deejammin'

I don't know what would have happened had we got Sheedy, may have been good, who knows? But I don't believe GWS can be qualified as 'closer to a flag' we have beaten them twice, easily. Most of their best performers from this year will be retiring and being replaced by underdone kids (Brogan, Power, Mcdonald, Cornes) they have no dominant ruck or KPD and will be relying on young kids, putting huge pressure on them to perform. They are overpaying Scully by quite a margin and face salary cap and poaching issues over the next few years. Their core midfielders are good but not elite. They are relying heavily on drafting well this year, which is unpredictable. They will change coach at the end of next year. They have no club history, no culture and there is a large amount of resentment in the football community at large and finally if GC has taught us anything the second year can be far worse than the first, which for GWS would be diabolical. Not saying I see a flag in our near future, but I think both clubs are so far away that arguing one is closer than the other is farce

Look, this thread is ridiculous as its argument is fundamentally untrue. Melbourne did not fail to go after Lyon hard enough, they went bloody hard with a 5 year 5 million dollar contract. Melbourne was told he was staying at St Kilda while he pulled a shifty deal with Freo that not even his manager was aware of, there was no opportunity for counter offers, NO ONE KNEW THE FREO DEAL EXISTED UNTIL IT WAS DONE!!!! There is so much wrong with our club right now, getting involved in this horse$#^* arguments about getting Lyon or Malthouse (who also turned down a similar deal when it was offered to him before Lyon because he wanted a year off coaching and as Collingwood would have sued!) lets talk about whats actually going wrong. What about Neeld's onfield strategy don't you like? We are about to see his list management strategy so there's very little to comment on there and how much do you actually know about what goes on at board level at our club and how we have turned $5 mil deficit into profit!!!!!!!! I see a lot of posturing from some of the most vocal critics, a whole bunch of revisionist coaching arguments that fly in the face of fact and very little discussion about what is actually going on.

Why are people suprised that we sucked? We have always been a terrible interstate side, we were terrible when the season was on the line, we have nothing to play for, our fitness has been sited as bad all year, we are at the end of a long season, our key forward is out injured, Freo are tuning up for the finals while we are getting ready for another grueling preseason, this is the expected result. The only reason to expect any sort of performance is for those whose careers are on the line to try to regain their spot, and thank goodness none did, so the cull just got easier! And don't say pride or showing improvement, I think this coaching panel have decided whose bags are checked and are getting ready to load the NQR bus, the rest was about trying some stuff out. Seeya later 2012, bring on some trades and drafts and the hardest pre-season these players have ever known.Next year is make or break for the coach and quite a few highly touted talents, fail in 2013 and we're in deep deep trouble. JUST BE GLAD ITS OVER!

Not really, it makes the job much easier, if they had played their guts out and saved their careers our coaches may have been goaded into keeping on players who over a long period of time have proved they can't cut it and we would indure years of performances like this one... I'm hopeful we may finally get some people in who don't ever need to play to save their careers. I think you have answered the midfield question, we have a premiership midfield coach proving that you can't polish a turd, it doesn't matter how well drilled you are in positioning, ball movement and tagging if you are constantly pushed aside, butcher your disposal and can't stick a single tackle. Its the cattle, thats the fact, one more game and we can start analysing how well Neeld does in recitifying it with trades/drafting. PS. Totally agree about the umpiring, how is it possible to have a free paid to a player, the opposition kick it 50 metres away preventing said player from moving the ball on to free players in the forward line without having a 50 metre penalty paid? This happened 3 times at pivotal times today!

Jimmi, I couldn't agree with you more. All of Trenners strengths would be very useful to a side with a versatile midfield. Sewell and Mitchell are made to look very quick by their midfield at times, but most of the football media and many coaches talked about how slow they were coming into the system. The reality is our team don't block well for eachother, our ball use is clunky at best and our midfield is either one-paced, under-developed physically or has extremely poor disposal depending on which combination you pick. The reality is JT is in our top 6 mids even whilst underperforming, this is how terrible our midfield is and until we draft and trade to rectify this problem he will have no problem keeping his spot. And who knows, maybe with a half decent midfield group around him he will flourish. Hell, Adelaide make a plodder like Van Berlo look good.

