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Akum

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Posts posted by Akum

  1. 12 hours ago, Salems Lot said:

    And there's the thing D2014.  It would be so perfect for the 2 founding teams to be meeting at the business end of the season

    Does anyone else feel bemused by the complete lack of respect shown to the Dees and the Dogs in the first 2 years of AFLW.  I am gobsmacked that they are passed over for the big games and as always the League focusses on the so called power clubs who have yet to provide any evidence of competitiveness. 

    (Fair go to Adelaide and Lions for making the grand final last year by the way) BUT Melbourne and Footscray are the originators of this form of the game.  Surely they should be opening the season at the very least. All this is off topic but it does get my goat!

    Couldn't agree with you more. You get the feeling that Dees vs Dogs GF would not be the AFL's preferred outcome.

    I reckon a lot of the gripes this year about AFLW are because of all the hype about the Blues vs Pies season opener. The worst game of AFLW between the worst two teams, whose AFL clubs both give the impression of being ho-hum about it.

    • Like 1
  2. 3 hours ago, poita said:

    I've seen bits and pieces of womens football for about 15 years, since I used to work with one of the St Albans Spurs players, but Saturday was the first full game of AFLW that I have watched. Overall I really enjoyed the day and the contest. There is clearly a lot of goodwill towards making AFLW work and getting it right first time, and I hope this happens.

    A few thoughts:

    • The skill level, particularly by foot, is poor. There are very few players who can hit a target 25 - 30 metres away. I thought GWS were better at this than Melbourne. Perhaps this is a consequence of bringing in so many players from other sports. Hopefully this improves markedly as the new draftees are players who have been in the sport better.
    • Melbourne were much better around the contest than GWS and looked much better in the second half when they were prepared to move the ball forward by any means, rather than chipping the ball around. I doubt they will get a half to sort themselves out against the better teams.
    • The gap between the best players and the rest is immense. You could immediately see the effect that losing Paxman had on Melbourne, as one of the few players who can use the ball well.
    • I was okay with 13 goals kicked across roughly 70 minutes of play (1 every 5 minutes or so), but we clearly had the best game of the weekend. Anything less than 10 goals a game just doesn't cut it. I suspect the game would benefit from playing on smaller grounds.
    • I don't see any reason for the competition to expand from 8 teams to 14 over the next two years. There isn't the player base, and with little or no revenue generated by either the competition or the clubs, all you are doing is creating a massive gravy train. Far better to focus on getting the fundamentals right and having the best product possible over a period of time, and then expand when this is achieved.

    Good "thoughts" Poita.

    GWS prepared for this well. They picked their two toughest players to wear Daisy and O'Dea like a glove for much of the game, (though if Paxman hadn't gone down they probably wouldn't have been able to cover the three of them), so our two best ball users were under the pump most of the time; when they did get clear, they were really damaging. GWS defended in numbers and stopped us spreading from stoppages pretty well; they tried to score on fast breaks, and did move the ball well at times.

    As others have said, defensive skills are easier to teach to "average" players than attacking skills - the tackling, for example, has gone up a notch from last year, as has teams playing a defensive strategy. It will take some time for the attacking skills to catch up. And there are a number of players from other sports who have definite athletic ability but are still learning the skills.

    The problem about expansion is that now everybody else wants a piece of the pie, including the clubs that were indifferent at the beginning, though other clubs might feel justified in believing they were gazumped at the original allocation. The AFL will probably engineer it so that the big Melbourne clubs, Sydney and Brisbane (GCS) will be at the head of the queue.

  3. 15 hours ago, Skuit said:

    I thought there would be a poll. Toughness. As the AFL slowly drifts toward rolling mauls. Can't hurt with skill if you can't win the ball.

    The last time AFL looked like becoming a rolling maul (Swans defensive "flood"; Hawks "rolling zone") it got picked apart first by the Cats and to a lesser extent the Dogs by rapid ball movement and precision foot skills. So much so that Clarko saw that this was a far more effective way to play and changed the Hawks style accordingly.

    These things can change within the course of a season, and if you get caught out with last year's game style, which other teams have worked hard to counter, you can end up holding a ticket for a bus that left long ago. The trick, as Clarko realised when he had the cattle, is to develop next year's game style.

  4. 4 hours ago, Sir Why You Little said:

    No he wouldn’t be that stupid. Disagreements can be sorted out. This one cuts a lot deeper

    as i said when this all started

    Goodwin has put both his balls on the line, if this backfires badly, his coaching career is over. 

    I will back him in. 

    I am just happy Jack didn’t go to Jeelong. 

    At Port it’s out of mind out of sight...

    Part of me can't help but wonder whether you're on to something here. But we probably won't find out until the 30-year rule is up. Or until one of them writes a book.

    • Like 1
  5. Again, for the umpteenth time:

    Watts is gone. He's now someone else's problem, probably Port's.

    Goody stays and continues to be a vital factor for us and our future success.

    And because it's Goody who's the ongoing concern as far as we (MFC) are concerned, some of us feel that Goody could have handled his share of this thing better.

    That's it.

    • Like 4
  6. 14 minutes ago, mo64 said:

    2016 Sam Lloyd 2nd on the RFC goalkicking with 35G 13B. An even more accurate shot for goal than Watts. And won games off his own boot.

    2017 Sam Lloyd played 8 games.Hardwick worked out that the benefits of having a smaller mobile forward line that applied pressure worked better than playing someone just because they are an elite kick.

