nutbean

He did indeed but again we didn't do Dawes or any of our forwards any favours. Roos nailed it when he said he we went fast when we should have gone slow and slow when we should have gone fast. We gave poor service to our forwards. I do think our defensive intensity inside 50 wasnt up to previous weeks,

I disagree - with too tall being our problem - its was our last kick into the 50 - butcher the ball , butcher your chances of winning.

If it gets us a premiership I will pay good money to see a rugby/AFL hybrid ( And Howie stand on an opponents head once a match)

That is gold - I know a few Canuckistanians so I will absolutely have to use it.

When was the last time we had almost 70,000 people to the G' with the screaming for the Demons almost ( I reiterate - almost) as loud as it was for the Pies. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

Beat me by about 30 seconds

I like that he doesn't bounce players in and out the team. ( for the record - I have never been an advocate of dropping a player after a couple of quiet games. Nor have i ever been an advocate of calling any player in the AFL a spud)

yes...yes it is.

I don't think the team is getting ahead itself - just some of the supporter base. ( I would agree with you on the team if they played like it was just going to happen and didn't put in the effort - but I cant really fault the effort - just the execution)

Like anything - confidence brings improvement - I rated his hardness and shutting down ability but didn't believe he provided enough offense. With confidence ( I guess from not being bounced in and out of the team) he is now not only doing a great defensive job but also offering some offensive rebound. I think as we improve this will also become more a feature of the game. I loved the little run in the 4th Quarter when he gathered the ball and both Pies forwards around him though he would dish off laterally but instead he charged straight down the middle leaving both Pies forwards flat footed.

Welcome to the MFC - obviously you are new here so I will give you a brief rundown of what happened the two years before you got here. You may be surprised but we were pretty bad the last two years. We got thumped every week and were the laughing stock of the AFL. We weren't in any of our games after quarter time and we wondered if we were ever going to win a game. We also had a fair amount of internal problems with our admin and apparently discontent amongst some players. Then at the end of last year we got a new professional CEO and a pretty decent coach who did not promise miracles - he didnt even promise a whole lot more wins - he promised that the first part of turning the footy club around is being in matches for much longer and a healthier percentage. And this he has delivered. We have seen improvement in our performances but as our pretty good coach says - we are coming from a long way back and we will have our bumps. Most supporters also realise that we are 9 games into this new coach and regime and have been cruelly struck by our big power forward retiring and our young untried gun forward having back problems. Sorry - just thought since lots of this has escaped you, you must be pretty new to our history (I apologise for a post that may have a touch of sarcasm in it - but I scratch my head when I see supporters who cannot fathom the depths we have come from and the progress we have made. Yes - I am not happy with 3 goals - bottom line is we butchered the ball into the forward line and we need to do better. We still have a number of young footballers who have had little good education mixed with some middle tier footballer who also haven't had good education. And we still have a number of NQR's who wont be on the list in the future. This is first time I can remember since the early Daniher years that I feel we are not just looking to win games - we are looking to BUILD something. I am under no illusion that will take some time.)

Wayne Campbell should look at the consistency of umpires across all games, Friday night they paid zero holding the balls yet the two games yesterday, players were given no,prior opportunity got jumped on head high and in the back, got buried under avalanche of opponents and still got pinged for holding the ball.

If history teaches you anything about hawthorn over the last 40 years is that they have very few closed window periods. Write them off at your own peril.

I can. At his height and build you have to be exceptional. Fortunately I think he will be exceptional.

You do realise that Michie has a whooping AFL career of 3 games ?

How do you figure that the Hawks are further away from a premiership than we are. Thats not a big statement - thats a HUGGGGEEEEE statement. If you are referring to their form over the last few weeks - I think checking on who they have out of that team may give some indication as to their form slump.

Does Gerard Healy going to the Swans ring a bell ? It gave me much pleasure that we towelled up the Swans in the 1987 finals when Healy jumped ship to play with the Swans as they were a real finals side ( but as you can see - i don't hold a grudge)

Umm ...yes.. yes they do recover. And in many (most) cases it is temporary and ongoing medication is not required. However in some cases it can be re-occurring and triggers need to be carefully monitored. In more severe cases as you point out there is life long management with medication. Depression has a very wide scale and breadths of severity.

I dont usually quote myself - but is this a little prophetic ?

Hey Biff, be a darling and spread the rumours will you ?

That and Vince has desire to be at every contest he can possibly be at. Repeat efforts whether offensively or defensively.

I honestly dont know if that is correct or not. Shannon Taylor (?) was interviewed on SEN yesterday on the VFL hour ( now plays for Frankston) and he played last year in WAFL after being on the Eagles list and he said that the VFL is a much higher standard.

Go home factor is way overplayed. The amount of players playing away from their home state through their entire careers as opposed to those want to go home is tiny. As to the ransom and Chips comments - refer to my comment again - I said the player transfer market is completely governed by demand. Demand is purely about how much someone is prepared to play. The arguments about improvement and non effort are subjective and may or may not have an impact on the demand for his services. At the moment, he is in demand. I agree to a point that the players have to take responsibility for the clubs improvement but he is correct to look at other areas that needed improvement as Watts did - there is no doubt that we were a basketcase in many areas of the club.

I agree that he is not tagging at Casey but I think that Roos has a different idea on tagging. The problem with McKenzie in the past is that his only focus was to stop his opponent and you can become too predictable. His opponents never worried about where he was so they could concentrate purely on hunting the ball. Cross to me is what a tagger should be - a beautiful mix between shutting down but also taking opportunities to get your own ball when it is on offer. Cross's opponents need to worry a little where he is and that is a good thing for tagger. Basically McKenzie has to learn to tag (which is what I think is essentially his go) and have his opponents respect him enough to worry that he will hurt you if you dont watch him. But on Magner - I had no problem with Neeld asking him to tag in the middle - but he put as a defensive forward deep in the forward pocket- almost the small forward role - a radical departure.

I am bemused by the idea of players "holding us to ransom". Modern AFL and players being recontracted has one main driver and thats demand. Managers and their players assess what they can get at another club and what they are offered at their existing club. There are always the little added anomalies like leaving to play finals or not getting on with the coach/played out of position or not being played at all. Players in general that don't play for basketcase teams are happy enough to stay for the same money being offered by other clubs or even slightly less ( aka Travis Cloke - took a lower offer to stay to Collingwood - the difference in $'s was not enough for him to move on). This is not holding a club to ransom - its the way of the world. To those pointing to Dunn signing up early as a free agent. Different players have different priorities. The take home message is that AFL to players is a business and a career. We get confused that supporters like us don't get paid to attend ( in fact many of us pay handsomely for the privilege) but the players do, and like most employees - we are loyal to the company that employs us - unless we are offered compelling reasons to work elsewhere.