rufus

They're right...and it feels like hope is starting to fade for the club to ever change the attitude to competing. I mean, you watch the St Kilda game and yeah it was good to win, but it looks like the players got as carried away with it as Demonland did. When you watch that game back, so much of the way we executed basic skills was lazy. Those saying we might be short on quality and depth may well be right...but we didn't lose on Thursday to the Swans or to the extent we did to Port earlier in the season because of our talent or depth. Those results were born out of a straight up lack of competitive intent. Sitting 18th for tackles is a damning indication of how desperate this group is to be successful. The clear inability for this playing group to drive the change that is required at the club is why I would have no issues with us moving on from almost any player other than probably Gawn and Oliver to bring in new blood and see if new blood can drive the club's future upwards.

I guess we shouldn't complain. There's been plenty of times over the years when we've been a bottom 4 team, with no shot at finals, playing against a team sitting in the top 8 and we've knocked them off with pure grit and grind. Hmmm...actually I don't remember that ever happening (and there's been plenty of times we've been bottom 4 with our season shot at this stage). A sporting club with zero pride.

Lots of blame for Goodwin again. Those gunning for him are going to be really unhappy when our players regularly raise the white flag under whoever the next coach is...just like they did under Roos, Bailey, Daniher and many coaches before them. That loss was on the players (again). A dedicated or proud group wins that game every time.

Maybe we coould lay a tackle and we'd probably win the game by 6 goals. If the stats showing 11 tackles in a half is accurate then that is a disgraceful number no matter how the game is flowing.

We can win this game if we apply enough pressure for long enough. High pressure footy nulifies their speed advantage on the outside. Are our players capable of going hard enough for long enough? History says no. We should be motivated to knock off another team that should be at a similar stage to us. Especially one who's coaching staff in recent years approach games vs MFC with only one basic instruction for preparation: high intensity for long enough and they will give up...they always do. Saints by 40+ for mine.

Exactly. When we apply pressure we look ok (and surprisingly we don't look slow). When we don't, we are a bottom 4 team. Kind of always been bemused as to why we regularly just seem to decide we don't need to apply pressure to the oppo. You'd think the players would have connected the dots by now, but no. Every season the premiership gets won by the team that applies the most pressure for the longest...it's almost without fail. This is not the NBA where good offence beats good defence. The talent level in the AFL is relatively low and defensive intensity can overcome offensive talent. It's obviously cultural and it's hard to see how this club will ever show the requisite intensity for long enough the compete for a flag. It just always seems too hard for our guys.

Spot on. Same with Brayshaw. If they are good footballers they should be able to play good football in any position. It's weird how some of our players just look deplorable when asked to play a role other than their preferred. Could be more an attitude thing than anything else. Having said that, we may also need to accept that some of our guys just aren't that good. The ability to perform at a consistent level is a huge part of how a player should be measured, and Harmes along with all but Oliver and maybe Gawn fail that test badly.

Ultimately we may just have to accept that our list isn't great...and our strength (midfield) is probably somewhere around the 10th to 15th strongest in the comp ( which is where we will finish). Our best players are nowhere near as capable of consistent performance under pressure as the best players on the strong teams. Anyway...thanks to the Port game we won't have to look back at getting taken to the cleaners by big bad bustling Mitch Wallis as the most embarassing thing we served up this season. Small mercies.

Well it was good to see the boys dig in and show some fight when things started going against us. This group is exactly what we know they are...not bad when things are going ok and [censored] terrible when put under some pressure. Failed test. Did not deserve finals after Port debacle and proved today that we are nowhere near up to it anyway.

Probably a poorly written article but the point of yet another wasted season is true. So far we are probably the only playing group to do a 'lay down Sally' on the short break which proves that we would have no chance of achieving anything when the going gets tough at the pointy end.

If so, he joins a group that includes Daniher and Paul Roos of coaches who regularly saw the players serve up soft efforts in weeks where it looked like they just couldn't be bothered. As I said to one of Goodwins friends not long after he took the job...he doesn't know what he's getting himself into. At MFC, a coach can't even rely on the players showing personal pride in their intensity and effort levels consistently. F#$ked if i know how you can develop and implement a gameplan when blokes squib it as regularly as ours do.

I'm usually over the horrendous performances pretty soon after games finish these days. I should be because they have been so regular over my lifetime. But this one is still sitting with me. Just thinking back to some of the 'efforts' we put forward is still getting my goat. The lack of intensity to tackle and kill the ball close to Port's goal was insulting. I keep giving up on this club and just joining in with everyone I talk to about football in just laughing at what the MFC is. Then you occasionally see for a week or two that they can play with intensity and some pride and you think that maybe we have turned a corner and this just might be thee group to deliver something of value to their supporters...and then you get fooled again.

