DeeSpencer

Mitch White - easily our best player, sadly body didn’t hold up to afl work loads. T Mc - found space a few times but couldn’t clunk any when defended, his decision making with the pill is still odd and he keeps barreling umpires. Rosman - loves a kick out and handball receive. Stronger in the air than expected. Still very suspect with ground ball contests. Something to work with though. Baker - a class above racking them up at half back, some ok defensive moments but mostly sweeping. Not exactly afl footy. Chandler - has his good moments but his handballs are fumbly and he can’t escape traffic. Melksham - lots of lazy high contact free kicks and iffy decision making. Otherwise good. Daw and Brown - fine. Deak Smith - some very strong defensive efforts and good aerially but a few mistakes, still one to watch. Put the clamps on Stack JVR - are we Sauntner-ing him by playing 2 mature talls and 2 rucks? He relegated to flank duty. Ellison - solid as a rock, has he got room to develop? Tugboat Tomlinson - commentators raved about his first half racking stats but he wasn’t that good. Not sure he has full confidence in the knee Laurie - he’s classy. But he struggles to win it in tight and he’s just slow. Sadly doesn’t look like an AFL level athlete at this stage AMW - does a bit of everything. Worth watching. The Shep mates kid - has talent and competes. Got to see more.

Harmes clearly wasn’t right in the second half. Maysy is nursing something. I get the feeling if Petty and Lever get settled they’ll very much consider giving May a week off. A couple to watch. If Harmes needs a week off it could be Gus back to a wing, Lever down back. Or Dunstan stays in and Sparrow does more wing and less on ball.

Goal umpires should be able to pay push in the back free kicks and other marking infringements. Boundary umpires should be able to pay throws. Start with that, work your way towards more decisions. I can’t see boundary, goal and field umpires being interchangeable. They are different skills. But using the existing pairs of eyes should help when they are caught out of position. It’s nearly impossible with the speed of ball movement as it is now to triangulate the play as designed. As for pay: the question is whether the money will be worth making it a career. I think that requires not just a greater top end wage but also long term contracts and a decent semi pro back up leagues. Personally I still suspect it’s still better as a lucrative second gig.

Every club gets it. There’s very few secrets in modern footy. Allowing the fans (via the media initially) more access promotes understanding and let’s fans know what to look for. If nothing else it might stop idiots in the crowd constantly calling for players to ‘kick it’.

I doubt they’ll play together either because it’s a bad defensive combination, but I do think both Weid and Brown have the ability to play higher up the ground in terms of offensive role. They’ve done that in partnership at Casey. Brown has a big tank and has been reasonably trusty at halving pack contests. Weid isn’t exactly flying around the field but does seem to be moving a little smoother than last year too. Might not matter if they can’t pressure and cover ground defensively as Tom does but there’s some reason to try it.

No, it shouldn’t. The NFL release the ‘all 22’ footage which is the side and end cameras and allows media and I believe fans to study each plan. That then allows the media to study the game at a much higher level and create far more interesting content. Instead of this weeks ‘Essendon don’t defend’ or ‘aren’t working hard enough’ we might actually get some understanding of just where and why they are breaking down defensively.

They know it and have tried to address it, they took a number of talls early in their first go at building a side and even now are pretty well stocked down back with Taylor, Haynes, Buckley (underrated player coming back from an ACL) and a big body veteran in Keefe or Davis. I don't think they expect to loose Corr either. They deliberately used an early pick on Leek Aller who I think will prove a good talent but needs time. Their forwards are more troubling. Lost Sunshine McCarthy. Lost Jeremy Cameron. Lost Finlayson as anything like a competent player. They've tried to fill the void with Hogan, Brander and Riccardi. Hoges got pretty close to playing good footy last year, just had a heap of injury interruptions. I really hope he can make something of it up there.

Jolly left because we had White and Jamar as his successor. Martin left because we had Jamar and Gawn as his successor. And partially because we preferred to bring in Pedersen as a forward/ruck to play alongside a number 1 ruck. I don’t think Weid is the same comparison though. Every club had a chance to get him last year. None wanted him. If he started playing well he’d draw interest, but if that was the case we’d play him every week and probably keep him.

