DeeSpencer

Terrible inside 50 from Oliver but you’ll take it

Ben King’s second touch, not all May’s fault

Gus letting his man roam free at half forward as usual. Allows the deep inside 50 and you never know what they’ll create from there

Our forward pressure is a mess when he isn’t forward

Anyone who’s watched Disco at Casey knows he’s not a deep defender on big talls. That’s not a fair match up. No 3rd up from Lever either

You can see the hangover from the 90 point win with how many stationary handballs and Hollywood stuff. Pickett cleaning up a very bad decision from Chandler there

If Langdon is getting tagged we could send him forward and use Fritsch on a wing to get him in to the game. Otherwise I’d like to see Fritsch as a lead up half forward and the instruction to kick to the leads rather than bomb it

Terrible bounce but Grundy can’t just go running past the ball and jumping in to Witts. That’s exceptionally stupid. The underrated reason to why the Pies got rid of him is because he’s really dumb for an experienced player. Has no concept of playing the percentages

They move it so quick and directly they challenge a lot of sides at home if you turn it over or lose crucial contests We’re doing both

Looking like pus from the moment Gawn got Lippy after Grundy’s mark

So do you Hibberd or Petty back? I want a genuine key forward. that said, not sure Petty is stopping big Levi there

Bowser is better than that. Really bad defending.

Diabolical forward entries this quarter. It really can’t be this hard to get a decent contest

Hope that late goal doesn’t prevent Goody for giving a few of them (namely Tracc) a good spray

Petracca isn’t fair dinkum. Needs a month off the TikTok’s

In previous decades there were usually only 6 opponents in the backline, maybe a ruck or a hard working rover. These days teams almost always have a dedicated intercept defender dropping in to guard space from a half forward and then within about 15 seconds of the ball going from end to end they have 12-15 opponents inside the defensive 50. There are methods to create better inside 50’s. Excellent kicks like Spargo often just have that momentary pause before they deliver and weight a pass which allows a forward to time a lead. Someone like Hawkins is the master of taking his one on one in to the pocket, doing a couple of dummy leads and still getting a one on one. But largely speed of ball movement is so vital. If you don’t get it in quickly you’re in much more trouble than if you are quick but not precise. We could also plonk Ben Brown at full forward, tell him not to defend up the ground and stay deep to lead and load up with our better kicks like Melk, Hunter, Salem across half forward. Suddenly we’d find Benny’s chest on the lead a lot more than we do now. But we’d also not be the defensive side we are if we had a stack of forwards purely focussed on playing one way footy.

Of course not, but 21 games a side over 23 weeks, maybe (but hopefully not) a wildcard weekend for a 24th week plus finals is a stack of games. Making the players play 23 games plus finals a year is crazy to me. 22 was already the limit to what I thought was fair for health and safety. The big question to me is does 10 games a round increase the broadcast rights. Tassie won’t. WA might be opening up more Friday double headers. Not sure if more small audience sides really move the needle.

Not really a surprise, has been in the works for a while. Just not announced like Gill. Probably because there’s more at stake with a listed company

I don’t know how 19 is equitable when it’s not even a proper split of home and away, unless you make derbies a neutral game between teams that share a stadium or location. I also think 2 derbies a year is a must. Apart from financial incentives they’re also big games that fans want. They’re huge in WA and SA and vital to grow the game in NSW and QLD. Personally I think double up games are wildly overrated on fixture in balance. Home and away, short breaks, travel sequences play a bigger factor. I’d go 21. That’s 10 home, 10 away, every team once with a double of derby/rivalry round and gather round which sadly isn’t going away. If you play a top 9 side in your double up derby round then you play a bottom 9 side in the gather round. That’s a nice even split.

He’s Chair of Woodside where he previously promoted a woman to CEO in 2021. Seems like he got 2 of the 3 women he wanted in to the top jobs

Yet you can probably count the number of players with Asian heritage - which makes up a huge chunk of those numbers - on one hand. Not a great deal of Kiwi’s in the league either despite Gawn and Dusty’s efforts. Some results with getting African kids drafted. They have great athletic traits for AFL footy but it’s not a huge population and attracting them away from basketball and soccer isn’t easy. Meanwhile it’s getting harder to be drafted if you parents aren’t wealthy or you haven’t first been drafted by a private school at 12 or 15 with a scholarship. And whilst there’s still some room for shorter players you’d want to be 183cm to play midfield, 195cm to play key tall and 2m+ to ruck. Whilst being able to run a sub 6:30 2km and a sub 3 second 20m sprint. That rules out a heap of kids right away. When it comes to talls you can see in most drafts that there’s a big struggle to find them, yet alone keep them healthy. Rucks are a little easier to draft because teams have pretty much embraced the idea they won’t be ready and taking athletes and willing to give them years of development.

I posted the community ones last week. The AFL protocol is available here. GUIDELINES FOR THE MANAGEMENT OF SPORT-RELATED CONCUSSION - AFL & AFLW Its:- • rest • daily activities • light exercise • moderate exercise • moderate exercise and skills • non contact training • rest • limited contact • rest • full contact • rest If there’s no symptoms it’s 12 days minimum. But they have to match the days which might make today a rest day A captains run could easily count as moderate exercise and skills more than team training if you limited a player to the warm up and isolated skill drills.

We got vintage Tommy Mc and Jackson’s best forward work but we did go 6-0 with Fritsch as the second tall to start 2021. Not like it’s never worked. Heck we beat Sydney this year with 1 ruck and BBB subbed off for Melk and a smaller line up. Again, not saying it’s the perfect outcome for Fritsch but if Toby Greene or Ollie Henry or some other medium gun suddenly turned up we could go smaller. Fritsch would lose a few contests but win plenty on the deck or on the lead against a key defender too. We’ve been flexible in trying to solve it this year. Petty forward, Schache a run, trying to get the last drop from Melk. I doubt it will work but Joel Smith just about has to be next in line. It’s all hands (and shapes and sizes) on deck.

I’m thinking more just little improvements without completely changing his game style. More to do with beating his direct opponent and halving a contest than the idea he’ll ever be a physical presence.

It’s definite a concern and I don’t think having a variety of options - whilst important for health - really means we have a solution. Fritsch and Gawn means we don’t need consistent 60+ goal kickers, but we need a pair of talls who can bob up and kick 2 or 3 when it’s their week. Just as JVR did against Richmond. There’s 2 big issues; 1. At least one of those guys is likely 30+ and not healthy in BBB, McDonald or even Melk OR is JVR who’s a kid. 2. There’s every chance one of them is Petty who is probably still a vital part of our backline if we could spare him. If JVR was 23 and Petty wasn’t our premiership CHB I’d actually be ok with them as a combination. They have the right traits.