Mad_Melbourne

i can just see it happening, melbourne showing a bit of heart with a mellee, and destroying the pretty boys at carlton, although mitch robinson is a tough nut, putting a bullseye on yourself in a team that has the two largest midfielders and a raging bull is quite stupid. moloney and sylvia will not forget this and both have a knack for laying tackles. and with tapscott likely to be back, i think robinson may shirk a contest. having said that he only said what most people are thinking, that we are soft and easily muscled off the ball, which is a very annoying thing to watch, players like morton and bennell flinging themselves to the ground in the tiniest bit of pressure really annoys me.

99% of the time it was warnock

if we do win the cries of an injury depleted essendon side, without their captain jobe watson, will be loud haha

this is what we need to do for davey aswell, sheppard him and get him in space!

he only played 60% game time, he could come in as our sub, possibly, but i wouldnt want him playing a full game at afl after playing 60% game time in the vfl having said that 19 disposals in 60% game time is awesome, and he would kill it as a sub. playing him as a sub would be great because we could then monitor his game time, barring injury, and we could also monitor his injury, and it would also mean we could get him doing a proper fitness test after the match for the next week.

ridiculous, maric has the ball kicking it inside 50, bate has the ball kicking it inside 50, i sure as hell know that i would want maric kicking it. 9/10 maric has a slicing kick, it is only when he tries to do too much, tries to gain that extra 2 metres of space, or take on an opposition player when he comes unstuck. he has had a very high number of score involvements in previous weeks and usually is getting 1 or 2 assists. he is not an elite afl kick yet, but he has the ablity to be an elite afl kick, he sure as hell on this season form is in my opinon at least, the first pick of our small forwards. that being said cloggers: Warnock Wonna Bate Morton it is rough to say, but i dont see warnock or bate getting another season, even though they are great for our depth, im not sure if this is already answered, but how many players do we have to drop at the end of the season?

understandable, and yes i have just stated how the successful teams get through the oppositions forward presses, and their style of play, but that is how they are winning their matches. run and carry is a viable option, but you need to get into the space, which is constricted by the forward press, and thus the "dinky kicks", handballs, and the switches create this space, if you run into the forward press you turn the ball over, and that is why the possesion football is used, to slowly drag players out of position and then to take advantage of the space. WHY WE HAVE NOT BROKE THE ZONE: -Laziness, not all players are wanting to do the hard work to get into space. -Bate, Jurrah, Newton, Maric, Petterd, Morton, are all decent players, but like to run half hearted leads with their hands in the air. run at the ball carrier hard and fast, turn around and do it again, this is how the space is also created, at the moment i think our players just want the reward without the effort, and this is why Jack Watts is slowly becoming my favourite player, he continually runs at the ball carrier, whether or not they pass it to him, and then he runs just as hard to repeat the lead, we are seriously lacking this. -[censored] poor disposal, hitting targets is the key, mind you we are missing several key disposal players, yet at an afl level nearly every 15-20m kick should hit a target, this is seen especially through, collingwood, geelong, hawthorn, they rarely miss the short kick, gaining meterage, until all that is left is the long option. KICK OUTS ON THE WEEKEND: -stoppage creating, which is all well and good, but seeing as carlton are the best stoppage team in the league (and if they arent, they are top 2-3) it lead to a bit of trouble, but it also meant that we had less goals kicked on us off the turnover from kickouts, and it was a more man on man play from there, having said that it was predictable, and resulted in a sydney esque style of game. -mind you, we were missing, tapscott, grimes, davey, garland, all who took kick outs while playing meaning we had to try something different.

i am always optimistic, and for some reason, i am more so this week. having said that, im just hoping my optimism pays out in a less than 4 goal loss.

it is clean disposal, doesnt matter what you do as long as you move it cleanly, which is hard with the pressure, but effectively if you can keep the ball in your hands then you can get through the forward press. this can be done through - chipping the ball to leading players, only 15-20m away, carlton did it against our poor press on the weekend, collingwood do this, hawthorn did this this week aswell. - going around the zone, with switches, as these presses in play usually bloke 1/4 or 1/3 of the field, thus when in posession switching is often the result, which melbourne tried to do, but we went well too wide. - when switching then splitting the zone up the middle, as the zone will move across the field there will form gaps through the centre of play, it is often a riskier kick but most good kicks can hit them, suckling from hawthorn is my personal favourite, but most teams have these offensive/defensive players. there were several times when melbourne could have done it this week i thought, but we were trying to avoid goals from turnovers and just pushed wider and wider. - running it, riskiest play, but breaks the press the cleanest, geelong style play, where in, handball and quick movement creates the space. hard running is also vital to push into the spaces.

True, but also a bit untrue aswell, i think we look slower, but surely Bennell, Nichloson, Evans, have some serious jets, i just dont like their ability to be a hard defender like Garland and Bartram.

