Little Goffy

The looseness at defensive 50 stoppages is a clear problem, but allow me a wall-of-text post to elaborate on my personal alarm bell. If you don't want to go through the whole thing the short version our kicking has hit the fan (and the fan is not a teammate). Petracca, Oliver, Gawn, Langdon, Neal-Bullen, Brayshaw, Jordon and Jackson have all had MAJOR drops in their kicking efficiency. Petracca is the key example. Crucial going into attack and a barometer for the team. No prizes for guessing which of the following games we won: Round 19 vs Dogs: 18 kicks at 22% efficiency Round 18 vs Hawthorn: 10 kicks at 20% efficiency Round 17 vs Port: 22 kicks at 72% efficiency Round 16 vs GWS: 18 kicks at 44% efficiency. Clayton Oliver also has a very poor kicking game about one in four times he plays. When both Oliver and Petracca have off kicking days we're bound to be in trouble - as very noticably happened in both the Bulldogs in Round 19 (37%) and the Round 16 GWS (40%) games. Max Gawn, who incidentally is now the most frequently 'kicking' ruckman in the history of the game, was going okay at about 60% efficiency overall up to round 12, but since then his best has been 54% and he's had three games in the 30s. Ed Langdon's kicking also dropped below 50% efficiency for the Collingwood, Hawthorn and Bulldogs games, compared to his usual 65-75%. Alex Neal-Bullen only averages 55% kicking efficiency this season anyway, but that is built on some real shockers; again, didn't crack 40% in the Bulldogs, Hawthorn and Adelaide games. Angus Brayshaw has a normalish midfielder average of just over 60% for the season but in the last two rounds, again, 42% and 43%. James Jordon is one of our more reliable midfield kicks except for the occasional shocking day out but here it is again, the last couple of weeks - 45% vs Hawthorn and then against the Dogs just 3 kicks total, with zero considered 'efficient'. Luke Jackson... well, he's just stopped kicking it at all. His five total kicks for the last three games combined is less than his average per game prior to that.

In hindsight, it is becoming easy to see why Goodwin and the selection committee persisted with Melksham for so long. 'Good Melksham' is precisely what we are missing - if that version of him was available for trade we would jump at it as top priority. No wonder we were so desperate to try to play him back into form. Meanwhile, I actually feel like we're going to have a bit more salary cap space to play with than is generally expected over the next two to four years. Multiple mature, mid-priced players will be retiring this year and next. Several more mature players who haven't been able to crack the best-22 will also be facing reduced contracts or a polite exit. A couple of players will definitely not be getting deals in the same range as their previous (McDonald and Brayshaw both re-signed on four year deals at their absolute peak form of 2018) and a number of our other best-22 players with contracts coming up are more the role-player types (Spargo, Petty and Hunt) who won't be looking at runaway salaries even in good form. Fritsch is a tricky one to price but his inconsistency and the fact he doesn't 'shape' the forward line around him means he won't be in the top brackets. For trading in, there's not much that really sits in our sweet spot. Doesn't seem to be a 'good Melksham' out there for us! I dislike trading for 'premiums' like Kelly and Cerra, and then the available players swing all the way to the other end with players you try to reconstruct as something new at a new club, like Guelfi, Constable or even attempt a Mark Williams confidence transplant for Sam Petrevski-Seton. We've got little draft value to offer - currently we have two picks in the early 30s on hand. That kind of rules out anything dramatic like a hail Mary play to add Dylan Stephens to our wingers club.

Ugh. I hate it when people just grab a few stats that have changed and say 'these stats have changed' and think their job is done. Phoning it in, Twomey. Just phoning it in. Imagine if someone who had access to all the detailed stats and play recordings really put some effort into the content they generated.

Well, for what it is worth, we are now a mathematical impossibility to miss finals. Actually, I'm pretty sure we were last week after Freo and the Saints lost, but definitely lock it in now. It's kind of a funny feeling, considering most of the last 15 years we would consider it a good year if we were even still a mathematical chance of making the finals this late in the season! Top 2 is difficult but not complex - win at least one more game than either the Cats or Bulldogs, and at least the same number as Port. Dropping out of the top 4 would require one of Sydney or Brisbane to win two games more than we do in the remaining four rounds, as well as Port gaining one win on us. We can't really drop below 6th (home elimination final) unless we lose every game and West Coast wins every game.

