Akum

What about the risk of running out of legs in the last, if it's a strength-sapping slog like it promises to be? As much as I love them both as players, the two that struggle with their endurance at the moment - both for good reasons that are obvious - are Oliver & Trengove. Both have TOG% in the mid-60%s in the past 2 weeks. If we have two players who struggle to raise a gallop in the last quarter or two, that means less rotations for everyone else and could spell trouble in a game like this.

This is exactly the point I'm trying to make. For anybody who represents the club in the media, they are coached about how to answer questions they might be asked, that if answered in the wrong way could cause trouble for the club or the AFL. There is obviously a particular script by which to answer the common mid-season question "Are you interested in player X?" Jack Watts pretty much stuck to that script on TFS in relation to Prestia: "I'm not the recruiting manager" "don't know who we're talking to" and "we'd be stupid not to look at someone of the calibre of player X if he remains uncontracted" Player X's current club can't object to that, and it doesn't give the impression that we are flouting any AFL rules. Roos also stuck pretty close to that script when he answered the question about Hibberd, and Essendon had no objection to Roos' answer. As you've rightly picked up, PJ stepped over that line when he answered the Hibberd question - so much so that he drew an over-reaction from Woosha. And I'm saying that there was no way this was an accident & he slipped up. It was deliberate, for the reasons I've given in an earlier post. His words were very carefully chosen; he doesn't slip up over issues like this. He was trying to provoke an over-reaction and he got it. And the main problem by taking this approach - as you've also rightly pointed out - is the highly important risk that "Hibberd (and almost certainly Hurley - they'd have to be trying for the double package) might resent things being made uncomfortable for him" at Essendon. The way to manage this risk is to make sure that Hibberd's OK with it, which he obviously is. PJ's easily smart enough & competent enough to get the desired result while managing reasonable risks. If it was a slip-up, I'd be concerned too. But with PJ, there's no way it's a slip-up. He knows exactly what he's doing.

OK, perhaps I should have said "agreement" not permission". Do you seriously think he would have mentioned it without Hibberd being OK about it? He certainly wouldn't have mentioned it if he thought Hibberd wouldn't have been OK about it. There's this thing called courtesy, you should try it sometime. Usually pays off. And do you seriously think he wouldn't have had another purpose in mind? That it was just an off-the-cuff answer to a routine question? Yeah, silly comments. Don't keep adding to them.

How would you tell?

Yeah, but a lot less interesting. Know anyone who might apply?

"Hey mate, you really wanna stay with this mob next year?" Pendles really doesn't look all that healthy, does he? Huge respect for him as a player, but he's really doing it tough atmo.

Best post in the thread so far.

Didn't think much of Treloar as a team player on QB. Nothing specific to go on, just a general impression. Thought there was a huge gap in class between him & Pendles, who drove the Pies good 1st quarter by working hard to bring team-mates into the game, but who fell away after Q1 because when we tightened up in the midfield, the likes of Treloar preferred to blaze away rather than looking to give the ball to Pendles for a more incisive clearance. With Pendles firing in the first, they got 4 goals. With Treloar as their most prominent mid for the other 3 quarters, they got 4 goals, definitely 1 and perhaps 2 from umpiring shockers.

Who was that former fringe player who's taking them to court to try to find out what he was actually injected with? Sounds like Dys could help him out & save him the legal fees. Could even give him the expert info about all the potential side effects too by the sounds of it. Dyson Pollyanna.

PJ has played this brilliantly from a tactical perspective. He's got exactly the response out of the Bummers that he was looking for. There's no way he would have spoken about it in public without getting Hibberd's permission. If Hibberd (and others) are wavering at all, it would have been over whether the club has changed now that all the sheit has been cleared out, or whether it's the same old heavy handed bullying dump that forced players against their will to comply with the regime, that then refused to take responsibility and hung the players out to dry, and probably that sacked PJ even earlier. I bet that Goodwin, McCartney & PJ would have had conversations with Hibberd(+) about what the atmosphere was like inside the club, and how good it is at the Dees. "So let's put that to the test - I'll mention it in an interview and we'll see how they react." Woosha's heavy-handed response shows beyond any doubt whatsoever that the leopard hasn't changed its spots. A mature, player-friendly, non-bullying response would have been along the lines of "We can't stop our players or their managers talking to other clubs, and they are free to do so. But they all know how much we want them to stay with us, and we will try as hard a possible to keep them here." (pretty much how we have handled the Hogan question) But PJ knows that club well enough to know that they're constitutionally incapable of being player friendly and laying off the bluffing and bullying. PJ laid down the gauntlet and Woosha just failed the test of character - surprise surprise. The waverers are now in no doubt - if you stay, you stay with the same heavy-handedness that you have probably regretted not standing up against back in 2011 or whenever. As you sow, ...