You can drop Weid You can rest Tom - his chronic knee could do with a tune up now. 5 weeks in a row is probably the right workload for a veteran. You can make BBB earn his spot back after losing it through ill-discipline. I haven’t really seen anything that changes my mind on Weid. He needs time down back at Casey to learn more skills and develop as a footballer. With his current skill set he has to clunk marks to truly contribute and without the height or athleticism to do so he’s unlikely to just flick the switch. So I’d drop him. But I’d understand if Goody went with him for another week.

The reality is we were super healthy last year and Salem is a while off being back, it's very unlikely there won't be shuffling by the time that occurs. And whilst we've built some backline depth through this period we haven't got any midfield depth at all - as evidenced by Bedford being sub 5 weeks in a row and the Casey midfield disposal totals. So the most likely outcome is by the time Salem is back there's a spot open for him down back and/or Brayshaw has moved back to the midfield to cover a gap there anyway. If we are at full strength and there's no gap by the time Salo is right to go: Send Gus back to the wing playing 50% wing, 20% forward, even 5% or more on ball. JJ then becomes the 3rd winger with a similar break down of game time. Drop a key forward. The 2 rucks and Fritsch can get more involved as key forward targets. Harmes then plays more forward with some stints on ball and is fresher without the wing minutes. Viney and Oliver get a fraction more rest. Petracca attends centre bounces but otherwise sticks more forward. Sparrow provides some marking if needed, he's strong in the air. Oliver gets a little full forward time for something different, as does Brayshaw who's reading of the ball in the air hasn't ever been maximised deep forward.

Yep when the ball is live in play in Rugby there's plenty happening and the refs don't start plucking penalties for players reactions. Then if the game is stopped the ref will interact with offending players or the captain and that interaction is always done with respect for the official. I think the player on the mark for a set shot can have some interaction with the umpire and it doesn't have to be as formal as rugby as long as it's respectful. The only other player speaking to umps should be the captain, but the umps should just tell all the other players he's not listening, rather than be looking to punish them ala the Hawthorn one yesterday. I can't believe they've made such a mess of this.

Learn what though? To become absolute robots? Is that really what we want? We’ve added so many rules to try to free up the movement in the game and get scoring and skill back in to the game. Players like Gawn, Petracca and Pickett bring joy and excitement to the game, it’s why we watch. Part of players expressing themselves has to be frustration after a free kick. That’s human and normal. A clamp down at abuse should be aimed at abuse. At the moment it’s a clamp down on putting your arms up. Rather than letting the umpires call it how they see it and use their judgment they’ve turned them in to the ‘arms out’ police.

It’s disappointing and I think some of the issues are overblown. The main one is a lot of people are away for Easter and aren’t coming home for GWS on Saturday night. The demons portion of the crowds for rounds 1+3 were very strong. Let’s pack out Anzac eve and dismiss this issue. In our defence it sure didn’t sound like a 20k crowd. And it was a smart crowd praising a lot of excellent efforts.

The 50 was probably fair enough but I couldn’t see the initial high contact at all. Given Harmes made the tackle I can see why he then took what he thought was advantage and played on. That’s a big issue with the 50 for continuing to play

I’m saying once you’re caught holding the ball you’re caught. If you then kick or handball it after the tackler has chased you down and conclusively tackled you then too bad. Go watch old tapes from the 80’s, if a player had prior opportunity and was tackled that was it. Holding the ball. Done. Now the umpires wait to see what happens and it leads to sling tackles and concussions.

I actually loved that decision. The new holding the ball rule calls for players to be deemed holding it earlier when they are caught. He was caught dead to rights and the ball fell from his hands. I really don't care that he got a fraction of toe on the ball as it hit the deck. If we are to prevent sling tackles we need to call holding the ball faster rather than wait for players to get extremely suspect disposals away. We've been rewarding players who get little toe pokes on the ball after clearly been caught and dropping it for a long time now.