    Getting rid of Watts is equally about how Goodwin wants us to play next year, as it is about his lack of discipline off field.

    Absolutely. This should have been the reason he gave from the beginning. If he'd left out all the pointless talk about his "lack of discipline off field" (and training blah blah blah), it would have only helped our ability to trade.

    • Like 3
  7. 4 hours ago, Axis of Bob said:

    We have just as many as Richmond did.

    Houli? Martin? Cotchin? Rance? With Watts gone, Salem is the only Demon who comes anywhere near this quartet in quality and consistency of ball use.

    And they moved the ball into space brilliantly and lowered their eyes into attack, resisted the temptation most of the time to bomb it on to Riewoldt's head (the way that we do predictably with Hogan and, yes, Watts, under Goodwin) which would have allowed Adelaide's tall defenders to pick it off with ease. They either hit forward targets, or delivered it low and hard and into spaces when no targets were available. They were brilliantly coached, and they were encouraged by their coach to take the game on and take risks.

    In all the bluster about Richmond's pressure, some have totally missed their skill and their quality of ball use. If they hadn't been able to hurt Adelaide so much when they had the ball, a lot of their pressure would have been wasted, and it would have been much harder to sustain.

    • Like 6
  8. 5 hours ago, Roost It said:

    Explain to us how else you can do it

    Since you asked so nicely ...

    There was absolutely no need for Goodwin & to a lesser extent Jones to talk his value down early in the piece. They gained nothing from doing it, and really messed up our capacity to negotiate a higher pick. 

    Where was Mahoney at that time? The FD took ages to work out its narrative, and then its negotiating position, and by then it was almost too late, a lot of damage has been done. Even some "Watts needs to go" posters wondered why we were talking his value down so much.

    In answer to your question about "how else you can do it":  how about something neutral that aims at the ball (i.e. the issue) and not the man (Watts)? Such as: "Our game next year is going to be much more focussed on contested ball. Watts has great talents, but not in the areas that our team will be moving into. We've therefore encouraged him to seek other options where his talents will be a better fit for their style of play."

    Pick 15, please.

    [P.S. My opinion (not fact) for why Goodwin & Jones were so heavy on criticising Watts initially was that they were struggling to convince the playing group of the strength of their reasons for pushing him out. I can't imagine who else the would have been trying to convince that "Watts is bad". If my opinion has any truth whatsoever, I very much doubt whether what anybody has said since would have made the slightest bit of difference. Which would be grounds for concern.]

    • Like 3
    • Thanks 1
  9. 5 hours ago, mo64 said:

    Do you know this as fact?

    It's feasible. We're pushing him out 1 year into a 3-year contract, so we're the party that's taken the initiative to break the contract. Not unreasonable to expect that we should pay some of what remains of it.

    • Like 1
  10. 6 hours ago, bing181 said:

    This is just ridiculous. It's not some Sunday morning kick to kick with your mates. These are professionals, working in a professional environment. Everyone knows what the rules are.

    Grasping at straws.

    True, they know they have to toe the line according to the rules, but it doesn't mean they all have to like them. Or that they're all convinced that the "rules" have been fairly applied in this case. 

     

  11. 7 hours ago, bing181 said:

    In the last few minutes, H Sun reporting that Watts has chosen Port. Won't be announced till after Stringer trade goes through, though what the connection is I'm not sure.

    Agree on the above re Port cap questions, but someone posted that they had plenty of room, so impossible to know. Think the Motlop to Port move would give Watts more, not less, of an incentive as it makes them more of a destination club.

    Picks could be the sticking point, Port only have second round picks in the thirties (or thereabouts).

    Watts's manager also manages Stringer.

    We've been pre-occupied right up until Thurs with getting Lever.

    Port have been pre-occupied with getting Motlop over Suns (thus massively disrupting the GAJ trade), and before that landing Rockliff.

    Perhaps it's only now that the Motlop FA trade has gone through that they can start talking.

    Port have lost Trengove who was apparently on 600K, and also Impey & probably Lobbe. I think it was Port themselves who said they had plenty of room.

    I'd say that Geelong & Swans were interested because with the way Goodwin spoke initially, they expected us to accept a late second or even early third. Since then, we've stopped Goodwin talking to anybody and Mahoney's done all the press calls and statements and he's tightened things up a lot.

    • Like 3
  12. 6 hours ago, Diamond_Jim said:

    not much choice after the way this game has been played.

    To say it was amateur is a gross understatement.

    Remind me never to ask the MFC list management team to negotiate on my behalf.

    Mahoney's done well to get it down to 30, since he came into the picture after the initial statements of Jones and Goodwin (twice each), that went pretty hard for Watts when there was no need, made it look like we'd be lucky to get mid-40s.

    • Like 2
  13. 1 hour ago, Wiseblood said:

    Big call.  They still have a very soft underbelly and they don't have great depth either.  A few injuries and they're in trouble.

    Not like us! Any gaps we have that need to be plugged, we have ...

    Oh. Right.

  14. 37 minutes ago, Demon77 said:

    I remember the time you posted the above and a few of us initially responded  by saying this was unlikely as Watts attended the MSAC school holiday kids clinic the day before.

    It would be silly indeed to post it if the club advised him not to go or if he had a compulsory rehab session that day.

    Its been suggested by other posters that the Byron trip was the last straw and really irked the club.

    If team protocol has been broken then fair enough, but I see no issue with this if he had a day off or two from club duties.

    Surely players would have provision for days off in their contract?

    Surely there couldn't be a problem with what he did on what was probably his day off?

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