Adam The God

I wouldn't say no necessarily, but Patton strikes me as a bit of an old world player. The sort that would have been amazing in the '90s. Stick him in the goal square and he'd deliver. But, he's still young and if he learnt off Dawes, well, Dawes is pretty much the perfect player to model his game on.

I'm with you, Robbie. Very meh, IMO.

He'll sign a new contract at the end of the season, IMO. He's said all along that he'll deal with contract stuff once the season is over.

Well, that's Roos all over, isn't it? And it's endemic of a strong culture.

Wow, hadn't seen that stat. Well, that's damning. I thought we'd only brought about 90% intensity to the game and this was against the top team. I guess that shows there's still a heap of improvement to come in the next few weeks even.

So the 1970s demon was cross-eyed?

Agreed, mate. I don't think many of us are saying he will be dropped. There's no one to take his place and I think you'll find Roos will persists with Grimes for the rest of the year. Let's hope he improves his decision making and disposal. I think staying fit and building his endurance are the two major targets for Gawn this year. Or they'll run off him like GWS did. Can't see Gawn staying in next week.

The same way ours can improve in that time. It has to be the coaching and has to be in some small or large part, the playing group. Did the playing group get ahead of themselves? Did the coaches get ahead of themselves?

Agreed. Coaching and administrative white-anting.

Now we're making excuses for him out of nowhere. Has he been sick all season too? Was he sick all last season? Agreed. Just last week, Roos lauded Jetta for having the courage to say no, I won't play and jeopardise the team by playing sick. They left him out of the Richmond game, because of gastro. Jetta killed Wingard. Grimes tried to take Neade.

Who's saying Grimes isn't excellent overhead? And this year, he loses more contests than he wins. As for being a great runner, did you watch the passage of play yesterday when Neade jogged away from him to kick a goal in the first term or when one of the Port forwards (can't remember remember which one) waltzed away from him in the forward pocket, but fortunately left the ball behind and it ran out of play? He's not a great runner. He's average at best. And personally, these basic lenses you refer to highlight turn overs. As a number of posters have now pointed out, it isn't just his clangers, it's the fact that he puts his team mates under pressure and consistently makes the wrong decision, which halves the contest when we should be controlling the ball movement.

Doesn't play like Rioli at all. If he continues to track the way he has the last few games, he'll be a role player. That's all Roos will ask of him. Nothing flashy, just shutdown your player and help provide rebound off half back.

Jetta played against the GCS and the Swans. Not many rated him, but he wasn't our worst in either game. His Adelaide game was superb. He didn't provide a lot of defensive rebound, but he completely shutdown Betts. Yesterday, he was able to not only shutdown Wingard, he was able to burst from defence and create offensive thrusts from halfback. I think his game against the Power was probably even better than his Adelaide game. It was just a more complete game from him. Whilst I agree that Matt Jones has come on leaps and bounds, Michie has not shown that he will be a champion and Toumpas is slowly building up some confidence and continuity, but hasn't quite had a breakout game yet. I expect Roos to persist with him now. At least, I hope he will for a few weeks. It will be good to give him some game time in a QB pressure cooker. He had 6 touches for a quarter and a bit, but a poor defensive effort or two. The previous round, he'd had 15 touches and 3 tackles.

I think the comparison between playing lists and seeming onfield and offfield cultures. They seem to have more stability in administration. I think competition will heat up further in 2015, because we'll add more midfielders to that list. I, like many, would love a GWS midfielder. ie. Shiel or Treloar. That's what we need to keep on doing. Target genuine midfielders, as you rightfully point out, BB. I think come the end of this year, we will be on the up, no longer regarded as a spirited team, but a really well drilled, competitive team on the rise. This along with the Roos pull factor will hopefully entice a gem from GWS and/or another opposition club.

Yeah, that kept happening to us when we were down. Happened a couple of times. We'd be down by 10 goals and the cameras would cut to MFC players in the stands laughing. We copped a bit of press for that. I wonder if Richmond will. Probably not.

I can see the parallels. Apart from their ball use and the fact that their 'leaders' go missing too regularly, Richmond's biggest problem is the lack of book ends. Riewoldt is the only bloke who'd get a game for any other club and he may well be plying his trade (pardon the pun) elsewhere soon. Their KPP stocks are woeful and aside from Daniel Jackson, there isn't a consistent leader that can influence games for them. Cotchin is overrated, but classy, who goes missing for large periods of games and Martin, who could be one of the most damaging midfielders in the game, has still failed to build up a fitness base to allow him to run out four quarters in the middle. I can see Richmond having one of their signature brainfades/implosions and sacking Hardwick this week or next and before we or probably they know it, they'll be in rebuild mode yet again. They're in for a bit of pain over the next two to three years.