Player A,B,C,D, etc: didn't handle conditions. Lots of dumb kicks Kicking straight into an opponent who earned a 'smother' stat without even waving their arms around - when does that get fun?

It is one of the things that turns me into a cranky old man. Let forwards be forwards. Much, much better to have even just a couple of forwards stay on the ground all day patrolling and lurking and making the space their own. Any 'total volume of running' contribute from forwards bursting all over the ground is a trade off for the extra bench time they take up when they could be getting routine 30 second or one minute 'rests' of low-intensity when the ball is in our defence. The extra bench time opened up would mean midfielders get more, and more frequent, rest. Meanwhile, having forwards rest in place forces the opposition to keep defenders back in defence, giving us the initiative while still retaining one-on-one targets. As the great Maurice de Saxe said, "If your argument is that my opponents shall simply adopt the same stratagem, have you not merely proven that my method is best?"

I admit, I would love some player somewhere to respond to the 'Do you think the free kick count affected the result?' question with a simple, "The fact is, if we are going to beat the Bulldogs in finals then we have to plan for that." The Dogs get 4 free kicks to every 3 for their opponents, regardless of opponent, and they are the only club with a discrepancy like that.

On the one hand, I agree with the concern. On the other hand, our losses have mostly been the product of dumb kicking and while fatigue can make you a bit fuzzy there is a limit.

Who want's to make the obvious joke about GWS? Shall we raffle it?

Hard to make a comparison really. Obviously not much point going back to Neeld era so it is just the Roos period of any recent relevance. Still, let's look: (per game) Roos: 2014: 40.5 i50s, for 8.6 goals and 9.0 behinds 2015: 44.5 i50s, for 10.2 goals and 10.2 behinds 2016: 53.8 i50s, for 13.0 goals and 10.3 behinds Goodwin: 2017: 54.8 i50s, for 13.7 goals, 10.1 behinds 2018: 59.8 i50s, for 14.8 goals, 12.8 behinds 2019: 54.0 i50s, for 10.1 goals, 10.1 behinds *2020: 42.5 i50s, for 9.1 goals, 7.8 behinds 2021: 54.0 i50s, for 12.1 goals, 12.2 behinds Verdict: It's patchy. 2018 we were simply the best attacking side in the game, 2017 not far off the pace either. Our attack imploded in 2019 and we were kind of mid-range in 2020. Right now we're doing 'well' for total scoring, but as much as a goal a game behind the top teams for actual goals. So in that sense it is our accuracy that is killing us, not our conversion of inside 50s to goals. But I would speculate we'd look very different if the stat was 'inside 35s' and therein lies the rub.

Funnily enough, our forward coach, Greg Stafford, has a career record of 141 goals and 66 behinds.

Lol. Reminds me of the good old days, coming on here after a disappointing loss so I can watch other people absolutely lose their minds. I find it very calming. Other people's hysteria is a great way to regain perspective. Anyway, as for the game; Our goalkicking was poor, theirs was superb; particularly the snaps. We failed to properly guard clearances in particular and the corridor more generally - same problem as the Adelaide game (which, coincidentally, probably should have been a draw, umpires notwithstanding) Alistair Clarkson is a four-time premiership coach for a reason - the very clear tactic to whack the ball around, kick it off the ground, and just generally being messy and swarming on the ball did a superb job of confusing us, confounding our structure and making us anxious and rushed. The plan to force Petracca to handball instead of allowing him breakaway kicks was executed very well, as was the plan to let Viney be our least 'guarded' midfielder so he would feel compelled to kick instead of handball. It's a bit like when we tagged Libba the extractor and 'cut of the snake's head', except it was rearranging the snake's head with our [censored]. Six Hawthorn free kicks in a row early in the third quarter clearly distracted us and clearly handed Hawthorn momentum. Enough of them were dubious enough throughout the night that it compounds the poor impression made by the 22-15 free kick imbalance. It was irritating that the commentators so clearly favoured Hawthorn. My favourite was the post-game excitement about the 'young talent' at Hawthorn. Our 22 was younger than theirs and most of their younger players were also their least effective. But, meh. Learnings. The way Hawthorn played will provide a valuable lesson for finals. Better to get a draw in round 18 than having to play extra time in a preliminary final.

