Little Goffy

It has been very gracious of our opponents these last few weeks to arrange for their rucks to also be injured or sore while Gawn has been recovering. Much appreciated.

Got to dream bigger, F'N'D!

It's been a true joy these last few weeks to see Jones really clearly enjoying football. He's had that generous smile like a parent seeing their kids having fun with something the parent loved as a kid. I for one am really counting the run to 300 for Jones - trying not to get too sentimental and have a realistic assessment that he is earning his spot each week. But... there is that little sneaking thought of Jones playing his 300th in a winning Grand Final. That would be satisfactory.

Seems odd to me, the fuss made about Collingwood's 4 games in 14 days. It was also our fourth game in 16 days and fifth game in 20 days.

Ah, no, no, no. It's a whole different format, don't you reckon, Biff? Gus, Oliver, Viney and Pettraca are all having fun out there in the middle, wouldn't you say? It's a big win for the club, do you think? They remind you a bit of the old days of Brisbane, don't they? This new fab four could be the next Voss, Lappin, Black and Akermanis, couldn't they?

That Naughton kid goes all right. Big job for May, I assume. Hmm, Crows still right in it approaching half time, maybe they aren't so bad... ? Immediately after I typed that, they completed the joke for me by sending a handball halfway between two players who were only a couple of metres away from each other anyway, and both had opponents right on them, at the CHB line. We'll be going in as the predators again next weekend against the Dogs.

It was a huge win for the club to see all of Gus, Viney, Oliver and Petracca having fun together in the middle. It's not quite the Voss, Lappin, Black and Akermanis fab four.. or... is it?

Considering we're one win behind the pace, and have a win in hand, and have a relatively soft draw remaining because our early season opponents included the entire top 4, you'd have to give us a chance. A second chance would be handy in this weird season, but if we're there it will be because we sustained top form that deserves it. Play like a top 4 team, finish top 4.

Bit of that going around...

Could be. That argument rolled on for years. And years. And years. No-one really understand why it kept getting renewed.

For the last four days every time someone said Preuss my brain went 'former North player, now a back-up only here, can't get a game, but expect to get a good effort from him' and gave me the result 'Pederson'. All this time I've been wondering 'why do people think Pederson can out-body Grundy?' I was also really shocked to discover the ol' Pedo is just 25. Meanwhile, I've been looking over the teams sheets and it seems to me Collingwood have an amazing number of players in that 189-192cm height range, across all lines. The Bate-Dunn-Newton black hole of yesteryear. It is as if they are just trying to bring in a army of Pendlebury-clones, but it just isn't working. Would have loved to see Jackson out there, mostly up forward, because he's got a significant height advantage over most oft heir defenders and a massive agility advantage over Moore. Thinking of that, don't be surprised if Preuss spends a lot of time plonked forward to force them to put Moore on him, while McDonald goes to ruck-tagging Grundy and Weideman gets given maximum space to lead out while Fritsch does his long-pocket leads. They've got nobody who can handle Pickett, too. John Noble? Uh oh. I've got that feeling. That feeling like we are going to crush them. Major MFCSS Danger.

Wrong thread Garbo.

I think you'll find that reacting to all critiques of contemporary political economy as if they are an endorsement of socialism is, quite precisely, a straw man argument.

It's a bit like the South Asian farmer. One failed monsoon, you just barely get barely. Two failed monsoons, you go into debt just to eat and have to borrow for seed stock for the next season. Three failed monsoons, your children die. Personally I'm an optimist about vaccines by 2021, and so long as a reasonable effort is made to not balls everything up until then, first-tranche vaccine targeting can do a lot to contain risk by innoculating major vulnerable and vector populations like transport, retail, crowded facility/factory workers, educators and the all-important health and personal service sectors. For what it is worth, I monitor vaccine news very closely and the progress is legitimate. Don't know what the borsch is going on in Russia though.

Sadly, even without such scammers, pets are one of those areas you really need to investigate before you buy. But never mind, if you can hold out a little longer, just a couple of months from now the rescue shelters will have a great supply. Ugh, this whole subject area riles me.

