deejammin'

So you have us losing to GC and GC beating GWS? I really hope we can get over the suns, I fear the meltdown that may ensue...

How nice to have a competition for all finals spots only a few weeks out from the finals, so heres the thing, what will be the final 8, in order and who's your pick to go all the way? Here's mine: Hawthorn Sydney Adelaide Collingwood West Coast Geelong Essendon North Melbourne Hawthorn to win the lot in a tight Final against Sydney.

The ridiculously overblown love-in for Richmond this year is getting beyond a joke. If we would should model our team on a club that loses to Gold Coast, can't win tight important games, has played in less finals than Fitzroy in the last 30 years and is a front running team with a strong midfield, one kp forward and not a lot else then there is something seriously wrong. Richmond and Hardwick are exactly where we were in 2010, close to the finals, been close but not good enough with top sides, and could easily capitulate horribly with a few unlucky injuries and lack of depth next year.

Alot of talk about floggings in this thread, May well happen but for the record I think people are getting a bit carried away about North. Their performances against Adelaide and St Kilda were impressive, but really, beating half of Carltons best team (who haven't been impressive since early season) and narrowly downing a Richmond team that the week before lost to Gold Coast and was hardly impressive against us isn't the greatest. They did lose to Port as well.... not saying we will even get close, but in terms of who will be going deep in finals I think North has been highly over-rated. If they make it I see them going out week one. Sorry to sound overly vindictive but I am very sick of bandwagon football media where a few wins in a row = quality team.

We are a terrible team, and that was a terrible team with most of its few good performers out injured, it was never going to be pretty, but it was still awful! We should never have had port going past us at this point, they were bottoming out during GC and GWS compromised drafts and were a terrible team the last couple of years while we should have been on the way up. This was a truly awful night for the MFC. At the half way point of the season we were told the second half would be a new season, that hasn't eventuated, it has been a repeat of the first half but without Mitch Clark! I am beginning to worry about Neeld, certainly he thought we would be better than we are by now, I don't think that he would have been as upset this week or last if he had expected it. But I think he could turn it around with some good trading and drafting as well as a strong pre-season and some luck with injuries. If we are at the halfway point of next season looking at 1 or 2 wins it may be that we have once again put all our eggs in the wrong basket.

We've had terrible luck this year, I know we have been terrible and bringing some guys in is hardly the panacea for our problems, but if we could have a team on the park with Clark, Jurrah, Green, Martin in the same forward line at least 10 times it would have been much more exciting to watch and difficult for oppositions to hold down. Here's hoping that next year Clark, Jurrah and Martin can play in the same forward line for 2/3 of the year! I know most of our problems are in the middle, but with a stronger line-up forward and back we can keep quality players in the midfield longer.

Part of that is due to bad luck, if Mitch Clark, Liam Jurrah, James Magner, Tom Couch, Rory Taggert and Tynan were playing there would certainly be a large changeover and a fairly large improvement (Mitch Clark is a large amount of improvement on his own!)

This thread would be a lot more poignant if the MFC was pushing hard for finals

I'm making the call, we will win 8 of the last 11 including beating Richmond to put them out of finals contention. Go dees!!!!!!!

Laser targets players: Apparently Chewy was also applied to several players boots, umpires were bribed and Coutney Dempsey had a full frontal labotomy 1 minute before the final siren. Could these guys be worse losers?

If you look at St Kilda's seasons in 2009 and 2010 most of their key games against fellow contenders saw them winning kicking 8-12 goals, and their finals scores from those years tell a similar story. Some teams play a brand of footy where the most important element is defensive pressure keeping their opponents score low so they don't have to kick high scores. Some play an offensive brand where they try a shoot out approach where they will score alot, but so will their opponents. The best teams have a blend and the ability to do both depending on the night. I would think long term that is what Neeld would be wanting, but he knows that alot of these players are good offensively off the leash, what he is building, and what Saturday night will reinforce, is that a strong defensive approach can grind out the tough wins in conditions where loose, off-the leash, Bailey style football saw us losing badly. When/If the two come together we will contend with the big boys. edit:grammar

Can you post what he said or give a link?

Bump, man a million years flew by..... It hurts so so good!

Maybe this week King will "just come out and say what everyone's been thinking about" a certain North Melbourne coach and football side? Maybe he should realise football is an up and down game, someone will almost always lose, 17 teams lose every year (from now on) so maybe don't make grand calls about the direction of football clubs you know sweet FA about.... Or maybe he'll just slam Ratten instead......

Three consecutive games is pretty consistant in my opinion, makes a few mistakes but is growing as a footballer and has the prepensity to tear the game apart. He's been brilliant since he's been back in the team against three very good sides under immense pressure. Credit where credit is due.

