Yokozuna

I know we need to make changes and due to injuries some will be forced. I am almost to the point of giving young players a go, such as the youngest McDonald, Evans, Blease and Howe. We need to see them play so we can get rid of our drift wood. I dont really care how they play at Casey, just give some of them a go. Dunn needs to go, suspension or not. I have never really rated him, I would prefer Bate than him! (which is saying a lot) I also have never rated Wonna, people get very excited about him, but I have never seen is. He is lazy and honestly looks like he is not trying on most occassions. I would replace him with whoever, just get him out and tell him to lose 5 to 10 kg and pull his finger out. Outs: Garland, Bail, Wonna, Dunn Ins: Bate, Howe, Blease and either of the McDonalds. There are others on the cusp too, Jetta (at least he put pressure on), Bennell (also needs to pull his finger out and work his arse off), Green (would be good if our skipper is out there and giving something), Warnock (just going, does his job and thats about it), Newton (just holding the spot until better options come back, and why cant he play like he did in the 1st quarter all game?).

Having a go at Juice for a "dive", at least there was contact made. Not like Daniel Wells who dived in the 3rd quarter and got a downfield decision when we were back in the contest. He acted as if he was hit in the head, lay on the ground, heard the whistle, jumped up quickly and sprinted to the bench. The umpire was 3 metres away and still fell for it! On a separate issue, it was really hard to "appreciate" the umpires yesterday with the crap they pay. They pull out ticky touchwood decisions, call holding the ball on Tapscott when he had 0.0001 seconds to dispose of it prior to being covered by 2 players yet players can be spun 720 degrees and get away with it. I am really hating the new "interpretation" of tackling, where you can tackle players for 5 seconds, then they place the ball on the ground or drop the ball, and as long as the umpire says they were making an attempt, it is fine. The game is changing for the worse with the new umpiring rules and interpretations, dont know how much more I can take.

I want Bennell to go and watch Robin Nahas (cant believe I am using him as someone to emulate!!!!). Nahas has learnt to use his pace and run, unlike JB. Nahas runs and links all the way from the backline to the forward line, JB does not. JB is a much more impressive lloking player but as of yet has not shown it enough. He needs to find more of the ball and the way he does that is by running more. He is never going to be an in and under (although he needs to continue to go when it is his turn) player so use your strengths and run JB!

I also heard a North supporter already making excuses on SEN before, stating they ar missing McIntosh (Goldstein is just as good), Bastinac (young and tries hard but not a star by any means), Greenwood (a battler with average skills). I always enjoy people claiming that players are out and costing them team, especially when they are no better than the players who are currently in the team!!!!!! Maybe we should whinge because Strauss is out, Campbell is not fit yet and Spencer is out for a year.

They are both great young men, have met them both, JT more often and have found him to be a level headed and dedicated young man. On the field he is going to be a star. I cant beleive the lack of press he has received in his time. If he was playing for the Tigers now you can guarantee he would have had a story about him on the back page today, as is the love fest for Martin at the moment. It is also unbelievable that he could not crack it into the top 8 players for us in the Sun!!! Personally I would not swap him for Martin no matter how good Martin is looking now.

My votes are: 6. Moloney 5. Trengove 4. Sylvia 3. Frawley 2. Maric 1. Jamar Apologies to green, Davey, Bail, Tapscott (who surely deserves a rising star nomination soon) Jones, Bartram, Gysberts (who having watched the replay again, was great in close, he had 17 pressure acts, for a guy so skinny he goes bloody hard and will just get better) and Petterd. Funny that some people dont rate Maric's game. He used the ball well and was smart with the ball. Yes he had plenty of uncontested ball, but not everyone needs to go in, you need someone to get the ball out to. He also had 15 scoring involvements which was very impressive. I also love the fact the media dont give JT the wraps he deserves. I cant believe the Sun dont even have him in our best. If it was Martin they would be giving him another back page story and coverage on all news stories.

I liked Bailey being in the box too, you can see more from the box and have a better chance to see things. I also liked the changes made, Bartram to the Ball, where he did some great work, stopped thompson before the injury and got some clearances and tackled well. Grimes also lined up on the ball for the first centre bounce. In terms of highlight pieces of play I find it hard to narrow down but I am just simply going to say the tackling, to see Frawley, Tapscott and especially JT just simply smashing people was fantastic. Even our smaller and not so strong players were smashing the opponents. That is the standard we need to stay at.

