DeeSpencer

May thinking Frost did something dumb, Frost thinking May doesn't know what he's talking about seemed the gist. Nathan Jones casually drinking a gallon of water whilst they went at it. Like last weeks pissweak leadership wasn't bad enough.

Brisbane did a great job of dragging Petty deep by taking Frost, Hore and others to the contest. The Cameron one was definitely a swap over. It's the 2nd week in a row that the match up Petty was bought in to play on disappeared by half time. Last week he was set for Cox but Hogan went down, this week big Oscar went off. Instead of an inexperienced tall he's stuck either tracking a dangerous tall or a quick small. With Max injured having to play forward and lack of flexibility from the tall forwards it meant he had to stay on a mismatch. I'm disappointed he hasn't played better but it's crazy to be critical of Goodwin playing him when we needed the tall and there isn't any other options.

Our list isn't dreadful it's just lacking a little quality around the edges. Just 1 good small forward and a hard runner on the wing would make a huge difference. Goodwin was the same coached who improved us 3 years in a row but nice story about him being another Neeld.

Oliver has wonderful loose ball winning in space and can make things happen. Harmes has a great running game. Brayshaw can really accumulate the ball around the ground and can be creative around the ground, aside from sloppy kicking his biggest problem right now is he's slow defensively at the contest. I'm not against trading. In fact I'd strongly consider it. But I'm also a big believer that these guys can all take a huge leap forward with a preseason. I'd love to get Salem in to the midfield and I'd like to get Petracca rotating through more often but we need more quality forward and back before we move them. Our wings often don't offer a lot at the contest which is part of the problem and are inexperienced around stoppages. Fritsch and Baker spent most of last week running their backsides off chasing Langdon and Hill. Not surprise at all that on the road they struggle to play well against a strong Brisbane midfield. Our mids got a nice touch up today but after a terrible start with spreading and a whole year of lazy inside 50 ball more often than not they are still doing the job at the contest most weeks. Suggesting throwing the baby out with the bathwater in the midfield isn't a good idea.

As long as we use the ball with more spread he’ll help by opening up a truckload of space. A lot of our inside 50 problems come because we attack so directly the defenders are always in good positions. We’re running head on in to a wall. A simple switch at half back or through half forward then opens up so much more space for our forwards. I really like the combination of Langdon, Fritsch and Baker as a wing/half forward rotation. Endurance, class, pace. We finally got Baker and Fritsch on the wing against Freo and started to move the ball. And that was using Hunt as the 3rd option, mainly to try to sit on Hill. Having Langdon to sit on Hill would let the other two attack. I’ll take some poor ball use from Langdon if it means we finally have a wingman with the right speed, endurance and good stoppage craft.

His last month has added a lot of composure with the ball in to his footy. Smart with the ball Run hard to space Smart and run in the defensive game That's all I want to see from Petracca. I don't care if he goes over or around opponents when it's ball winning time, the guy has no issue with getting down and winning the footy.

We pushed him way too hard on the fateful day at Casey. Moved on to the ball after injuries and had a stack of tackles and collisions. He's exactly the type of player you work in to a season slowly rather than thrust in to a heated preseason game with limited rotations. Average skills but his contested game and pace are excellent on the wing, at half forward or in spurts on the ball. He had a really nasty heel injury that required multiple surgeries and was always going to be vulnerable. When he injured it again the advice was take it really slow with recovery even though the damage doesn't seem all that bad. The last time he was mentioned in a Misson update had him running twice a week which is steady yet clearly very slow progress. There's still months to go until any list decisions have to be made but I expect unless there's some kind of out in his contract that they'll give him next year to see if he comes good.