Was a poor defender too. Could drift across and take a few marks when the 3rd defender...but extremely poor at winning or halving 50/50 contests. His spoiling intensity was not much stronger than his brothers.

We got 3 weeks of applying physical pressure to our opponents after the players got called out by the media...which is 1 or 2 more weeks than i expected. So we should be happy really. Funnily enough we managed the kick some goals those weeks. Goes to show just how much passion this group has for the club and the supporters though doesn't it. They'll have a crack for a bit if they get called out publicly...but the idea of giving that sort of effort week in week out is unthinkable.

This thread could not be more symbolic of everything that is wrong with this club. Club as a whole just doesn't seem to value consistency...and players don't deliver consistency.

I feel dirty but I felt sorry for the commentators. When you're supposed to be narrating a contest between 2 opponents and one of them decides it's in the too hard basket from the first bounce it must be very difficult to try to make your way through. Someone like Luke Hodge who spent a career competing should never be made to commentate on that group of pea-hearted non competitors again.

Tom McDonald may have just played the worst individual game of professional sport I have ever seen someone play. Not sure we can carry him anymore. His brother isn't good enough either. Langdon's positioning on the wing was some of the most putrid I've ever seen. Yeah let's continually stand 25 metres from a defender running out of the back line while our opponent stands a further 20 metres behind us with no other player between him and their 50...f%&k me. Skills abysmal mostly caused by the continual fright from the physical pressure. Unfortunately for the players who played physically scared tonight and gave the panic handballs they're all on the video for everyone to see (not that anyone would want to watch that again).

That was easily the softest physical display by any team this year...and possibly other than some of our own performances it may have been one of the softest across the league for the last 5 years. Beaten physically and no f*&ks given. Multiple players $hat themselves at the physical contact and flicked the ball away. An absolutely disgusting performance by every single player who took the field tonight.

Legitimately seen a couple of our guys fully [censored] themselves at the physical contact today. If we hadn't already set the lowest of low standards then tonight might have been the all time worst!

Last week we applied good pressure to GCS when they got the ball. Better pressure than we have applied for the past season and a half (although our tackling execution still wasn't great). If we apply that sort of pressure to Hawthorn then we give ourselves a good chance to win. If we revert to type and think that our own ability to win in close is enough to win us this game, then we will lose. If only our group start to realise that while they have a great ability to win the ball in close and generate forward entries, the golden forward entries are the ones that come off opposition turnovers. Bring the pressure, watch how our own ability to score increases.

Given our players copped it a bit in the media this week, we might have a better chance of seeing nearer to 4 quarters of decent intensity (historically this is usually what has triggered a bit more from the players at MFC). If we do, guarantee our skills will look much better. If we don't see it this week, then buggered if i know what it's going to take.

Bang on. Most AFL games and in fact most AFL premierships are won by the team that applies the most pressure for the longest time. Its not hard. Its not the NBA where the skill level is so high that good defence can regularly be overcome. It seems too hard for our players to apply pressure for long periods of time...and it always has. And further, our lack of pressure is the reason why our skills look so bad. It's because we rarely force the opposition to give the ball back to us in a way that we can break into space and create more time for ourselves. We applied pressure in Q1 vs. Carlton = we looked like we had some skill. Downhill from there.

We've been here before though. Many times. Remember the week Mitch Robinson accidentally said what every club thinks about us (that we like it bruise free)? The players came out breathing fire the next week. Smashed the Bombers. Mission accomplished apparently because we went back to normal within a few weeks. I just don't think this club is about winning. There has always been a reason why it's too hard for our players. You can see the culture of this club all over this fan board...

Ha i was the same when Bombers game was cancelled. So relieved. Could just watch other games without wondering what fresh hell the club has to offer us that week. I generally follow scores now for a couple of reasons...first that we hopefully will kick 2 or 3 goals for the game...and second that we don't lose by 100+. Sad.

Why is anybody surprised? I'm guessing the one's who are surprised are the ones who thought last year's train wreck was purely caused by pre-season surgeries. And that the 2018 prelim was just a bad day at the office. And that this season is all Simon Goodwin's fault. - Good competitive groups don't churn out the 2018 prelim 'effort'...and if they did it would burn so hard that it would drive them forward. Not this lot. - Pre-season surgeries might have made last year a tough one. But it didn't have to make it a complete disgrace. - Those who want to see the back of Goodwin are going to be real upset 2 years into the next coach's reign (if the players haven't managed to completely bury the club by then) when our players still can't muster up 4 quarters of high intensity, high pressure football.