Come on, Nash. One spoil. It was a brilliant spoil, but he made a number of costly errors in that game too. You haven't linked to those, but this is his one moment to offset the rest of the season? Please. The fact there's only one 20 second grab of his season thus far is pretty damning as well. That's a bit of a leap, D. Spot on. He doesn't know his limitations. Nathan Jones had this problem for many years and he sorted it out, IMO, last year. Matt Jones had this problem too. He seems to have sorted it out this season. Even his handball backwards to Tyson who then goaled today was an example of him knowing his limitations. Grimes needs to use his team mates like this. Not a reasonable excuse not to drop someone. Having said that, he won't get dropped. Roos likes unchanged sides. You only have to look at his Sydney sides. Totally unfair. Bail has been one of our biggest improvers. Didn't particularly rate him at the start of the season, but he's a really hard worker and lays a number of tackles. Grimes doesn't have a role in the forwardline, for mine.

People that are saying Grimes was on Wingard today are kidding themselves. Jetta shutdown Wingard, in a brilliant game and complimented this by providing a little bit of defensive rebound too. Let's be honest though. Grimes has never been a good kick. Giving him the captaincy hasn't made him a horrible kick. His poor decision making highlights his poor kicking. Roos has made Pederson into one of our most important players, so we shouldn't rule anything out, but if there simply isn't enough there to work with, players eventually get delisted or traded. Maybe, it's time we accepted that Grimes has been overrated for too long? His ceiling is he's a good reader of the play, that can take some nice intercept marks, with a courageous style of play, and affect a great spoil every now and then, but it stops there. I'd argue that although he affected a fantastic spoil against Dangerfield in the final moments, he still turned it over a number of times that day too. But people were hailing it as a great game. Seriously overrated. Agreed. He still turns it over and too often, but he has shown small improvement over the last three weeks. This makes me wonder whether with an increased fitness base, could Terlich make it. Potentially. Eradicate those errors caused by a potential lack of fitness and inexperience. He does provide excellent run off half back. He used to be able to win one-on-ones, but recently he's really struggled in this area. I, therefore, put that down to confidence. So that can be regained. It's his decision making and disposal that let him down. That's a harder proposition to rectify.

Spot on, P. He's played 78 games now. Wake up, people. Unfortunately, as you say, we have to live with it for this season. I wouldn't surprised if two elite kicking half backs are on our shopping list for this off season. In fact, with some of the guys we have kicking back there, it's almost our most important area to address from a list perspective. We need an elite decision maker and disposer or two. Pity blokes like Strauss haven't come on. That's what he was drafted for.

Nail on the head. A number of supporters seem to have a blind spot with Grimes. Clearly not getting better.

Jones and Dawes as captains for 2015 would suit me. Otherwise, I'm quite happy with Jones as the sole captain. Don't rate Grimes, never have. Turn over King. Let's hope he shows some selflessness and relinquishes the captaincy and focuses on becoming a role player. He has great courage and reads the play well. That's his base to work from.

I agree, Watts needs to do more. He finds himself out positioned too often when the opposition have the ball. He's good when we have it and decent when the ball is in dispute, he just has to work on the defensive aspects of his game. That said, his tackling is getting better. He had 2 tackles today. The same amount as Pederson and one less than Frawley. Our most was Cross with 5. Whilst he needs to do more, he's taking small steps and I'm reasonably happy with his progress. I just want to see progress from our all of our guys and if everyone is improving at the same time, you'll see steady improvement in results and the 'contest'. We're getting a bit of a sense of that already this year.

Fair calls.

Woah. Talk about complacency. Let's just see this season out first. We're improving and the rest of the season should be thoroughly exciting, but let's take it very slowly. Building blocks.

It's about more than a misleading stat like a clanger. It's about his positioning. It's about his disposals that go to the wrong option and put his team mates under pressure. It's about his lack of offensive value. When he kicks a 30m pass down the line to a speculative one-on-one and the opposition halves the contest or wins it, is this considered a clanger by the stat takers? As far as I'm aware, it isn't. He does this sort of thing consistently. Players make mistakes, but they'll offset those mistakes going the other way. Tyson had 8 clangers, but was instrumental in a number of clearances, kicked two goals and linked up well with Jones, Viney, Vince and Matt Jones. Dunn's clangers were costly. I thought he was great on Schulz, but offensively he made some crucial errors and that torp was dumb football. Roos' reaction said it all. He won't be doing that again any time soon. Dunn offers something offensively though. His disposal is usually excellent. He had 27 touches. With only four errors, that's pretty good. Grimes isn't a good kick or decision maker, so his offensive value is almost zilch. The standards will rise again over this off season and unless Grimes improve significantly over the rest of this year, I wouldn't be surprised to see him lose the captaincy for 2015. He needs to work on improving his own game and getting it up to AFL standard, rather than focusing on leadership. Right now, he's not AFL standard, IMO.