DeeSpencer

Goody flags playing 22 or 23. I’d take out JKH, Melksham and Frost from the list I named. Keep Keilty as the 23rd man. The big challenge is how do you evaluate the guys who play well in the 2’s v the guys who might not do well in the main game. Hannan and Brayshaw have come in to the round 1 based on vfl form in years previous.

There’s also often thousands in the bar and lots of empty seats in the public they are just in 1’s or 2’s so harder to see. If they had their time again they’d change the top half of the top level to public seats but open up more of the ground level to mcc members. You’d then get more bums in seats from the same crowd. Booking individual seats ruins the walk up culture that is a huge part of the club and makes Footy a mixing social experience not just an outing.

Viney and Jones to play VFL as per stevoooooo. Probably both of minutes restrictions, let’s them have a look at the depth guys under AFL conditions as well. They might play VFL next week as well. My guess of the 26: Backs (8): May, Hibberd, Jetta, Lewis, Hore, Oscar, Hunt, Frost Mids (9): Gawn, Oliver, Gus, Harmes, Brayshaw, Salem, Vanders, Fritsch, JKH Utility: Keilty (plays 2nd half to rest Gawn and T Mc more) Forwards (8): T Mc, Weid, Melksham, Petracca, Spargo, ANB, J Smith, C Wagner

The final preseason games should be on fox footy or ch7. any previous games should be streamed or televised at a clubs discretion. They need to stop filming this stuff and having everyone watch it.

They are in the vafa, I don’t really understand it, the MCC has a great football division with men’s and women’s teams.

Good. Now someone needs to make sure he doesn’t fold to the pressure of banning walk up seats for big games. The greater unwashed complain the mcg isn’t full for big games due to a bunch of seats at the top of the members being left empty. I say, bad luck.

Can get an LED soccer substitute board for about $100. Or the old fashion manual ones for about $15. Maybe next time the AFL can pay us 90,000 and we'll get what's needed, split most of the spare cash and put the rest on for a demonland bar function.

It was strange and I was tempted to stand my ground. There was a camera guy and a journalist all of 50m away the other way so fair to say they weren't implementing some kind of secret weapon play. At the end of the day the coaches and players are there to work and improve and I'm not so I moved but I must say I prefer the way Brendan McCartney engages in the occasional banter over the fence. I did make Robert Harvey run around me up the tan hill though, I'm not prepared to move for the enemy.

Someone reported he left training early during a session last week. No update on what's happened but given his injury history its not a good sign.

I'd happily put a big bid in for Jamie Elliott. Worse case scenario it makes the Pies pay more to keep him. Stephen Hill if the price is right? Come play wing/back flank and finish your career with some wins. Brandon Ellis for the right price? Has only had one great year in 2017 since his early days but he can run and kick. Un-retiring Cyril is still a great idea. Realistically we've signed Salem, we need to get Weid done at a fair price and then it's probably more shopping around the edges looking for guys who can fill needs.

I wandered by at around 10:40 and stayed for maybe an hour until they were wrapping up. Looked mostly a craft session as Saty would say, lots of smaller group drills focusing on particular skills. Gathering the ball, quick hands up, hit up a kick, get a handball, kick inside 50 was one drill and there were plenty similar. Lever was doing some jogging. Apart from Hannan, Garlett, Neitschke, Tim Smith (not expecting good news there) everyone else was on deck. KK was in a t shirt but was involved in some of the drills. I had a good look at one of the craft drills and to be honest I wasn't all that impressed with the overall skill level. Jones missed a few easy handballs in a row, other players dished it off on the deck or too high, the kicks were sloppy. Petty and Chandler were 2 who impressed me with reliable skills. Interestingly it seemed a guy like Austin Bradtke was fresh and hitting his targets where some of those who played on the weekend looked fatigued. They split in to forwards/backs/mids and I wandered over to observe some clearance stuff and was bluntly told by Ben Matthews to move at least 30m away which seemed particularly odd given I was wearing headphones and couldn't hear whatever wise secrets he was imparting. Anyway, maybe our clearance structures will evolve to something more than Gawn hits it to Oliver/Gus/Viney/Harmes/Petracca who make something good happen. The general plan seemed to be to get the ball to someone running forward ideally in to the corridor. Most of the guys who played on Sunday (I think maybe all apart from Harmes) started to filter out to the sidelines or do some goal kicking whilst the others did some match simulation at the end. Melksham and May both impressed me. Viney involved, got cleaned up by Preuss at one stage and enjoyed a wrestle.

