robbiefrom13

Lever would be good at what he does if we asked him to play the position he is good at - but we don't. ditto fritsch. ditto Tmac. ditto Bennell. ditto Goodwin

Remember when Jurrah was under the pump because he wasn't defensive enough? like Diesel Williams wasn't fast enough... Like Fritsch is letting us down by not being bigger for the position we put him in. Is this what they had in mind when we took Harley Bennell on? And was it explained to him? Such great story, to have him get fit enough to play - and now we want him to become a different player to the one we recruited...

We are only doing this to him because we refuse to pick the big blokes we've got.

put him where he can do something - not where he demonstrably can't. Put him where his physique gives him a chance. Then we might have one more successful forward. It's not his fault we don't have a big forward, and it makes no sense getting him to try to be what he's not. Of course he'll lose confidence

coached into ineffectiveness. no belief, and no hunger. Sadly, no brains

are they drilled to man up? are they drilled to find a team-mate? where's the connection between max and the runners? They've had a lot of time to get these things sorted. Does Goodwin know what our players are skilled at? not worth watching - so utterly predictable. And our blokes still guard the space where only a miskick will go; still wear themselves out chasing after the bolted horse. Geelong is laughing at us The whole competition is. Goodwin, this is you

The players are very young men, and playing for a perennially unsuccessful club - they need a father figure type of coach. Greater wisdom than their own. Norm Smith was tough in an era that had quite different values to what we have today; he was also apparently great at getting the players to bond; but his real greatness has to have been his outstanding football nous. He drew respect as much as fear (or love), and engendered self-belief and trust in the whole. Without an established culture of success, we do need the continuing input of a coach who sees more than the players have ingrained in themselves - and Melbourne appears to have struggled ever since the aura of Roos has faded. Goodwin being loved is not enough - it's not producing the outcome we want to see. What we can expect the players to be bringing, for the coach to build with, is their own skills - which a wise coach would be maximising - not trying to re-shape. Play them in their natural positions, and let them get confidence out of their own natural talent as well as from the coach's input. Validate them, surely - how else are they going to grow in confidence? Change can be disruptive, of course, but maybe change needs to be considered. English Soccer clubs aren't afraid of making leadership changes, and it doesn't seem to do them harm. Even if it is risky, persevering with what isn't working is guaranteed failure. Think twelve months too many of Neild. So I hope people at the club are clear about what KPI's are guiding them in their ongoing evaluation of Goodwin. I hope they have clear ideas about the sorts of principles that make coaches successful. I hope they learned from their experience of Roos. I remember going to a practice match against the Ballarat league in 1964, and listening to Norm Smith give his three-quarter time address, after which he left the ground and drove back to Melbourne - leaving the players to get on with it. No problem - such different times; a successful well-oiled machine... Everything seems so fragile today - brittle, permanently a whisker away from disintegrating; no consolidating patterns in anything. When Melbourne were 7.3 to nothing, I switched it off and said to my wife, "I don't trust it..." You can criticise this supporter for that, same as you can bag out players for what's wrong with them - but someone has to be able to turn the ship around - and it's not my fault, or Jack Watts' fault - it's the guy on the bridge who has to be steering.

Barassi and Flower are something else. There have been lots of good players. How about this - when Barassi started, he wasn't all that special. Norm Smith in a sense created him, a bit later. When Robbie Flower started as a skinny seventeen-year-old, one of our very good players - Stan Alves, captain and star wingman - was moved to the half-back flank to make room. And Robbie was a star from that first game. He gave everything he had for the Melbourne Football club, and whether or not he should be rated above or below Barassi as a great player, he is without peer as a Melbourne player, start to finish.

I remember watching Chris Aitken in a pre-season practice game, and he was just back from the bush. He hung around the goal square mostly, and went for the big hanger, over and over. He looked the goods and we thought "here we GO!" Perhaps he was lairising, even though it looked like he was just revelling in it. Thinking about it now, and the great number of big-marking forwards we've gone through - you have to wonder. I remember Hardeman going forward one week and kicking 8, but he was a backman, and back he went. We really didn't seem able to get into synch. The tone of that congratulatory letter to Ross Dillon sounds so complacent, so lordly superior, very MCC - and yet I know Jim Cardwell is well respected. Were other clubs sounding as fusty old-fashioned as we were? Back then, too, we played our pre-season in-house practice games on the MCG... I was just over the fence behind the goals, watching Aitken. Free admission, if I remember rightly. So much lost, despite what looked like such promise, and what was at that time an incredible birthright.

Ken Jungwirth never amounted to much, but in his first game (I think it was) he kicked four goals with huge torpedoes that spun perfectly without wobble or slew, and they had great hang-time. So that he stays in the memory for his kicking; it promised so much.. Late replacement for someone if I'm remembering it right - but his kicks are an indelible memory. He led straight down the ground - but too far, so it seemed.. Great kicking is so fundamental to the game that it blinds me to other things - I still fully believe in Jack Watts... his goal sealing the game against Collingwood is one of the great moments - seeing the whole crowd leap up together behind the goal in the Punt Road northern pocket ... Watts aeroplaning, Collingwood doubled over with the exhaustion, and the exhilaration! The high mark of course - but kicking must be the real essence of the game. I agree with the comment Travis Johnston drew the player to the ball - Robbie Flower did the same. Jurrah could do it. Watching a long kick curling in to goal... Great kicking is where a lot of the magic of footy is, surely?