Also we've got a lot more out of some of the players we've traded in. Most obvious is Vince, but there's also BenKen & Garlett (until his recent stumble). Could prob add Pedo and Frost to that (though it's early days for Frost).

How many ex-wingmen have also played ruck? And does this mean that JW has now played every position on the field?

Was listening to SEN on way home from work last night, first time for a while. Scott Lucas happened to be giving his "not-so-obvious" halfway-thru-season AA line-up. It had only one player from MFC. Guess who? Yes, it's just an opinion, but a highly informed one. Is this Jack's "minimum standard?" Oh yeah, the club has an internal stat that it rates highly - "involvement in scoring chains". Last time I saw it (admittedly a few rounds ago) Jack was way out in front - about 50% higher than whoever was second (about 130 to 80 IIRC). And I thought his game against Pies was so-so, nothing more. And I suspect he would too.

Sorta like that Sidebum went the early crow by giving him heaps of sht at quarter time, then Bugg wiped him for the rest of the game. The Sidebum got a dose of the Tommy Bugg - somehow ... poetic!

MKR has a lot to answer for!! The bolded bits are absolutely right. Dawes's positional play, use of his body and sheer footy smarts as a CHF are way ahead of any of the other alternatives. As far as the other forwards are concerned, this makes it much easier to work as a team, and makes the forward line much more effective. Pedo is a really good back-up for Dawes, but he doesn't work with the other forward in the same way. In fact, Dawes looks as fit as he's ever been at the Dees, because he's been allowed to take his time to get fully fit, and part of the reason he's been able to do that is that Pedo's been such a good back-up. Dawes in attack is like Vince in defence. You're a defender in a tight spot, you need someone to make position for a give and to deliver the ball forward, and most of the time it's Vince who's in the right place at the right time. In the forward line, the ball's coming in long, you really need a big guy to make a contest, most of the time it's Dawes who's in the right place at the right time. And the other player who's often gets to the right place at the right time is Trengove. But that's another story. "Footy smarts" is hard to define, and not something that can be taught, but it's such a valuable commodity to have on your side.

Coming from someone who played his junior footy in Tassie, that's a big statement!

Right, so your message is that your thing against JT isn't based on anything objective or rational. You're just basically having a swing. Carry on.

Insult to plankton

Or grab "perpendiculating" arm at elbow & hold it up while teammate smashes into unprotected ribs.

So - as with throwing, as with ducking - "playing it well" in this context means knowing what illegal tactics you can get away with the whole game. And it's no coincidence that the teams who "game the umpires" best are riding high.

Surprised that nobody else got as annoyed about the commentators praising the Bont's "lightning fast hands in traffic" and the one-handed "give" over the shoulder, "very few can execute that as well as he does".

The other thing about the Diamond Defence that just occurred to me. The Dogs often defended by pushing us out wide, but attacked through the corridor, which is what we were trying to do. For long periods of the game, they owned the corridor. I don't know this for sure, but it may well be that Diamond Defence works better against attacks from out wide than from through the corridor.

I'm interested in this thing about "the-scoreboard-flattered-us". I totally agree. And you could say that about all our losses this year, as well as our win against GWS. So excluding the games that were relatively easy wins, in 5 games out of 5 "the-scoreboard-flattered-us". How many times does this happen before we start to think that maybe it's not a co-incidence? Could there be something about our game style that causes "the-scoreboard-flattered-us" when we lose?

So many good posts on this thread it's impossible to quote them all. The most important point is that this is above all a work in progress. I think that's why, for the time being, we're playing an extreme form of it. To work well under pressure, it needs 6 out of 6 defenders (and however many mids) to be in the right position and to respond in the right way. If one out of the 6 is out of position, then the flood gates open. As it stands, we're trying to get a bunch of kids (Hunt, Wagner, Salem, O-Mac etc) to learn it within their first 30 (or in some cases 10) games. Plus a bunch of seasoned players (Lumumba, Dunn, Garland, Grimes, etc) to adjust to a plan that's almost the complete opposite of what they've done for years. I've left out Jetta, Vince & T-Mac because they're the ones who at this stage are anywhere near getting it right. That leaves a helluva lot of holes. And we need more talls - the problem for T-Mac is that he has to get to the drop zone of every ball that's bombed in, because he's the only one that can contest against a tall forward. The Dogs knew this, and when the ball comes in long & high, it's easy for them to work out where he is (because he's the only one who's going to make a contest) and impede him to make sure he doesn't get to the drop. And it only looks bad when we're the "hunted" - when other teams have done their homework on us and worked out specifically how to beat it, and are coached to play in that fashion. We can't fly under the radar any more. But when we do eventually get it right, it will work very well indeed and we'll be an exhilarating team to watch, and very hard to stop.

Comedy gold!