Akum

Playing as a tall forward at Melbourne is going to make anyone look bad. What bothers me about Frost is that he's had many games where he just doesn't get near it very much. Can't help but wonder whether he'd be better having a few games at Casey getting a lot of game time and much more involvement, and see whether he can actually do the swing-man thing for which he seems to have been built. Or at least to work out if he can actually play forward. If he really can't have an impact playing forward at a lower level, he's not going to do it in AFL. With his athleticism he looks like he should have a lot of upside. But unless he really gets into the game, we'll never find out. And if he can't compete against VFL rucks, he's not going to cut it against the likes of Goldstein & Mumford. Even if he's nothing more than a competent tall defender, we'll never know unless he sees far more of the ball.

Would "any player" include Nat Fyfe, Luke Hodge, Sam Mitchell or Boomer Harvey?? Admire your faith in the integrity of the MRP.

North are the biggest whingers in the game's history. I'm surprised they don't get ridiculed for this at all. Titus O???

Is it legal to get the media out to training on Monday and practise tackling a player who buckles at the knees or launches themselves forward? Bet you any money that Norf practise sucking in umpires.

Do Dees supporters come in bags down your way???

OK then - 80% Bevo, 20% everything else. What bothers me more is that several coaches have decided what's the best game plan for 2016, and it's all pretty similar - conincidentally, not unlike we tried to play, with some success, in the NAB Challenge. The only ones who seem to disagree are Roos & Ross Lyon.

Is all this uncertainty a concern for anybody else? Considering the importance of us making a good showing in this game, we've had strange selection decisions & now speculation over further changes. 2013??

But we did execute it in the NAB Challenge, especially in the first & third matches. Yes, there's still a fair amount of adjusting, tightening, fine-tuning needed. But at least we took the game on.

All I can say is this: The game plan in the NAB Challenge, when Goodwin had control, was far different to the game plan in the first 2 rounds, when Roos had control. If we keep playing the same way as in the first two rounds, it'll be a long hard season. There's just no way that game plan is going to succeed in 2016. If we play to the NAB Challenge game plan, at least we've got some hope of things getting better. Worst case scenario for Roos is that he hangs on for game after game, and then as soon as he hands over to Goodwin, we start playing exciting footy & winning games.

... since we got rid of Fitzpatrick. Sure, flaky at times, but the only physical match-up we had for the increasing numbers of mobile 200cm forwards. Could bite us on the bum big-time. Unless they're seriously contemplating H on Waite.

With the talk about "tiredness", thought I'd look at some of the "% Time On Ground" (TOG) stats for last week to work out who might have been "tired" & had less TOG than might have been expected. If I've got it right, the average across any team is just below 82% TOG. The lowest on Saturday was Brayshaw with 58%, then Oliver with 67%. No surprises there. The next lowest were BenKen with 72%, Tyson with 74% and Harmes with 75%. Then comes Gawn at 78%, then Bugg & Viney at 79%, then Pedersen & Watts at 80%. I don't know what this means, but is anybody else surprised at some of the names at the bottom of our TOG%?

First, there are a lot of mobile 200cm forwards these days, and the threat they pose will only get greater over the next few years as the likes of Peter Wright & Tom Boyd improve. We don't have an obvious physical match-up for them, since getting rid of Jack Fitzpatrick. Second, shorter but stronger defenders have historically always been able to blunt the effectiveness of taller forwards in the air, but only by getting body-on-body contact and leaning into them & using their lower centre of gravity to stop them getting into the right body position. The only one we now have who can really do this (now we don't have Frawley) is Dunn, who's so good one-on-one because he uses his body so well in contests. But it sounds from what T-Mac said before the game that we were playing zone defence, with no defender assigned to any particular attacker. That might work overall, but there are times, with a particular dangerous forward (e.g. Betts) where he'll need a "stopper" all game (e.g. by Jetta and nobody else but Jetta) and if we play zone defence he's going to carve us up. We also need to have the flexibility that, if a forward that we didn't expect is carving us up in a particular game, we can make the change and put a "stopper" on him. But this didn't happen with Daniher, partly because we didn't have an adequate match-up against him, and partly because putting the "least-worst" option (T-Mac) as a "stopper" on him might have deprived us of a lot of attacking drive. I'd like to think we won't make that mistake again, but I wouldn't bet on it. Clearly the coaches had no contingency plans in place to cover the possibility of Daniher carving us up, because they just didn't seem to anticipate how vulnerable we'd be if he did. Again, poor planning, poor responding to situations within a game.

