Undeeterred

1 minute ago, Generation dee said:

This.

Haha weird - I meant Gawn of course. Must have started posted something else and forgotten to delete it

9 minutes ago, johndemons said:

Just play the ball GAWN, umpire will give you less if you shout out for a free in the midle of play

I'd say he's sick to fucken death of playing the ball and not getting anything.

1 minute ago, Wiseblood said:

Terrible decision.  I'll stick by that.  A terrible kick is one that flops off the boot, bounces in front of the player and becomes a turnover.

As opposed to a loopy one that sits up and gives the other team a chance?

It was both a bad decision and a bad kick.

These umpires are disgusting.

1 minute ago, Wiseblood said:

It wasn't a poor kick, as it was hitting the target, it was just a bad decision.  Bit of a difference there.

He sat it up, going backwards, into the centre when there was nobody back. It was a terrible kick.

One day in the next, say, 10 games this team plays, the dam wall is going to burst and it's going to be amazing.

9 hours ago, AdamFphlebeb said:

It might be down to the backs gelling more, but I'd argue it's the pace of Sam Frost and Jayden Hunt. We close down space quicker with these guys in the team. 

Definitely this is helping too. I think there's been a slight structural shift too, though, because earlier in the year we were pushing up much higher, with much less protection, and getting completely smoked on the rebound.

Tom McDonald is the perfect player to play the sweeper role and the fact he has a couple of very quick players to get to the contests up the ground can only help.

I actually really like the way the backline is coming together and the injection of one or two older heads next year (be that Melksham, Hibberd, Vince going down there full time etc) will only help.

1 minute ago, jnrmac said:

Noticeable for mine that we stay outside the contest more and we have 1 or 2 goalkeepers to stop the quick over the top goals.

Yep. Tom McDonald doing a fantastic job with this and those immensely frustrating goals where there were 2-3 free players over the back have basically dried up.

1 hour ago, AzzKikA said:

HAHA circle jerk each other...nice.

And the other one is so many times I watch opposition games and see them kick a snap after a stoppage in a congested forward line and think to myself, we would have fluffed that up trying to find the player on his own in the clear.

 

Precisely!

1 hour ago, Sir Why You Little said:

Sure it is. But many cancers start from stress

10 minutes ago, Satyriconhome said:

I said anecdotally, ie stories, so I didn't say specifically, I also said mitigating, also if you think the stress of what Bailey went through didn't contribute then it is your opinion whereas myself and SWYL think it possibly contributed to it

That's just wild, ridiculous speculation.

SWYL - linking Dean Bailey's death with Hardwick's decision on whether to carry on coaching is up there with the best nonsense I've heard on this forum. What about Leppitsch? Should he quit, just in case he gets cancer? What about all the other, literally, hundreds of VFL/AFL coaches who have coached through shocking pressure and not got cancer?

Saty - 'Mitigating' means to reduce, not to increase.

3 minutes ago, AzzKikA said:

I too think we are a little too unselfish, I just think it is the team mentality they are trying to build that plays on their mind in situations like the Watts one.

Completely agree. And when it comes off, it's fantastic because the ball goes through a few pairs of hands and they can all get around afterwards and circle jerk each other. But it's so frustrating when it doesn't come off, which should be really rare, but isn't.

7 minutes ago, Sir Why You Little said:

I am saying the stress of the whole episode would have contributed to his Cancer...

Wow. Ok. That's a fairly big call.

1 hour ago, SPC said:

An honorable man would... but then again, Hardwick does not have this quality..  History has shown that once you fail as an AFL Head Coach, then you are thrown on the scrap heap.

Come on. Honour has absolutely nothing to do with it.

1 hour ago, old dee said:

That is a scarce commodity in the AFL these days SPC.

I would be saying to Richmond "I have a a two year contract and will coach next year, you want me out you pay $1million"

 

This is the response that every single one of us would give.

1 hour ago, Sir Why You Little said:

That's just what my Richmond mate said to me!!

they really don't get it. That was a 186 effort from the players last weekend. 

Hardwick has to walk if he has any brains

Um, no it wasn't.

1 hour ago, Sir Why You Little said:

Health reasons yes i would. 

It took Bails

I doubt that very much.

And sorry, are you saying that coaching a bad team killed Dean Bailey? Just want to be clear.

