DeeSpencer

They reduced Houli's penalty after a hearing, took in all the character witness stuff with a letter from the PM. Then the AFL appealed and got the penalty reinstated I believe. So I think the tribunal got the message then not to go messing around with penalties. Dangerfield will argue for nothing and most likely fail. Or he'll argue it was high impact not severe and could get 2 not 3 if he goes that route. If the tribunal finds him guilty on severe impact I'm confident it will be 3 or more.

Which I doubt anyone was giving us in 2018 yet alone now. Patty Ryder wasn't as good as Gawn but he was in his prime when he went to Port and that only cost a later first rounder. McEvoy the same when he went to the Hawks. In terms of resource allocation we've got 3 reasonably expensive key forwards in McDonald, Brown and Weid. And a bunch of inside mids on decent money too I'm sure (Oliver, Petracca, Viney, Harmes, Gus). That's where your wing and skilled half forward comes from.

Nankervis won them a prelim last year. You don't need a superstar but good rucks standing up in finals are a pre-requisite for finals success. Just ask Geelong! Max has always been too important to trade even if he's overqualified for the role. I hope what they've done by extending his contract (for far longer than I would've liked) is manage to decrease his salary and spread it out over many years. If he's on a million a year like Grundy that's a waste. If he's soon to be on something like 600k next year like maybe Lycette or Nankervis could be on that's fine by me. The expectations probably need to change for Gawn. I'd like him to sort out the connection with his mids but after that if he beats his opponent and does all the team things with some tackles, blocks, defensive marks etc he doesn't have to dominate games.

We've never really been a stoppage based side under Goodwin anyway. The first thing he did taking over Roos was to shift to a zone defensive system and to encourage ball movement. We probably could've won more games over Goodwins time if we stuck to just banging it down the line and resetting. We did that a couple of times last year and I think it was Montagna or Dal Santo who questioned why we don't make that a bigger part of our plan. Goody's always encouraged run and spread and there were patches in 16-18 and again last year where we've done it well. The Richmond model is right. Always make sure the 22 you pick are strong at the contest and don't draft players who can't develop that side of the game, but then make sure they can seriously run and get enough of the right skills in the right positions. We seem to be a bit short on skill and run but we have to keep trying to play in an aggressive manner and taking the game on.

Did we finally draft Nic Nat?

He’ll get 3. But I think it should be 2 weeks. Concussion and a broken nose isn’t a severe injury. It happens in AFL and will always happen. We’ve had concussions for decades and we’re finally monitoring them and treating them properly, that doesn’t mean the game has to jump at shadows. You can’t ask players to chase as hard as possible and then throw the book at them when a collision occurs. Danger’s adapted at the last minute not to tackle and not to bump high. The next step is to not bump at all and just pull up or make minor contact, that’s what’s required, but it’s all split second. If you give Danger 4 then what do you give the guy who genuinely bumps high and goes straight through someone?

Others will know more than me but I believe Slug Jordon as an Under 19's coach also had responsibilities for finding talent. Craig Cameron had a decent run through the late 90's and early 00's. I've said in other recruiting threads, Jason Taylor's record is pretty much like this: 1st rounders - very good 3rd rounders and rookies - time will tell, we haven't nailed many in a long time and haven't had enough picks 2nd rounders - this will be where he goes from either solid or very good. It was a nice day for Fritsch, Spargo, Sparrow and Jordon and hopefully Petty is back healthy and developing. More nice days from that crop and he'll be looking good.

I'd say we failed poorly to take advantage of Max, that's for sure. Although as I've said a lot when the plan is for both sides to rove to Max there's little to be done unless he starts jumping at the ball which he just isn't going to do. Otherwise after hit outs I thought we did about as well restraining them from the stoppages as they did restraining us. One horrible moment with the Brayshaw goal in the 3rd quarter but I bet Freo fans were thinking about all the times Oliver and Petracca went streaming free.

The main thing I'm unsure of with Jackson is what's the best way to develop him. I reckon if he played CHB he'd pick up the drop of the ball easier by following a forward and would start to hold marks more consistently. I don't think he's a natural enough reader of the flight to become Harris Andrews or Aliir Aliir overnight but he'd be a menace to opposition forwards in that role. If he played key forward at Casey he'd start kicking goals pretty quickly too I think. He'd get chances on the lead and he'd only have to jump anywhere near the ball to be clear of his opponents to mark or draw free kicks. Same goes if he rucked against VFL level opponents. He'd jump all over those guys and get a lot of the ball at ground level. He looks physically and mentally up for the fight at AFL level so I'm not suggesting he does drop down a level but if he gets tired or really doesn't get his hands on the ball it's worth considering. Development isn't linear and the chance to go down a level, get the ball in your hands to work on using it and build some confidence isn't a bad thing.

Some poor skills at times but I didn’t see hospital disposals as a huge issue. It’s AFL footy, it won’t always be clean. We had moments of not ideal midfield transition. Which will happen with the new rules particularly, it’s certainly room for improvement. We didn’t strictly get beaten on the outside. We had 104 marks to 69. Some of that is our talls having an advantage but our mids and half forwards all had marks out in space. 10 Freo players had 2 marks or less, compared with 2 demons.

