Mad_Melbourne

rubbish, port were in a genuine rebuild under primus and they have the cattle through the midfield that is bound to make them competitive, anyone who thinks it was hinkley that came and built the culture has no idea about football, it was already started and if primus got one more year which he was obviously hoping for the results would have been the same.

everyone is so doom and gloom, and fair enough to be upset about some of our performances, but at the end of the day our list is not too bad. we have a solid forward line, (when fully fit) the backline will benefit from a more experienced midfield] it is just our midfield, and at the end of the day you cant really pick up players who will play and carry a midfield, you need a depth of midfield performers around the 100 game mark, with 3-4 pre seasons, and we are not at that stage yet, but we will. at the end of the day neeld will and should stay and will lead our list forward into greener pastures

tappy will play bursts through the midfield, but he has not done a full pre season yet so will not have the tank to play throughout the mid for a full game. he also stated that he preffered playing as the small forward role and was happy to be settling into the position

rodan has the leg speed required to be helpful on the offensive and defensive spread which is where we have been really lacking of late. he can also play as a crumbing forward which means his rotations are beneficial and will probably be involved in a swap with sylvia and tapscott to chop them out and spread the load. but at the end of the day, a premiership player with over 150 games experience, that is why he was brought to the team, and with both captains being out that is why he is playing ahead of magner also rodan is not a certain starter yet

i guess its all opinion based, im not saying he looks quick, but i never thought he was quick, i think he is more of a consistent paced runner, sustaining pace rather than burst of pace. i definitely think he fades out over games but at the moment i feel its due to fitness and that once he starts being able to clock up the 15-20 minutes a quarter through the midfield again then he will be back to his old self.

would everyone here have fired Mark Thompson or Damien Hardwick, or even Mick Malthouse, although we have not played well early on this season ,we are in the second year of a full list rebuild, anyone who thought the players we had brought in were going to carry us up the ladder are plain daft, these players were for leadership, and bigger bodies to chop out some of our smaller bodies, and provide depth in the case of injuries. Make no mistake, we are going through a rebuild of the club, player group, tactics and culture and there is no way that we can sack the person who is on the front of it so early into what he is beginning. is this an ideal start to the season? no! are there positives from most of the games? yes! did the game against carlton show that other than a few lapses in concentration and vital skill that our application is there and that we are working the game plan and game style out? yes! at the end of the day we are missing our top 2 key forwards, and we dont have the depth to cover it. our midfield is pretty much the least experienced in the afl, and this is where games are won, once we add 50-100 games to these players, 2 - 3 seasons we will have a much greater idea of where we sit, if in 2 years time we are not competitive, then neeld will be in trouble, but at the end of the day when our core midfield group doesnt have the cattle to win matches then we will not win matches. Rucks: Jake Spener: 17 games Max Gawn: 7 games Mids: Nathan Jones:141 games Jack Grimes: 59 games Matt Jones: 6 games Lynden Dunn:101 games Rohan Bail: 40 games Jordie Mckenzie:60 games Michael Evans: 8 games Colin Sylvia: 144 games Jack Viney: 5 games which is a touch over 50 games average between them! compare that to any of the other midfields we come up against and no doubt this is the major gap! None the less my point is, sure we have not played many "good" games, and our results on paper do not look great but we have definitely been showing signs of improvement, the foundation is there, and we have out project manager, let him get his project underway and if its faulty at the end of it then we will have another melbourne eye just laying around, but there is no doubt that we should let him work on what he is trying to do!

the first sentence was my next post, but i just think he is underdone, and that they are playing him in the forward line to build his fitness and almost play the forward pressure role. and i think that his lack of full pre season gets highlighted as the match goes on, and hopefully as his fitness builds he can move into the midfield and then we will see the trengove of old!

personally i dont agree, but if you are expecting him to be one of the quickest players on the field then he isnt quick

he was never the quickest player, but he doesnt look that slow early, but rather as the game progresses

he missed 8 weeks of pre season he cant have the fitness to impact the game as much as he would like yet.

get ratten back as a midfield coach but today doesnt really prove much, spencer and gawn are still a little ways off being the ruckman that will take over the game but it is frustrating to watch the clearances continually be dominated by carlton and constant goals from stoppages

your posts contribute nothing ever you are a [censored] today was always going to be a tough day for melbourne, with our first choice ruckman out and two key forwards, made even worse by having to use our sub so early, but yet we have played a competitive first half with only a few lapses in concentration resulting in goals. will this match blow out, unfortunately i think so, is this neelds fault? no

keep him in the twos, play him on the wing, dont let him play until he runs both ways, gives the first option (this could be running in space), and is willing to chase just as quickly as he is runs when he has the ball. although they are different types of players, and not only due to him being a ranga but he has alot of bate about him, likes to run forwards and will be heaps quicker over 20m running into goal.