The comparison to Hipwood is laughable. Wallace is doing the Wallace thing and just reacting to whatever happens to be hot that week. Hipwood just played one of his regulation two outstanding games for the season. Look back, it's like clockwork - two huge games a year and then maybe two more 'pretty good' games and a bunch of flashy meh. It will be interesting to see if he gets a second big one in the 2020 shortened fixture. 1/3rd of Hipwood's goals in 2020 were on Saturday and Weideman still has him beaten for goals per game, among a host of other stats. If we made the comparison on Friday Hipwood would look like nothing worth mentioning. I'm perfectly comfortable with the club's decision to focus on priming Weideman to be consistently outstanding as a true key forward, rather than letting him amble along without responsibility and ending up a perpetual third tall or some kind of utility - which is where Watts becomes relevant to the discussion. I think it very much relates to Petracca in the sense that the club has really pushed them to be the very best version of himself and not become complacent with just being very good.

I think Tomc playing as a ruck/forward 'tagger' is an interesting experiment with positive results in the one attempt so far. I'd cheerfully let him go at it a second time and definitely wouldn't risk Gawn if there's any doubt. Plus, Gawn has shown in the past that he can use time 'out' to think through his game and target improvements. If he comes back better at targeting his taps then he will actually be close to ruckman perfection. Personally I think the team let Gawn down a little by not putting away Adelaide early so he could be rested in the second half. But such is life when it's all on the line.

Elaborating on his point, Wallace goes on to argue that gifting games to kids who aren't quite ready is definitely the way to develop their confidence. He contrasted Melbourne's past successes of 2009-2014 exemplified by getting a quick first 50 games into Jack Watts, against their other failures such as the way they constantly held back Max Gawn instead of letting him play regularly while unfit and unprofessional. "Those Schwab era Demons really knew what they were doing, just like me at Richmond."

I think I'd be satisfied if this game was a draw. A true 'nobody wins' situation where both teams go home miserable. Wow, the apocalypse is making me mean.

Have Saints actually played Geelong yet? Meanwhile, How about that Hawthorn. Mm-mmm, fried potato, dropped in a muddy puddle.

Setting aside any hyperbole, it is great to have a respectable quality player offering something we were deficient in. Strange to think that our recruiting has actually been bang on for filling our list holes in the last few years, and really the only remaining structural gap is the Hogan-sized hole up forward, which we can at least now move to 'fingers crossed' condition on.

@Elegt I nominate a 'Rivers is soft and will never make it' thread.

Just for balance, I've been in the ranty wing of Team Fritta for some time. You'll find far too many posts of me insisting that Fritsch is in the top five of his draft and I stand by that. At the time this thread was started Fritsch was kicking his couple of goals but doing little else and that was definitely below his best, but the flat period for him of course was his inconsistency while neing tossed around the ground last year. 100% Fritsch output is a lock for All Australian. Anyway, the sack Taylor wailing was, like, three whole weeks ago and since then our season has been turned around largely by the resurgence of players who were 'trade disasters' and 'not up to it' and 'failed experiments' as recently as July.

Our consistent weakpoint all season has been tackling and especially tackling inside forward 50. This game, six players laid one tackle inside 50 each, and Tom McDonald laid three, on the way to also being our leading tackler for the day with seven. He stays for at least another week to see how this evolves. He may have found a new role. New, and possibly unique, the game's only 196cm pressure forward. And if he is capable of being the humble hard worker he was tonight then he becomes a great support for the confidence-driven Weideman and the kid Jackson. I also can't agree with dropping Jones as I felt he was an effective contributor and he just looked so damn happy. Plus, I'm still on the fantasy ride to him playing his 300th in a winning grand final! For me, the outs for Gawn (if played) and Viney are - Melksham - consistently underwhelming. VanDenBerg - currently not enough upside to justify the brain farts. Sure, it looks like a tall team, but that's okay if one of your tall forwards is running around laying tackles and the other is just whatever exactly it is that Luke Jackson is!

Injury fecalised their season. Won't know where they really are until next year. but I expect us to be playing them in finals in 2021.