Overall I think they paint a picture of a team that plays an effective style of contested footy but needs to add in more uncontested play without diminishing our strong suit. Eg: When we win the ball let's get it to the outside freely so we aren't tackled with it. When the quick play from half back isn't on let's play some kick/mark footy, switch and reset. Goodwin and co made a number of in season and in game adjustments to our defensive work last year and the hope is May helps there. Becoming a more efficient team with the ball probably centres around Fritsch and KK in to the side, without upgrading personnel we were always going to have a hard time fixing the issue of flooding numbers around the ball instead of finding open space and bombing it forward.

I think Frost and Oscar were (and are) both bad and limited footballers. Oscar is more talented and a nice kick who doesn't turn the ball over, but he still has no physical presence and doesn't kill the contest. Both the Balta and Higgins goals on the goal line came after Oscar failed to kill contested situations. He's indecisive, slow and hesitant to commit his body. Frost will have a few clangers but if he's put in the right positions - ie. playing from behind on a lead up forward (ie. Jeremy Cameron, Tex Walker and others last year) he'll make them earn it. It mostly comes down to how they want to use May and how the other defenders will work around him. I get the feeling it will be May at CHB and Oscar at full back to start with and we'll try to dictate with pressure up the ground to stop quick ball exposing Oscar and provide May a chance to intercept and control the half back line. Sounds good in theory but if May blows up chasing around a decoy and Oscar gets exploited deep then I can see the argument for May to stay deep and Frost to come in at CHB.

Keilty is the new Pedersen is my hope, a capable ruck/forward to come in if needed. I’d play him next week over Preuss as the back up ruck. Maybe just for the 2nd half again. Wouldn’t expect him to play round 1 but I think he did enough to deserve another look. Petty I’ve always been a fan of his clean skills and very good intercept marking. He can get caught out of position and isn’t all that quick or attacking so where does he fit in our backline mix? May, Hibberd, Jetta, Lewis come back in, I’d leave Salem at half back. That means 2 more spots for Hore/Hunt and Oscar/Frost, or 3 spots if they leave Salem in the midfield mix. Can Petty play ahead of Hore as an interceptor? Or ahead of Oscar/Frost as the 2nd tall. If we were a development team I’d play Petty because long term he’s got more talent than Oscar and Frost. As a team that needs to win as many games as possible I’m not sure we have that luxury.

Define very unlikely? Freo play North in the last round, assuming they both win next week the winner and loser of their match in the last round will finish on 24 and 20 points respectively. With the loser on 20 points and probably a percentage similar to what they are on now given they'd have won 1 game and lost 1 game. Adelaide will move to 20 points with a win next week and we will move to 16 points if we beat the Dogs. Then if we beat the Crows in the final round it will come down to percentage to determine 2nd place. Hypothetically if both teams win 50-30 next week then the Crows will be points for/points against 319/181 and we'll be 282/175 A 41-30 win in the final round we have us 323/205 (157.56%) and the Crows 349/222 (157.21%). Win by a decent margin next week and we'll be looking at only having to beat the Crows by a small margin.

I assume come round one it will be ANB and Spargo both in the side. Spargo is a similar player with better class and potential. If we stick with 2 pressure forwards then Corey Wagner is a very similar player who might have a little stronger hands and nicer field kick, but he's hardly a clean user and probably only gives 80% of the defensive pressure. Garlett seems unlikely. Hannan is a long way off. Joel Smith was underwhelming in terms of pressure as well as skill. Bedford and Chandler remain unseen, it's unlikely they are ready. Would the midfield mix ever get so deep that we're rotating Vanders, Jones, Fritsch through half forward as well as Petracca/Viney/Oliver/Gus/Harmes and they all provide enough forward pressure to do with one less dedicated pressure forward? ANB isn't under immediate threat but he has to show some skills under pressure and not just when we're 10 goals up against bad sides. He's not so great of a defensive force that he can spud it up every time we play a team that puts pressure back on him. He has to make some quicker and better decisions and he has to be stronger at the contest and take some bodies.

The reason for concern was from about 10 minutes in to the 2nd quarter until 3/4 time we couldn't lay a glove on the Tigers. There's areas we should be much stronger in come the real stuff - midfield depth, ruck, almost the whole backline, but there's no excuse to keep turning the ball over out of the backline without even trying to switch or counter, to not even be close to locking the ball up forward and to struggle with simple things like not committing 2 players to tackle one opponent with the ball and leaving a free option. The middle quarters were like the Prelim last year in terms of style. We should've had enough good players in the game to prevent that. The margin should've been closer to 10 goals by 3/4 time.