In regards to the post saying some players are unhappy with the FD and some are not "friends", well are you really surprised. DO they all need to be friends? They dont get to choose who they are selected by, so why would they all be with their friends. I will guarantee (not sure how I could prove it) that every team has its groups of mates and people who dont see eye to eye. Are you friends with all your work colleagues? The thing is that you need to hope that players can put their differences behind them when they play together. I have played footy in the VAFA for 14 years and I am not mates with all my teammates, and I CHOSE to play at the club I am at! Also there is no team in the AFL, let alone any other league, that has all players happy with the FD. DO you think the guys who cant get a game at Collingwood are in love with the FD? As I stated earlier, we just need to hope that all the players work together on and off the field to improve and give their best which hopefully gives us some better results or at least a better effort.

It happens in all clubs. It used to annoy me when the players on the bench, who played half a game in a losing team would be dropped before the under performing players who played all game. That being said I think Bennell deserved to be dropped. He shows glimpses but does not do enough, he needs to get 20 touches and 5 tackles a game. Martin has shown some glimpses, and I am surprised he was dropped. Dunn should be out, we cant have both Dunn and Bate in the team and it is Bates chance. I would have liked to see one of our senior players dropped to send a message. Win or lose, as long as we have a dip, that is what we need to send out to the fans and opposition. I am happy the Gysberts is still in, he needs to keep playing.

I think we partially deserve the media attention, but I do love how we got it this week and so many other teams went under the radar, see NM, the Saints, Port. I am hoping the media attention makes the players and coaching staff pull their fingers out though. I do love how much people are talking up richmond though (I know they are having a dip) however they only beat the lions, as we did, but everyone talked up how good they were against the lions while we were disappointing. When we battle hard and have a fightback and draw against the swans or just beat brisbane, it is disappointing and lucky while other teams have a disappointing game and win by a small margin but the media spins it to be a great fightin victory. I think we are just being bashed because people thought we would be going better (i too hoped that but am more realistic) than we are, depsite the fact we are still a young team and really should be looking at a position of 8th to 10th this year.

I agree with you Kento, I was going to right a similar post. While I dont agree with Jonesy and I found the few AMericans celebrating his death the way they did very offputting, to have a go at people for their tweets and webpages and telling them to just go and get a kick is out of line too. They are young men who play a game, do they not have the right to do what others do. They are doing exactly the same thing as many people, whether they are famous or not. To imply, directly or not, that using Twitter is causing them to not play well cos Port and us have a lot of players doing it is one of the most ridiculous things I have ever read. Get off your high horses and let them express themselves however they want. I too want them to play better and give me somthing to cheer about but having a go at them for this reason is very amusing.

What a surprise, an injury list post which gets turned into a Scully is gone post. Why do people have to keep peddling the same stuff when they have no idea. I dont know if he is injured or signed to GWS but to simply speculate that he has gone becuase he is injured is pretty ludicrous.

I like the idea of having some fowards actually staying in their position. I know it is a radical idea to actually have a forward playing as a forward!! The main reason why teams have all the players up the ground and in the contest is to have even numbers at a contest. For example, the dogs had 3 players staying at home while collingwood only had 2 defenders near them, when the ball was 100 metres away. The extra pies player went to the contests and due to the extra player they would win more of the contested ball than the dogs. You need to have great faith that you will win the ball when outnumbered and hope you can get the ball to your forwards. That being said, I want us to have 1 player, probably LJ or Greeny, in the forward 50 at all times, preferably near the goal square to lead up when we get the ball, and then another forward, be it Petterd, Watts, Bate etc leading up from the 50 to the wing to provide an option. It is so frustrating to have nobody to give the ball to when we win the ball in the back half.

I totally agree that Davey is not doing as well this year and I hope he pulls his finger out and shows us his worth. However I do love how "journalists" can pull out stats to back up their arguments. The game has changed and I doubt many players at all are having too many running bounces anyway. Especially the way we are playing, having all 18 players in one half of the ground barely gives you any room to bounce the ball. That being said I would love to see Davey break the lines and run through with some bounces this week, and hopefully we have some forwards actually standing in the FORWARD line for him to deliver the ball to.

You can say they were well behind us last year but it was mainly because their senior players were either injured or playing crap (as most of our senior players are doing now). Now with a bit of confidence they are playing well and are back in form. How many players did they have playing last night who were in their Premiership teams and/or at the club in that era? That is one of the main reasons they can improve so quickly. They were never that bad last year in regards to their list, just playing shizen.

Firstly it is Brendan McCartney that Hird has talked up so much and Scott Watters has been said to be the one who has introduced the Collingwood Defensive structure as much as Neeld has, so he could be one to look at too.

If Daniel Jackson can get a week for a deliberate elbow to a guys head with his bad record Tapscott will probabaly get 2 weeks! Really nothing in it and just a typical overreaction from a commentator. I am all for protecting players but if he gets cited it just goes to show how over the top the system is getting. On a side note, how did Scarlett even get cited last week for a legitimate spoil. He smashed the guy in the process, fairly, but cos it looked rough we better look at it. So annoying how you cannot touch anybody these days without giving away a free kick or being reported.

