Akum

"Plausible deniability" again.

Spot on. If Neeld starts listening, there might be hope for us yet. For a start, when his game plan isn't working (and it never has & never will) ... FGS let them try something different! And instead of zone defence and kicking to contests ... can he even be persuaded to try manning up when they've got it and kicking & running into space when we've got it? Good basic accountable footy - like every other side does?

And don't forget Annette Funicello!!

As long as you clean up afterwards.

While there are doubts about anything Caro says about internal matters at MFC, I'd expect her to be much closer to the truth about what the AFL think of CS. That's what concerns me about this article.

I get it, I really do. No sense in sacking unless you have somebody better ready to step up. My problem is, how many weeks can the club sustain the "do-nothing" option before it looks totally out of touch with reality? If we get smashed by Weagles then lose to GWS, which seems highly likely, the "spin" of the past 2 days won't stand up. They need to develop a plan, or a series of contingency plans, that go deeper than "we're going to stick fat". If they seriously can't do that now, then get help from someone who can. The "do-nothing" solution is as just as ludicrous and just as extreme as the "sack everyone" solution. The club leadership (such as it is) needs to talk of steps they're going to take.

Hate to admit it but Lloyd's hit the nail on the head. It's the lack of answers, or at the very least, any effort to search for the answers then implement them, that's the biggest concern. Together with the sense that we're not getting the whole story. If you're just not good enough, you get smashed by maybe 70 or 80 points. But you don't get totally obliterated by 150 unless there are serious problems within the club.

Exactly right. While every other side has since 2010 perfected how to beat the zone defence and goes man-on-man when the other team has the ball, we're still playing zone defence because that's all the coach knows.

It's well overdue for the so-called leaders of this club, McLardy & Schwab, to take the heat. Last week they were MIA and left it to the likes of Grimes, Trengove & Watts.

Who would have made the decision to let the cameras into the rooms for a coach's address to a demoralised team 90 minutes before the start of the game? Seriously, what were they thinking??? How was this ever going to do anything except make a really bad situation much worse?

We don't have a culture that produces leaders, at any level. Not any more. Our culture is about self-preservation, not leadership. Why is it not the leadership group - individually or collectively - that steps up? These are the ones handpicked by the coach to be the team's leaders. Where is the leadership from the coach? "Don't know what happened" - a great example to set to his leadership group. That's not a leadership statement - that's a self-preservation statement. The so-called leaders at the club have left Jack totally exposed this week for an off-the-cuff comment. The club - not just the team - have failed to show leadership.

Fantastic OP, fantastic thread. Thoughts and prayers go out to all those associated with MFC who are going through the same thing at this time.

I agree with your intention here. Except that there's little or no chance it will be October. If there's no significant improvement in team performance, the pressure on the club will be massive, well before October. The media hounds usually try to pick off the most vulnerable coach by Round 11, which for us is QB, and comes after games against Hawks, Freo away, and Tiges. We'll need a huge improvement to survive intact through that 4 weeks (if we even get that far). Of course, if performance does improve, then no sackings needed in October or at any time. Unless there's another 186 in the last round. I agree that it's premature to be sacking now, but the point is: how many performances like that can the club withstand?

It's pretty impossible to defend if you can't hurt your opponent when you've got the ball. Attack is a big part of defence. It's not "either / or".

There's a distinction between midfielders and midfield. These days a champion midfielder does not make a champion midfield. It's all about talented players growing and developing together as a unit. Playing in combination, developing an understanding between each other. We have midfielders who have as much talent and potential as any team. Trengove, for just one example, was at least the equal of Martin when they were drafted, but one has been part of an effective midfield (and has been able to develop within it) and one hasn't. The question is, are we capable of building an effective and potent midfield out of our potentially-talented midfielders? So far there's no evidence that we can.

Might persuade one of his sisters

Alpacacino???

Do you mean that he lets an opposing player mark uncontested? Or does he avoid being the third or fourth Demon going up in a pack situation?

What have we actually gained in these practice matches, other than practice at making excuses for poor performance? For one, Hogan has stamped himself as a player with a future. Terlich seems to have been good too. Has he played himself into the Round 1 team? The other one is probably Sellar, who has hit the scoreboard better than most of us would have expected. Apart from this, we've got very little out of this preseason.

Looks like our defenders are going to see a lot of ball this year.

It's all about the midfield starting to play as a midfield unit, rather than a collection of assorted midfielders. The top 4 or 5 simply need to get used to playing together as a unit. They need a string of games where all of them are available, at least 3 of them should be together on the ball at any time, and they should work out and practice a few simple set plays. At the moment it seems like all our mids in whatever combination play as individuals, with everybody going for the ball, nobody blocking and nobody running into space so the in-and-unders know where to find them from a clearance. It concerns me that we still haven't settled on our starting midfield A-team. Instead we've used our praccie matches to try out different midfield combinations and as an audition for the newbies. We won't challenge the top sides until our midfielders do start to work together as a midfield team.

I think that's a key part of it. If we can stick with a midfield "A-team", for example, and sort out what roles each of them are going to play, it's going to be much more effective than just sticking in the required 8 or 10 miscellaneous mids and hoping they'll sort it out between them. We don't seem to have used our practice matches to get our midfield A-team to play together; we seem to be trying to work out which fringe players are in and which aren't. Or maybe we just haven't reached that stage yet - we don't actually have a complete A-team.

This to me is by far the most important factor for our future. If we can play as a team, we could beat some good teams. If we can't, I wouldn't expect too much improvement from last year. There is a tendency to focus on individuals - "if we could get one A-grade mid ...", or "if player X tried harder ...", or to argue who should play ("Sellar or Pedersen") or where ("Grimes - mid or HBF?"). The one thing that will really improve our overall performance is if we start to combine as a team. We do seem to be getting better at it, but there's a long way to go. Part of is getting structures right, and there's definitely been progress there. On the other hand, sometimes it can just click into place (Geelong 2007) and underperforming individuals suddenly seem to make much more of a contribution.

Jimmy what positions did Tappy & Jetta play?

Would be a change being the bender rather than the bendee.