So incredibly happy with that effort tonight, can't stop smiling! I was dancing and singing the song like a madman, even through the carpark. Dragged my parents along (we go to all the home games but they were trying to get out of this one) by the end we were all going nuts! What an incredibly gutsy performance by the whole team. The best thing is there is still so much improvement in this team and with the confidence from this game you would hope that they will be this dogged, determined and at times bloody brilliant as they were tonight. Man, Jack Watts, Jack Grimes, Jack Trengove all had great games! After all the flack of the past nine weeks I hope every player, coach is as proud of the team as I am and that we can bottle the feeling and keep it going for the rest of the season!

In my opinion we are struggling on-field because we embarked on a strategy of rebuilding by completely removing almost all senior players from a list, replacing with 'project player' draft picks and expecting the team to become successful simply by pumping games into players with little or no on-field leadership. Culling so many experienced players all at once left a void in leadership at the club which we are struggling to recover from. They may not have been star players but the over-eagnerness to turnover all of our list at once certainly hurt our build more than help it. Consider West Coast and St Kilda, both clubs had members of the media, supporters and senior members of their clubs screaming for them to play the kids and cut some players when they were struggling over the past coupe of years. Yet the very players many were arguing were past it (Quentin Lynch, Kerr, Embley, Gram, Milne, Koschitsche) are now leading them back into form on-field and are no doubt setting the standard at training. Off-field we have just overhauled almost every facet of the FD and rushing to get rid of a CEO, Chairman and Members of the board would leave a similar void. Schwab, McClardy and Connolly may or may not be the best for the job, but I think knee-jerk reactions will do more damage than good. As redleg said stability is what we need right now and as for Schwab, when his contract is up at years end I am sure all members of the board will seriously consider alternatives.

I think Bennell may have a negating role on Garlett he did this under Bailey and it wasn't his worst effort.

Carlton, as with their injuries and current bad form a loss against us could put them out of serious contention, and set the media wolfpack on a different scent for a few days.... it would be nice to be able to pick up a paper without a negative article about our club for a little while, not that we don't deserve it but its getting a bit too painful.....

We'll learn a lot about a lot of players this week. There's been intense scrutiny and the playing group has been in the firing line, no-one expects us to win and neither do I but this is an undermanned Carlton and we desperately need to be competitive.

I thought Steph played in the Casey ressies game this weekend?

Actually its not the same team, Jurrah has played 3/4 of a game, Steph Martin 1 game, Col Sylvia 4 games, there's no Tom Scully, Petterd has barely played and is badly out of form, Tapscott ditto, Gysberts also...... Also Gawn played in a couple of wins as well.Thats 7 players that figured in most of those wins, and in fact most of those players were in great form whilst this year have barely played... Don't get too excited, Plus technically two wins were against a first year Gold Coast, which is 6 and a half wins as I don't think Gold Coast counts, one was against Port Adelaide who were barely a team last year (they couldn't beat Gold Coast) in Darwin (which makes the game bizarre every year), another against Brisbane (where we fell over the line), and wins against Adelaide and Freo in Melbourne in which both opposition teams didn't show up. Thats 2 and a half honourable wins, while on the other side of the ledger there was a flogging from West Coast, Carlton, Geelong (186), Hawthorn (sound familiar) and bad losses to Richmond and Port Adelaide (remember the team that was barely a team?). It was a terrible year, we could still do better this year (although it is unlikely). But if we are going to hang our hats on last year as a retrospective success then we are in real trouble. And, for the record of the teams we beat last year we have faced 2 (one of whom we also lost to last year). Sydney was a draw so we have done far worse there, but really we didn't even win that game. Maybe assess this year once we have played some of the teams we beat?

I think this is being blown way out of proportion by the media. Yes, we have played poorly, yes we deserve to get a whack for the standard of footy our players and FD are serving up. However, apart from (arguably) Brisbane and Richmond every club we have played has had a vastly superior list and its the nature of any compeitive league that teams lose. I am aware that these have been bad losses, but really, the frantic media circus it is becoming is so far overblown in relation to what is actually going on. I expect journalists to have a go at our players and FD but really, journalists coming out of retirement to give the club a whack? So far over the top!

Bravo Ox! Well said, didn't get carried away hit the nail on the head, King chose to throw an ill-conceived hand grenade miles too early and should be picked up on it. He did the same to Port and the reality is unless you can prove what you are saying is correct all you are doing is taking aim and kicking clubs while they are down, poor form, and btw, hows North travelling?

Has missed a set shot from within 30 metres in almost every game this year, I like him but this is severely hurting his game.