Little Richard

True, but he is a bit hit and miss. Hopefully it'll be one of his quiet days tomorrow. I'm a bit concerned about Ryder too. Max is still finding his groove and Ryder's athleticism around the ground might cause a few headaches. Defenders will have to be super conscious of him around the top of and inside their forward 50.

Something close to those guys would be a great addition to the side, but does Dion have that X factor? I haven't seen a lot of him so forgive me if I'm wrong, but he looked a bit more like a working class small forward. Clearly works very hard defensively though, which is great as you say.

Great stuff, very glad to see him back and he definitely earned his place. Hopefully the start of a rejuvenated career for Jack.

How do you mean?

Give him 10 metres and he'll still miss. You can't play footy after a dozen scotch and cokes.

Obviously GWS and Port will be the biggest tests. I'm confident that we'll finally get the monkey off the back and hammer North though. St Kilda and Collingwood will be interesting, but I think we'll knock them both off. We should be too good for Brisbane at the MCG and Port are yet to beat anyone in the top 8, aside from Sydney at the beginning of the year. With a few players back in the next couple of weeks, I could actually see us winning 4-5 of the last 6. We just need to maintain our frantic attack and pressure.

Nah, there's a conspiracy against the MFC and Vince did nothing wrong.

Maybe if we didn't have so many injuries...

Potentially between Vince and another player, and both play for the MFC.

Nothing wrong with a bit of banter. Not enough characters in the game, so it's a refreshing response.

Lewis has been solid since round 13 and is stepping up exactly when we need him to. No point stressing about next year yet.

It's all about opportunity IMO. These guys have proven themselves to be dominant when playing in the middle at Casey, and with injuries they're able to show they can play well in the seniors too. It's nice to know we have this depth now.

Obviously a disappointing loss but it's pretty much what I expected would happen. We couldn't beat them with virtually our starting midfield on the sidelines. The loss of Viney, Jones and Tyson is obvious in the centre bounces, where there's far less cohesion between Max and whoever is in there in the place of those guys. However, if Adelaide also had 4 of their 5 best midfielders out too, I think we'd beat them. Next week is so important - we need to stay in touch with the top 4.

Late to the party, but this is an absolute joke. How can any good at all come of this?

Hoping that JKH will perform with more time in the middle. I think it's where he plays his best footy and since our midfield has drastically improved, he just hasn't had the time there.

No luck. But on the bright side, we blanketed all three pretty well last time we played.

Melbourne v Adelaide at TIO Stadium, Darwin at 7.10pm ACST MELBOURNE In: J.Kennedy-Harris Out: B.Stretch ADELAIDE In: T.Lynch, H.Greenwood Out: S.Thompson, W.Milera (calf)

Wouldn't call him soft but definitely very inconsistent. Not high on my list.

If you're on facebook and haven't followed the page 'Nuffies on AFL pages' you're missing out.

We'll overrun them, hopefully. Come on lads.

The sooner we have enough depth that Melksham and Kent aren't selected, the better.

Pederson is 30, Weideman is developing and when Maxy goes forward, someone needs to rotate with him. McDonald has performed admirably in the role this season, so if we were to recruit Lever I could see him spending much of his time up forward and relieving Maxy. There's no reason he can't go back when required.

Well it makes sense that if T McDonald were to continue up forward in that FWD/Ruck role, with Hogan and Watts, we need a quality defender to fill the hole he leaves down back. Lever would be a phenomenal pick up and with Frost and Oscar, would form a formidable back line.

Add those fresh players coming in too, and we should definitely be up and about. Intensity won't be a problem at all.

112 disposals, 91 contested should do it.