durango

Simply a brilliant season and he is just in the prime of his football career, this is a great reward for hard work and dedication.

How he missed being a AA player is beyond me but am I biased or just a better judge.

He is look good for a 85 year old, when older people watch games of clubs they support they tend to ride every bump, handball and kick.

When the team wins the premiership a tear comes in our eyes because we are relieved that they have achieved the holy grail and we are there to witness it even if it is only on TV or a replay.

Unfortunately my father and cousin did not live long enough to see the mighty "D" raise the cup again.

I have a friend who is a St Kilda tragic and we talk about the team from time to time and I looked at their season with fresh eyes they had a larger injury list than MFC, the older recruits like Hannebery played very little football in the last 3 season 17 games last year he played 8 of the games in a 17 game season, Frawley 2 games, Ryder 12 games, Jones 13 games, Carlisle 4 games and Kent 7 games.

These are the so called high profile recruits who were going to get them into finals and maybe a premiership, if you cannot get your best cattle on the park and play together building a team cohesion then you have no chance of making finals or premierships.

My theory is that if you can get at 16 of the your best 22 to play most of the season together and the bottom 6 improve then anything is possible provided the team has 20 very good to great players and at least 10 good players on your list with little to no injuries.

We did get this scenario this year and if it continues into the future we will be very hard to beat again for the finals and a premiership.

I look at the picture they have changed very little in time I believe they were friends then as they are friends now, competition between them is like little brother trying to outdo big brother and that is a good thing because they will push each other to be better for the team and best players in the AFL.

Simple go onto the AFL site go to Match Video, then round and game, watch quarter by quarter match replays like I do when I what to relive the season we have had.

We have respect that he has 7 MFC players in the best 50 which when you look at the AA squad the players all 7 were there, only 5 got into the best 22.

His 50 usually include players who dont get a mention in AA Squad.

How you rank them is a personal preference and I always respect other peoples opinion I never rank players because I am bias towards my team.

Draft ranking on the other hand were you have no club to cause bias is in the eye of the beholder.

They had a draw in 2010 and had great chance in 2009 were they kicked 9 goals 14 points losing to Geelong 12 goals 8 points, 1997 bad kicking again was their downfall and 1971 where they were 20 points infront at 3/4 time and lost by 7 after Hawthorn kicked 7 goals in the last quarter with Bob Keddie kicking 4 goals.

Their only premiership was in 1966 by 1 point

17 minutes ago, Fat Tony said:

Gawn was AA in his seventh season. English has played only five. 

Gawn missed basically 2 seasons with knee reconstructions and had some knee swelling in some other seasons.

I listened to Jason Taylor's interviews and he has a policy of tracking players from the time they are U16 watching their progress thru the system, I believe they had an interest in Lever during his draft year but were not willing the pick him 2 or 3 (Petracca and Brayshaw).

Also Lever was coming off a knee reconstruction.

I made the prediction at the start of the season that we could win the premiership so long as most of our best 22 play close to 22 games with a very low injury count and the bottom 6 improve and we have a little luck in some games.

I did not imagine that we would stamp our authority on the teams in the finals to this extent and still marvel at the way they crushed Geelong and the Bulldogs.

As luck would have it Geelong lost Stewart and Parfitt and the Bulldogs lost Bruce maybe with these player we might have won by less than 50 points but I think we would have won anyway, round 23 maybe we might have lost, but as I said you need a little luck and we got some and we will never know what would have happened if these players where there.

The bigest question is whether all the recruiters think the way the so called draft experts think about a player, if they are correct he will end up at GWS who will have to use the pick 2 because he will not be there at 13 the so called experts think.

In 3 years what will his value be to the recruiters as a developed footballer who wishes to return to Victoria and family, if this is the way to develop your team trading players back to their original states then GWS has very little chance of progressing beyond middle to lower half of the 8.

I saw him play and he was a very good center half back at a time at 184cm he would be a half back flanker in the modern game where center half forwards are upward of 194cm.

It shows how the modern game has changed when you compare the modern rover/ruck rover, 178cm upwards to 194cm, to the past ruckmen Wise 188cm, Denis Cordner 191cm, Don Cordner 188cm, Terry Gleeson 193cm and a tall Bob Johnson 198cm the one thing they all had in common the played for MFC in premiership some might not get a game in MFC 2021 team?

If you watch training the ball butchers are usually good to very good when there in no pressure but when under games pressure and the adrenaline has kicked in the players tend to butcher the ball, kicking it long bomb, not lowering their eyes or up and under, so you find that good teams have intense match practice to improve the disposals in pressure situations.

Listen to some comments from players in other codes like NRL Storm where players come to the club as rejects and become very good players because training is at game intensity.

Problem with documentaries are that it takes the player focus of what they have to achieve in the future by reliving the past.

For the supporter it is great.

The current To Hell & Back allows the players to remember the past which was dreadful and show the great joy in actually achieving the first step in a road to greatness,

No matter what the supporter from other teams say 2021 was our year whether we were lucky or not the result is in the record books and wont change.

