binman

Agree.

Can't wait for Friday night footy tommorow night. Watching the dees play port. Again.

Agree. But even more importantly, he does the simple things well.

Bollocks. 33 posessions? Do you really think goody cares about those posessions when barely one hurt, bar his goal. Every touch he had was under viney pressure and that resulted in us getting our intercepts. Port totally rely on wines for their clearances. The game was won in the first half. Wines had one clearance to half time. One. And only four in the second half. I don't know how many of them were in tbe ladt, but the game was over at 3 quarter time

Apparently that was the lowest number of inside 50s we have had all year. And we won by 5 goals. 19 inside 50 tackles a big factor in our efficiency

Would you seriously have expected him to say anything else (ie it wasn't a factor). Explains the pressure drop you highlighted does it not?

We're never going to beat any of the top teams kicking 4 goals 10 in the second half of a game. (Just in case dr d and osilik can't bring himself to post after a win like that)

I stand to be corrected, but not at the the first bounce i don't think

He hasn't been in the last 3-4 games

I reckon it time to to use Harmes as a tagger again. Sit him on Wines or Boak. A straightforward job for a straightforward fella

I'll give you that one.

Spargo playing game 50. Langers game 100. Maxy game number 150. Coming of a loss last week. The boys will have been waiting 12 months for the chance to atone for last years smashing. Big Bad Benny Brown in with a point to prove. Perfect conditions - light winds, likely no rain, but some cloud cover to make sure it doesn't get dewy. Flew in yesterday and being a night game have the full day to cross all the Ts and dot the Is. So preparation perfect, including a run last night at Adelaide Oval to get a feel for the ground. I've tipped us. Go redlegs.

Just saw this. Brilliant

As in all things the life of brian has relevant material (albeit tangential in this case):

Yep. Ta When i tried to cut and paste it i keep getting this one:

And perhaps more significantly Burgess used mid season loads and tapering at Port, and Liverpool too i think. And i think the tigers might have done so too in the last 6years or so (but have no proof of that). Whilst it is true that almost all of the senior players have super high TOG percentages, mot of the young players are consistently mid 50%. Hard not to think this a load management strategy. If so, as we get closer to finals, we can expect to see the young players on filed for longer and the tracc's and olivers getting a bit more of a chop out, meaning they can be more explosive and damaging.

The Richmond comparison is a good one too, becuase our game styles are so similar and it is a game style that is simply impossible to maintain every game thought 23 round home and away season.

This photo gives me a lot of confidence (pic 18 - tried, but couldn't copy the image for some reason - when i tried a picture of Hunt kept appearing!). BB looks super fit - and appears to have dropped some weight. Which marries up with the suggestion made on DL a while back he has done a mini preseason the last 6 weeks or so. I'm sure his fitness and mobility was the reason he was not in the side as of yet. He looks ready now. https://www.melbournefc.com.au/albums/973841/training-gallery-july-7?modal=true&type=gallery&playlistId=973841&playlistSize=18

I'm also having my bets tipping season in probably 15 years or more. The last time i did well, the dees were going ok. So no coincidence. I'm coming fourth in the Demonland comp webs, so snapping at you heels. I'm on top of a couple of comps so in pretty good shape there. So i'm pretty motivated to tip correctly I have still not put my tips in as I'm genuinely not sure about tonight's game. We are a better teams, i'm convinced of that. And our system is perfectly suited to negate their game style, not least becuase our defence works best against set ups where one big is the key to the opposition forward structure The variable they worries me is not being sure if we are physically ready for the running, spread and pressure we will need to bring to make our system work. I need to ruminate some more.....

The good thing about Brown playing is that he has an outside chance of marking one of tracc's passes given his height. Any other player and it is kicked a foot over their head. Come to think of it he missed Max by a foot in rbe ladt q, so perhaps Brown needs to pop Charlie on his shoulders

Fatigue

If you apply Occam's razor to the question of why our pressure has dropped of, the answer i come up with is that we are fatigued. We play a very taxing game that is very tiring. And it is logical pressure falls away when the team is fatigued. I reject the idea it is something as vague as a lack of effort. They might be mentally tired, but I don't reckon that is a huge factor. To me the real question is why are we fatigued? We have a number of young players. It is the point of the season that all teams start feeling fatigued, particularly younger teams. But again I suspect we are doing extra training loads and that is a big factor.

I reckon this is the key point.

Wouldn't say he had a blinder. Only had three possessions. And no score. To be fair he only played about 10 minutes by the sound of it as they rested him (having not known the Port game would only be in 4 days when they selected him to pay with Casey)