Pates

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.

They played with a good system against us the other week, they'll get a scalp or 2/3 somewhere. Remember everyone said Adelaide would go the season winless last year and look at them now. Kanga's just need to work their way through the mud, like we did.

Nice change of pace from what they used to do with scheduling our trip to Darwin with a 6 day break before and after the match. I could never understand why they didn't scheduled our Darwin match to be followed by the bye round.

Interesting to hear so many other AFL players out there when this incident occurred, is it common for there to be clumps of AFL players out? Are there pubs/nightclubs that are known AFL player hotspots?

Couldn’t agree more, the current format of the second tier competition gives very little opportunities to players pushing for selection. Even worse is when both the seniors and Casey have a bye. It happens too often it’s embarrassing.

Even the Seven commentary team and Fox Footy pundits said nothing in it. Maybe he’s heard the criticism that he listens to the comments too much and this time went against it. No doubt should’ve been a high contact free kick on the night (though buddy looked like he was going down before May came along), but a fine? FFS ?‍♂️

I counted 14, I thought the ump was very quick to call it. I can only imagine it was because he took the ball from the contest he “felt” like he had the ball for a long time. I have to say Harmes was A LOT better than I expected him to be, a couple of issues but he looked more like 2018 Harmes. I wonder whether he has a clearer role when Viney isn’t in the team with him.

Fritta’s entire game was useless, he’s had a great year but he was bloody awful against Sydney. I’m backing him to return to form against the Blues though. I’m going to throw out a left field idea, Max was big in the last quarter but mostly his two weeks have been off. I’m wondering if he’s carrying something and whether perhaps he would benefit from a week off, give Dogga number one rucking role and bring in Weid as 2nd ruck/forward. Possibly also rotate TMac between forward and wing with Gus having a bit of time in the guts. The other reason I’m suggesting this is that there could come a time this year where Max is injured/burnt out and Jacko needs to be our main ruck. Give him a crack at the role this week to give him some experience at it, the flip side is that we also potentially do the same with giving Jacko a rest against Adelaide. This gets games into Weid as another bonus.

Certainly is but marijuana is also a banned/illegal substance so would you want Willie Rioli at the Dees hanging about with Jackson, Rivers, Pickett, Jordon etc?