I agree we had a good year with injury but most times the premier have good years and a bit of luck but the way we beat the 3 teams in the finals was emphatic 33 83 and 74 we were getting better with each outing.

We were challanged by the Bulldogs but they were found wanting and if you look at the Bulldog players faces when Clayton kicked the goal with 20 seconds left in 3rd quarter it was shell shock of the highest order and they had lost the game at that point and did not believe they could come back from there like they did in the 2nd quarter.

We should enjoy our victory because come the 1st match of the 2022 season we are on zero wins like every other side and must climb the AFL ladder again, then win finals to get to the holy grail in 2022.

Sometimes you take a calculated risk but if GWS recruit Lobb and Andrew he will be a development player and when he is ready for AFL football he will be picked off like a lot of GWS players and now Hill wants after 30 games.

Hopefully the high performance team at GWS will not destroy Andrew in a haste to get him upto AFL standard a la Jeck Watts.

Lets hope the Ball history is repeated many times over like 2010.

Unfortunately players on the fringes have played very little football in the last 2 years and their development in heat of battle has not occured to Chandler Bedford Baker Jordan Laurie Rosman and Bowey, although Bowey through performances and injuries to Smith and Hunt was promoted and florished.

Hopefully 2022 they can get time on the park at Casey and push for senior selection thru performances at the lower level.

Training can only do so much in practice of your skills but when under pressure in a game this is the time that we can see whether the skills have improved or not.

I think Luke is young man who in his 2 seasons has achieve only what other players could dream off, listening to some interviews he does not come across as a player with tickets on himself.

He sounds level headed and when thrown into the deep end lifts his game rather than drowning in expectation these are characteristics that make a champion compare his 30 game career to Jack Watts who basically was thrown to the wolves and drowned in the expectation.

Almost every year at least 2 or 3 teams miss the following year due to age or injuries to players last year St Kilda Collingwood Richmond and West Coast missed this years finals which is great for the AFL competition creating hope for supporters as well as heartbreak for others.

I hope we are able to improve enough to stay ahead of the chasing pack who want our success to be a flash in the pan.

If you go back to 2020 Jackson played 6 games and then got injured, he had already shown what he could do with a rising star award I think that if he had not got injured he would have help the MFC reach the finals in 2020.

Ratten was an assistant coach at the MFC and was well liked but again the being a Head Coach is a different kettle of fish some time good assistant coach make rubbish head coaches, Neeld was an example all theory and little application.

The question is he a good coach or has had good cattle because of the recruiting of Stephen Wells and free agency players wanting to play finals.

In the 11 season to date he has coached Geelong to one premiership, the first after Thompson retired, with a team that lost the preliminary final to Collingwood the eventual premiers.

Has now coached the teams to multiple preliminary finals 2011 winner, 2013 lost, 2016 lost, 2017 lost, 2019 lost, 2020 won and 2021 lost, it seems like a great record but is it the players or the coach.

The Geelong team seems to be able to recruit good players in the twilght of their careers and then promise them they are a part of the premiership squad but fail to deliver 2020 they lost the qualifying final and had to get to grand final the hard way Richmond also did the same they were 15 points in front at half time but old legs become tired in the 2nd half of matches and lost by 31.

The game at Geelong this year 44 points in front 10 minutes into the 3rd quarter and lost by 4 points, the preliminary final Melbourne  kicks 8 goals in the 3rd quarter and win by 83 points.

He has not refreshed the side using youth mixed with experience but more old experience players disadvantaging players like Clark and Constable.

I realise they lost Parfitt before the Preliminary final but they were the oldest team in the finals and MFC was the youngest.

I have watch the game from the early 1950's to 2021 and game has not got quicker players have improved their skills on both sides of their bodies because the games have changed from a 6 man defence to a 18 man defence and from 6 players on the ball to 10 players.

Players of the past with skills like Deisel Williams and Sam Mitchell who were not fast but were always aware of the players around them and were ready to dish of to a teammate in a better position.

The players who have highs early in their careers, the reason they get caught out and disappear is that opposition put a lot of work into stopping these players and if they dont evolve they die 'Darwin's theory of natural selection'.

Look at Clayton Oliver starts out as a handball machine and has now evolve as a total disposal expert both by hand and foot, he is now slowly working on how to stop players that tag him and in the Grand Final tagged Bontempelli in the last half of the 3rd quarter.

I believe that we pick the best available and if Taylor & Co believes that a small forward is the go I would back him.

Although every body has said we have many tall forwards I think the depth is there for the next 2 to 3 years but we need to allow a young KP, be it Forward or Back, players at least 2 years development before they are ready to take on the mantle.

I watched the Grand Final again and noticed the ground Brown covered in the match I wish I could get his GPS stats but he seem to go from the full forward line to the full back line which meant the players were never over crowding the Forward Half and the talls always were well separated meaning tall backs for the Bulldogs were most times playing one on one with their tall opponents allowing Fritsch to run into the fat side of the ground and use his elite marking skills virtually one on one.

Now is the time young KP players would learn their craft from Brown as a Forward and May as a Back, so they get a great grounding in the art of KP play.