Little Goffy

Not the time. Actually, for this kind of comment, possibly never the time.

Ding Ding Ding! I'm just quoting this because I agree so damn much.

Carlton are slipping badly at the moment. Bordering on 'bruise free football'. Watching them, and realising that we play them next week, went a small but significant part to cheering me up after the disappointment of watching us and knowing I'll have to watch us again next week. Interestingly, like us, going into last round they had just three players with 4+ tackles a game, and like us added one more in the last game (Carazzo v Viney). Their depth is limited, all over the ground. A lot of Carlton's players at the moment seem fragile; as has already been said, 'frontrunners'. A lot of icing not a lot of cake. And right now their form is way off the mark. Both coaches will be going into this game with some very, very simple messages to players. Lay tackles, get to contests, offer options. Work Hard or [censored] 0ff. Which raises an interesting contest within the contest - two of the game's top coaches face off while leading two of the game's current weakest teams.

Apparently Frawley is expecting $800,000 to move clubs. Either he's just foxing and has no intention to leave Melbourne, or he has a massively inflated ego and thinks he is a year-in year-out All-Australian upon whom any given club's fortunes could pivot. Seriously, if you want to be in the top 1% of player salaries, you should probably iron out the inconsistency, random drops to sullen half-effort, and imperfections from you game. If he is seriously aiming for 800,000, he needs to be shown to the door with a smile. That kind of arrogance and delusion is a cultural disaster.

There is a lingering anxiety that Roos' got sucked in to the Melbourne Football Club Messiah syndrome. From the small things - today's game, Frawley kicks a goal early in the final quarter where it turns out all the other players were getting around him to thank him for taking the responsibility off them (or something psychologically dysfunctional to the same effect) To the big things - THIS new ceo/president/benefactor/draft pick/VFL alliance/club facility will really turn our club around. But, if Roos successfully moves the club to some kind of dignity over the course of this season, and facilitates the recruitment of a quality, long-term committed successor coach, then his job really is done. That was his job description. Restore dignity, establish a good football department, recruit and prepare a quality long-term successor coach. He doesn't need to make a long-term commitment for that. He'll either succeed or fail in 2-3 years with the club.

As I mentioned earlier, Tyson got 10 clearances (out of the team's 32 for the game), 19 of his 25 possessions were contested, and he had the best disposal efficiency of any of our midfielders. Tyson v Kelly might be a close comparison over the years to come, but we also got Salem. I don't think you can cry about missing out on Kelly too much. We have plenty of things to be disappointed and angry about without trying to invent new ones. Barry Prendergast is gone, ok?

Update - Mumford fell 3 hitouts short, and came in 3rd for the all-time hitouts tally, behind Gary Dempsey (63) in 1982, and surprisingly, Sam Jacobs in 2012. It would've been nice for some kind of record to be nothced up in this game. At half time I was doing the numbers to see if it was possible for Melbourne to win, get off the bottom of the ladder, and still have below 50% for-against.

With Jones hurt early and not having a great day, Dom Tyson was clearly our best, which was borne out in the stats. 25 disposals, 19 of them contested. 10 clearances (not quite a third of our total) Had some clangers but overall maintained a 76% disposal efficiency, well above most of the team. Honourable mention to Tom McDonald who played a good game considering. Also, despite it not quite working on the day, I'd say Frawley at CHF-ish looks like being worth persevering with. Infuriatingly, a lot of our players had short good patches, though for some that seemed to be literally 15 minuets or so. And even moreso, a lot of players managed to do one or two parts of their job well, but butcher other elements to the point of not giving us a whole lot of overall gain. As a team, we broke even in contested possessions, but got smashed in the tackles and clearances. Which suggests to me that we're pretty good at fighting to get the ball but terrible, really terrible, at the awareness in close required both to find eachother in a pack and to be react quickly to a ball being worked out of there by our opponents. 79 to 37 in hitouts... the mind boggles. I think you'll find that Mumford's 60 is in fact an all-time record.

You mean, close down the Melbourne Football Club so that another club can enter the league? Derrrrpp? How about we close the club and distribute the membership to other clubs in a kind of delisted free agency? Wait! I've got it! A merger with Fitzroy! That's thinking outside the box.

Does anyone else get reminded of James McDonald when they watch Cross play, or give interviews, or for that matter just looking at his tackle numbers? Four or five more of him, please.

Many Melbourne players are in the habit of waiting for someone to run before they begin to chase. You'd need to be damn fast to win a 20m sprint if you're not off the mark with your competitor.

