Jaded No More

Swap May with Tommo and that’s our best 22 right there.

Lever, May, Pickett etc say no.

I think A+ is too generous given we have played mostly ordinary opposition and still have a lot of improvement left in us. I think A is about right. We will know a lot more after we play Sydney, Brisbane, Collingwood and Geelong.

Good. Now losing May doesn’t hurt so much.

I swear to god if he gets off just call the AFL off. What a joke.

Completely agreed. Furthermore if we don't keep giving the likes of JJ and Sparrow games, we are really doing ourselves a disservice, as we need to keep developing the next generation of midfielders. We don't have great depth in this area and IMO Sparrow has all the makings of a very very good inside mid who can also go outside and impact the scoreboard. He can be anything, but he needs time to develop and he won't have a better chance to develop than under 2 of the best mids in the competition (not to mention the best ruck duo and Viney protecting him). He is contributing each and every week, and even if he has a quiet game, he deserves to maintain his spot, especially as there is nobody at Casey knocking the door down in this role (and I would pick Sparrow over Dunstan every single day of the week).

When is this going to happen? I need to know when to crack the [censored] as clearly he will get off.

Particularly when his replacement was Dustan, who is so one dimensional and has very ordinary disposal. Harmes gives us a lot of positional flexibility as you say. It's also why Tmac is so important, because he can go down back and can even pinch hit on the wing.

Can't see Salem coming straight back in. He has missed far too much footy and it's a big risk to throw him straight back into AFL footy.

We won the minor premiership for goodness sake. How can people not recognize that we were by far the best home and away side in 2021? Mind boggling.

We played a slightly better team

Thank god for that. Keeps us 2 games clear of them and Freo play Brisbane next week.

Same 🤮

Might be a chance to debut if Petty is out too. Great to hear that Hibbo is finally playing.

This just confirms to me that clearly we’ve had a bit of illness go thru the club this week. Trac sick. Majak sick. I assume JVR is too.

I suppose we do have another chance later this year to beat Freo. But we were so comprehensively outplayed. Other than the second quarter we never looked like we had any sort of control of the contest. We were outplayed and sadly outcoached. At no stage did we look like Melbourne. Even the goals we scored in the second quarter were a bit messy. There never was any flow or structure to how we played. I know the loss of May and then Petty getting injured killed us, and then you combine that with not having Tmac to help and no Langdon or Harmes or Salem (plus Trac being sick) and their replacements being decidedly average (apologies to Bedford who tried hard), and there are certainly reasons for this loss. It was just disappointing to see us fall apart and capitulate so badly in the second half. I thought we were done with that sort of performance no matter the adversity. This was certainly a far worse loss than any we had last year, and I was most disappointed in our midfield. They were putrid once Trac was hidden up forward and Oliver copped the hard tag instead (we would have almost been better off having Trac play a dummy role to keep his tag). Gawn and Jackson were totally outplayed and the rest of the mids could not get their hands on it. 10-0 centre clearances is unacceptable.

Sorry but can you fug off? Haven’t seen you around once since we won the flag and went on a 10 game winning streak. We lose one game and here you are like a bad smell.

Yep conceding 12 goals in a half is a major worry.

Let’s hope so. We are a significantly worse side without him. May will miss with concussion. At least Buddy got suspended.

Melksham has played his last game. We got him to 200 and that’s enough. Weideman did more than Brown, which tells you how awful they both were. Brown has been putrid for 2 weeks now. Also our reliance on May is so evident. We fall apart with him. He is the glue that holds us together.

It really is. Because losing to [censored] sides doesn’t matter come finals and is clearly a concentration lapse. Today wasn’t a “we didn’t come to play because we expected to win”. Today was a “we got beaten by a side that is very good and killed us fair and square”.

A terrible day from start to finish. Don’t want to panic but last year we didn’t lose to a single top 8 side. This year we’ve only played 2 really good sides and Freo has not just beat us, they smashed us. So disappointed in so many of our players. Trac was embarrassingly poor. If he’s injured to the point where he can’t chase he needs to have time off. Brown and Weideman a disaster today. Backline had a complete meltdown without May. Smashed in the air. Smashed at ground level. Really bad day.

Unfortunately this is the first top 4 side we’ve played all year and they killed us. So you have to question the result. Teams have shown that they know how to play us. This is the first side that has been good enough to do it. And they did it convincingly.

Now Carlton will be even more confident they have the flag in the bag.

This is an embarrassing loss.