robbiefrom13

Trusting would be enough. I'm frustrated. Too much to say, and mucking it up anyway. Fair dinkum, it's not worth it. We are far too dumb.

And THAT isn' anything to do with selfishness. It' applying team rules. Enough of that, and how can anyone remain i vested, or trysting?

Watch the game on tv or at the ground, you see the other side with the ball in their backline, for a kick-in or after a mark, and you see their players jog into space... everybody waits - you know perfectly well where the kick's going to go you can't tell me professional full-time footballers can't see it too. But they stand around in nowhere until the inevitable kick comes, and then they run in to stand on the mark. Were they hoping the guy would drop the mark?? Someone Is responsible for this brainless method of losing. Whoever it is, they are mindbogglingly in denial of what goes on week after week. We expend energy running flat out to where the opponent moving in an easy jog. We are exhausted apparently, unable to do anything in the last quarter. I don't care who they sack, but whoever approves of this brain-dead way of playing needs to be gone. We have gone from being a contest team to one who let the other side have things entirely their own way until the ball somehow comes into contention - then we want to compete. But when the opposition have the ball, we apply no pressure until it hits the ground. And look what happens! I mean, how can they not be seeing it??

When we had the ball there were no free melbourne players. When they had the ball we left free men everywhere, and they chipped it round under zero pressure, looking completely in charge and highly skilled. Guarding grass has always been drivel. Our so-called zone defence worked because we had superb marking defenders in May and Lever and excellent smalls in Salem and Hibberd. It wSn't about tactics but simply superior footballers. Goodwin really has killed attack. MFC did with Jurrah, and have done with JVR and now Fritsch played out of position. Have fun? Let them compete! And The umpiring bias that goes unchallenged - Adelaide are right to complain. They've been robbed before, and quite rightly they speak up when it happens again. Bullies challenged start looking behind their backs, and stop the schitt. Melbourne are unwatchable and unbackable, for both internal and external reasons. And we should continue to be faithful?

It's not worth watching. Like the match review bulltish. Just blood pressure, you get little else. Totally rigged. If it was a fair contest covered by rules, it would be sport. This is just business. I' m going to read a book. Boycott the crapp

Our success in 2021 was probably the result of a really exceptional group of players. The most dominant midfield in living memory, plus the best backline. I don't know if this is true, but I remember hearing that with less than a minute to go in the third, the wisdom was to ice it - and either Petracca (i think) or Oliver said no, go for it! And they tore off the leash. It was mindboggling, looking down on that and hearing the noise. Nothing like it, ever. Or, maybe Ablett snr. I saw Brent crosswell once do something like that - get into a zone of unstoppability. But apart from that, you need structure and system. Take out that extraordinary month in 2021, when the players were removed from ordinary life and went into hyperdrive or whatever - outplaying the world to an insane level - we have lacked charisma, and added very little to an extraordinarily talented group. Which has been really quite disturbingly disintegrating ever since.

A leader has to come from somewhere outside the followers - be bringing to them the benefit of consideration of maps, and tactical plans based on more than they have been aware of - they have to be in some sense apart. So that the trust they inspire goes beyond self-trust. Like them - yes, probably a good thing; but when it comes to their leading, that's not the key part. Norm Smith was more than that. And the tough man element of him was not all he brought. Anyone who ever heard Don Scott speak will remember presence, and unmistakable authority. Not bullyboy toughness - he WAS an authority. Deriving out of grasp, not just demeanour. Max is fabulous for what he does. But Max is the guy that he is. We need someone at the helm who is backstopping Max, with things clearly other than what Max brings. There does appear to be a lack of grip, of gravitational pull. Brad Green is great, but the club needs more than him. The lack may be filled by Stephen Smith, though as good as he was I don't remember him as having a galvanising presence in say the manner of Stephen May. There doesn't seem to have been anyone with guru-like presence since Paul Roos. And the club seems to have been falling apart for several years,with nobody there able to take hold of it. Ahh, what would a spectator know? Maybe it'll all right itself, somehow....

Nathan Jones. Our midfield is currently spectacularly bad, Nathan. Got anything?

Now that it's all settling down, I wonder will some of us come to to the view that Petracca is deserving of enormous respect and thanks. Disruptive, yes - but showing the way; doing what needed to be done. What MFC needed. Come the start of next season, we will find out maybe In the first couple of hundred years of Christianity there was a debate about governance and purpose - some "authorities" were appointed by the community's recognised leaders, and some other leaders were recognised as having been gifted by God and therefore as having the right to leadership. Institutional as against charismatic leadership. In time the institutional won, and the rest is history... Petracca has charismatic gifts. He has spoken about the state he was in as he walked back to the middle after his dribbler goal in the Grand Final. We all have the look on his face in that moment etched into our memories. The whatever-it-was in the split second that made him go for the dribbler - it rolled across the line at the exact centre mark of the goal line. I was there - in context of the match this was pure inspiration, something totally off the show. Pure instinct - and so imaginatively powerful. Way beyond the six points it got us. Do I remember hearing that with a minute to go in the third, the story was "shut it down" and Clarry and Petracca said "nah - go for it!" ? At the time, sitting in the stands, there was a feeling like in Greek tragedy of something huge and inevitable taking hold - and Petracca rose with it - even, was a huge part of it being lifted into view. He certainly was then and may be regularly tuned in and operating above the institutional default. Certainly he's impatient for greatness, and I think you could fairly say he's connected to purpose more so than the pragmatic norms-driven solid citizens. There's a place for the rules-breaker. They can smash everything, I know, but they can also release the shackles that lets better through. Post-Maynard and the test-case that so publicly displayed the fundamental dishonesty in the AFL's money-driven double-standards, the shake-up of the Melbourne Footy Club resulting from the public dissatisfaction of Petracca - this is a genuinely interesting drama way beyond the reach of the corrupt AFL. Potentially, it could launch the club back into contention with a break-out re-stating of priorities. If it does, our gratitude to Petracca will be inestimable. Like it was in that best of all days in Perth. TIME TO Suspend disbelief, I reckon - faith may be going to get its reward. The hard work Petracca is putting in looks pretty good to me. He looks exactly like he did in Perth - driven, with no limits holding him. So I'm genuinely interested to see what he's got in 2025. There's a big story here.

