Akum

I thought that too. He actually did quite well a couple of times when he went into the ruck (mainly because when he was in the ruck he wasn't constantly being held off the ball), but was only there for about 3 minutes at a time.

What started the "niggle" was Higgins decking Oliver right in front of the ump after about 10 minutes of the start and no free. And our players getting held off the ball and throat-punched all over the ground. Higgins gave away a free because he throat-punched Bernie, and complained that it shouldn't have been a free because it was "only" a throat-punch. You heard what Scott said in his presser - the MRP has set the standard. They knew exactly what they were doing. Why any Melb supporter would want to try to excuse an umpiring exhibition like that is simply beyond me.

You seriously think that umpiring was evenly bad for both sides???

See this is the sort of thing that really annoys me. He was setting himself to contest the mark with Goldstein, and Hansen took his eyes off the ball and shoulder-charged him long before the ball came, which allowed Goldstein to mark uncontested. If you're setting for a marking contest and an opponent just takes you out when you don't expect it, very few players could stay on their feet. Yet our "supporters" say he staged. If after watching the replay you really do think that Watts staged that, you have no idea. I've also seen comments that Oliver staged when he was sniped by Higgins in the first quarter, and that Vince staged when he was punched low in the gut by Cunnington - even when he was vomiting on the bench, the commentators were trying to say he was exaggerating. Unbelievable.

I reckon when Max comes back & gets fully fit (i.e. maybe not from his first game back), we'll come storming home and win every game, even against the top teams. Whether that's enough to reach the finals is another matter. My fantasy is to sneak in at 8th and play Norf in an elimination final and smash them by a record margin. Don't care what happens after that.

Yes, but despite all this, we smashed them in the first half of the last quarter and got to within 2 points of them with about 10 minutes to go. As in our other two close losses. We simply don't know how to win it from there. We just gave them back the initiative far too easily. It's like every player was looking for somebody else to finish the game off.

And bombing the ball into attack is no good if you can't get it within about 20m of goal. Bombing it to 40-50m out is a downright mistake, just begging for a rebound goal. Oppo defenders' eyes light up when they see us bomb it to 50 out. Especially if -yet again - they play a spare in defence.

We win games we're expected to lose whenever we're the HUNTER. We lose games we're expected to win whenever we're the HUNTED. From the senior coach to the bootstudder (yeah, I know), we simply don't know how to prevail when the opposition plans effectively against us. To be a true contender, we need to find out how to drag ourselves over the line in a close game we should have lost.

This also indicates that the jumper punches, gut punches, throat punches and sniping of the likes of Oliver were actually a team tactic and that Scott expects to get away with it "Scott-free".

Even with all the horrendous umpiring, horrendous turnovers and having several of our key players way down, we still should have won it. Losing the hitouts 67 to 28, our mids did an incredible job to win the clearances, though they beat us by at least 6 in the 2nd half. But we had to also stop them getting high-quality clearances, which we couldn't do in the 1st & 3rd, especially at centre bounces, and that gave them the advantage. In the 3rd, this was partly because they got Cunnington back (and we made the mistake of tagging Higgins and not their lynchpin Cunnington). But it was partly because Scott changed their mids set-up. They all started one side of the stoppage, then all ran through to the other side, where Goldstein just tapped it in that direction, while our mids were caught on the other side of the stoppage where they'd started from. Scott had this advantage and he worked out how to use it. Each time it took us a quarter and 4 or 5 goals to work it out. It took me a quarter and a half, but I'm not paid 200K or whatever to work it out. Playing T-Mac in the forward line at the beginning of the game was a massive mistake. With Gawn & Hogan out, T-Mac is our greatest asset, and we need to know how best to use him. Today, that wasn't it. Our brains trust also needs to understand how desperate Scott the lesser is to not lose to us, and how much he prepares for us. And the Scotts are masters at knowing how to play dirty and snipe while staying on the right side of the umpiring. We play a very naive game, thinking that other sides are just going to let our superior talent run free.

Bad idea to start T-Mac forward.

About 2/3 of that team turned over in 4 years. And only about 5 of them could be said to be regulars now.

Totally agree mate. Had the amazing experience of watching the grand final last year with a Ghanaian family and a couple of young Ethiopian guys. They're all mad Doggies supporters (& the Ghanaian family are members), decked out in Dogs scarves & beanies, all because of the incredible amount of work that the Doggies do in schools out this way.

