Little Goffy

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.

They could realistcially have experimented with putting him at full forward. A bit less of a bashing for him, and Carlton are bereft, bereft I tells ya, due to injured to forwards.

Westhoff retires, Port decide they need an additional mature forward to partner with Dixon. McDonald to Port for Watts and change. Good times.

Not sure if this is the same as others have shared, but AFL Website has included some footage of Crows targeting Gawn. https://www.afl.com.au/video/482945/exclusive-vision-crows-disgraceful-attack-on-sore-gawn?videoId=482945&modal=true&type=video&publishFrom=1596928380001 I'm actually now at the point of hoping they lose every game for the season. I might have had sympathy for Matthew Nicks up to a point but for a zero-win coach to be putting his time into getting talented players to focus on dog acts behind the ball is just miserable. Jake Lever must be immensely confident of his decision, there. Hmm, I wonder, Laird's form has dipped a bit and he is being played a bit away from his defensive rebound role where we would love to have him... RFA 2021, but Crows might want to clear him before he just walks. Lol, I just had a look across their list for fun and they are just in so much trouble. Winless with a mature playing group - average of best 22 has been over 25yrs and they've had the older team in a majority of their games. A team with zero wins that knows things are going to get worse? Good times.

You must really rate North - we only played one good quarter last week and won by 51!

What I've learned is that Malthouse maintains an archive of 'points to say' about other clubs, presumably coaches, players, and anyone he might ever bother to use for content for boosting his online presence. He is, basically, a well-organised blogger.

Of Freo's draftees I would have taken either Young or Henry before Serong. I think they did very well out of that draft but I also don't think Serong offers much of anything we are short of. I also happen to have a gut feeling that the Demons have ended up with the best career-span player available at all three of their selections, so I'm not hurting and wish Freo all the best.

We really need an eyeroll 'like' button. Or a broken record. ?

Seems like Port are determine to get things out of the Tiger's reach as soon as possible.

Seems odd that the AFL would protect the stars from being held to account for breaking the rules, but then NOT protect the stars from being negated on field by opponents breaking the rules. Where is the win here? D-U-O-A. My acronym of the week. Starts with 'Disappeared Up...'.

There's the three I think could drop out of the eight. Our main rival to climb into the eight is of course the Bulldogs. (Because Essendon will implode at some point and Gold Coast will inevitably finish a respectable, promising 10th-ish ready to pick up their folllow-up set of priority picks). We need to pick up two wins, or, one win plus the 'game in hand' win, in comparison to just one of those three teams. We directly play against the two most vulnerable teams currently in the eight. Strangely, the only remaining 'scalp' we can aim to take is St Kilda. Other than that we are playing low-ladder teams and a string of proverbial 8-point games. Heh, even stranger, it is realistic to expect to make the eight based on only a minor improvement to our current form.

Except for Gawn, none of the mooted 'outs' are a structural problem. Viney out just lets Brayshaw and Harmes spend more time on the ball. VanDenBerg and Nibbler are not hard to find alternatives for. Lockhart is more specialised but also coverable, especially given Jetta should be fresh. One of the structural things our game has been missing this year is tackles and pressure inside forward 50. I'd presume that was the reason for including Nibbler on Wednesday, but he didn't show a whole lot and obviously is now unavailable while he serves Shaun Burgoyne's suspension. So I'm definitely a fan of getting Pickett in and maybe even Jordan to add a bit of ground-level pressure to create some goals and just make it that little bit harder for opponents to pick and choose how they counterattack.

Well, that's junk, eh. Obvious bias. Stain on the game.

Papley and Butler both turning it on in the same evening really puts a spotlight on what we're missing up forward. It's something missing from the games of Hannan, Fritsch and our other mid-sized forwards. On the one hand we can realistically hope to get some of that mysterious occult power from Pickett as well as the unknowable future of Jackson, but we really need to bring a bit of spontaneous hunting into the game of the mid-sizers.

And a couple of hours later, "Must get Dan Butler".

Watched the second half with my magnificent spouse. Me: "Ugh, so many of these Collingwood players look like little [blank]s." Her: "Oh, don't be so harsh, they're not Hawthorn." She also lip-synced Buckley talking to the 3/4 time huddle, including "You're not Coles, you're not Woolies." Her theory being that the Collingwood players had those range-activated thingies that make your shopping trolley stop when you get too far away from their start point. Some people just really commit to embracing Australian culture, y'know? Sigh, she even really, really hates West Coast supporters. ?

20% reduced game time is the clear 'gross' factor. Don't think there's much more to take from it as far as raw km run. More info on time spent sprinting vs jogging and walking would be interesting to add. Possibly may be exacerbating the 'surplus midfielder' problem that is affecting the likes of Brayshaw and Harmes so much. Not much need for a rotation group if your primaries can play most of the minutes.

Very pleased to see both Oliver and Brayshaw grow as the game sweated on. Really happy for Jackson and Weid to bag a few. Nice to get a win with both the zuperztarz Gawn and Petracca being a bit quiet for much of the night. Langdon and Tomlinson are currently combining for what we were hoping to get from either one of them. Overall, seems like we only really focused in the final quarter, but it also just might be that we got our conditioning right this season and Burgess may yet be worth more than every penny he cost.

Christian Petracca and a couple of first round draft picks should change that...

Slaon and B Crouch still out, with Ben Keays and Chayce Jones the named followers and M Crouch in the centre. With all due respect to them, that should not be a contest over the length of a game. The missing Crouch and Sloane are also both in Adelaide's top 4 for inside 50s. Their leading tackler is their ruckman Meanwhile, two of their named forwards have never kicked a goal, and Himmelberg has just one this season. Lynch bags a goal every second game or so. The only area that they win on paper is their defence, with Doedee, Talia and Laird providing a core that must be kept honest. Seriously, they are thin on every line and their 0-9 run is not an accident. I'm so anxious about this game now. Every reason I see for us to romp it in, I become more nervous.

Not only reached the milestone at 32, but also did them both at once. Clearly has Phillips covered.

I've carefully evaluated the data from our recent games against the Crows and can confirm that the losing team's score will be divisible by 11. This is a peer-reviewable valid discovery. At probability of 1/11 x 1/11 x 1/11 the chances of it being just a fluke are about 0.07%, or one in 1,400. Clear scientific validity. Finally I have mastered "P-value hacking." I can now get my accreditation as an epidemiologist.

Might as well put together a quick best 22. Yesssss, goooood, let the hate flow through youuu. FF: T Hawkins C Curnow Parfitt HF: Rankine Darling S Motlop M: Murphy Wines Constable HB: Parish Grimes Cerra B: Z Williams Gardiner Byrne-Jones FOLL: Kelly Cotchin Wallis INT: Acres, Dunstan, Georgiades, J Hill Emerg: Hartung, C Beams, B Sinclair, B Reid, B [censored], Tippett,