Adam The God

No he wouldn't. He's been terrific since coming in, but he hasn't played enough games this season. Fast becoming one of my favourites though.

I thought Nathan Jones was pretty ordinary today, despite a good first half and a high possession count.

And Nev Jetta was outstanding. Easily the best defender on the ground and comfortably in the top 5 players on the ground too.

The Melbourne members end of the ground was packed with Hawthorn, 1 to 5, I reckon. I guess I don't begrudge those who have given up, but it seems unfair to think that those of us who still go week in week out, will reap the same reward when the tide eventually turns our way. The MCG is our ground and we were severely outnumbered. Gives me the shits.

Thought Hawthorn took their foot off the pedal in the final term. Really disappointed we couldn't even kick 10.

Viv Michie was good today too.

Dom Tyson chugging along nicely again. Imagine if he was your third best mid and was given time and space. One of the major positives of 2014.

He's been better today. Will be a fantastic player once he builds a tank and starts to throw his weight around. If he's playing as a forward, he needs to kick goals from directly in front, 40m out.

Our ball movement is too slow and we try to do too much when we have the ball. It's been pretty painful so far.

Disagree. He showed intensity last year. He's struggled this season, I believe because he's unsure whether to back his instincts or simply play a role. He appears to attack the contest a lot more when he plays instinctively. Obviously. See ball, get ball.

We've been watching different games. He's a beautiful kick.

Spot on, rpfc. Some horrible fantasy list managers on the ole Demonland.

Particularly, when you look at the way teams like Hawthorn kick the football. It's just a totally different league. Over half our current starting 18 have iffy disposal at best. We're just not going to be able to win games, let alone compete, unless we hit basic targets by hand and foot, and can kick gimmes as described above. I completely concur, Redleg, there is absolutely no excuse. These guys are professionals and are paid a lot of money to do what they do. I can't imagine someone like Jordie McKenzie or Jack Grimes would be on anything less than between $100,000 or $200,000. Missing a goal from essentially the goal square is staggering incompetence for a person earning that much money.

Yeah, if so, disappointing that's all. : )

I agree. Wouldn't it be nice if he was a bit more than that though? I don't mean an Eddie necessarily, just someone that does their job behind the scenes (which Bartlett may well do) and can speak eloquently in public. The public speaking and an ability to clearly communicate are essentials IMO, otherwise members have the potential to be left in the dark or confused.

I'd say he has improved, if only slightly, Steve. He's clearly a confidence player though and I've no doubt he is one of the players Roos is referring to RE: scars from the recent past. I feel like his work rate has improved, but his obvious lack of physicality is still a major impediment to further improvement.

Well, I guess it's a bit like Mackie at Geelong or even Josh Hunt when he was there. Pretty ordinary one-on-one, but because their team mates around them work so hard, they have been rarely exposed. Watts is a good height, so if the ball is in the air, I'd hope he gets a fist to it. You really have to back your players in unfortunately.

To be fair to Col, he took the game on and showed great leadership last season. I haven't been impressed by his form this season, but I suspect it is taking him time to get used to the game plan and his lack of pre season might be a factor. I think he's quite an instinctive player. That's how he played last year. When you have a new game plan to follow, I suspect you could quite easily second guess your movement and your attack on the ball. Anyway, I think we have greater worries than Garland.

Watts should play off half back, with stints on the wing. That's his shtick. I know we'd all love more, but for the moment, utilise his disposal and reading of the play off half back, when we desperately need it.

The problem is, who do we replace these guys with? Younger guys who will not be able to impact straight away? There's no easy fix here. Even if we delisted twenty, there's no certainty that those we replace them with will be able to impact next year. Undoubtedly, we need a big clean out though. I couldn't see it being less than ten players.

Yeah, a bit early on that one, SPR. Absolutely no certainty Cameron is on his way here.

You won't win many games when: Howe gets 20 odd possessions and barely hits a target, two of your three best kicks (Vince and Dunn) butcher it, Kent manages to miss 3 AFL standard shots (one laughably ordinary and worryingly similar to a simple miss against Port Adelaide), Jordie McKenzie barely makes the distance again from 15 metres out directly in front, Tapscott misses a regulation 35 metre kick directly in front, usual suspects Bail and Terlich consistently turn the ball over and every time we go near the goals, we manage to inexplicably [censored] it up. I suspect this will be another of those Etihad games that we supporters block from our memory banks. At least, I hope it is.

Well, that's pretty 'deemotivating'.

I'm not looking to bring about any instability with this post, just simply sharing my thoughts on 'The President's Lunch' today and the President himself. Did anyone else attend? Glen Bartlett obviously spoke and Robbo interviewed two former players: TJ and Woey. Bartlett was Q&Aed, in a casual, relaxed sort of fashion. Probably par for the course, which is fine. My problem with the discussion though was that it told us absolutely nothing about the club. It was all about how he'd travelled the world with his son, Josh. Maybe it was just me, but it came off as cringe-worthy gloating. I felt like I was back at school and people were bragging about which European country their parents would take them to. I don't want to be overly critical, but I just found Bartlett very underwhelming as a speaker too. Lots of 'ums' and 'ahs'. Not particularly eloquent at all. Perhaps, it's something that's still sticking with me about those alleged comments in The Age (was it?), RE: appealing to the Collins Street crowd and insinuating at the dissolution of the Casey deal. But unfortunately, I got very little from the function and that was then compounded by one of the worst Melbourne performances of the season. Anyway, if you went along to 'The President's Lunch', what did you think of it? Did you get much out of it? Is this usually all the lunch entails?

I'd love this team. Replace Grimes with Salem or Kent and it's pretty much finals worthy, if everything goes right. We're still gonna struggle for depth though next year. That's why everything has to go right injury-wise, even with a best case scenario trade/draft period.