I was refering to Carlton...

Tanking!

Best thing about Essendons decline this season is that yet again the media got overly excited about them (remember the predictions of a pies bombers grand final). Now they are going to struggle to make the 8, and if they do I see them travelling to Perth for an almighty flogging.

You cannot turn over every single underperforming player on a list in one year, Sylvia will stay, the coaches seem relatively pleased with him. He is contracted, he won't be worth enough in a trade and football clubs, like all performance institutes need a degree of continuity, there are so many already on notice (reportedly 11) there is no way more than that will go.

Sorry to disagree Akum, but should freo win even one of their remaining games by over 7 goals it would be very very close, Saints need all they can get. Playing with the ladder predictor there are still so many possible results that I don't think any team can take anything for granted, there are multiple ways the Saints can miss the 8 purely on percentage.

I thought Blease got to some tackles to affect kicks purely due to his pace yesterday.

How long were all four of them there for? My guess is no more than 2mins, this is modern football, all players spend time on the bench, they all played a major part in the last quarter (Riewolt obviously excepted) so I don't think its "taking the boot off the throat" and percentage is an issue for them should they end up on the same points as Essendon or Fremantle, remember Freo play us round 23 and they could catch the Saints with a reasonable flogging, its too close for any team in contention to not think about percentage. If they had come out and kicked 15 goals in the last term we would be talking about how freshening those stars up for the first couple of minutes of the last quarter allowed them to come home like a train.

I would say that we are finally seeing what happens when Blease, Strauss, Tappscott, Grimes, Trengrove, TMac, Jetta, Howe all play together, add Watts to that mix and we are finally getting all our players together on the park, how often has that actually happened so far in these player's careers? I remember seeing not so long ago that Blease, Watts and Strauss had only had something like 2 games together in the same team, I think we are starting to see something from all three and that if they can all play together consistantly we can see some huge improvement. The same goes for all the others I have listed, Tappy's coming good, TMac is a revelation (despite his brain fades) and Grimes and Trenners are steadily improving (whats happened to Trenners Goalkicking tho?). I know it is an "excuse" but the fact is we have had a terrible run with injuries to some of our most valuable players, (Blease, Strauss, Tapscott and Grimes have missed more than a full year each!) and when they all get out on the park feeling fit and confident we see some much better footy from this side... with some luck hopefully it will continue in a more meaningful way next year.

I agree that they aren't a good team, and as I have stated in other tanking threads, I don't think anyone can be "pulled up for it" as it is a situation created by the AFL's rules. However, I think that if tanking exists that it doesn't matter if its a new team or the oldest in the competition, anyone can do it. I also don't think the GWS team we saw today was anything like the team we saw last week, or the last time they played the suns. Coincidence, maybe, but it looks equally if not more suss than most other 'tanking' incidents, and yet we aren't hearing much about it from a rabid press who can make a story out of nothing (see Mark Neeld's alleged racist remark). Coincidence? I doubt it....

I think junk time goals may actually be good for the place our club is at right now. I know that they are meaningless, but much like we need to play well over the next month to take confidence into the preseason I think running out the game well and kicking almost our most goals in a quarter against a team like St Kilda will inspire far more confidence in our group heading into next week. Certainly beats the hell out of capitulating and getting beaten by a heap!

