Adam The God

Agreed. When Hogan is fit and firing that's all he'll need to do. 3 goals every week'd be nice.

There was a reason I said 'near gun' and it's not fact. It's opinion, although I happen to agree with it.

Wow, there's some kneejerking going on in here.

You're having a bad run today, HH. Thompson was nearing gun status at Melbourne when he left. I remember going to a game up in Sydney where he dominated and kicked three goals from midfield. Absolute gun. Then the [censored] left us.

Our ball movement under Neeld was atrocious. In every game this year we've shown at least one passage (sometimes multiple passages) that have included some great ball movement. We went through two whole seasons where we didn't move the ball like that. Neeld was a disaster. With the exception of today, Roos has improved our defence markedly. It's really an incredibly simplistic and not particularly intelligent way of viewing things.

A lot of them looked sore at the first centre bounce actually.

And it's really the midfield we need to improve and get games into the younger blokes that are already on board (Hogan, Salem, Tyson, Brayshaw, Stretch and Petracca).

Jeez, you're fickle, HH. He inherited probably the worst AFL list of all time. If you think one can turn a list around in two years, you simply don't understand list building.

Don't do that. Make him go for Melbourne. It's character-building. It will also give him a sense of real appreciation when the tide turns. Unlike those kids that just jump on the bandwagon. They weren't woeful at all. There were a few skill errors in there, but pretty much every time we turned it over, they made us pay. We just turned it over in bad areas and too often. We don't attack enough there. A couple of times today we moved the ball really quickly and low and behold, we looked dangerous.

Would have loved Shiel today.

You've gotta remember who we've played this year. But, Jamar is finished. Wouldn't play him again. Trade Howe. Jones and Tyson need to get fit. Dunn needs to lift. He's been ordinary. And we need more from Bernie.

Plus a couple of blokes who are simply not best 22/AFL standard.

Spencer was decent today. He needs to inprove his hit outs, but a ruckman is measured by a lot more than that these days.

Anyone who says we didn't lack depth before the game should be rethinking it after that game. I'm not even that [censored] off. We have a C grade midfield, with older blokes that make error after error and Hawthorn will punish you like no other. Our older blokes won't run hard enough to give their team mates an option and our younger blokes (who are showing the way with their cleaner, more effective disposal and attack on the ball) don't currently have the fitness base to run out games. Tyson (clearly carrying an injury) got a lot more of it in the last and we looked a bit better. I noticed someone said in the game day thread that we need Jones and Tyson firing and it sounds obvious, but when they're not on song, we just have too many of those aforementioned holes.

They better put up a good showing for those of us going along. I'll be mighty [censored] off if we get flogged now, because it sends a pathetic message to the rest of the group.

He's totally worth that and sometimes you have a to pay a bit more to get what you desperately need.

We need to set up in a way that either makes neutralising the opposition stoppages easier or our midfielders need to anticipate the opposition ruckman in a better way. The amount of times oppositions used to read taps of Jeff White and yet our mids have never been able to do this.

We'll agree to disagree there then. I think Kent and Jetta's injuries have shown our severe lack of depth, along with the fact that we've had to bring in Matt Jones, Grimes and Bail. Their inclusions speak volumes. We've gone from a D grade midfield last year to a C grade midfield this year. It's ultimately a very young midfield too.

And in some ways, it's been great to test ourselves against the top teams early on this year, rather than have a draw that is divided by a soft start and a tough run home. We haven't had a run of cheapies. I'm really hoping we can win 8 games this year. I'd be pretty happy with our progress. We could also point to this as evidence of improvement to lure prospective young mids. If we managed this, we'll have improved our depth significantly and we can push for finals next year. Or at least the cusp of finals.

Sat a couple of rows in front of him in the MCC a couple of weeks back. He looked the same as I remember him, but I didn't catch him on 7 tonight. Loved him as coach.

Except when we lost by about 12 points 4 or 5 years ago.

Disagree. We're another two years off having solid depth. I know what will have happened. We'll have spent $700,000 more than we should have.

Lol. Why is Watts being brought into this?

Well, let's just wait and see first. I think we can keep in under 35 points and if everything goes our way, we can get within a couple of kicks, perhaps even give the game a shake.

Agreed.