First, there are a lot of mobile 200cm forwards these days, and the threat they pose will only get greater over the next few years as the likes of Peter Wright & Tom Boyd improve. We don't have an obvious physical match-up for them, since getting rid of Jack Fitzpatrick. Second, shorter but stronger defenders have historically always been able to blunt the effectiveness of taller forwards in the air, but only by getting body-on-body contact and leaning into them & using their lower centre of gravity to stop them getting into the right body position. The only one we now have who can really do this (now we don't have Frawley) is Dunn, who's so good one-on-one because he uses his body so well in contests. But it sounds from what T-Mac said before the game that we were playing zone defence, with no defender assigned to any particular attacker. That might work overall, but there are times, with a particular dangerous forward (e.g. Betts) where he'll need a "stopper" all game (e.g. by Jetta and nobody else but Jetta) and if we play zone defence he's going to carve us up. We also need to have the flexibility that, if a forward that we didn't expect is carving us up in a particular game, we can make the change and put a "stopper" on him. But this didn't happen with Daniher, partly because we didn't have an adequate match-up against him, and partly because putting the "least-worst" option (T-Mac) as a "stopper" on him might have deprived us of a lot of attacking drive. I'd like to think we won't make that mistake again, but I wouldn't bet on it. Clearly the coaches had no contingency plans in place to cover the possibility of Daniher carving us up, because they just didn't seem to anticipate how vulnerable we'd be if he did. Again, poor planning, poor responding to situations within a game.

Let me put it this way. What if they'd missed the goal that put them in front, we'd taken it down the other end & got a goal, and escaped with a lucky win with over a hundred less possessions? The only way we'll beat ANY team this year is to plan and prepare well, choose wisely, work hard and play smart. If we let the other team dictate the terms of the game, we lose. We're nowhere near the stage where we can go easy on any one of these elements and still win, even against the crappiest teams. This humiliating loss showed us that as a whole club (or at least the FD), we clearly hadn't learned any of these lessons - the whole club is to blame, not just any one player. It was a lesson we might not have heeded if we'd scraped a lucky win. So, if in 10 weeks' time it's obvious that we've learned that lesson and changed what needed to be changed, it will have been well worth it. But it all depends what we do from now on.

Yeah, we'd be OK if our phycology was unpredictable! I get what you mean tho', and I agree with you. If an opposition coach does their homework on us, they can stifle s fairly easily, and it's fairly predictable how we'll react. Woosha's eyes would have lit up from the moment that T-Mac ran first one way across the ground in d50, then the other, took about the 4th or 5th option & inevitably turned it over.

This looks like another example of Watts making great position in metres of space for an easy 30m pass and then a dangerous kick into f50, but being ignored yet again.

Great OP Steve. Should it be pinned, as a catalogue of all our potential trouble spots? They're all there - the only contention is the relative weight to give to them. We need to look closer at this "starting as favourites" thing - it's about being "The Hunted". The side that's favoured to win is always "The Hunted", in that the team that's not favoured to win will always make plans to try to surprise them and strangle their game. The statement that "a powerful side yesterday wouldn't have taken Essendon lightly" is perfectly true, because a powerful side is "The Hunted" every week! The Hawks, for example, are used to being "The Hunted", because every side they play tries to come up with a plan to beat them, and they need to overcome that plan every week. The best sides - including Sydney circa 2005-2009 - can overcome being "Hunted" simply by being a strong enough team to take whatever anybody throws at them. Middle sides (Richmond, for example) MUST make adjustments when they're "Hunted", or they'll lose (which is why we beat them regularly by "hunting" them successfully). We're hardly ever favoured to win, so we're used to being "The Hunter", not "The Hunted". We never seem to expect the other team to "hunt" us and plan to shut us down and to take our best players out of the game. If we get "hunted", we're not good enough to just brush it aside - we have to make major adjustments. Roos never had to make adjustments when he was at the Swans (which, remember, is his only coaching experience at any level), but he has to make adjustments with us. And if we're ever going to move up the ladder, we must work out what to do when the opposition successfully covers our main playmakers. We'll never be a good side until we can withstand being "The Hunted".