Melbourne has an injury list of 15 players 5 of whom would be absolute walk up starters (Clark, Frawley, Jamar, Watts, Jurrah), St Kilda has an injury list of 3 players who I am not sure would be in their best 22 right now and had Riewolt off in the first quarter which almost cancels out Clark, thats 4 of our best out as well as another 4 players who if in form would squeeze more players out of our team (Bartram, Davey, Martin, Nicholson). With a huge recruiting, trading, training and development pre-season coming up I'm actually feeling far better about our team. Today we performed well for a large part of the game against a team that not so long ago played off in 2 consecutive Grand Finals and got as close as you can get to winning one (arguably both). Not bad at all for the walking wounded.

I find it unbelievable that Melbourne beats Richmond by 8pts earlier in the 2009 season, then loses by a kick after the siren allegedly as a result of positional experimentation (at least we played our players, a 2 goal turnaround, earth shattering!) but GWS has an almost 60 point turnaround after dropping all their "stars" against a team that until only a few weeks ago couldn't win a game! Yet there is not even a murmur of from the press about tanking. It defies belief, the AFL protection of its new babies obviously runs pretty deep.

And yet which club is the AFL investigating? Hypocrites!

There are so many that will leave the club before Sylv this year. Will get another year but would want to make it a bloody good one. Only way he gets traded is if we get a super good deal.

Thanks for the memories Greeny

Why does anyone think that the comment "if we had played a good side today we would have been belted" is insightful? We have played the top sides, we were belted, we know that. What we didn't know was how we would play against a bad team that managed to beat a team we lost to twice. We won easily and were never challenged, some players played better than they have all year (all career for Spencer), others played just ok, overall we won, great, thats all we can ask for. Essendon beat this team by 5 points, they've beaten some good teams and are in contention for the 8, meant nothing to them. Richmond smashed both of the premiership favourites yet lost to this team, didn't seem to affect their performance against top teams too much. Maybe if we can get winning against bottom teams right the confidence we gain will help us against the top teams, not how we look doing it.

I cheered Magner coming on, nothing to do with Cale, I like Magner, also didn't know Cale was injured, but as I said, my cheering had nothing to do with Cale. I thought we had brought on Magner as we were being smashed in the clearances at the time and I agreed with that descision so I cheered.

Culture has become a buzz word for winning in the afl, thats all it is, consistant success. It doesn't matter if half your team are smashed off their faces on coke, that your captain needs to be replaced as he's far too addicted to drugs to be the face of your club, that a mere 2 years after your success several players OD, one fatally. That is a terrible state of affairs for a club, but you know what, they won so hey great culture. It doesn't matter if one of your star players hangs out with bikie gangs, shoots up cop shops, if members of your leadership group lie to presidents and the police about serious car accidents, if members of your team are telling drug testers "you won't catch me" or if your head coach and assistant hate eachother and are on the brink of a meltdown due to a botched sucession plan. They won so their culture is great! It doesn't matter if your star player cares so little for your club that he leaves the place where he and his father become legends for a shitload of money to get flogged every week, or if your coach at the time abuses aforementioned star player for the same act he then pulls by abondining the club, lying about it and going behind admins back. They won, so you know what their culture is great! It doesn't matter if your team hate eachother because of 2 rape incidents, whilst other members take nude photos of eachother and let them end up on the internet causing major feuds, they still have great players and still win more than they lose, so their culture is far better than ours.... Its a chicken and egg argument, the only common thread I can see is that if you win more than you lose your 'culture' is better, end of story.

I stated in the pre match that this is one of the worst Melbourne teams I have seen on paper and I stand by that statement, as a result I will very happily take an easy win where we were never challenged. Spencer, Sellar, Morton, JMac, Bail, Dunn had all been terrible before this game and all played better than usual, Strauss and Gys are both coming back in after a long time off AFL footy, and Moloney leads a list of players horribly out of form. This was a good win in the context of the match, I can see at least 7 of those players dropping out of our best 22 next year to be replaced with far more quality, given that it was a good win.

GC were never within 5 goals of us after the first quarter, that is an easy beating, we can say it was a poor standard game etc etc but ultimately we got the job done and were never seriously challenged on the scoreboard. Thats good enough for me in a season where we have been so much worse...