Pates

I know commentary is one of the regular bug bears on this site but can I just point out one of the most patronising/condescending lines that the usual suspects trot out. "[Insert lower team] has been so brave tonight". It's actually insulting to the team that they're referring to, in this case St Kilda by Brayshaw. They haven't been brave, they've been better than the cats and quite clearly. They just haven't taken their shots on goal with their forwards having an absolute mare of a night in the fumbles department as well. Makes me sick that the Cats are likely winning this, they are a lucky team and the Sydney match was one of very few that went against them.

Well except for vs Sydney in the final 30 seconds ?.

Is it me or is this game some of the worst skills on display? Some absolutely shocking mistakes, misses, and fumbles from both teams. Maybe it's the perceived pressure but if that's the case both teams are turning to water when the heats on. EDIT: Saints have been worse than the Cats.

In fairness there aren't a lot of great options that week if you take out the QB. As ratings go it's probably the best of the worst options available.

Wouldn't surprise me in the slightest to see Trac have a week off after that corky. He looked really sore after the game. Sparrow would be my tip to come in if he does end up missing, the other option is bring Baker in to take the wing role and move Gus into the guts. The good news is that the match is Sunday so we have the time to see how he recovers.

Blimey those misses from the Saints are absolutely disgusting. I'd be tearing my hair out if I was a Saints fan (and we've been in that position plenty of times before). Cats should be counting their blessings that they're only a kick behind.

I think Clarkson also became a victim of his and his clubs own arrogance by trying to Moneyball it with broken players such as Scully, O’Meara, and Patton. When the champions retired/moved on he didn’t want to cliff to come so he kept topping up and it’s ended up being a part of their own demise. Keep giving them Sunday 1pm games, let’s see how many turn up. My guess is their crowd figures will be about on par to our Bailey/Neeld years.

It’s a bit of a bizarre read and begs the question of what are we doing with Jones? I would think the best use of his experience is to have him within our best 26 but likely playing some games at Casey as a leader there to push the right attitudes. He’ll have more games this year but Sparrow was outstanding against North’s VFL team and surely deserves a spot. Weid for Jacko is all I’m anticipating though.

Well we’ve only beaten teams below us ?.

That should definitely come next, force them to do that trip down the highway. Watch Jeff crack the sooks then! (As a little side point I think it’s complete bull that only certain clubs go down there. Richmond, Carlton, Essendon, and the Pies should be copping away matches there as well.)

I see this as a bit of a danger game, don’t get me wrong I’m still confident but they do have some very good players in their line up that on their day can tear you apart. I feel like we have become the “nothing to lose” team to play against, so teams are coming out hard from the start and trying to keep the contest tight. What I noticed though is that when teams open it up to try to kick a winning score against us that’s where our leg speed and transitions come out and we can score quickly. I’m pretty sure I read somewhere that the Blues have allowed 4-5 goal runs against their opponents in every game this year. If we are given an opportunity at a run like that we can break the game open VERY QUICKLY. I can’t imagine any blues fan being confident, but it seems the competition is still waiting for the “Melbourne of Old” to come out.

Oh I’m sorry Jeff, is it difficult to have a successful financial model with a team that’s down the bottom and playing on commercially bad time slots/days? I really hope Tassie dump them.

Would absolutely love for him to kick a bag, I reckon the Melbourne boys massively get around him (in the same way they’ve got around Tommy). As for what I’m expecting of him, I want to see him clunking marks and providing strong second efforts. I’d like to see him kick a couple of snags. Good luck Sam!

Go to 5:10 on this clip for what I’m referring to.