Morton - Gibbs, like his role on Goodes Jetta - Scotland Judd- Mckenzie, would love to see Nicholson on him bit of a baptism with fire though Murphy- Green, like we did on dal santo Bennell - Yarran Looking at the list though we will probably need Nicholson in the backline, on gartlett or betts. Would love to see green on judd, like we did with dal santo but his engine would probably be too large.

trent cotchin hayden ballentyne campbell brown, when hes not elbowing people in the head

ill be there with horns on

Ridiculous, the only place we should ban twitter is forums on demonland, for anyone to suggest that twitter effects how a person plays is ridiculous, sure if they are twittering during the match or even in the warm up and cool down of a match then we may have to get them off it, but let them do what they want during their free time. If a person being on twitter annoys people so much, then dont follow them, it is a simple as that, just dont go on twitter and no one will be bothered by it. Although it is ridiculous you may be on to something, we should ban them having anything to do with the internet Facebook, get them off it, Twitter, see you later, newspaper articles and articles on the melbourne football club website, goodbye. Also the players sometimes attend University, this promotes free thinking too much and they may get distracted from playing football, so unenrol them. Extra curricular activities that have no relation to AFL, such as surfing, going out to dinner, watching movies, hanging out with their girlfriends and wives too much, we really need to cut this out aswell. We should make the mfc, a prison based team, create a bunch of cells at AAMI park, only give them certain hours for free time and three square meals a day, and the rest they have to be at AAMI training, gymming, and then studying opposition, they should not be allowed any time to themselves, and really lets be honest, its not like they should be doing anything else with themselves that doesnt involve football.

that we won in contested posession and tackle count that it looked like we wanted to be playing out their, most of the players at least. we were just out classed, they kicked 11 goals off our turnovers and that is what killed us. lots of positives to take from the game on the whole, and other than basic skill errors, i thought it wasnt too badder match from our point of view.

our only problem is the fact that we are losing our speed, rohan bail, colin garland, both relatively quick, hard running players, if they are replaced with rivers and mckenzie, although they both have good tanks and good players, in my opinion this leads us to a lack of speed to break the lines, hopefully bennell can have a ripper, and even more so flash. i hope it is a closely fought out contest, and we come into the last quarter and blow them out of the water, the one thing i am pretty set on is that we have really good endurance and that we are able to run out a game up their with the best of teams, and i hope this puts us in good stead. Maric to continue on with his good form and kick 4 goals.

yeh i agree he knows why he is being dropped, and he takes it in good humour which is good. and also i personally rate bartram alot, although i agree he does fly under the radar about his work ethic, and his physical strength and endurance, and really just how hard he works in a match, especially on this site

i laughed at it, due to the fact he isnt playing for that precise reason!

going on past match ups it will be frawley.... and i would love watching frawley decimate milne

i think it will be petterd

yeh, because it is also a team based decision, and it is voted upon by all the players!

he was more dropped due to the fact newton and martin came into the side and can play in the ruck, and he cant, and also because he was the worst player afield, including adelaide players in a 96 point winning side.

arguable, if i was an opposition coach i would be more inclined to worry about watts and jurrah, as their goal kicking and disposal is much better than newtons. newton would take the warnock-esque defender, just the lump who really is not the number one defender but rather just a stopper. none the less on the topic on a whole, with the massive drafting of our fwd line it is good to see this depth coming in handy, even though bate was handy in the vfl, howe was best afield, so i would be giving him a run ahead of bate, as i see playing a player on form is better than playing a player because they have played good afl matches. bate was awful against adelaide and we hammered them, so i feel that we do not need him in the side

OUTS: Garland (inj), Bail (inj), Dunn (susp), Wonna (omit) INS: Macdonald, Evans, Howe, Mckenzie basically self explanatory, these are what i would like to see, but i will not be suprised if rivers replaces garland, and bate replace howe. but... rivers and warnock in the same backline, leads me to severe worry, especially with a forward line of riedwolt and koschitzke, rivers and warnock will make us too slow, in the backline and will probably lead to severe strife, so a mobile macdonald is definately who i want in. howe on the form from the weekend, bate in the form of a tried and tested forward, so will be interesting to see the path they take. also for mckenzie to come in for bail, i feel this will lead our midfield looking a little one dimensional, so we need someone with that zip to break lines, and this is where evans comes in, evans is a player in the mould of bail, and thus can possibly be the perfect replacement.

i dont understand the system at all, but surely the impact is taken into account, if his is a 3 week/4 week suspension, what will hockings be? also, dunn is not that bad, he does his part adds a bigger body, i much prefer him to bate playing, and really this week is rough to be judging him so harshly seeing as he played about a half in the backline