Better than the one with the light blue. Ideally we’d honour the Anzac’s without a nonsense jumper

You can tell by the immediate reaction he hasn’t meant to get him high. Very similar to Gaff on Brayshaw, thankfully without the damage. Pretty clear what the Willy defender is doing too. Bump in to Brown, keep him outside 50, give his team mate a chop out and even better if you can draw a free kick too.

Don't think Benny meant to flush him and unfortunately he'll have to cop the week, but the Willy defender deserved every bit of it. It's completely dodgy off the ball blocking and it's coming in to Brown's space to create contact way off the ball. The defender leaves his direct opponent to block Brown and comes in right at him with his arms up to block him. The kind of motion that's seen Ryder in trouble this week. Doesn't justify flushing him on the chin but Brown was well within his rights to strike at him because he's flat out cheating and making completely unnecessary contact. Cut out the off ball cheating and you cut out the contact entirely.

People need to check the B+F from last year to see Spargo’s result before looking to replace him on a couple of quiet games. As I said earlier I’m down on Laurie but I’ve seen reports he’s high character and a hard worker. Sparrow and JJ absolutely underwhelmed me through 2 years before breaking out on the back of huge work rates. Did we need to keep both Bedford and Chandler? Maybe not. But there’s other clear choices where we could’ve moved guys out and looked for more medium sized forward/midfield players. 2 young but ready to go depth players covering 3 starters makes sense.

Bedford: seems to have taken a step forward this year. Has genuine pace which is handy both in attack and to defend. But he’s slight, fumbly, lacks a fluent kicking action so struggles to weight kicks and lacks smarts IMO. The kind of depth that can help win you games but not the kind of depth you want to end up playing consistently. Chandler: stronger and smarter, with a cleaner boot. But still short and so far his VFL trick bag hasn’t worked at afl level where he can’t take marks or break out of traffic. Lacks top end pace to be a weapon both in attack and defensively. Think he’d be better suited at a spread them out and use the ball team like the Crows. Our afl game plan just doesn’t play to his strengths currently. If he finds a yard of pace or his tricks start coming off at afl level he could be handy, but he hasn’t had that consistent run to find out. Laurie: had a luckless year last year but frankly he’s looking a bit like the dangers of drafting for need and drafting in a compromised draft. Had a great under 17 year as a flanker in a dominant side but the gamble was he would be faster, stronger and a good mid in his under 18 year. He’s looked slow and unable to win consistent ball as a midfielder. The skills and tricks are there but if you’re small and slow you’ll battle as a forward, and you can’t play mid if you can’t win the ball. I’m sure the hope is for some kind of mix of at least a Spargo type forward and ideally a Shuey type midfielder, but that seems a mile away. 10 touch games playing decent midfield minutes are a big worry.

Crows are a state side, whilst we have to split Vic talent between 8 teams. They have so many tall powerful players in their prime years. We really fought it out against the odds and just couldn’t get that 3rd goal to get within a kick. If that happened I really think the Crows could’ve got nervous and we could’ve pinched it. Great coaching effort to get the game back in our style with run and carry. And the players run, commitment to the contest and pressure lifted to levels I didn’t think they had in them.

I’ve talked all year about Birch’s reckless behaviour and lack of leadership and there it is. Trade her away this winter

Far different to Weid, in that he is good. A very solid role player. But I said over summer and got hammered for it that those expecting his finals form to result in a breakout will likely be disappointed. He has plenty of potential improvement but the work on his disposal, contested ball and uncontested possessions is all going to take time. Plus he’ll keep being asked and doing a lot of dirty work and defensive running, he’s not going to be put in positions to dominate.

The May, Tomlinson, Lever trio seems to work better than going smaller with Smith, but I just feel Tomlinson is a long way off his best and Smith has a chance right now to finally string games. We need depth in case Hunt or Rivers go down or if Gus has to go to the midfield. Assuming he’s healthy and gets through some trainings I’d get Smith back in