learned deliberations about patent lying. What a farce. The guy is a thug, said he'd do it in the week before, and they end up blaming Gus. Splitting the second and pontificating clearly drivel assertions. And oh, retire to deliberate! This is just pretence. A bit of AFL theatre, for ratings. Nothing to do with sport, or proper skills, or duty of care, or any other valuable possibility.. A lifetime of caring; and MFC has worked and worked to build culture, to develop players, all this - and all our believing - and it doesn't mean jacksheeyit when the Grand Final build-up threatens to displease the biggest stakeholders. What utter trash this all is. Is anything going to matter, from here? The price of entry is pretending the Emperor looks fine.

The AFL needs to make some strongly-worded statement about the utter bull****t dishonesty of Maynard's replies, and hand down a more severe penalty, because of the insult to the intelligence of everyone connected with the game. Otherwise, my prediction is that intelligent people will walk away in their droves. AFL will be reduced - thanks Braydon and Collingwood's cynical bull****t-spinning lawyers - to the irrelevant and artless nonsense of the old TV wrestling. Want Collingwood to be on the TV, whatever it takes? Ok, but unless we are as stupid as they suggest (when they dish up this drivel with a straight face), we won't give a rats. I won't be back, for one. Enough is enough. Thugs picnic, and a TV rating extravaganza? Is that what we are passionate about? Psss off.

There has always been an element of legitimising violence, in football. "Contact sport" and "let him earn it!", they would crow. I remember at school, you had mates who would flatten you in the contest, and laugh down at you as you picked yourself up off the ground, "left yourself wide open for that, didn't you?" Everyone laughs. Maynard lined him up, and mate or not, that is part of the culture of football. Always has been. Societal values are changing. Not long before he died my father conceded, "I s'pose I might've given you a few clips round the ears..." When I was a boy he belted the schitt out of me daily, with his belt, the bread-knife, a lump of wood, whatever. Went for the head with his fists. Thought it was all good, along with cold showers and Man magazine. Treated my mother with disdain, while throwing her the odd endearment. Died thinking all of that was par for the course. Times are changing, and domestic violence, child abuse, teachers using the cane, racism against our indigenous people and so much more, all of it is being challenged. The rearguard don't want to lose the licence to continue their bullying and disregard of anyone's comfort and freedom other than their own. And ordinary people elect Tony Abbott's and Donald Trump's. People at the football bay for blood, and cheer the Maynard's. And after the game, make children cry. The AFL has made some half-hearted and compromised efforts to reduce thuggery - but probably only out of fear of the litigation that is beginning. With Angus unconscious on the ground the commentators all discussed Maynard's well-being, and Collingwood supporters behaved as described in this thread. Is there really any understanding of how ugly and unacceptable ritualised tribal violence is? Do we football supporters really want things to change? Or are we packing the Colosseum with the same underlying mindset as the Romans did? I wonder if I am kidding myself, following AFL. Maynard did what people have always done. He is unlucky as much as Angus is - caught out when the game (as it is played and always has been) delivered an outcome that must seem to him to have ambushed him. Maybe the game itself, and its total culture, and the primal nastiness in all of us that has failed forever to define where the line is - maybe that's the real fault. I'm not sure I am equal to the spectacle of what we have been made to look at, here. I don't like violence. How can I follow "contact sport"?

It's a very public test case of all the AFL's sanctimonious rhetoric over the past year or so. And the concussion issue isn't going away. But like a politician, Gil and his accountants will be in comfortable retirement by the time the final verdict on this is handed down.

Gawn to full forward and Grundy to the ruck. Turner or Tomlinson in, to free up Lever. And another mid so Petracca can go forward. Pace, for preference - maybe Woewodin. Oliver's steadily getting back to his normal excellence. With Max clunking a few marks, we'd've won comfortably. Spook up the arrogant defenders. And Grundy can do the tap work well enough. Yes, we'd miss Max saving the day in the backline, but with another tall, we'd hold. We kept a rampant Collingwood to 60 points, so we can afford to slightly loosen our defensive stocks if that's what it takes to get some bite in the forward line. I don't think Salem's travelling well. Not convinced that in the overall we should have Hibberd as an essential, either. Kosi needs to play with strict instructions of what not to do - stay where you can crumb, and go nuts doing that. Apart from a run through the middle now and then, just for the pace and the chaos. At least, what we bring will not be predictable, now.

Guarding grass. Free use of the ball. Dumb.