Little Goffy

Am I mistaken - the trade was 2019 picks 26 and 50, plus 2020 first rounder, for pick 8 (which eventually became Pickett) The trade was sensible at the time and the 2020 draft is a total pot-luck mess. Also, we're just a few rounds in to the weirdest season ever. Yep, it's kick the Demons week, that's all to this story.

For a moment I thought it was Manly to Bankstown, which is almost a guide tour of every traffic snarl Sydney has to offer. Manly to Bankstown you still have to negotiate The Spit, North Sydney and Epping Road across Lane Cove, but after that you're on freeways most of the way. If it's 50km, the first 10km will take longer than the next 40! So, I think we can expect a lot of slow first quarters and fast finishes during this hub time.

I thought it was a bit rough making Langdon and Tomlinson stay on the wings.

https://www.icms.edu.au/contact-us/our-campuses/northern-beaches-campus My theory. Facilities all there and if it turns our season around get to make Hogwarts jokes forever. Right by the headland and you could even get down to Collins beach next to the Police College for recovery swims without too much concern of public interaction.

Melksham is supposed to be one of our key creative and clever players bringing the ball inside 50. Today he kicked two goals and a behind... and yet had one of the worst individual games possible. That was, apparently, all of his disposals. He also gave away at least one goal with a dumb free kick against. I gave him the benefit of the doubt last week, thinking he had been a bit unlucky, but the only gain from hsi performance this week is that we definitely have someone to drop when we bring in the second tall forward we so despetately need to make McDonald a little less predictable and to allow Fritsch to do what he is best at instead of being 'the' forward target.

Manly, hmm, I wonder if they'll be securely isolated up at that bizarre colonial folly building that got turned into a business management school near North head? Would be secure and convenient and they'd even be able to get to a little beach. Would actually be an ideal location, given it was already a premium boarding school and is almost certainly unused at present. In fact, it is probably the only suitable location I can think of out in Manly. Even the old quarantine huts wouldn't be secure enough, ironically. If so, I think we've been very lucky under the circumstances.

WLLLWLWWWLLLLWWWLLLL A very streaky record against Richmond. I choose to believe the tide is turning. I think our two 'gun' tall defenders are steadily improving, I think our radically different forward line solution is literal centimeters from beginning to work properly, and I think our clearance effectiveness will be helped by playing together in consecutive weeks for the first time at AFL level since last season! In fact, I'm going to rest my thoughts on that - this will be the first time this season that the team has played together in consecutive weeks, and we've implemented a whole lot of changes that need to be worked through. Calling it not - incremental improvement for the next five weeks and then brutal unstoppable dominance after that.

Mumford vs Nankervis Lycett/Vardy vs Grundy Jacobs v Nankervis Roughead/Boyd v Naismith/Tippet McEvoy v Naitanui Pike/Tippet v McEvoy/Hale Hale/Bailey v Sandilands Hale/Roughead vs Pike/Mumford Jolly v Ottens/West Jolly v McEvoy There is no definitive pattern there for what type of ruck 'wins premierships' or even tends to make it grand finals. Some of the winners there had dog days, others were among their teams best in a loss. My only concern with the ruck and with Gawn's contribution is that the communication is missing a beat and the hitouts which should be giving us great quality as well as quantity of clearances are instead giving us mixed results because players don't know where each other are going to be. On this particular matter, I'm willing to put some blame to the shutdown and not being able to train together, and I'm willing to watch the team play together and re-connect in the coming weeks. As for how this relates to the 'Goodwin boosting' thread... I would argue that this, and the dropped marks up forward, and the fact that we do not yet have a player with more than two contested marks for the season, are all things which Goodwin himself has only limited control over and our season is far too new and unclear at this point to be scratching at his scalp over a 3 point loss!

No cap is neeed for interchanges, just make it so they have to be done in a batch, all four switching at once. Boom. Not only do you have players out there for extended periods, and tactical use of resting forwards and players being held to position to minimize low-value running, and the fitness premium becomes about being able to sustain the effort in a way that will actually stand out (Robert Harvey style) instead of being managed to invisibility (87% Tog vs 83% what a star) , but also you add a whole new tactical element of who you 'deploy' in those batches. Bring all your left-footers out fresh and try to dominate their wing? Rotate your mids in pairs or groups, or have one super-fresh at each centre bounce? And think of it - the need for a bteak in play to allow the batch interchange would mean every time there was a goal the 'reset' would come with a meaningful tactical/structural change. I actually first thought of this as a joke suggestion but it is really growing on me.

Hmm, I recall the last time a highly respected premiership winning coach talked us up, they also nominated Goodwin as their successor! Conclusion - Goodwin is going to the Hawks.