My point is not that our first choice backline won't be better but that today was a demonstration of the list imbalance. Derm made the point in commentary that to beat the best sides you have to break the lines from half back, you can't just chip it around and hope to counter attack by ball use. His observation was Hunt was the only player like to break the lines and when you look at our first choice backline it's really only Hibberd - who's probably not as quick as he used to be - as the other line breaker. KK is an option but he's been training with the mids because we need that outside run in midfield as well. I really like Jordon but he seems another good size, hopefully good contested player with nice skills but not really someone who's going to beat opponents with speed. We've got 45 list spots and we can't use one of them on a young back flanker who can run the ball?

Had his nose splattered across his face a few weeks ago at Tigers training. I thought Preuss was fine until half time. Not good. But fine. A back up ruck capable of getting some hit outs (had 19 by half time) and not entirely inept around the ground. If he really is 15kg heavier than Max then his fitness won't be ideal but it's also likely he'll struggle big time in 40 degrees in preseason. I never thought he would play round 1 unless he was dominant forward and the Weid was battling and that hasn't been the case. So he'll build at Casey. I wouldn't be worried playing him to rest Max at some stage through the year against a bottom side once he's got match fitness. Second half they clearly wanted a good look at Keilty who now seems ahead of Preuss if one of the key forwards gets injured, I'm glad they gave him a good chance.

Good: - Oliver is still a star - Gus isn't far behind either, although he has to stop with the poor turnover kicks - Petracca at least started like the best player on the ground - Excellent first quarter, nice effort to keep fighting in the last - Petty, Keilty and Jordon showed a bit Bad: Where was the mental strength to hold the game up, switch, change angles etc to keep control of the ball? There simply wasn't enough structure in the 2nd and 3rd to show that the back ups are well drilled and organised, that's a worry. Ugly: 1. The performance of the lower tier maturing players - Oscar, Frost, ANB, J Smith, Maynard, Hunt. Just very little from these guys 2. Where's the run? We weren't a good side out there today but we were hardly a young side either. The Tigers had 2 first year kids and a 2nd year tall, pretty much the same as we did. For the middle 2 quarters in particular the forwards and midfield couldn't get any pressure on the Tigers in transition. That's a big worry. We had 5 of 7 forwards from our finals series last year and plenty of rotations, why are they letting Houli and co run around us all day? Then the backline was probably even worse in that regard. We couldn't stick with their smalls or provide any drive. It wasn't like Hunt, Hore, J Wagner and Jordon were butchering the ball constantly with bad kicks or poor decisions but more like they weren't even getting the ball and moving it on. Salem went back and steadied things up, as Lewis, Hibberd, Jetta, May etc should do as well I still have big concerns about where the half back run is. If Hunt doesn't get back to his best then we're relying on Hibberd and Salem (who can't be released in to the midfield) and maybe hoping KK can also bounce back. The lack of running defender depth makes little sense to me, every team should be well stocked in that position.

A couple of nice tackles and kicked a goal was the positives but some moments of poor ball use and hesitant efforts then attempting to spoil Rance and popped his shoulder out. Hopefully (for him) is fine with rest and rehab and not an op.

The make shift backline being ordinary is hardly a surprise. Nor is a shock that Preuss is going to take a while to build his tank. The bigger shame is that we’re still making system mistakes. - Bombing it forward under little pressure. - 2 defenders on to 1 opponent with no impact. There’s a bunch of maturing limited players who have shown no improvement as well. Oscar, Frost, ANB, Hunt all bad.

Yeah the guys is getting paid big bucks because he has a reputation and I assume a track record of getting results and obviously there is a concern with things like slipping over but that's probably the whole point. It's a controlled exercises it's not just go out there and have a run. Ankle deep snow is probably still a safer surface than the Etihad turf where Lever did his knee.

Would be nice if he could kick them from outside 50, but the most important thing is he knows his range and plays to it. Can still be a very good player at 173cm with a 40m kick, especially if he brings smarts, evasive skills, tackling and other things that little guys are better at. Hoping for a strong 2nd year.

What they need is to install a proper scoreboard like this next to or above the bench for each side. That way you can put up 4 numbers to rotate as well as any in game signals you might need. Instead they've got clunky and horrible handheld signs that are less effective than the ones they use for soccer substitutions.