I saw those players and agree. But as I remember it, Tilbrook was the longest kick. He lined up from near enough the wing and people laughed at him. He put it through, though. One of his early games. Well, that's my memory of it, and I always trusted him to kick it no matter how far out. But he charged past the pack as the ball came off hands, so many times, just on the wrong side of the pack. He just couldn't get the rhythm of it in Victoria. For odd kicking style, Warren Dean had his way of holding the ball from underneath - that looked weird. Good kick generally though. Greg Parke got odd results.

Those who didn't get to see footy back then will not understand what seeing Vagg in that game was like. It was man-on-man football back then, and everybody played with just one opponent. That day Melbourne kept Vagg way out on the flank in a vast amount of open space. (Reminiscent of the famous Robbie Flower game against Richmond, I think.) As the game got going, Vagg progressively got on top. Then every Melbourne thrust seemed to be directed through his flank, and every time, he won the ball. It was truly heroic stuff, one slightly built guy up against whoever Essendon's could put out there, and they couldn't stop him. As I remember it, he had 4 goals and a number of behinds by half time, and Essendon had no other star defenders to try - it was a question of how many will he end up with. One of the most thrilling afternoon's of total domination that I have ever seen - though the second half was an anti-climax. I was too young to be able to say how he was quietened down. With Vagg it wasn't speed, or power - it was just like watching some kind of mesmerism going on.. Bugs was one of my very favourite players from that era.

Collingwood appear to be physically far stronger than Melbourne, and faster, and unlike us they are playing with confidence - so it's hard to see us getting anywhere near them. On the other hand, if Goodwin hasn't lost the players, they - all of them, coaching staff and players - must be highly motivated to prove it and silence the growing rumblings about coach/players "connection". And Collingwood are presumably at real risk of going into this game overly confident. Like a team running out for the first time under a new coach, we could surprise the world. Terribly undermanned, we surprised West Coast a few years ago. Upsets happen - it's not impossible. But unless the stories about a breakdown between players and their coaches are wrong, it's not going to happen this week. So there's the interest - to see if the game departs from the obvious script, even a little bit. The game itself hardly matters for us, as far as this season is concerned - but the bigger narrative of the state of our club - that does. We must be getting closer to knowing for sure - so Melbourne supporters may go to the footy focused on a completely different drama to the one Collingwood fans will be there drooling for.

You see our players looking round, checking that they are guarding space - in the middle of nowhere between three opposition players. This happens from a kick-out all the way down the ground. Chip-kick to unmarked player, chip-kick to unmarked player, all the way - by the centre-line the opposition are lining up for the optimum line of attack, and presto, another goal. Our players do this because they have been told to do it. They are footballers, following counter-intuitive instructions, and getting sliced wide every time - and we wonder why they have lost confidence? Treloar explained it, in case anyone didn't realise what's going on. We are not fast enough, but not told to be on the man anyway. So by the time we have a shot at goal, after a couple of quarters of this rubbish game plan, we are as lacking confidence to kick straight as our stupidity has made the opposition totally can't-miss confident. Plus Macdonald is plainly not fit. I can't see that Viney is either. Jones is finished. We have gone in every week with the team knowing we are handicapped in terms of personnel as well. Neeld was our schoolmaster teaching what happens when the coach messes with the players' heads and with their natural competitive instincts. This is looking like a re-run - all the way to a spot in the middle of nowhere.

just like Liam would be welcomed back too, his time served...

Did you hear our Prime Minister with steely gaze explaining "we are too soft"? Thought of Demonland. From now on every time I read a poster complaining about this one or that one of our players being "soft", I'll be able to put the face to the comment. Picture it every time you hear it - "soft", in Abbott triplicate, complete with that manly tongue-flicking. Bring it on, fellas, there's vision now! Maybe I should find out how to do the gif. Meantime, others of us will listen to Paul Roos, valuing other attributes...

I don't think there's anything about Hogan that could be described as waiting. He's here.

?? and what do you want - that today's players aren't good enough for you, sitting pontificating in the grandstand, or grandstanding on your keyboard? Ex-players I know are semi-crippled, having been broken for our entertainment. Today's players will be too - and you call them princesses! I respect players. They earn a lot more than I do, but there isn't anybody'd call it entertaining or pay money to come and watch me for an afternoon a week - or discuss me on a site like this. These guys are on a different level to us, and they put in and get knocked around beyond anything we face in our lives. (Except I suppose possibly those of us who are in the armed forces.) What exactly is your point, claiming players want a rest every 4 minutes? - to keep 18 on the field they'd have to be less than one minute rest each time, making over 20 rests per game by 18 players = more than 360 interchanges per game. Your big-talk is drivel.

They pay with their knees, their head injuries, their loss of privacy, their curfews and team rules and weekly workplace appraisals, and with the round-the-clock fact of being public targets for every loud-mouth seeking an audience by trashing others. Well and truly earn every cent. But "supporters", you would think, would be on their side...

Give it a few weeks. Fitzpatrick and Watts are important to us if they can find their range. Toumpas hasn't yet done what we hoped to see once he got past his hip problems. Trengove ditto his foot. Too early to tell on these guys, i think. We stand on the outside, and the players just don't tell it the way we do. Wise-guy negativity aside, we have to accept it's too early for us on the outside to know.

How many members, people through the turnstiles, is this guy going to bring? Who's going to go next week now?

He's different to Neita, and one of the differences is excitement level.

well, it was a certainty that there'd be some part... but, Satch, correct me if I'm wrong

I like the carton bit, and "rubbish". Clever, guys! How often do I miss this stuff, and naively suppose you are all being serious?

you'd have the courage to explain your reasoning to Paul Roos, I suppose? Seems he doesn't see it your way...