We’re we killed? A midfield of Fyfe, Mundy, Brayshaw, Cerra and Serong is going to have their moments in the sun. Apart from the first 5 minutes and then a flat patch in the 3rd we were very close to even. Freo fans right now would be saying ‘how did we let Oliver and Petracca get so much space running forward’

Because he played a Casey game on the wing and was bloody ordinary. You can’t convert a school footy athlete to an AFL player overnight just because you want to.

The thing that I don’t understand is if someone is there to tweet the quarter by quarter scores couldn’t they at least manage goal kickers and best players? Would take all of 30 seconds to get that information. Maybe they’re holding off for the worlds best match report.

Nev was solid defensively but I reckon I could’ve handled Liam Henry in a one on one. Henry’s out of position as a deep forward. The issue with Nev is he just provides nothing once we’ve won the ball back. Given our game plan requires switching, run and carry and changing angles to move the ball it’s a big liability to have a one way player. There were times our defenders ran in trouble where Nev could’ve been there for a handball or lateral kick. I don’t think they can give him Dan Butler either. Rivers with a chop out from Hunt probably has to take that assignment. Jetta was better than Hunt. But I think Hunt has upside if he can sort out his ground ball fumbles and more than that I just don’t think we can go with Hibbo and Nev in the same side.

For what? 2 goals 1, 2nd most score involvements, 6 marks, his pressure and contest work was all improved if not decent, nailed a couple of tackles. All against a very strong Freo backline. The breeze at the city end made set shots incredible difficult too. If Luke Ryan dominated the game like Lever and May did then you might have a case but that didn’t happen.

Kozzie’s best attributes are hunting in to congestion to tackle then bursting out of congestion. We need him at centre bounces and on ball, he’s not a wingman. A lot of teams don’t have 2 great wing options. A Harmes/ Brayshaw combination is probably about league average for the 2nd wing. That said I hope we’re on the look out for a mid season draft pick up (then draft, trade, rookie etc - let’s throw multiple assets at this role).

I really liked 2 parts of his game. 1. He pops in to dangerous areas of space especially in the corridor. I don’t know if it’s smarts, work rate or both but it’s good to see. 2. Whilst I hate the pre tackling that is allowed it seems Jordon’s very good at it, he’ll lock on to an opponent and make sure he gets them His kicking is interesting, nice low trajectory but it worries me he seems to hit a bunch of them thin. Hopefully he keeps working on it and becomes reliable or even better than that.

Probably give Yze more than 1 game. He rotated half the size through the centre square so clearly there's a plan for more variety and surely more team work. Apart from some better coaching I'd be writing to the AFL every week about the ridiculous amount of holding Oliver is subjected to. Let him gather the ball without someone grabbing him and he'll be in and out of the contest in a flash.

We have an incredible retention rate of members. We've played finals once in over a decade and still putting up consistent membership numbers. Peter Jackson's aim for the club was to be a bespoke club that got a whole lot better at footy but didn't try to be bigger than it was. Pert's plan so far is to try to mcfranchise it like he and Eddie did at Collingwood. It's disappointing to get such a low crowd but for many Melbourne supporters the MCG and the way they go to the MCG is a decades old tradition. It is after all our home ground and always has been, we aren't tenants.

Anyone know why Rivers played such low time on ground? Dodgy backline rotations? Or maybe the plan was to use him and Hunt in spurts more than the other backs?

We had 22 more disposals, 30 more kicks, won the inside 50's and the centre clearances were pretty even with only 1 terrible stuff up that led to that late 3rd quarter goal. We could easily revert to Petracca, Oliver and Harmes all getting 30 but instead Jordon, Sparrow, Pickett and ANB all have double digits and are far more engaged in the game. Obviously we didn't get great value from Max, and the midfield skills are still ordinary but overall the depth of mids all getting a share is a great improvement over just 4 guys getting silly numbers and a quarter of the team not touching it.

These are the 2 I think. A lot of Melbourne supporters are not like other club supporters. They don't just go to the footy for the footy. They go to the footy for the social aspect and they like to sit where they like to sit - be that reserve seat or MCC. The reserve seats clearly aren't the reserve seats. The MCC absolutely isn't anything like the MCC. It's not a total excuse, we should've got 30k. But we're a different type of fans to other clubs.

Wait and see on the marking. It hasn’t been great so far. I loved some of his tackling and the way he was full of running in the last. Plus the way he can land from marking and keep moving is off the charts. We need to kick it where he can run and jump across a pack more than sit it high like we do for Gawn.

Gus got better than longer it went but isn’t the answer. He’s such a poor pressure player in general. Harmes to the wing please. Try Jordon there if we can. He’s a willing tackler. Chandler’s small but fit, skilled and smart, let’s give him a go on the wing at Casey. Still got good hopes for Jackson if we get our big forwards firing.

Nibbler and Fritsch both hit targets inside 50, Jordon was solid too. The mids were the worst offenders as usual. Kossie does some brilliant work with the ball and messes up. I think he’ll settle in. Spargo has come so far from his early days and still stuffs up plenty. Composure at half forward is really really hard. The best patch of play was Nibbler holding the ball and waiting for the forwards to all move before picking out Jackson on a dynamite lead. It was the ‘connection’ that everyone has been wanting.