I sat pretty close to goal, out in the open (except when huddled out of the storm) for the GWS v Sydney game. Both sides were seeking to whip the ball back from defensive 50, Mcveigh-style, for most of the game. Of course it's just an impression, but GWS got quite a few goals running forward and bursting across the attacking 50. They were also well served by their multiple key tall targets in that game. No, they didn't clunk a vast supply of contested marks inside 50, but time and again they brought the ball down and created a ground level contest or stoppage. There's no denying Devon had a blinder against the Saints, but when 174cm guys are kicking goals it is often from grabbing the opportunities when the forward line targets could keep the ball in dispute. Also, after Smith's 6 for the season, the GWS goal tally is; Jeremy Cameron, 5 goals, Jonathan Giles, 4 goals Jonathon Patton, 3 goals Rest of team - 10 goals So it is pretty much the tall forwards and a ruckman-forward, a crumber, and then one goal each from a collection of midfielders. The 'no forward line myth' is holding up pretty well. That said, the rest of the OPs analysis is spot on and I can even add something to it. I'll even put it in bold since it is so f'ing shameful. Western Sydney currently have ten players averaging 4 or more tackles per game. Melbourne have Cross, Jones, and Spencer.

Pretty sure we already have a massive wines thread.

Drop Toumpas? Surely not. Young player, making an honest mid-range contribution and seeming to grow in the role. Sometimes I worry that we've been fed so much cheap baloney under the slogan 'it takes time' that we forget that, well, in some cases it genuinely does take time. I think comparisons with Camporeale are reasonable, and I think most of us would be content is Toumpas went on to play 200+ games for the club at a generally good standard, yeah? For what it's worth, I keep picturing Toumpas as being more like Essendon's Stanton. Certainly the early-career stats are comparable, as is the body type. Not to mention the amount of fan rage directed so unreasonably at each of them!

Hmm... what do all those players have in common as a group? Pretty much nothing, other than being Melbourne players giving meditation a try. Practically a control sample for a scientific evaluation. Interesting.

I'll take a moment first to gobble up all the low-hanging fruit on that; "Demon's results headed south" "Supporter forum gets chilly reception" "Demon's gone cold early in the season" "Melbourne fans dreaming of end to endless night" "Demon forwards kept on ice" Right, glad I got that out of my system. Also, thanks for the report Whispering Jack. Really good to hear that former board members are not keeping their distance from the club, and I like your hints at, let's call it 'moderately positive' news regarding Dawes. Touch wood. Or titanium rod inserts. The latter seem more common around our forward line lately!

Free Agency in it's current form will cripple the AFL if allowed to run in the long term. I've been working on an article exploring and elaborating the problems the current system creates, what is shocking is that when you go through it systematically from a few different perspectives, especially in terms of 'formal economy vs informal economy', the issues are completely obvious. The AFL doesn't get let off the hook at all for their responsibility on this - part of their management culture of pushing things through with as little meaningful assessment as they can get, making decisions first and then commissioning reports to reach the right conclusions, and generally doing things in a short-sighted rush. If I ever actually complete the article, I'll be sure to post it here, but the main point I want to make now is - it took a genuine dereliction of oversight and governance to fail to observe and anticipate the problems free agency creates.

Yep. Absolutely. People expressing their frustration at minimal signs of improved competitiveness at the start of yet another season is clearly a sign of the degenerate state of young people today. I think you'll find most of the people expressing frustration are also of the 'stick it out' mentality. For that matter, Paul Roos expressed plenty of frustration, but I assume he's not an 'instant-noodle' type. Yes, it was good that we were winning our share of the contested ball. It was only every other aspect of the game of football that we failed at against West Coast. I'll go eat some noodles now, eh.

I'm getting the proper s51ts at Frawely. James "jog jog" Frawley. Goes fine once it is near him, but is kind of wafting around a lot, watching the ball of over hiss head, then across the other way. Should be involved in a lot more moments.

'Scared to try' good description cowboy_from_hell But you know what they say, the harder you try, the dumber you look when you fail. I fear that gets into the Demon's sometimes. Sigh, there are some moments where we look competent, but it isn't lasting.

Well, there was plenty of disappointment in that. Couple of error-goals, and a bit of weak running (looking at you, Frawley) that failed to cover an opponent ending in a goal. Fascinated by Georgio on Naitanui, working hard, being just a little beaten repeatedly, but not being crushed. There's some good efforts out there but the system and the whole-team running isn't happening yet. Scoreboard is annoying. Hurn off might be helpful.

I'm so glad somebody else said that. I'm off to the Swans game tonight, if they beat Collingwood, that would make us better than both Sydney and Collingwood, yeah?

So many sour, sour people on this site. Tragedy is, once in a while each one individually makes a sporadic attempt to be more positive, but gets dragged back into the pit within a couple of posts as someone else turns their comment into an excuse for a personal attack. And the surliness at the club is remarkable.

Meanwhile, it is just an impression I'm getting, but there seem to be a scattering of injury layoffs being extended unexpectedly. I wonder if this is a perception created by more optimistic reporting in the first place (maybe Nick Smith would be know as '2-2-4' these days) or whether there is actually a recovery issue beginning to work it's way into the game?

To which Schrodinger said 'The cat is both there and not there, until you either trip on it or the lights come on. In the meantime, plot the potential distribution of the potential cat based on previous experience of where the potential cat has been tripped upon, and proceed to tread carefully'