Adam The God

Just thinking on our defence, I liked that we tried Turner forward in the last, but he seemed lost after that first shot on goal. We certainly have issues with our KPFs, but Petty is serviceable and JVR will find some form at some stage. The bigger questions for me surround our defensive set up. I have genuine question marks over May and Lever moving forward. May because he's starting to lose 1v1s and is slowing down. Lever because he struggles to play on smalls or talls and if the game is fast, I don't trust him to win contests behind the ball. May started to try and hit the corridor kicks yesterday and we need more of that at the right time. Turner needs to stay back IMV and I know @Slartibartfast is a Howes fan like me and has suggested if Howes came in, Windsor could shift to the wing, perhaps Lindsay to half back to use his pace and ball use. I also hope we get Adams into the team if there are injuries to May or Lever moving forward. I'd structure the back half of the ground as follows: Howes May McVee Bowey Turner Lever / Lindsay Windsor Oliver Langford Langdon and Chandler to remain high half forwards. Rivers to stay in the midfield.

Lever was terrible at AFL level, TMac was terrible at VFL level. Wrong lever to pull.

I'm not going to explain the differences again. Read any of my approximately 20 posts on the matter this year.

You continually shift the goal posts. I pulled you up because you said the game plan doesn't work. When I pointed to our previous two wins, you started talking goalkicking. If you'd started with goalkicking and not mentioned game plan, I would have agreed with you, but you started with the shallow analysis of the game plan doesn't work. I don't think any Melbourne supporter would disagree with the far from enlightening idea that our goalkicking is often atrocious. Aside from the end of 2021, the start of 2022 and the start of 2023. If Chocco is still deemed valuable for our development pathways, keep him on, but we need a new voice for goal kicking coach.

Did Brisbane give up? That doesn't bode well for their season.

You're avoiding the question. Did the game style work the last two weeks?

Did it work last week? Did it work the week before?

It wasn't that hard if Oliver kept finding himself free in the corridor, hence the 3 goal assists to half time.

Lol mate, you are king of the flip-flops. You had it slammed shut at Round 3 too, and then it miraculously opened itself the last fortnight.

We had 3 top 4 finishes in a row. You might have been negative all the way through 2022 and 2023, but I loved it. And the 2023 flag was there for the taking if we'd had a bit more 2021 luck.

No one was tagging Oliver. To half time he had 6 disposals. 5 of them were uncontested and 1 contested. He had 3 goals assists and 4 score involvements to half time. He couldn't break from stoppage, that was the problem.

I'm glad you're at least acknowledging the likely loading, because it was pretty clear our guys couldn't cover the field. The first half TOG for a bunch of our guys was really unusual too. Only one mid (Trac) cracked 20 disposals (with 7 pressure acts) - Max equalled Trac with 22 disposals for a team high touches. Oliver had 16 touches (10 pressure acts!), Rivers had 14 touches and 17 pressure acts (spent a third of the game at half back). You then had our best pressure player over rhe last 6 weeks in Tom Sparrow with only 11 pressure acts, Chandler with 14 pressure acts. These are not guys that don't bring consistent effort. It's just they couldn't get out of first gear.

He's a decent sub role player. I think we pulled the wrong rein today with Laurie as sub and Spark as a starter. I thought that before the game too. That said, Laurie was horrible when he came on.

I think we can win enough games to make finals, yes. There are more than enough historical examples to not rule us out. As I've already noted, Hawthorn were 5-7 with a percentage of 86.7 last year at the same time. In fact, Hawthorn ended up being 8-8, with a percentage of 94.2 at Round 17 last year. They finished with a percentage of 118.5. We had a bad day in the Alice, just as we did against GWS in Round 16 of 2023, kicking 5.15 that day and then coming out and winning the next week with a very straight 12.7. We're not dead yet.

Look, this bit I agree with strongly. There was a moment in the third where we really needed to keep working the ball around the ground to get the best shot on goal. We switched into the corridor and nothing came, so it was chipped to Lever, who should have kept chipping, but instead bombed it long to a 2 vs 1 in St Kilda's favour. They took essentially an uncontested intercept mark. I thought Lever was a liability today except for that intercept mark he took off the centre clearance at the start of the second or third quarter. He was routinely outmuscled by small forwards. As to our other leaders, Clarry went back to blindly bombing it by the last quarter. On the good side, Trac was solid today at handballing or going short. Our leaders have to get this long bombing out of their game though. We haven't seen it for 7 weeks, but as the game worn on it became worse and worse.

Well, off you pop then. FFS, the negativity on here. 🤦

Rivers has been really good at times this year, but like the whole team today, he was very ordinary. As @layzie implies, we looked either smashed and/or terrible. Not really. We had 8 more scoring shots. That's not outcoaching someone. That's kicking yourself out of a game.

I thought the leaders were terrible today. This game reminded me of the GWS loss up there 2 years ago.

Totally, it's certainly not over.

A fresh Bailey Laurie struggled to get the distance on his snap from 25m. Sharp missed from directly in front, snapping, but under 12s type stuff, no pressure, an easy around the body shot. Melksham 30m straight in front in the last. Kozzy's in the first. 20m out. That's 4 right there.

Lowest pressure match under Goodwin too, I believe. Let's wait to see the pressure stats on that count, but if you don't bring pressure, you let them transition the ball from one end of the ground to the other, and have simple marks at the top of the goal square. Didn't Butler have all his goals from the top of the square? You can't let Wanganeen-Milera run around by himself though.

Hang on, hang on, hang on. We had 8 more scoring shots, most of our 28 shots on goal were extremely gettable. No one was good today except May, but to put this on the midfield misses the point. Like the first half last week, and so many times before over a long period of time, if you can't kick basic set shots, you won't win games.

The lowest pressure we've had under Goody apparently. May the only winner on the ground. Probably our worst performance since North. Kick straight though and we win by 4 or 5 goals. Turner and Melksham missing in the opening minute of the 4th basically put paid to the game. These are the sort of games we'll have unfortunately. Deeply frustrating and our conversion rate will mean we will struggle to be competitive against any side. Play like that again I hate to think what Collingwood would do to us.

Yep, agreed, history would suggest we'd bank on quantity over quality eventually leading to a higher score than the opposition in combination with strong defence behind the ball. However, as we've started to change our list over the last two years, we've now got a greater spread of better ball users. Having McVee, Salem and Windsor behind the ball; Lindsay and Langford on our wings; and Spargo and Kozzy kicking it inside, we should improve this ability to convert more inside 50s into scores and need less inside 50s to kick winning scores.

Interesting, I've never seen that, but I just go straight to Kayo for footy content.