If people are going to whinge about the logo they either have too much time on their hands or they are just that annoyed with the form on the playing front that they will complain about anything. If you look at the old logo it looks as though a primary school kid designed it and does not show anything other than our colours. The new logo demonstrates more of who we are and what we represent in my opinion. And to be honest we have more pressing issues to deal with than what our logo or away strip jumper looks like!

It actually sounds like people are happy and proud that there are no Dean Bailey apologists or that there is a need to have to defend him. It sounds as if a few of you are happy for the loss so now we can all jump up and down and say I told you so!

Unfortunately at this stage I have to agree with you. I hope the young players can develop (as quick as possible please) and become stars. If you look at last night the WCE experienced players smashed us - Cox, Embley, Kerr, Kennedy, Lynch, Glass etc, while our experienced players - Green, Davey, Moloney, Sylvia gave us nothing. That being said though the experienced players from WCE gave nothing last year, injuries aside, so it does not take long for players to turn their form around. Lets all hope that a better game plan and some confidence comes to the players and we see the best of them, because we all know that atm we are seeing some of the most disappointing football we have ever seen.

Having attampted to sleep off the anger and disappointment, and having promised myself not to come on this site as it would annoy me more I cannot help think about our pre season. What have we done to develop our team besides simple wieghts and fitness. The tactics and game plan have not improved, in fact, many will say they have become worse. How is it that essendon and WCE can change their game plan and structures in 3 months and show such a difference while we stagnate (being very kind there). I am assuming we have a game plan, and it has worked on occassions, but unfortunately it more often than not serves up the tracsh we got tonight. I am not going to use our youth and inexperience as an excuse as many other teams are in a position such as ours. I just want to see a game plan that shows promise, has flexibility and can win us games. So I ask "what the hell did we do for the past 3 months'?????????????

I cannot agree more with you. Unfortunately I hat Essendon with a passion, so it pains me to say that right now I dont like the Football Department at MFC. The players (in general) and coaching staff (in general) are giving me so many reasons to give up. Our tactics are like the bombers last year and if it took them 3 months to change their tactics, and their list is not too different to ours, why cant we!

Based on tonight and the previous few games I could see a reason to drop almost every player. It is hard to blame the forwards, as the ball never gets there, and when it does, the delivery is usually average. It is also hard to blame the backline, as the are under the pump for the majority of the game (even when we are winning) due to our tactic of letting other teams carry the ball into their own forward half before we decide to put pressure on them. That being said, without even watching the Casey game I would bring in Petterd, Maric, Blease (if they think he can run out a game). I would drop any of Green, Davey (but I know they are both safe, despite the fact they have iven little to nothing this year) Bennell and Dunn. My god we need Scully and McKenzie back. We need speed and tackling pressure and we need to bloody atack the ball and opponents and start to gut run. It is so frustrating.

What I learnt from the game is that our game plan and our players have no flexibility and just some down right stupid ideas. 1. We kick out long almost every time, and we know we are going to do it, yet the opposition have more players there. 2. We wait until the opposition are on the wing or HFF until we put pressure on them. 3. We let the opposition simply chip the ball around through our "zone" (a term I use loosely for us). 4. We dont get our hands on the ball enough. 5. Our experienced players give us sweet FA too often. 6. We bomb it long to our marking targets who are not big, strong or good enough to take pack marks. 7. The opposition do the same tactic over and over again (see Natanui at the start of every quarter, see Natanui/Cox hitting it behind to a running crumber in ball ups in the forward line for at least 3 goals) and we dont adapt or stop it. Tonight was the first night where I really, really thought our so called game plan will get us nowhere. Geelong still do it, but they have the skill and strength to do it, we dont. We need to pressure like the rest of the teams. I was hoping our different tactics would help us succeed, but if they are not working, try something else. I know we have lots of promising youngsters, but if WCE can change in 3 months, why the hell doeas it take us 4 years of redvelopment and we still get this crap. GIVE ME 4 QUARTERS OF HARD RUNNING, HEAD OVER THE BALL, SMART FOOTBALL AND I CAN ACCEPT A LOSS, BUT THAT WAS THE WORST I HAVE SEEN. I am glad we had Bail, Jamar, JT, Watts and Garland in the first half or it would have been a lot worse. It is going to be a long, long year unless something drastically changes, be it the coach, the players attitudes or my not turning up and wasting what little money I have.

It was frustrating nobody picked up on it. Even worse is that every time a semi-humorous video is shown, it wins. Really, how many times can we see a junior team getting stuck in a banner and winning, it happens all the time. Taking a hanger rarely wins. By the way, the young kid who took the first hanger is a student at my school and just went over to Europe with Lloydy and the AIS, may be a future player to watch, his name is Liam Sumner.