1 hour ago, ArtificialWisdom said:

Interesting i have felt a few of our forwards arn't greedy enough. Many of our players seem to look for a handball or pass before looking for the shot. This is shown by our high goal accuracy but low score efficency per i50. Players only shoot when they have heaps of time and space. Exceptions are Vanders and Bernie who seem shoot whenever they touch the ball in the forward 50.  

I'd like to see some more rushed snaps and kicks on the run. Yeah they might miss but the chain of handballs to others in the hope of more space is not working especially on repeat entrys. Very rarely do scores from repeat entrys (which we are developing more and more of) come from an open player. There was a number of times against the Eagles I saw chances for shots that were given as handballs that were immediately shut down when what we needed was a quick snap even if we had 6 more quick snaps and kicked 1.5 that would have been enough. A little over 1 extra shot per qtr.. with 70 odd inside 50s it shouldnt have been hard.

In the first qtr against the Suns Dawes had the ball 35 out almost straight infront and could have taken 2 steps and kicked on his right but instead gave it to Vandenberg who was forced to kick with his left... thats just not greedy enough! Dawes had the space, take the shot dont risk the chance going by. Too many times we get a mark inside 50 there are players looking to give it off, yeah there are times if a player is miles on his own but not often enough do players look to take the responsibility.

Watts looked to give off before settling and missing both the shots from the pocket early in the game but when he got that one in the last he had a quick glance then went back and slotted it. Yeah they arnt going to kick those every time but risking a turnover when you have a guaranteed shot should be a non-option. Just think back to round 3, thank god he hadn't tried that again! Even Kents kick to Tracc in the last I wasn't a fan of.. what if suns players had actually been switched on? Then it would have been a turn over. 

This.

It gives me the absolute screaming shits.

Sure, it's nice they want to share it around and slap each other on the back.

But sometimes, for example, it would be nice for Watts to take 3-4 more steps and bang through the goal from the pocket, rather than miskick a dinky 15 metre pass to Hogan who ends up smashing himself into the point post.

We are way, way too unselfish inside 50 which can be great, but we stuffed it up a number of times on the weekend.

1 hour ago, Ron Burgundy said:

I reckon Tom McDonald will re-sign, as will Oscar.

They both seem very committed to the club.

It's an incredibly unusual situation to have two brothers drafted to the same AFL club with the very same pick (no. 53) albeit 4 years apart . I suspect Tom would have to answer to more than a few people, including his parents, were he to leave in circumstances where the MFC really wanted to keep him.

 

I know for one that I wouldn't give a flying stuff what my parents, or my brother, thought.

17 minutes ago, ArtificialWisdom said:

Unfortunatly I have the same fear, history just isnt on our side. The only player who demanded more and eventually got it was Cloke, dont realy want that scenario to repeat to us. If Tom says he is leaving then I think it is time to have a tantrum. None of this "ok we will work out a reasonable trade" I would expect us to continually make unreasonable demands. Allir, a first round pick and a nice set of steak knives. Make trading with us an absolute nightmare. I'm happy to be resonable getting players in but scrap that when we are losing players.

Unfortunately with Sydney there is no trade imaginable that wont result in us being set back a long way losing Tom. He goes and our 2017 finals hopes take an enormous blow. He goes and we dont get a new key defender? well, then our finals hopes will be crushed before the preseason even starts. 

Side note: Ik there has been romours in the past that TMac might want Hogan to sign first, but I wouldnt be surprised if it is the other way around. Lose our key back and Hogan's chances of success go way down. (no source, just a thought)

Maybe it's both and they should go down the pub and sort their [censored] out together.

3 hours ago, Bring-Back-Powell said:

Any chance we give him a mini token farewell game in one of the last couple of games?

I wouldn't be opposed to it.

I would.

1 hour ago, DeeSpencer said:

Getting way off topic but I didn't have a problem with that kick. We needed to open it up instead of bombing it inside 50. I thought it was a good decision and reasonably well executed. I know Watts is the man of the hour and rightfully so but he should've marked that. Had he gone a little harder it would've been an uncontested mark and given our best kick in Watts open space to hit a target inside 50.

Absolute drivel. It was an appallingly bad decision, and an even worse kick.

If he'd kicked it flat and hard and to Watts' advantage, then it might have been Watts's fault.

2 hours ago, low flying Robbo said:

Still dominated the hit-outs 67-21....

