Jaded No More

6- Moloney (sensational for 4 quarters. Carried the midfield through good and bad patches) 5- Trengove (brilliant) 4- Bail (great speed and use of the footy) 3- Jamar 2- Sylvia 1- Tapscott

It was an OK win. I didn't expect us to win by less, with just 2 of our best 22 out and them missing Ablett. The 3rd quarter was again terrible. Just unacceptable to lose a quarter to a team with an average age of 18. They dominated the stoppages in that quarter which was pretty dismal. But we take the margin and we move on. Can't really get excited by beating a soulless franchise to be honest. Edit: ridiculous decision to have Watts as a sub. He did well when he came on and this was the perfect game to get him going. I'd have used Bennell instead to give us some fresh legs.

Agreed. However my lack of trust in human nature means I'm putting a complete media ban in this house until 3pm. No Internet, twitter, phone or radio. In fact, I'm going out of the house and not returning until 3.

It's fair to say that I will kill myself if we lose this match... or win by less than 40 points... or lose a single critical stat.

Absolutely, there is nothing better for a football club than a loss The mind boggles!

Correct, but give me a D grade forward who will consistently kick 2 goals on a bad day and I'm happy. His bad days are average to good days for many secondary forwards in the league. His good days are as good as any forward in the competition. When we finally stop being shizen, and he matures (especially mentally) I'm confident the gap between his sublime and average days will shrink significantly. My one annoyance with him is his lack of forward pressure, although he was better on Sunday than he was against Hawthorn (where he was deplorable with his defensive pressure!). Having Aussie in the team, who loves that sort of thing, helps bring that side out of Liam too.

That is pretty much it in a nutshell. Everyone wants him to be a star because we "wasted" a number one pick on him. I don't care if he turns out a star or not, as long as he plays his role in bringing us a premiership. Watts will be a unique and important player for us in years to come. If he doesn't win a single AA nomination or a single Brownlow vote along the way it won't matter to me one little bit. He has a role to play and I'm confident he'll be able to play it well for the next 10 years, doing things that separate him from other big key forwards and which will make him hard to match up on. Who says you have to have an angry bull at FF to win a flag?

It's clear to me that Tom Scully's left patella has already signed with GWS. The club is fighting a losing battle trying to secure the rest of him. Obviously Tom will follow his knee cap wherever it goes. 2011 is so dead to me. On a serious note, I feel for poor Tom. Knee injuries are a motherf*ing piece of crap!

You gotta agree that there are some valid points here though. Davey has never been one to handle a tag well, because it's very easy to get into his head and put him off his game. If he gets picked on behind the play he'll often end up giving away a free for his retaliation. My solution to this problem is to find alternative elite midfielders, so that the burden is not only on Davey. That is the only thing we can do that will make us a better team and not rob us of creative midfielders, and that is exactly what we are already doing.

Heaven help you if Scully stays at Melbourne. You are going to cop more hammering than a rusty nail.

Plenty of players more ordinary, less skilled and softer than Jones have played in, and won premierships. That doesn't mean that we should settle for average, if we have better options. Jones has been getting a game every week for the past 4 seasons because currently we haven't got a better option, and he gives us good honest service. But it's because we haven't had better options that we have struggled to get off the bottom 4. If we are to ever contest a flag Jones has to be a fringe player. He needs to constantly be on the brink of selection, as opposed to being one of the first selected each week. Even now, with arguably our two best developing mids out injured, he isn't named in our starting 18 each week. To me that says that the club knows he isn't a key player in our future, but they are happy for him to play bit roles, because in all honesty he isn't going to be someone who wins or loses you a premiership. In other words, he is a foot solider in a nuclear war.

Please oh please let this match up be true. Jurrah will kick 10 on him. Oh lord. I can't see us losing this one but I suppose I won't be shocked if we did. However given the pressure is on us to show we can play 4 quarters, we won't be seeing us ease up. Bailey will be onto it.

Personally I find some of the responses to that post more alarming than amusing. Learn to read sarcasm people!!!!!!

I get that we are all very frustrated, what with Bruce, McLean, Robbo etc... all gone and therefore nobody to pick on in our hour of need, but can we seriously just move on? Let the footy department develop him the way they see fit and just shut the hell up about him already. If he is a dud, no amount of crapping on will change that. Surely we have better things to talk about than this game of "Watts tennis" where one person says he is developing nicely and another person retaliates by saying he is a joke and should be sent back to Casey. YAWN!

Really not a fan. It's unnecessary and celebrates a complete lack of on field achievements in the past 40 years. I'll want to see the flag when we win it. Then it can be super-glued to the MCG turf and I'll love it unconditionally.

And the amount of clanger kicks by Grimes.

I think we've already seen Bailey try to release him from a tag at half back or half forward. That works sometimes, but he doesn't really suit that sort of role to be honest and he often doesn't find much of the ball at either position and thus we end up missing out on his impact anyway. The answer is to keep developing elite midfielders like Scully, Trengove etc... who will demand a tag themselves thus releasing Davey, or making him less critical to our success.

Absolutely the right decision by the club. We have a clear no d!ckhead policy, and have gone out of our way to avoid bad eggs and clear our list of them. Moloney's behaviour (and thankfully he did not urinate anywhere publicly), was inappropriate for any footballer, especially a vice captain of our club. He let himself down and he embarrassed our club. There are no shades of gray here. It's just so disappointing that a player who has worked so hard on his game and for many years tried to get into the leadership group has let everyone down so badly. I doubt he'll ever repeat this sort of stupidity though, so we move on.

Agreed. That will be the most painful punishment for him and it won't cost the team. The rest of the players don't deserve to miss out on a vital player helping them out because he stuffed up. The club can then reassess his leadership position and review his standing mid season. I really like Moloney as a player and he is not a serial offender so we shouldn't hang him for this, but as a leader you don't get multiple opportunities to stuff up.

Did you read the post I was replying to, which you wrote??! I wasn't the one who infered Beamer was lashing out. I'm pretty sure he just acted like an immature, irresponsible player.

You can't be serious. I know men can be idiots and find it hard to deal with emotions/ hard situations and so they normally run away or lash out, but I've never heard of a guy urinating in public because he was angry or upset. Whichever way you look at it his behavior is unacceptable and sets a terrible example for the sort of behavior we expect from our players. I hope the club punishes him accordingly. Very very poor form.

Seriously pathetic. He is not 18 anymore and it's unacceptable to behave like that, especially when you are a vice captain. Why was he out so late after a game anyway! Ugh like we really need that. I suppose that is why he isn't captain.

Until Melbourne produces a player more worthy of tagging than Davey, he will continue to get tagged and he will continue to struggle. Teams target him physically because mentally he can't handle it. Since day one this has been his biggest downfall. That is why he didn't perform when we played finals, and why he generally struggles when the heat is on. Don't get me wrong, Davey is a sensational player and he gives his all, but he can't handle close checking by an opponent. Do you think an opposition player would ever do to Sylvia what they do to Davey? No, because Sylvia would thrive on it and Davey doesn't. It's easy to get into his head.

Chip. I have serious love for him. Seriously.

I don't disagree with you at all. We were terrible today, but the constant whinging from supporters on this site is just so goddamn boring and pointless. We got 4 points and at the end of the year nobody will remember this game or how much we won by. It was an ordinary performance and we managed to get the points anyway. 3 years ago we would have been jumping for joy at that, so we have improved and the expectations are higher, and that's a good thing.