bing181

You're kidding yourself. Really.

"There needs to be players who put their hands up and take responsibility and say "I haven't been the best teammate". It's all me, me me. That's the biggest issue I had when I went from Hawthorn to Melbourne, getting these players to understand it wasn't about them." Insightful analysis from someone who's been there. And no mention of the coach or coaching or game plan or whatever.

How did that work out when we sacked Neeld? Neil Craig was an experienced, competent senior coach. We were losing badly under Neeld but then went even further backwards under Craig. Which is exactly the same pattern we've seen Every Time we've sacked a coach mid-season. The incoming stand-in coach ALWAYS lost more matches than the coach he replaced. And not just at Melbourne either, happens across the league, and for that matter, happens across multiple leagues in different sports. The only way to change a team's trajectory is through list change. Delusional. Mercifully, those in charge at the club understand this, also understand what Goodwin and the coaching team are trying to do, and understand where the list is at. As for the supporters ...

Hunter was more than useful when he came across, McAdam we may never know (injury). As for the rest and what happened under Roos, Tommy Bugg, Ben Kennedy, Pat McKenna, Ben Newton say hello, even some of the people we drafted/rookied. There were more than a few doozies there. And let's not even mention Heritier Lumumba. You're rewriting history.

Petty forward. The one thing he can (still) do is take a big contested mark. Unlike JVR who is struggling to take any kind of mark at the moment. For the rest, who knows, depends on who's available. No point on just moving deck chairs to give the impression that we're "doing something". I'd be inclined to make as few changes as possible, we desperately need stability and consistency. There'll always be hesitancy and indecision when every week you look up and have a different set of players in front of you. BTW, no way Sparrow gets dropped. Was a big part in us winning centre clearances.

And there it is.

Goodwin's not going anywhere, at least not before his contract is up at the end of 2026. Get over yourselves. So many bizarre posts, unconnected to reality.

Swap Van Rooyen for a key forward who can hold his marks, and Petty for someone who can defend without giving away stupid frees, and we win that. In spite of everything, we are generating enough I50's ... only to see it come straight out again.

So who would you bring in? FFS.

Plenty of glimmers of hope and positives. Probably not enough, but at least they look like a football team. At times. Get Windsor and Kozzie back up to speed, Lindsay and Lever back in ... building, building.

A foretaste of the main game perhaps ...

"New ideas" are meaningless without real and meaningful list changes. No accident that the first thing Paul Roos did when he arrived was use our draft capital to bring in talented, experienced players who could have an immediate impact. Of course, you might argue that we could have stayed with Craig and done the same thing, and we'll never know what the result might have been in that case. But the reason we'll never know isn't so much that Craig mightn't have done as well as Roos, it's that Craig was tainted by being part of the Neeld team and the optics weren't good. If everything else off-field is in place, changing coaches is about sponsors and memberships.

... 2 tackles. Hardly night and day. We get it, you like Johnson over Fritsch, even when all the facts clearly show Fritsch had a much better game and one with a lot more impact. Classic confirmation bias.

Interesting final score, neither team managing double figures and Magpies winning with only 8 majors. Also Magpie inaccuracy, 8 15. Perhaps it's not just us but something to do with playing fast and furious football?

Fritsch had 15 possessions and 8 score involvements. Johnson had 5 and zero. Not complicated.