Pates

What the hell was Salem going for then?

Big finish from TMac there.

3 things that will win us the game: - tidy up our kicking - up our tackling tempo in the forward 50 - take our chances on goal The old premiership quarter here, let’s get early goals on the board and start to get the game on our terms.

Our forward pressure which has been a trait of ours this year is almost non-existent.

What has happened to Petracca’s kicking? He was sobbing them consistently last year, that was an absolute shank and not for the first time.

Frost being a thug and the umpires letting him do it.

Our kicking efficiency has to be really low today, missing some very easy kicks.

Hawks are out working us.

Really disappointed in Petty so far, rated him but so far has looked way out of his depth.

Except for the first 4 weeks of the season where he has...

I’ve just flicked on, this is exactly what I was expecting. Hawks have turned this into an ugly scrap, their balls inside 50 have been the chaos ball, not to anyone but not falling to our marking defenders. Then they’re putting good forward pressure on and we’re making silly mistakes. What’s standing out for me is that 3 of their goals just shouldn’t have happened. We had out balls that we coughed up or we fumbled at the critical moment. They’ve made the most of our backline looking a bit unsure. Meanwhile at the other end we haven’t made the most of good opportunities through poor entries. Melksham was completely unsighted that quarter, he really needs to step up.

I guess I see it as if the reserves players are going to be paid as full time professionals we can’t continue with the second tier being a nothing league with zero interest. I think there needs to be a level of interest and exposure to it that gives it respect in its own right. Perhaps the prize money for winning the reserves is worth say 400k or a salary cap concession. I’d agree that maybe it doesn’t need to be self sufficient but I think it should be sustainable where it doesn’t become a money pit.

I’d be very interested to have a look at the over hit vs miss rate on number one draft picks. It really looks like it’s a poisoned chalice. Patton, Watts, Scully, McCartin off the top of my head are number one draft picks that have had early ends to their career.

This would be a great idea if there was money in the reserves competition from crowds turning up to watch and watching on TV. In an ideal world it would be something similar to the popularity of the EFL in the UK or college football in the states where there’s enough interest to sustain it as a low-end professional league. The catch is that if the AFL do this then it could pull interest away from the main league so the question is would they be willing to sacrifice crowd sizes and broadcast ratings for the AFL in order to boost and provide a serious 2nd tier competition.

We play them again at the G later this year, hopefully he plays, the Dees fans give him and big cheer, and of course the Dees get the W!

Blimey that is one of the single worst efforts I’ve seen, and I’ve watched some truly disgraceful efforts for Melbourne players in the past. The damning part to it isn’t that he dropped the mark it’s how quickly he gave up, he’s having a terrible start to the year.

See that Richmond humbled the Saints has got me thinking, we have ticked the most important boxes so far this year (4 wins, no losses). But like any team there needs to be constant development and improvement, so the next thing we need to do is actually beat a team well. We should have done it against the Saints, only our poor kicking prevented it from being a 50+ point hiding, but that's ultimately not good enough. While I will be happy with anything that's in the win column, I would also hope that our squad is driving themselves to be better than "just getting the win". Saints could be on track for a 2019-like season that we had, Brisbane as well. If so that's two finals spots opened up, the only thing that might keep the cats going is their massive home ground advantage.

I can’t shake the feeling this week is a danger game, it has all the hallmarks of a team getting ahead of themselves with one eye on next week against the tigers. I hope whatever is going on at the club the only focus is getting the 4 points against the Hawks. Adelaide this year have shown that if you have high work ethic and belief any team can win on the day.

I think that was a bump post to prove a point.

I totally understand the comments regarding Melksham after his extremely poor 2020 (and how he constantly managed to survive the chop), but clearly internally the club rate him very highly and his 2018 was elite. If ever there was a chance for redemption and an opportunity to motivate him back towards his best this has to be it. I think Brown will come in for Fritta but I think our plan A will involve Melksham moving into the Fritta role and Brown playing as a connector. Melks had the ability in 2018 to turn the game on it’s head, I’m backing him to have a lightbulb moment this week. If he doesn’t then I think he will see himself get left behind quite quickly with the emergence of other players. Majak would be a very left field possibility, and he has had strong pre-season VFL form but I don’t think the like for like is there compared to Brown. Hopefully Fritta recovers well, he was well on track to have his best season.

Fritta out might see Petracca play more time in the forward half, I also agree with those that this presents Melksham with a big opportunity to step up. 2020 was awful and he was quite comfortably one of our worst last week but this is a chance for him to show his worth to the team. I think TMac needs to stick to his CHF connector role, perhaps a little deeper depending on how the game is running. But this is our first major injury hurdle since Weid and Brown went down, a test for our depth. Changes should be kept simple IMO: Out Fritta, May In Brown, Petty Like for like, obviously big quality drop but a chance for two players to stake their claim and be a part of the ride.

It's interesting that despite it sounding like Brown came through the Casey game better that Weid is the one that's categorised as 1 week and Brown is 1-2 weeks. Perhaps the body of work that Weid managed to get through over the pre-season is what is standing him in better stead, but for me if Brown gets through this next week well then get him in for Richmond. If Weid plays a belter, does he come back in as well or would we expect a couple of weeks of solid form? I think May would love to push himself forward for the Tigers but it should always be up to the medico's and he shouldn't play unless his eye has been allowed to properly recover. I can't imagine him getting to play ANZAC weekend, maybe North game, but surely we do what we can to make sure he's good for the Swans.

I totally agree that the use of the word star is way overused by the AFL media. I think it's for a couple of reasons: Firstly as pointed out by others the vocabulary available to a lot for the personalities is not very big, and star is a very easy word to remember and use. It also adds a little bit of meat to the story, instead of the pies giving a first year player a debut they're "unleashing future star". It's basically to create clickbait. The other reason I think is because these people are put up in front of the spotlight the are entertainers, and when pushing a product are you going to pump the product up or keep it real. Naturally they're going to pump them up. Ideally the use of the word "star" would be for those in the elite category.

Yep it's a little weird looking back at games from 20+ years ago and thinking, "well that's holding the ball" or "deliberate out of bounds". Also the fact the Leoncelli was given so much time to hold onto the ball, these days you receive a mark and have to go within 5 seconds! Was funny seeing the Dees players celebrating the point as well, these days while you'd still want to do that at that stage it's a big opportunity for the opposing team to go end to end.

It's funny when the royal blue jumper I think it came back in 2006 and then kept being used as our heritage guernsey for a few of years coinciding with some of the worst years we've ever gone through. So when it went away again I thought good riddance. It came back in 2018 as our alternate top and I think there would've been a fair few Melbourne fans thinking, "oh boy here we go again". But it hasn't been the colours of failure that it was in the past, in fact I've actually grown to like it. I did think that we had gone to another alternate guernsey that was predominantly red on the back which I really liked, is that one no longer in use at all? I think if we can wear our proper colours we should always do it.