better player for it. And if we have a midfield that rarely makes mistakes by hand or foot and is brilliant has gaining possession regularly, we'll be sitting pretty near the top of the ladder.

Banning it wouldn't do anything. That's a bad move to ban them entirely. Only makes them cooler then. They heavily tax them and plaster death all over the boxes. I think the government response and legislation (in terms of public smoking) has been the perfect way to marginalise smoking and smokers. And meanwhile, the Jesse puff on a ciggie is still a rubbish news story.

Good on ya, Hunty.

Preferred the Gold's back in the day, but each to their own, WYL.

Given Jack's foot skills and decision making, I think I'd prefer to have him as second ruck and play forward most of the time. The most important characteristic of fearless Goody Footy is our use of half back and even deeper. The backs (and floating mids) are responsible for switching the play or looking for that spot up in the corridor that opens the whole ground up. This is where a great number of our attacks come from. We expect to win the centre clearance with Max Gawn in the ruck, but our plan B is switching the ball quickly, widening the ground and using our half backs to repel from defence to attack as quickly as possible.

7th in the Coaches Association running too.

Please remove Sam Rowe from that list. Sincerely, A F.

Agreed, although I think what we'll see this year is a bit of what I thought we'd see in 2016. That is, we'll win some games we expect to lose and lose some games we expect to win. So if we lose a couple of games early on in 2017 that we expect to win, I think we may well make up for it during the harder back end draw. I am only scared about playing Adelaide, GWS, Bulldogs, West Coast (in Perth) and at a stretch, Sydney, but that last game is at the 'G, so we're a real shot. If we play like we have in the first three weeks, we'll win enough games to finish in the 8. Can't wait for the rest of this season. I'm even more excited by the challenge the Gawn injury has placed on us.

Interesting post and I wonder if the one club that ironically would have picked Heeney at #1, was us. Given we did select him first from memory.

Yeah, probably dreaming. And now he's off the market. Ah well.

Me too, mate. I'd be even more confident if we beat Freo and predict an 8-2 start to the bye. As you can tell, I really liked what I saw from our guys after Gawn went down. Our kicking for goal aside, I haven't been more excited about a Melbourne team in my near 30 years of supporting/life.

This is so damn good. I've already sent it around the family.

He's one of my favourites too, but I want him to work on a few things at VFL level and come back into the big stuff having dominated the VFL for a few weeks. Making him hungry won't hurt him at all. I did. I watched it. Thought the Bulldogs didn't come to play and were beaten by harder running on the outside. If we bring the required intensity we'll beat them.

If Spencer goes down in the next 12 weeks, Frost would be my choice for number one ruckman. Watts can then play forward.

Cannot wait to show the rest of the competition what we can do this weekend, minus Gawn, Hogan and Lewis.

Haha, just announced on AFL360 that Shiel has recommitted to GWS for $750k. Robbo reckons he might be on a little more than that, but interesting. I'd say he could well have been on $500k at the last contract.

I understand they have a larger salary cap than the rest of the competition, but you can only pay so many blokes $500k+.

I agree that poor kicking is poor football. But that discounts all the hard work we did to dominate the contest around the ground, and get the ball into decent scoring positions. We did this on numerous occasions. I take it you haven't seen the game yet either, OD? It might be worth giving it a watch, rather than being too defeatist about it. I'd also say it was a bit different from the West Coast game in that we never deserved to beat the Eagles by at minimum 5+ goals, but given our dominance around the ground, we should have beaten Geelong by that margin.

I'm sorry, mate. You're not looking closely enough. Even as we were down by a couple of goals at quarter time, you would have seen that we dominated play and simply didn't lower our eyes. Our inside 50s were atrocious and we kicked it on the head of our small forwards against tall Geelong backs. By the second quarter, we'd taken control and continued until pretty much three quarter time. We kick those 10 or so easy shots and we're 10 goals up at three quarter time and you don't come back from there. We blew it.

My old man (who missed the game on Saturday) was telling me he watched the replay for the first time today. I asked him whether the commentators were praising Melbourne or Geelong. He said that almost everyone, including Hudson (who is a Geelong supporter), agreed that the game should have been over if we'd kicked straight. I'm intrigued by David King's new found love of Melbourne too. He's been talking us up big time as of late and apparently was complimentary again during Saturday's commentary.

We had a potentially game-changing trade and draft period there (7 out of 8 are almost best 22), but the rest of the top 10 aren't too bad. - Marchbank looks like he'll be a good player. - If Moore was in our side he'd be a star. - Cockatoo looks decent. - Wright could be anything and is an exciting prospect. - And Pickett is looking okay at Carlton. - Lever is a gun. - Heeney is a gun and will be star. - Daniel was an important player in a premiership side. The list goes on. Pretty strong draft really. We did well with Petracca. Brayshaw hasn't developed as we would have liked, but I'm still confident he'll get there if he can stay on the park.

Yeah, I get that, DA, but until we're right in a premiership window and FA comes into it, we have to go for needs. We might get lucky and have another Lewis fall into our laps, but most of the time we need to target biggest needs first. For mine, we have more pressing needs than Jake Lever.

21 disposals is bloody good for a player who is effectively a second year player. Some comparisons: - Chris Judd achieved this in his third year. - Gary Ablett Jnr achieved below this for his first 5 seasons. - Josh P Kennedy achieved below this for his first 3 seasons. - Patrick Dangerfield achieved below this for his first 4 seasons. Not only is he finding the footy in the midfield, he's finding it up forward and being instrumental with his scoring involvements. This is inconsistent Christian Petracca. Cannot wait for consistent Christian Petracca. Will be a star of the competition.