But yes when this starts to happen, a player needs to shepherd the 3rd man up out of the play and big max will be even more dominant!

 

Yes the Win was very ugly. I'd rather win ugly against someone like Hawthorn than one of the cellar dwellers...

It was really odd, but I think that even though Gawn was still getting a hand to it, he was a bit overwhelmed with firepower and wasn't directing it all that well.

1 hour ago, Pates said:

So I haven't been able to watch much of the game but managed to watch the goals on the MFC website. Gotta say if that was the "highlights" then I can't imagine how frustrating watching the actual game was. I also got to see the montage Fox Footy's put together of the mistakes in the 3rd quarter. My god, I don't think I would've been able to last without drinking A LOT of alcohol. 

What a ridiculous game. Was it our worst for the year? If so I guess we can take something from the fact we still managed to win. 

We play like that next week and we're in for an absolute bloodbath.

Have to say, you sort of can't say that if you have only watched a highlights package and a blooper reel.

Having said that, it was bloody dreadful. Literally the only thing that made remotely bearable was losing my sh!t when Watts kicked the winner.

1 hour ago, hells bells said:

Looking at the games I think it might have been R2 2014 v West Coast.

The 6 Players:

Jones N

Jones M

McDonald T

Tyson

Vince

Watts

Those still on the list but didn't play:

Kennedy Harris

Dunn

Grimes

Michie

Pederson

Spencer

Terlich

Trengove

Those Gone:

Byrnes

Toumpas 

Howe 

Cross

Bail

Fitzy

Frawley

Georgiou

Christ on a bicycle we were awful. And that's not the full list, either.

2 hours ago, AdamFphlebeb said:

They employed a simple third man up for most of the second half and probably earlier. This has been happening against Gawn for weeks and our players never give him a chop out when things clearly aren't working. It's fine to keep your structures, but we need to look at giving Max a block in these situations. 

1 hour ago, hemingway said:

An age old tactic that has been used for ever by teams to combat a dominant ruckman. I think this has been used in other games this year, but it is going to become a common feature as Max has become one of the dominant big men of the competition. We need to be able to combat this tactic otherwise Max is going to become a very tired boy.

The point I'm making is being missed. The third man up was often Nicholls himself (ie, the actual ruckman), while another player engaged Gawn, pretending to be the ruck. Not the typical third man up situation.

Watts waved his arms around at the ump in the third quarter, in the pocket at the city end, because he didn't know which of the big blokes standing next to him was the designated ruckman.

It has to be illegal, surely.

24 minutes ago, Fifty-5 said:

It was a massively frustrating game.

But coming up to 10,000 metres we killed them on the outside which is a completely different story from the Essendon debacle.  Our decision making and skill execution forward of the centre was absolutely shocking, if this had been on then we would have won easily.

I think the other problem we had yesterday was our total inability to convert Max's dominance on the inside.  I think we have a structural problem there, the opposition acknowledges we're going to get first hands on it and tackles immediately, it's what happens after this first possession that's crucial.  Either another stoppage, rinse and repeat, or the ball comes out and we don't have an advantage.  I've seen us running a 7th player off the back of the square at the centre bounces, presumably to provide an outlet, but I've only ever seen that player actually get involved in the play once.  Some other plan is required maybe a different mix at the bounce instead of 3 insiders.

Gold Coast did an interesting thing yesterday on Gawn and it killed us.

They designated a ruckman that wasn't Nicholls, who would engage Gawn at the throw up. Then Nicholls would come across and contest the tap, so he was two on one around the ground the whole game. 

Even when he did manage to get hands on it, he was in so much traffic he seemed to be not able to do much with it.

1 hour ago, Pates said:

Hoping it'll be better than seamless. I sort of wonder sometimes if Roos is our get out of jail free card. Largely his tenure at Melbourne has been without controversy or discussion. I wonder at times if it gives players a bit of an out. 

This will be Goodwins team next year and I really hope the boys are able to play for him the same way the Hawks boys play for Clarkson. 

Its unkown but honestly I'm intrigued and excited. 

Absolutely this happens. I've said a number of times before, when Roos admits 'mistakes' in the media, it's almost always being used to cover for and draw heat away from the playing group. Will be interesting to see what happens when they're fully exposed, although I'm pretty confident it will be fine.