Bulldogs have a very strong partnership with Victoria University here in the western suburbs. Works well for both parties.

I went to the Chinese New Year festival in Chinatown last year and I was stunned to see an MFC stall with everything in Mandarin. It was a great initiative and I felt proud of my cub for doing it. But was that a one-off, or does it happen every year (I missed this year's festival)? And I know someone who's a Commissioner on the Victorian Multicultural Commission. They are linked to most of the cultural festivals that go on in Melbourne every week of the year. The Commission is keen to encourage these communities to get more involved with and develop relationships with the mainstream Australian community, but it's difficult to find a suitable vehicle for this. It depends what sort of a club we want to become. And it would take a lot of groundwork before it started to pay off. But if we're prepared to take the time, the pay off could be immense.

Again, from where he kicked it there's no way it would have gone between the goalposts and continued on its original trajectory if it had hit the near post, even it had just lightly brushed the post.

Boom Boom!

I wonder whether one of the coaches (my guess would be Craig Jennings) worked out where Jacobs puts his taps, and he's just very predictable. Most ruckman have a preferred way of tapping, especially if they're easily winning the hit outs. I don't think it's coincidence that while we broke even in the around-the-ground stoppages, we absolutely smashed them in centre clearances. Centre bounces are probably a lot easier to analyse.

Thought he did it brilliantly. Feinted to handball laterally to Garlett in space, totally wrong footing both defenders, then jagged back n to his right foot and easy goal. He'd know exactly what the defenders would & wouldn't want him to do in that situation. The beauty of playing him as a forward from time to time.

Sorry, to me the word isn't intensity, but composure. Lack of composure has been a major problem in all of our losses, not a lack of intensity. Going for even more intensity can stuff up our composure. If we can find the right balance of intensity & composure, we're well & truly in this.

No way. They're going in hyper-intense, especially at the start. Too hyped up, and too much adrenalin. This is why we have such things as four and five defenders flying for the mark or spoil, three or four mids going after the same ball at a stoppage and no one shepherding or blocking or spreading, too many "hero" handballs and slam-it-on-the-boot clearances, experienced players missing targets that they'd normally hit, kicking the ball far too high when we're going into the game with a height deficiency. Even when we're on top early, like against Geelong or Carlton, we don't get full value for our dominance because we don't take just that little bit of care. Intensity is great, but not if it's all you've got. It needs to be tempered with just a light sprinkling of taking-care with disposals and team play (it used to be called "steadying" before you get rid of the ball), or what you get is skill errors and turnovers. And more intensity at that point makes it worse, not better. Beyond a certain threshold, more intensity stuffs up your output.

Great post and great points. They didn't really jump us at the start because we "lacked intensity" or "didn't come to play". We just didn't execute simple skills and made basic mistakes, and this allowed them to set up goalscoring chances, and ruined chances that we had created. We didn't take the necessary care. (Was it in the first that Hannan snapped over his right shoulder from about 15m out and missed everything? Might have been 2nd).

In another article he speaks of watching Norf's win over Adelaide as almost a supernatural experience and promised to try to not go on about it too much.

Hawks jumped us for the first 5 or 10 minutes, but were only a goal or two up, and we reeled them in. We ended the quarter with more possessions, clearances etc etc. but wasted it all. When the momentum shifted toward the end of the quarter, they made the most of it and got three of their 5 goals in the last 5 mins or so. What killed us in that quarter was we just didn't execute basic skills. Our disposal efficiency was lower than 30% at one stage. Three times Jones had a teammate 15m in the clear, but missed them by 15m and speared it straight to their opponent, but he wasn't the only one. We missed easy targets and turned it over all over the ground. And the team that got its three-peat basically by punishing teams for turnovers will make you pay for turnovers like no other.. One reason for not executing basic skills, particularly at the start of a game, is being too fired up. A number of our key players are "hyper" personalities, balls of adrenalin - Jones, Viney, Oliver, Petracca, Hunt & Frost just for starters. If these guys are made to get too hyped up at the start and run out loaded up on their own adrenalin, they might get plenty of ball, but they're going to miss targets. This emphasis on intensity above all else concerns me. Our gameplan relies equally on good disposal, but poor basic disposal (whether in general play or kicking at goal of both) has been a feature of all of our losses so far.

Anybody else getting fed up with so many of our young players getting repeatedly concussed in VFL? And for Maynard - how deliberate does a hit have to be to be deemed deliberate? (by a non-Melbourne player, of course)