Adam The God

Some of the comments directed towards Jesse are warranted, such as the need to improve his goal kicking and lay more tackles, but other detractions I would place into two boxes. 1) unrealistic expectations for a CHF in his second full season. Compare him with whomever you like and statswise, he'll knock them out of the park. Carey, Ablett, even Tom Lynch if you want. If you expect him to come in and win the Coleman and kick goals every week, I'd class these as unrealistic expectations for a young forward being double and triple teamed every week. It's also worth noting he has actually statistically improved his tackle count on his first season. 2) a bit of the old defence mechanism. It'd be very interesting to know if half the posters that knock him now, would do so had he signed earlier in the year. I think this failure to put pen to paper has contributed to frustration within MFC supporter ranks and fair enough to a degree. So in turn much of this response, I believe, is a defence mechanism in response to the possibility of him leaving. But you still have to remember he is a 21 year old CHF, playing the toughest position on the ground, in a forwardline that has (at times) placed an overemphasis on passing and looking for him. Don't expect the best from Jesse for another 2-3 years. If he's kicking 40-odd in his development years, just imagine how good he'll be with natural improvement and experience. The fact that he set the bar so high last year, should not detract from his solid 2016. Would he have liked to kick a little straighter this year? Of course. In all honesty I believe we may have won 2-3 more games had he done so, but ultimately he's still 3 goals outside of the top 10 for goalkickers in the league, so it's not as if he's had an ordinary year. Anyone that choses to spin it that way has an agenda of their own.

Lol. He's become a turnover merchant for them. One of my Pie mates was telling me today he'll be in the top three of their Best and Fairest. I told him that was more of an indictment on their season. He's soft and lazy and simply doesn't fit the mould of player we're trying to foster at the MFC. So glad I don't have to sit through his lazy chases anymore, which might I add, he was doing as early as 2013, but people looked past all that in favour of a highlights reel for dark times.

Good post, S. I agree that it's the mental that we must work on and develop next year. Having predicted 10-12 wins at the end of last season, I'm predicting 12-14 wins next year, which should get us finals. If even start to beat the teams we should beat, we'll get 14 quite easily. That's the goal for 2017. By 2018, I agree, we should be challenging and I don't mean for the 8, but for the big one.

Is my favourite opposition player, along with Prestia. Though I didn't like watching him much yesterday.

Except Cripps, who has lead the clearances all year. For the competition.

If we go by Jude Bolton's recent article, he discussed Roos' philosophy being anchored around the players working through situations going against them, rather than falling back on the coach. That would be about giving the players 'empowerment' to change momentum in games and take control themselves. I'd say this is what it was all about and has been throughout Roos' tenure.

Bugg, Vanders, ANB and Michie are ordinary players. I don't think too many people would debate that. We win games when our midfield performs, our forwardline functions and our backline provides rebound. Yep. It was a terrific day.

I actually don't think they nullified Gawn in the stoppages. He simply tapped straight down the throat of the opposition because 1) he was poor and 2) his midfielders didn't work hard enough.

Vanders is just a hopeless kick and an even worse handballer. Not sure leg speed is necessarily his weakness. But agree with the rest of your post. It's not depth, P, if none of them are good enough at AFL level.

If we can beat Geelong next week, we'll have beaten GWS, Hawthorn, Port, Geelong and was a kick away from beating West Coast and North. 2018 is going to be exciting. 2017 is the year to break that mental fragility.

Yep. Such an ordinary player.

PD and others (myself included) have been saying for weeks that for a player of Bernie's skill level and experience, he consistently makes mind-bogglingly bad decisions. I don't think his move to half back has been good for him, nor his Bluey win last year. Big-headed bumptious Bernie.

We started the game with particularly attacking midfield positioning and adjusted to one-on-one reasonably quickly. We went for it at the top of the last quarter with the Diamond Defence, but ultimately, the players simply weren't working hard enough and when that happens, any game plans falls down. I actually think it was all about work rate and mindset. A bit like my Reds last night (I thought their loss would be a bad omen - both my football teams tend to lose at the same time). And like Liverpool last night, today we failed to take the game on and move the ball quickly. The reason we've shot up the ladder this year is our attacking game. We flick quick handballs about to players in space and then kick long and quickly to the advantage of one-on-ones. They applied tackling pressure, but we didn't know when to pull the trigger on the correct disposal, which was a result of a lack of work rate from the majority of our players.

Hunt managed to impact the game from half back...

Next year we should win the 10 games we did this year, plus beat the Blues, Essendon and St Kilda twice. That gives us 14. Once we start dealing with the tag of favourites, we'll be mentally stronger and 14 wins could get us in the top 4. I think the biggest thing holding us back next year is the mental stuff. Otherwise, we could be anything next year. I'd certainly welcome a first round Friday night game against a bunch of drug cheats whose games should be banished from primetime broadcast slots. A good test to start next year with and a test of our early mental strength.

We're a one trick pony like everyone else (except Hawthorn), in that if our midfield is off, we lose. Hence, midfields win games. That tells me he choked today.

Isn't that just pathetic?

So Goodwin isn't at fault? It was all down to Roos was it?

When no one else is moving in front of you or working hard enough to provide you with an option in the midfield, you can get caught holding the ball or turn it over. I'd be blaming our other mids who failed to bring the work rate or intensity that Tyson did. He was constantly running hard to provide an option for his team mates.

I recall distinctly 2 horrendous turnovers from Viv and we all know the DE stat is useless. He's a better kick than Harmes, but he rarely takes the game on with his disposal and as PD says, does everything in slow motion. He like ANB, unfortunately, are not up to it.

Pretty harsh on Tyson, who kept running all day and picked up 30 possessions. Probably our best player.

They were first to the ball all day and the majority of free kicks they got, I thought were there. Most of them came of the back of heinous errors by MFC players. Oh and realistically, we might have had more uncontested possessions (due to overuse), but they absolutely spanked us in the centre clearances. Is their dominance some kind of record? We were never in it. Cripps lead the ground for clearances by quite away and then Gibbs was second. The more I think about it, the more I think Jones played one of the worst games from a captain I can recall. In a big game, with everything to play for. He fumbled, overused, put team mates under pressure and when we needed him to kick the captain's goal, he couldn't get the job done. His play exemplified our entire team. This is a guy who has played in finals and is the captain of the club, yet he seemed to choke in a way that would belie his experience.

Yep, we definitely need a Plan B in the wet. We can't play our gun and run game style in the wet. It breaks down poorly. And we just didn't pull the trigger with kick or handball at the right time today. When we should have kicked we handballed. When we should have handballed, slowed down play or gone side ways or tried the switch, we bombed long to an empty forwardline. It's been a while since our forwardline has been as dysfunctional as it was today.

Choke. Absolute choke. Tyson, Hunt, Jetta, the McDonald's can hold their heads high and Hogan worked hard but kicked like a D grader. That leaves the rest. Gawn had an absolute bath. Jones was terrible. Michie and ANB have no weapons for this level. Trade and delist both. Weideman was run off every time and was redundant. Vandenberg and Bugg are fringers. Horrible skills. We were unclean, overused the ball and couldn't execute basic fundamentals of the sport. I didn't want to be right but I've been telling my Carlton mate all year that they'd beat us in that game. We're just as likely to beat Geelong next week. In hindsight, missing the finals this year isn't such a bad thing, because if they can't handle the pressure of beating a pitiful 16th placed Carlton side on the MCG to keep their finals hppes alive, they wouldn't have been able to handle the pressure of a final.

Given what was on the line, this is worse than the Essendon debacle.