binman

Yep. Great test of character.

Noone cares about confidence and arrogance. Good on him. What worried me when I went and watched him against the Dogs at Whitten Oval was his body language was poor, as was his intensity amd second efforts. It looked much better against the Box Hill Hawk, and no coincidence he was one of the best thst day.

Agree, The lions game plan is more aggressive than the Bombers in that yes, they use lots of short kick mark plays but they usually go forward, and once an opportunity to go quick appears go quick (or long) whereas the Bombers go sideways and back heaps. The lions have the skill to hit those forward 20-30 metres kicks whereas the bombers don't. The only way to beat the Lins method is to pressure the kicker and press right up on the receiver and either spoil, intercept or at the very least hold them up so they cant quick and/or long. Much will depend on whether we have the gas in the tank.

Spot on. My use of the word attitude was probably ill advised in this context as it might be read as a perjorative - ie XL has a 'bad attitude'. How you've described it above jnr reflects perfectly what I meant - a young, super competitive fella, used to being one of the best players in every team he lines up with itching to live his dream and get selected in the senoirs and like any uber competitive person frustrated not to have got the call up.

Yep, that was a good game

I reckon the Blues will win as their weakness is their leg speed and ability to spread defensively, particularly as the games goes on. The Pies are also dead slow running wise, and are not playing fast, instead using lots of the sort of chip kicks that the bombers used against us, which both mitigates their weaknesses and helps them defend (eg the bombers had an extra in defence, meaning when we did finally get the ball of them and go forward they had an outnumber, which was no doubt a big factor why we couldn't score from our back half the way we have done in other games). Short version - the Pies won't exploit the Blues weaknesses and will do well to match their key strengths, their contest, clearance and stoppage work. And i suspect the likely wet weather will suit the blues given their strength in the contest. And whilst the Blus are under the pump, like us last year they are playing better than the result suggest - again like us they are running out puff late in games. Conversely the Pies form is flattered by the results - thy don't look like a team that made prelim last year. The 2.40 for a Blues win looks great value, with the safer bet being they make their 8 point line.

So many rubbish games, including most of the Gather round games (not helped by the weather of course, but still). For neutrals, i can only think of two great games this season - for the drama, our comeback win against the blues (but not a great game skill wise) and the Cats hawks Easter Monday game. I might be missing some, but geez that's a pretty poor return for box office games after 5 rounds and OR.

Finally, a semi decent round of footy. Nine games, most competitive. How the AFL could have cocked this season's fixturing up so woefully is beyond me.

And we lost Salem early too. Two down can't help with the total number of clicks the team has to run.

Good call. You're spot on, we could use the burst of energy XT will bring - straight swap for Salo you'd think; high half back kicking inside 50. I fear we'll struggle big time defensively against the Lions - hardly a big call their talent and skill level. Much will depend on our intensity and capacity to press up on their kickers and receivers and pur them under pressur. Any hint of last weeks 'fatigue' and they'll cut us up.

That's awesome- on two levels. One, who doesn't love it when a new draftee debuts? Two, it's clear from comments made by King that XT had some things to work on, and I suspect attitude was one such thing. If King is picking him I assume XT has worked on those things to King's satisfaction. XT's leg speed won't hurt either.

Thanks, that's an interesting consideration - I hadn't clicked we only had a five day break into the Tiger's game. I think playing both Heath and Max against tge lions would decrease our chances of beating them. I'd suggest if they pick Heath to maximise how fresh Maxy is for the Tiger's game they are prioritising the Tiger's game. Which wouldn't surprise me as it is our biggest game of the home and away season and Guerra has already shown he wants to maximise such opportunities from a promotional perspective. If they are thinking that I'd rather they rest Maxy and play Heath as the number one ruck - but can't really see them doing so.

The issue is not his form, the issue is that he cannot cover the ground at speed or do the end to end running for the whole match that Kings' game plan demands. You might argue that nor did Melksham and he was still selected. Which would be a good point - i was amazed he was selected against the Suns, and proven wrong. But the chickens came home to roost against the Bombers when he might as well not have played. Every player has to run north of 10kms a game, and mostly at a good clip too, to do the sort of offensive and defensive running the game plan demands. With Salem out early in the game, and Melk slow to begin, and then injured we basically played two down for the match. Add Tmac's lack of leg speed. and we were behind the 8 ball all match in terms of being able to defend (hence our struggles in stopping them chip the ball around - a strategy obviously designed to exploit our lack of run) or create overlap on offence (hence our woeful score from the back half). Heath might play with Max at some stage this season, but i would suggest probably not until the back third of the season. My guess is as soon as Luker is 100% good to go he comes in and plays as a key forward and chop out ruck.

