bing181

Go for it Dean .... B

... and the reverse. Which is, for the most part, the present situation, and is one of the reasons why we fell apart on Sunday. B

... or a foretaste of things to come. Time will tell how much of an aberration or wake-up call it was. Of course, I hope for the best. But ... B

Good post. The thing that struck me was that Dees' players almost seemed surprised when they were tackled .... mid-way through exercising routines that they'd obviously been working on at training. B

Absolutely. Which hopefully is behind some of the recruiting strategy of late: Watts over Nat for example The kind of on-field accountability, leadership and experienced presence that Freo had last night, and we haven't had for a while now. You just have to wonder what a difference it would have made yesterday if we'd had just a Sandilands and a Pavlich. The last AA Melbourne had was the skipper, back in 2006, and then Jeff White two seasons before that. We just don't have enough (or any?) game-changers and on-field leaders, players who can weather the storm and marshall the troops. Another long season ahead I suspect, in spite of the rise and rise of the 'kids'. B

" He has forecast more pain for Richmond and Melbourne supporters, who he tips to fight out the wooden spoon. After doing his homework over summer training and looking at all 16 AFL teams, he says the Demons' skill level in the pre-season has been ordinary." Shane Crawford in the HUN. Tipping us to fight out the wooden spoon with Richmond. B

Agreed completely, but I wouldn't be shooting the messenger here. I don't know how happy the clubs themselves are with the current AFL/Bigpond tie-up, which leaves them with little room to move and little control over the content/configuration/operation of the sites. Certainly, I don't believe they do their own coding. Adding Twitter to the armoury can only help, but even there, as links are often back the MFC site, there's a limit. B