The key here is that all of their opponents since the shutdown have also been stuck on the Gold Coast.

Casboult is a very different beast to the unreliable, occasionally impressive forward-ruck of the past. He's been really good for Carlton this season and his one fairly poor game against us probably made the difference. Unfortunately he's also now over 30 and has only once in his career gone a season injury free. Plus, as I understand it he is pretty deep 'Blue'. In-form Hogan is, tragically, the type of player we could use. But so would be in-form Weideman or in-form Tom McDonald.

Brayshaw was one of several 'senior' players I felt began to turn things around on the weekend. Still short of his best, just like Tmac, Lever, May and Hibberd, but there was enough from each of them to give realistic hope they are on their way back. I've had a lot of belief in Brayshaw for a long time and still feel like he could be a champion quality midfielder if he can stabilise his form at the higher end of his range. Our midfield strategy has for a long time been to assume dominance based on having the best ruck and tge best young ball winners in the game. It looks, and is, full of holes if we don't actually win that overwhelming load of clearances and contested posessions. It's also why our mids look like a bunch of front runners the moment things aren't favouring us. In form Brayshaw is a key piece of the puzzle. Having all of Petracca, Oliver, Viney, Harmes and Brayshaw on song together as the core of a midfield means we have A-graders ready at every bounce and throw-in for whole games. No other club could hope to keep up with that all day. It's why we got the regular six-goal surges and goal-centre-goal doubles in 2018.

Interesting signs of several underperforming players beginning to steady. I won't say turning it around just yet, but better signs from May, Lever, McDonald and Brayshaw.

That goal was especially weird because it was created by a chain of really quite neat kicking., which isn't Melbourne's way even when we are on!

Y'know, considering we're one fumbled mark (Fritsch) and a poster (Pickett) from even scores, it's interesting to note that was the WORST QUARTER EVER SACK EVERYONE. For that reason, when angry and frustrated during a game of football I try to restrict myself to only inarticulate grunts and wailing.

Bases on this, I'm tipping a big win.

I'm glad I saw your comment, because I'd written it off and just flicked it on in time to catch the Butler and Bolton goals and for the first time this season outside watching Demons a game is holding my attention!

I just realised that today's games are like some kind of special championship event featuring all the teams where the only thing I care about is the particularly disliked teams losing! I checked the season guide and sure enough, the AFL have this marked in as 'shaudenfreude round'.

Starting to look like Charlie Dixon is the standout tall forward of the season, and by a significant margin. Although, horrifyingly, Ben King might be his main rival at present. Come on T.Mac, come on Weid, there's a loose All-Australian spot up for grabs for any tall forward who actually kicks goals this year!

Definitely should show interest just to annoy Essendon and put pressure on their salary cap. Funny that we have two ex-Essendon players but neither could actually tell us about him from personal contact, but we also have two ex-Suns (incl an ex-co-captain Sun) who might know him a bit. My level of interest in Saad will be entirely determined by how our little collection of smaller defender options make progress this year, although many of them are still listed on stats sites as forwards, it will be interesting to see how this season's experiments turn out. Other than that, a lot depends on salary caps, playing numbers, and the wild swirl of chaos we are all engulfed in at present.

Ironically, he would probably be much more valuable on-field now than he was back in his playing time. He was never a true 'target' forward close to goals and whenever he found his best form it was as a long-leading link player, going into the wider spaces out from half-forward. With the increased 'tightness' of defense due to shorter quarters and fresher legs, the key forward targets are getting fewer opportunities to be one-on-one or find a space to lead into anywhere within 50m of goal, so a lot of the tall forwards this season are doing their best work by providing a steady point across half-forward or even further away, allowing the attack to calm itself and lower its eyes (in a double-sense) to pick out the shorter forwards who just keep running around until the defense gets dizzy. But, as noted, Miller has hid head screwed on in that astonishing way where being close to your kids is a top priority in life. Damn these new-age rubbish attitudes, eh?

At some point a couple of teams will get their heads straight and rise a whole level above the rest. Then we'll be watching 10-goal drubbings which are really 100+ point smashings, and just counting down the season to see which one sustains it through the finals. On the bright side, with so much of the results being even more between the ears than usual, it is possible for just about any team to suddenly start running hot and becoming a late contender.

5 season, or a bad haircut. Proven time and time again. Is Weideman prepared to really commit to his football career?

If Sydney brings that first quarter and we bring our first quarter, we'll stomp them next week. Stomp stomp stomp. Football would be fun again. I wonder, maybe we're secretly the hipster club? We smashed Adelaide to dust before everyone else started doing it, and maybe now we will smash Sydney to dust before it becomes fashionable, too. I'm just enjoying fantasy land over here, never mind me.