Snap

Yes, at least for the short term. You do know Max is likely to retire at some point don't you? And that our succession planning involves Heath becoming the number one ruck?

I'll give you lever, but Sparrow was our 5th highest rated player Player Ratings Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Match TOG Ball Win. Ball Use Max Gawn 6.3 5.3 0.9 8.8 21.3 85% 12.4 7.2 Harry Sharp 5.1 4.7 6.0 0.6 16.4 73% 4.8 10.0 Kysaiah Pickett 3.5 4.5 8.4 −3.0 13.4 81% 6.1 9.0 Harvey Langford 1.0 2.4 2.4 5.7 11.4 70% 3.1 6.8 Tom Sparrow 1.5 6.8 2.0 1.0 11.3 67% 4.5 3.3

The first line here picket rather undercuts your call to bring Jeffo in. I mean a scratch match, a shorttned one at that, between two VFL teams sits somewhere between preseason match play drills and intrac club sim for relevance to senior selection. That said, I think you'll be proved right.

If fit, and assuming there's not other isssues, surely he will. We need some of his physical grunt. To be honest, when thinking about who would come in I forgot about Riv, in large part because I assumed he was injured. But he played the Casey scratch match, so hopefully he's OK play on Sunday. Id go with Out: Melksham, Salem (assuming he is inured), and Tmac In: Kentfield (plays forward and second ruck, Petts goes back), Jeffo, Rivers (if fit- AMW if not)

Equity Post Clearance - the only quarter where our pressure was at an acceptable level was the second. Not surprisingly that was the only quarter we had a positive Post Clearance differential (+12). And the only quarter we outscored them. Interestingly, we actually stil lost cp that quarter (and were down ball winning equity too) - shows that in that quarter with AFL level intensity we got great scoreboard impact from our possession won Post Clearance. The second quarter was also by far our best quarter for ball use equity points (+9.7 - next best +3.6). Our pressure fell away in the second half, there's went way up in the ladt (+22) and our points from ball use collapesed (-13.4 and -13.9). There's obviously a risk of confusing correlation and causation but I think its reasonable to argue that our ball use is largely dependant on our pressure, contest and intensity - with ball winning equity points being a good measure of these aspects of our game.

Thanks @WheeloRatings The quarter by quarter stats are fascinating. Rather than just looking at contested possessions and Clearancs as the measure I'm increasingly looking at a combo of cp and ball winning equity points to get a sense of how good our contest work was. And I don't even bother looking at disposal or kicking efficiency as a measure of our skill level. I just look at ball use Equity points. Both tell a tale in this match, particularly when you look at the quarter by quarter trends - particularly ball use, which collapsed relative to them from half time. That said I was wondering if it's possible to include clangers in your weekly data - our clangers were off the charts yesterday and I reckon clangers are a good measure of where our kicking, intensity and even fatigue us at.

And clever - she's leveraged her position of strength very cannily. My day looks very different tommorow, and will involve full clean of her car, gardening and my most dreaded of chores - cleaning the #$%$#$% windows inside and out (for weeks afterwards sunlight mocks me highlighted all the smudges I've somehow missed). By the by, in the as live Masters Jason Day made birdie at 9 to go 5 under and equal second.

I'm not suggesting Goody behind the Swans change to their game plan to but it's interesting their hyper attacking style and long forward handball (#1 for metres gained by hand) coincides with goody joining them as director of coaching and performance. That's where the buck stops. Always

Great day of sports watching Masters as live now thru to 1pm game time. Get my bets on the ponies. Races kick off 11:45 am Game 1:10pm Races replays during the breaks, more after the game finished Post game, 3 group ones in Sydney, includng the excitement machine Pride of Jenni enjoying the trailing wind - can they catch her (I hope not). And Australia's best horse, the u defeated Autumn Glow gunning for her 12th straight win in the Queen Elizabeth, which this year is stronger than last year's Cox Plate. Then watch the replay of our victory over the bombers. Gold.

....with four of our recent first round draft picks - Langford, XL, Kolt and Latrelle - going bananas.

It's awesome isn't it - it's by one of Australia's great musicians, ans hige dees fan, David Bridie (Not Drowning Waving, My Friend the Chocolate Cake, terrific solo stuff). It's a recording of a live performance from many years ago on, I think ABC's spicks and specks Note: well answer that question again on the show, just coz