Context is key: 1. The forward line has been a joke all season. On the weekend against a pretty decent Freo side they kicked 13 goals, scored 85 and won the game. The forward line function was certainly improved. 2. The forward line featured 3 talls who haven't had a heap of footy together to learn how to function as a unit. I won't look up the exact number but McDonald, Smith and Weideman can't have played more than 10 games together, most likely under 5. Between the 3 tall forwards they had: 7 goals 5 behinds 44 disposals 15 marks Goodwin was explaining very clearly that the forwards worked well for each other and McDonald and Smith got on the end of the goals whilst Weideman played a very good game for 6 disposals. I'm sure the aim will be for Weideman to hold a few more marks and play an even better game for 10, 15 or even 20 disposals, but the most important thing for the side right now is to have guys working for each other and doing the team things. Having watched the replay Sam dropped a mark going back with the flight early that he did all the hard work for and he would've loved to hold one or two more where he got hands on inside 50 but Hamling - one of the best closing speed full backs in the game - got a fist on. But I severely doubt the coach was commenting as a way to pump Weids up. He was being honest and correct in saying it was a really good 6 disposal game as part of a discussion on what the players did well to turn around a bad forward set up.

Some players will get crunched in big hits and have a run of concussions due to bad luck but I doubt that's the case here. Did anyone ever see the incident that led to his first lay off this year? Players who have a propensity for getting concussions or concussion like symptoms from innocuous contact - like Paddy McCartin - are still very unlucky but it's because something mentally or physically is going wrong that puts them in danger or turns minimum contact in to something serious. Still bad luck and not their fault but it's a sign of something more at play that makes them far less resilient than their team mates. Our medical staff decided KK's concussion symptoms at the Gold Coast were all due to some neck problem that was meant to be fixed. Now it looks like he'll have managed 2 AFL games and not many more VFL games for the year. I'm highly skeptical.

Wouldn't be a bad idea of new Burgo caught up with some or all of Vanders, J Smith, Walker and Fred to have a chat with them and see if they are still alive. Surely that would be nice content for fans and might even be good for them as well.

So the actual list is: Chandler - test Hibberd - test --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Lever 1-2 Jetta 2-3 Stretch 2-3-season Keilty - 3-4 Sparrow 4-6 Melksham 4-6 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- KK - season (seriously) Vanders - season (let's be honest) Garlett - career J. Smith - season Walker - season Neitschke - season

Well the new injury update format is very fancy and impractical. Great to add a few more mystery injuries to the book. There's clearly a mental or physically resilience problem with KK. 3 year deal was it? That's a lot for a player who looks fine on the training track but battles to get through VFL games.

Port - 38,886 - excellent round 1 crowd GWS - 20023 - not a good crowd but we were 3-6 Freo - 20211 - solid enough for a team at 3-9 Would be nice to up that minimum crowd to more like 25,000 but given our struggles it's not terrible if we're above 20k.

Correct me if I'm wrong but Carlton have only played 2 home games against non local clubs and they have been: v Sydney in round 3 - a game they could've won and would've felt somewhat positive going in to v Brisbane a few weeks ago after sacking a new coach. The old South Melbourne and Fitzroy fans would've made a nice boost to those attendances. I've seen a heap of Lions fans around whenever they've played in Melbourne this year.

Outside of the dumb free kick (the dumb part was going anywhere near a flopper when the team had the ball) and a couple of bad bombs inside 50 (one where he had Fritsch free for an easy sideways kick but burnt him in the 2nd in particular) I thought he was good across half back. Worked hard to get to contests and had some very important moments coming up in to play to win ground balls. Happy for him to play on in that high half back role on the basis that like Lewis this year he might not have 22 games in him.

Port are a well run club who have made solid decisions to build a decent list over many years. They've gone up and down a bit but they got close to beating Hawthorn in a prelim and have pretty much had a strong list since. I'm surprised they are 7th but not shocked, because it became clear they'd replace the guys they traded out with really good draft picks and then move experienced players back in to the midfield to cover their losses. But how good has there season been? - Started the year 2-1 with uninspiring wins against us and Carlton and a good effort at Brisbane - Dropped a game they never should've to a severely undermanned Richmond - Upset the Eagles who probably weren't going all that well at the time and beat the Roos - Blown out by Collingwood and Adelaide - Get an easy win with the farce that is the China game. Everyone would've beaten the Saints with the flu - Soundly beaten by Freo - Get a big upset win on the Cats Their remaining draw doesn't have any more easy beats: Dogs, Crows, Bris, Rich, GWS, Ess, Syd, North, Freo. Just as likely to trail off and miss the 8 as they are to host or win a final.

