Adam The God

Time to bloody bury our soft underbelly on the big stage.

That was a poor error inside defensive 50, but he earned the goal back straight away. He needs more awareness at times, but that will come with more experience. Tyson has flown under the radar a bit this year, due to all our younger high draft picks. A ball magnet. Imagine for a moment a midfield of: Viney, Tyson, Prestia, Oliver. In two years, probably the best midfield in the league. Thank you very much.

Aside from the Port game, he's been really consistent. One of my favourites and well on the way to becoming an A grader. Just needs to string some games together without injury.

I wonder if this will shut a few up? He's doing fine and let him keep developing in the 1's.

I rate Spencer. I reckon he's a decent back up, but as always, Ernest, each to their own.

We didn't...

Come home, Dion. Despite what some say, we do very much need your services. They were always being held together by aging stars. I thought they'd stay in the middle of the pack for another season, but it seems they might be going down sooner. I think it's hilarious. They need draft picks to build their ordinary list. Like St Kilda, Carlton's team is being held together be their older players, with very little coming through below that. Cripps and Weitering. Maybe Curnow in time. Anyone else? The higher they finish, the less likely they are to ever get anywhere with their current list. They need at least another year or two in the bottom 4 to get picks. Their spine is rubbish and their midfield is old. They're going nowhere. Bolton's structures and coaching are wallpapering their deficiencies for the moment, but they will be in big trouble if it continues.

No way Frost goes out...

Yeah, I can't understand it myself. Perhaps they thought Dunn and Garland were better defensive options at the start of the season, but have now adapted and changed tact?

Spot on. Agree on all fronts there. I posted somewhere yesterday that Hunt is a more defensively capable version of Lumumba and in their premiership year, Collingwood gave to him off half back at almost every opportunity. Hunt is a far better defender than Lumumba though. Some of his spoils this year have been terrific. I do find it strange that the FD resisted for so many weeks to throw Frost back. He looked more comfortable back there than up forward. He made some errors, but also initiated a number of fine spoils and offered rebound from defence. He was a little excitable on a couple of occasions, which led to turn overs by foot, but he'll eradicate these with more experience and instruction from the FD.

That's how Tony got in the last time and one of the major reasons for it. Rupert was using his News Corp muscle to protect his billions tied up in FOXTEL. Rupert is a conservative, but he's happy to bat for either side of politics if it suits his business interests.

As someone who works in the industry, I believe live sport will simply transition on to mobile, transient devices. There will still be a need for commentary teams to commentate games. You'll just be able to watch it by streaming it on a streaming provider's device. The AFL distribution deal is linked to the continuing financial success of the game itself, so I doubt they'll self-distribute off their website and charge AFL fans to watch it. That could signal the long term death of the game (then again they are amateurs in so many different ways the AFL), but instead I think they'll sell the rights to a new sporting streaming provider. FOXTEL will die and is dying a slow death and is trying to transition itself across mobile devices, hence FOXTEL GO, but its medium is inherently flawed and outdated. Whoever manages to start the first sporting streaming service in this country will make billions and billions of dollars. As FOXTEL are seeing with the EPL rights though, if you lose the rights, your entire platform fails. So in effect, your entire business plan is contingent on winning the rights, otherwise you're stuffed for the term of that deal. The flimsiness of this model could well be the reason why it hasn't happened quite yet. If I had more money though or was Rupert Murdoch, that's where I'd be putting it. Interesting times ahead, but there'll always be a need for commentators. It's more entertaining, particularly if the commentators are half decent.

To be fair, he's been far more consistent than Kent and Harmes. Anyway, hope he's back to his early season form next week. Definite inclusion by the sounds of it.

You're probably right, TU, but that's what I'd do.

I wouldn't mind these changes. It's Harmes or Kent out for Kennedy IMO. At least Spencer could take second ruck, provide a tall target to kick to and is quicker and more agile than Dawes.

I'd say they either don't believe he'll go close to breaking even (which is a problem for Dawes long-term if so) or that they felt that first game back, wet conditions, his body needed a week playing a simple forward role. If that was the thinking, we'll see Dawes rucking next week.

I shouldn't be stupid enough to predict them. What I have said is that we'll win games we expect to lose and lose games we expect to win. But for the sake of my previous post, let's go with the following. We'll win 5 games from the following matches: Collingwood, Adelaide, Fremantle, St Kilda, West Coast, Gold Coast, Hawthorn, Port Adelaide, Carlton, Geelong. Obviously, we won't win all of them, but we'll manage 5 of those. If we get on a roll, who knows, more could be possible. The beauty of having a young side is that often they aren't hamstrung by fear of failure and the fear of past defeats.

I think a lot of posters' issue with you Satyr is that if all your posts were like the above, they wouldn't have reason to call you out. Their issue and mine too, is that the majority of your posts target other posters for expressing their own opinions, lucidly or otherwise. If you want your posts to have any resonance, let others have their turn to express themselves too, without being personally attacked by you for expressing an opinion that you disagree with.

Agreed. There certainly seems to be this pervasive fear amongst some Melbourne supporters (understandable too given our past mistakes) that history is repeating itself with the FD's determination to play younger players. But there is some grey here and I trust this FD a lot more than I did Neeld or Bailey's teams.

Group 3 is surely: "Oscar McDonald should be given time at the elite level and will develop best there." Reading between the lines of some posts suggesting that we're apparently losing games now by playing him, I'd proffer there's no way his inclusion is costing us games. Spot on, mate.

No way we only win 7 or 8 games. We'll win our 10+ games. Those calls that we'll only win 7 are premature. We'll manage another 5 wins.

They're both more gettable than ever these days, SWYL. That's not to say they won't feature heavily in finals this year, but their glory days are over, IMO. If Dawes can improve his game I will happily say so. And as I have said elsewhere in this thread, I think Dawes was previously really important for Hogan (taking pressure off Hogan and another KPD away from his area), but in the new game style, I think Dawes is less important.

I completely agree, but Harmes and Kent are getting games purely to bring tackling pressure. Harmes has said as much in interviews. His game is built around frenetic tackling pressure. Even if he only gets 5 or 6 kicks, if he lays 8 or 9 tackles then he becomes a vital cog in our team. Kent's KPIs are probably exactly the same and yet neither are delivering. Jeffy is a goal kicker, so he won't be measured only by the forward pressure he brings, but whether he can bob up and kick a few goals. Hogan needs to stop dropping his head when he doesn't win the first contest. You can see him become totally dejected as soon as it happens and he rarely gives a full chase after that. He's had a number of doughnuts in the tackle category this year. For a man of his size, this shouldn't be an issue. But it's all about attitude and work rate, both of which are intrinsically linked. I'd argue that our lack of forward pressure from the forward group was one of two major factors why we lost the game. The second was our midfield was simply less efficient and untidy when delivering the ball upfield. Agree that we overdid the handballing too, but I felt we did that a lot off half back too, which is not linked to forward line pressure, it's linked to poor decision making. You could argue it's a lack of work rate up the ground from our forwards too, in failing to provide a clear option to kick it to. Yeah, I was pretty happy with Watts' game, although he did fade in and out of the game, which is disappointing.

Good post. Spot on.

I think this is a midfield problem. We still lack class there, so our forward 50 entries are just kicks in hope a lot of the time, rarely to the advantage of our forwards. I know a lot of people rated Vince's game yesterday, but I can't recall a clearance of his that was thoughtful and directed to the advantage of a forward. He and Jones can win the ball, but they just kick long, high, up and unders.