So firstly I’ll say that I’m a Liverpool fan so clearly YNWA has a strong emotional connection to sport for me anyway. But people saying it’s a Liverpool song is the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard. I’m living in the UK and we’ve copped it big time from COVID deaths and the impact it’s had on people’s mental health has been really tough. They played YNWA at the Proms last year as a tribute to those who’d suffered and to recognise the front-line workers, and it choked me up big time, hit me like a freight train as I wasn’t expecting it. I also remember it was played prior to our match against Essendon that was the tribute to Troy Broadbridge at the request of his family as it was his favourite song. So it has a connection with us already. That said, I can understand the calls for it to be something totally different. For something that has a connection to us perhaps “Danny Boy” in memory of Jimmy. Another song that I’ve always thought had a bridging line that would be great for fans to chant is Knights of Cydonia from Muse, it’s always been a rev up song for me. “No one’s going to take me alive, the time has come to make things right. You and I must fight for our rights, you and I must fight to survive.” Not sure it’s very appropriate for any connections to suffering from mental health issues though.

Haha I was meaning "Jacko" not Jack! Viney definitely comes in when fit. I get what you're saying with LJ playing more as a mid but I feel like the balance of too many talls could affect our two-way running and the pressure we put on other teams. It's a good potential problem to have but a problem none the less.

Shows how much of a joke he actually is, he fines May for contact that is a tippy touchy free kick at most but allows Rampe's reckless, off-the-ball, WWE style flip that could actually have done some serious damage. He needs to be replaced ASAP.

Throw out a hypothetical here: Weid comes in this week and kicks 4 as second ruck/forward, with TMac and Brown kicking 3 each. Jacko has another week off and we get similarly positive performances from all three, do we drop one so Jack comes in or does Dogga have to come back via Casey?

I was really glad to hear that when asked, "do you move on from it pretty quickly and look closer at the fact we won" (paraphrased) he absolutely rejected that and actually seemed to take a lot of responsibility for the fact we lost the centre clearances so badly. I'm backing him and the midfield to find a way to rectify it for this week against Carlton. I feel like what Sydney seemed to do particularly well was put tactical blocks on the players and almost bulldoze paths through for their players to get the ball. I think it didn't help that Max wasn't quite hitting the right spots with his taps but I really feel like Sydney did their homework our our contested ball winners at centre bounces. My major issue is that when the opposition seem to have our measure on these things we seem to just stick to the plan rather than try to mix things up, even a tactical smash forward rather than deft tap might just get them re-thinking how they go about it.

He's certainly tall enough, I think it'd be better to keep him out of the ruck with his dodgy knees though. Weid has done it in the past, as has TMac. If they do end up picking Sam it'll be interesting to see how it goes with 3 true tall forwards in the line up, Jacko has been playing more as a 2nd ruck/mid rather than a ruck/forward, so we may be asking Sam and Tom to try to impact the 2nd and 3rd contests almost more than the initial bounce/ball up/throw in. The good thing about bringing Sam in is that it will allow us to maintain the structure we have had all year and Max can keep popping up behind the ball to take relief marks.

Injuries happen, thankfully in this case he will recovery relatively quickly and easily. We are also well served in the talls department. We will miss him, zero doubt on that, but I’d rather it happen now than in a month or two’s time.

I think both will have stints as the second ruck. I see Weid as a more pure forward whereas TMac has a little more flexibility. Given we have a forced change, I see no reason to do any other changes. Melksham might be the only one that could worried about his spot.

So surely this has to be Weid in. Just as a thought rather than Weid into Jacko’s position maybe TMac plays the second ruck role (in tandem with Sam) and is the more mobile tall around the ground. I’d say Tom would cover the ground in a more Jackson-style way more than Sam, and Sam can play a more traditional CHF role. Shame for Dogga, he’s been getting better every week he plays.

The interesting thing about our team is I don’t think we’ve played our best yet. The Richmond game was probably the closest IMO as it looked like finals intensity and the crowd was final-level noise. But every other game we’re just doing what we need to do. With our tricky run coming late I think there might need to be a flirt with form around rounds 15-16 before trying to push well into finals.

The system created right now with no top level and actually promoting crowding beggars belief. Either put COVID protocols in that allow for social distancing or don’t so that people can get back to the footy with ease. Sounds like they are making a simple thing complicated.