That's true, but Evans and nicho are two of them who are quick, and Evans has been using the footy alright though. We spread, just way too early and don't run back!

too slow, butchers the pill, and has problems with the spread. rather be giving games to evans, bail, toumpas, viney, m.jones, jetta, blease, nicho and even taggert, strauss and tynan

yeh, there is nothing worse than seeing an opposition player running between two melbourne players, and while that definitely looks like an issue with the zone, in my opinion i think it is an indication that the zone has good positioning, which should be expected from an afl level, but the players inside the zone are not willing to run and follow the people in their area, thinking that the person is someone elses responsibility. obviosuly when they are in the zone, players still need to be awake to the dangerous options and we often get carved up by a 15 metre kick into the top end of our zone because these plarers up the high end of the zone are in most instances the mids and i think they feel that they are trying to force a deep kick to the numbers, but are either not aware or refuse to man the dangerous players

exactly, which is exactly what i am talking about when i say we are spreading the wrong way and do not have a midfield willing to run both ways in most instances. we are both arguing the same point, we just have different ideas of why it is happening

but that is not to do with the zone, that is to do with the spread from midfield. why they had the 100 more possesions is because they fiddled with the handball on the spread, and had the numbers around the ball, as i mentioned in my first post, it isnt from the zone why the midfield gets beat, it is due to the spread of our midfielders and there unwillingness to chase their opposition players, meaning that the opposition mids and high forwards are able to move the ball with ease. zones are set up usually from kickouts, free kicks down the field, or a stoppage that is forward of centre, and as i said, its not why we are getting smashed through the midfield

there are so many flogs on this page, from this match i have seen countless stupid threads, and this is another. although i agree frawley looks disinterested at times, he was solid today, three goals to j-brown, and frawley was actually a decent option on the rebound and ran well. the problem in our backline today was tom mcdonald. Frawley is a number 1 full back, and when our midfield is able to limit the easy ball that the opposition midfield gets will look even better, joel macdonald should not play as the number one defender ahead of frawley, stupid

in modern football all teams will implement a zone, and this is definitely not the reason we are losing. the unconstested marks stat, is one which is of huge interest to me aswell, and i feel its more about our midfield spread and the preparedness of our midfield to run both ways. we as a team spread too early, we do not actually have possesion of the ball when we spread, and have not worked it to the outside mids, but rather have won the hard ball and everyone has spread off for the disposal, this leads to the turnover and then the opposition spread, which leads to countless uncontested marks in the midfield. in regards to the zone, i agree sometimes it is the problem, but its not that they arent in good position, it is the willingness to move out of the zone and the dangerous player! the boys seem to keen on blocking space rather than manning the dangerous player, the uncontested marks inside our fwd 50 and from kickouts are the only real uncontested marks off the zone, in my opinion this is

what article were they reffering to with the alleged arguement? who was it allegedly with? good on neeld fighting back, would love nothing more than to see the club take a few of these fictional story tellers to court

hinkley walked into a team that was ready and primed, primus had done all the hard work with recruiting the mids, working on a team orientated defensive mould, and playerd were told to perform for the team or leave, it was a pity primus got fired as he had done all the hard work and the easy work is what hinkley has to do

dunn should have stopped taking the ball off watts and let him kick in, we looked better when watts was kicking in, because he is a better pin point kick. but at the end of the day, if we kick the short ball, the idea is that the designated kicker gets the hands off and can get it 80m-100m up the ground instead of 60-70m its hard to work the kick outs when we only pushed one tall target to the ball, we need to push howe, jamar and pederson/sellar all to the same area and that is how you can work kick outs.

Watts was playing loose, as they had westhoff playing loose for parts and i forget the other player they had playing loose. Port adelaide made paul stewart who was playing on dunn follow watts around, with dunn following him, meaning it was a 2 on 1, watts would then try to get loose, dunn would let stewart run with watts trying to get the cheap kick, then watts was left chasing stewarts tail. Watts was never able to get to the good spots as he had no protection from his team mates. This is not defending watts because at the end of the day he should have drawn stewart to the kick down from play where it would have been a 2 on 1, watts and dunn, instead of trying to drag him up the field and thus losing him in the play, meaning that stewart was streaming down the field when we turned it over, watts was caught chasing tail and dunn just manned up on the nearest player to make it look like he had a man in the "structures" why we never manned up their loose man and played a 7 man fwd line so we had one on ones all over the field is beyond me because we just kept picking out their loose man over and over!

yeh, an inside midfielder, with a body ready made to play afl! definitely viney