Well, it is kind of impressive. I mean, how often do you go out to a field to have a dog throw a ball for you? Normally it is hard enough to get them just to drop it... and the umpires aren't even penalising them for that, come to think of it.

The kid owes you big time for that. :D

I just gave myself permission to imagine a few years from now when Pickett and Jackson have the experience and preseasons to go with their initiative and talent. Terrifying.

Courtesy of https://afltables.com/afl/teams/melbourne/season.html Most games won in a season - 16 out of 22 total, in 1990 16 out of 18 total, in 1956 But the REAL record to chase this weekend is our best year in an odd-numbered season. A win over the Hawks pushes us level with 1989 (14wins) and prior to that we go all the way to 1955 with 15 wins.

Looks to me like the beards are trying to attack eachother and both players are just trying to keep them apart.

Ooooh, song lyrics. As per trade week: "Even if you've got Daniel Rich, a trade for Young and Hart is much better by far."

If we lose to the Hawks I will go into a nasty little sulk and not go outside my home for days. If we win, of course, I will have a merry celebration and not go outside my home for days.

For as long as the Demons are doing well I will be looking for games with a chance to inflict at 186 on a 'deserving' opponent. Decapitating the Hawks sounds good to me. And it is time we began getting our attack in shape.

I agree with the sentiment. Throughout this experience there's an awful lot of people suffering a lot more than the people who have been getting most of the attention, public sympathy and support. Unfortunately, it is looking like some kind of case study of political economy; groups of people with real ability to affect their own circumstance (through status, political voice, accountants, or simple cash reserves) are also the people with the ability to influence how help and sympathy is distributed. That decisions are being made on the basis of placating the complacent has directly contributed to most of the errors in managing Covid-19: - absence of serious strategy for safe, large-scale repatriation - absence of a stable, predictable support structure for individuals and communities facing lock down - hedging about spending the relatively trivial additional funds to accelerate the vaccine rollout - constant fiddling of the minutiae of vaccine choice advice despite there being plenty of people happy to take AZ at the first opportunity - lack of coherent system for exemptions, such that 'special needs' applies to whoever can be the best 'Karen' (I hate the term, but it is illustrative here) rather than who actually is in need. The end result is constant knee-jerk reactions whenever the complacent crowd suddenly finds themselves actually exposed to the impacts, with the further effect of constantly undermining perceived legitimacy of the advice and rules being given to keep people safe.

There may be some satisfying irony in that once they go to jail they will be so hated in there they will have to spent much of their sentence in protective isolation.

AND as soon at it gets in, it kicks everyone else out. #bastardcovid I for one refuse to go to any party that little [censored] is going to. Of course, being in Sydney that means I've literally left the house just three times in the last five days and only once did I actually enter any other enclosed space. Toilet paper waits for no man. I've got family down in Victoria who really shrink into themselves at any mention of another lockdown so like most people on here I'm clinging to the desperate hope that the current 'seven in one' cluster is as far as things go.

That spoil by Ziebell with about 10 seconds left was magnificent. And it would appear he ripped a bit of skin doing it because he was bleeding solidly from his hand during the celebrations. Something about that game just felt vintage and I'm sure it will go down in North folklore.

Surely what the AFL needs is salary cap concessions for players over 30 who were traded into their current club after at least five seasons at a previous club. Obviously this wouldn't be a rule just to suit Geelong. It is entirely coincidental that it would apply to Dangerfield, Stanley, Henderson, Tuohy, Jenkins, Smith, Higgins and Rohan.