Jones played in Lewis’ sweeping half back role on the weekend and did it well. If we put Lewis in for Wagner we’ll either have to shift Salem or Jones to a more defensive role, or have Jones go back to the wing and Fritsch or Hunt back I think. This reminds me of the last two years when Vince v Lewis was the debate once it looked like only one of them should be in the same backline at once.

When Hogan went down we had a spare tall defender really so I’m surprised he was even on for that long. But it shows just how important rotations are, we could have had better match ups with the 6 more mobile defenders but rotations are vital. With the Lions playing 3 talls he’ll be needed for a decent chunk of the game.

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I'm as critical as anyone with Oscar but the guy had a limited preseason and was then thrust in to playing 9 of the first 11 games underdone and low on confidence. Obviously Lever and May were out and the decision was made not to risk Petty in to a bad side when he also had a niggling foot that cost him a week or two. So Oscar kept going and actually played ok in rounds 7-9 before a couple of stinkers. This seems like a smart thing to do to get his body and mind back on track and I expect he'll play well in the VFL from now. He might surprise a few as a depth player who can come in to the team and do a decent job once he finds some confidence and actually gets a run at developing his game at the right level for him.

He sure did, but only because holding the man has become legalised by bad umpires. The game would open up and more goals would be scored if players couldn't lock on to their opponents any time the ball was in dispute. I wouldn't want Trac going the big dive but I thought the handball out in front tactic was worth a go when he found himself in a bit of a pickle.

Ducked to draw a free kick from the May tackle. Went down like shot when Petty I think fairly made a spoil only milliseconds after he marked to draw a 50. Straight dived to draw that reversal with Jones. Throw in Fyfe and Hill amongst others throwing themselves desperately forward to get push in the back free kicks that weren't paid the other way and Freo manipulated the umpires very well. Those tactics rarely work long term though.

1. Fyfe is 27, Oliver is 21. 2. Fyfe is a gun forward, Oliver is maybe an ok forward 3. Freo were down 2 on the bench for most of the 2nd half 4. James Harmes strolled in to the goal square to kick a vital last term goal ahead of Fyfe. The kick in to him came from Brayshaw who got it from Oliver. In an ideal world Viney, Harmes, Oliver and Gus should all play 70% in the centre square, with Petracca or even someone like Hannan or Lockhart taking up the last 20%. Clearly those numbers could change in a blow out win or loss. They should all play about 10% of time in the forward line to try something different for a total of 80% game time. Hopefully in time we can get even more flexibility and mix these guys through roles forward or back. Our game plan requires our inside mids to charge around the ground in attack and defending. The days of playing anywhere close to 100% on ball are over.

Manic tackling pressure? Even in peak form Hannan has a good sprint but is far from the best at sticking the tackles and ordinary at changing directions. The best of Hannan is decent forward pressure but a versatile attacking player who can get to the right spots to create goals or link up with clever run and carry. And the ability to kick a goal at an important time. I'd be inclined to drop him as well but more to get him some easy touches than thinking his pressure is going to drastically improve. The best argument to keep him in the side is he's a natural forward where as the replacement for him wouldn't be. It goes against the idea of keeping continuity in the forward half as well.

The only thing I can find about him online has him listed as 190cm. We an early developers frame that doesn't look like a speedy rebounder or laser like kick I can't really see the combination that screams top 5 pick and the player we should take. Never pass up best available if there's a clear gap but otherwise I imagine our focus will be on finding a player who can impact in the front half of the ground, be that a classy midfielder or a forward.