... The one thing that was a constant of the great Geelong sides were a knowledge of where their team mates would be and a belief that their team mates would win the footy. Occasionally they got hurt on the counter, but their belief in the game plan working was so strong that they would play bold attacking footy at all costs. This is what we need to do. We've got a strong defensive mind-set now established by Roos. Now we need to take this discipline and combine it with bold, running play. I'm not saying we're at Geelong's level, but I think there's an apt comparison in there somewhere. Where we have to get to is consistently exhibiting solid team structures and a willingness to take the game on at all costs. When we get to this step, with good coaching, the next steps will naturally follow. My concern is though that we are struggling to believe at the moment and this is resulting in a lack of work rate that is being hindered by perhaps poor communication from the coaching group. These are good points, and agree with the little that I know about the Roos & Goodwin dynamic. It's not that the players "like" Goodwin and "don't like" Roos. They have enormous respect for Roos, and appreciation for the much improved defensive aspects of his game plan that he has brought. But there is some frustration that when things aren't going well and changes are needed, Roos won't change it up. Those who say there's not much difference between Roos's & Goodwin's game plans are right, in a way. The game plan is basically Roos's, and Goodwin has only made a couple of tweaks to it. But those tweaks are absolutely crucial. I do know that the going forward by low firm passes that we saw in the NAB Challenge is pure Goodwin, and bombing high to Hogan isn't. I don't know whether going forward in that way is also Roos's intention - it may be that by bombing it to Hogan, the players were actually disobeying Roos's orders to do it Goodwin's way. But the fact that they did it for the whole match, although it was obviously not working because Woosha had Hogan well & truly covered, makes me think that it was actually Roos's orders to "get it in to Hogan as quickly as you can" (as well as the clear resemblance to the Swans c.2005-2009) And I think - but I don't know - that the other Goodwin "tweak" is the forward press, only because it has been very apparent in games where Goodwin has had control (NAB Challenge) and has not been apparent in games where Roos has been in control. Happy to admit I may be wrong, but what makes me think it's Goodwin and not Roos is that to play the forward press, we have to accept that we're going to leak some goals when the other team gets out the back, but that overall it has more benefits than costs. And to me it just doesn't seem Roos to accept a strategy that involves us leaking some pretty bad goals. So AF, I agree with you totally about the Geelong comparison - a critical part of an essentially defensive game plan is to be able to hurt them on the rebound. If you don't have an effective attacking strategy, in 2016 you can be as good defensively as you possibly can be, but you're going to be eventually overcome, because good sides will realise that you can't hurt them on the rebound, so they'll exploit that and just wait for you to bomb it down the line to a contest (sound familiar?) and kill you on the turnover. Goodwin isn't going to throw Roos's game plan away - in fact, Goodwin's game plan is probably at least 2/3 Roos's game plan (remember Allan Jeans' thing about footy being pretty simple - either we've got the ball, they've got the ball or it's in dispute?). But his tweaks are absolutely vital, and make it more effective defensively as well as offensively. And for that matter, it's possible that Goodwin by himself couldn't have put together as good a defensive game plan as Roos has - he owes a huge amount to Roos. Yesterday, the Essendon brains trust had a plan to tie us up in knots - they sat on Viney, our new prime mover; they had loose men in dangerous positions and banked on Roos not covering them, which he didn't; they knew we had no physical match-up for Daniher, unless we were prepared to sacrifice TMac's attacking game to stand him, which they knew Roos wouldn't do; they knew Gawn would win loads of taps but worked out how to nullify them, and banked on Roos not changing the stoppage strategy, which he didn't; and they anticipated the vast majority of our i50 entries being bombs to Hogan and double-teamed him, banking on Roos not changing it and he didn't. WE ARE ALWAYS VULNERABLE TO THIS AND NEED TO PLAN FOR WHAT TO CHANGE WHEN THIS HAPPENS, and this ALWAYS happens when we are "The Hunted" and not "The Hunter". It's like a fish being caught in a net - the harder the fish struggles and makes an effort, the tighter the net becomes. The players find that the harder they try to do the same thing, the harder it becomes. This is when something needs to change. But in the games where he's had control, it seems that Roos doesn't do changing things in the middle of a game - he seems to prefer to set a strategy at the beginning of a game that he thinks is going to prevail, and expects it to prevail no matter what the other coaches do. And it's this refusal to change when the other coach has us "in the net" that leads to frustration - by which I mean not angry, but feeling that there's a way to fix the problem that's not being used. Now I'm a huge admirer of Roos & what he's done for MFC - his skills in being able (with PJ) to unite a fractured organisation, his leadership, his inspiration, his club-building and team-building, his recruiting strategy (of senior coaching staff as well as of players) have been absolutely fantastic and exactly what we needed. But he is not as outstanding at match-day coaching as all these other things (his background in coaching is actually quite shallow), and he has everything to gain & nothing to lose by letting Goodwin (and Craig Jennings, who I've heard is a great pick up) have more match-day responsibility. Roos is like the best editor in the business who wants to have the front page article as well - we need him to be a great editor, there's someone else who can be the great journo. Sorry for the rant. But I have fears that this situation may set us back a few times this year.

But it was glaringly obvious that they'd put heaps of planning into stopping Viney and Gawn. It was easy to see that they were their big targets, plus Hogan of course. As Praha keeps saying, the fact that our three big guns were nullified, we refused to cover their two loose men the whole game, we were comprehensively out coached and we were in front with 15 minutes to go actually says a lot for the players' efforts.

But we've lost games before by Roos refusing to man up on loose men. Woosha - like every other coach - knew that Roos wouldn't man up on them.

You know what's the worst part? We've made a whole lot of Essendon supporters very happy tonight. This performance of ours will have given their whole putrid club a new lease of life. And they will feel that their arrogance is completely justified - thanks to us!

According to the AFL match feed: All of Essendon's goals have come from intercept possessions in this match.

For the first time, I'm prepared now to believe that Jesse's gone. Scully-like performance.

From the AFL match feed: All of Essendon's goals have come from intercept possessions in this match.

Absolutely humiliating