rufus

Feel sorry for neutral people who pickup the TV guide and see the Demons are one of the featured teams. Just know you aren't going to get a battle worth watching and it couldn't possibly be worth watching.

Good quarter Demons. Really got stuck into them there.

The group has the capability to be top 8, however we are a bottom 4 team right now and we will finish in the bottom 4 this year. Unfortunately we don't work hard enough defensively and just seem to be poor defensively in general. This means two things: first we can give up 5+ goals in a very short space of time, and second we rarely get easy goals our way (as easy goals usually result from forcing the ball back from the oppo). Was interesting once again seeing most games on the weekend won by the team that applied the most pressure to their oppo. It's a much simpler game than many believe.

Like all the other players at our club reaching their peak years, he needs to keep improving and be able to deliver a consistent minimum level of output. He's looking like being another on the long long list of talented MFC players who seem to go backwards with experience. Other than low expectations from supporters, teammates and the club in general i have no idea why this happens. You would think that all else failing, personal pride and drive would see these guys willing themselvesto be dominant.

Not sure regarding Goodwin, but hearing Melksham this morning get the impression they are quite happy with themsleves about yesterday. It's a major worry. Getting the 4 points yesterday would be hugely important if we also learn from the 2nd half capitulation...but it means nothing if the FD don't adress how badly we played in the latter part. Doubt clubs like Hawthorn, Collingwood, Essendon, etc. Would have been happy with playing like that.

One thing that really struggle to reconcile with our club is how poor a return we get from our players in the 'experienced` bracket. I'm not talking about leadership, I think that word is overrated. I'm talking about pure football output. Over the last 20 years I can think of so many MFC players who's output is just hugely inconsistent as they go through their physical peak. I would have thought the one thing you should get from an experienced player is consistent output. The whole idea of gaining experience is that players get comfortable with what they need to do to make their contribution to the game. It must be a freaking nightmare for our coaching staff. You expect a lack on consistency from the young guys, but with us you have no idea what you're going to get from these supposed experienced guys. Nathan Jones over his career has been an exception to this, and it seems we get pretty consistent output from Oliver and Gawn. But most of the rest of them are confounding. I cannot see how someone like Tom McDonald can be as poor a contributor as he is right now. I always thought he perhaps just wasn't good enough when he was playing in defence, but his season forward a few years back was exceptional. How can he now be this bad? Do these guys get ahead of themselves, stop doing the work, and fall of a cliff??

Agree with this. Realistically it's been this way for the majority of the days since Northey.

At 3 qtr time we were still in a great position to make this a good result. All we needed to do was match their intensity for a period until we broke them. But we didn't. I'm a bit lost as to where this club is at again. Maybe our list really is terrible. But can a terrible list play the way we did early in the game? I still feel like as a club we just do not know how to compete when it really gets physically tough. I just don't see how a different coach gets different results in that area, but who the hell knows at this point.

We are an ordinary football team and and ordinary football club. Once again, the people in a position to actually do something about raising the intensity when the opposition does the same (i.e. the players out on the ground) failed miserably. I can't even be bothered looking but I'd love to know how many times this group has failed to kick a goal in the last quarter over the last few years. They just don't like the heat. We look like sending North Melbourne a pick between 1 and 4 for Pickett which is great.

I agree. Goodwin was part of a winning culture as a player and seems exremely committed to turning this club around. Not sure where we would look next turning away from him. And at some point, we might realise that the constant over the last 20+ years has been an inability to get consistent effort from the players. You might say that's the job of the coach, but Roos couldn't do it, nor could Neeld or Bailey or even Daniher in the latter part. It's a part of the clubs fabric and its that that needs to change.

In terms of pure talent I think we have them covered by a huge margin. Unfortunately the evidence is suggesting we may have yet another group who don't go so well when things get tough. The Hawks culture thrives under the idea that their competitiveness can outdo the talent of the opposition. Ours does not. The fact that Hawthorn won 11 games last season was one of Clarkson's greatest feats. By rights that list should have sat in the bottom 4 with no more than 5 wins. They compete in an envious way.

We have a pretty strong midfield but I'm uncertain how much better our forward line will be than last year. And our first choice backline is very poor with poor depth behind it. You can't win a flag with a struggling backline.

Just my opinion but as a weaker Victorian club i see it as crazy to draft an interstate kid with a top end pick. We are destined to go through the 'go home' chatter at every contract. Why not just cut that out with a gun Vic kid? We don't have a Collingwood or a Hawthorn culture to wrap these kids into.

I don't know mate...I reckon 9 or 10 wins would have been a real bad year but it might have still given people some belief that this club was in the process of changing its ways. As it stands, we looked like a club that was pretty lost but even worse we didn't even look like we were fighting to right the ship. The performance late in the season against Sydney looked like a group who gives no $hits about the direction of the club. Very hard to sell it to potential recruits on the back of that.

Difference is that there's a general expectation to compete at those clubs. Competitive people often like to be in competitive environments. The players efforts of 2019 have resigned us to having to build again through the draft (that outcome may not actually be the worst thing). Hopefully we can uncover a couple of people with the kind of drive to compete and show linear type improvement through to their late 20's (and maybe become the second person at MFC to do that since Jones started).

Jeepers the clubs thinks Oscar can fill the 3rd tall defenders role???? That genuinely worries me that they can possibly think that. Don't rate Frost at all so not fussed with his departure...however Oscar is a frighteningly poor league footballer. I reckon we could find a number of better tall defenders in suburban leagues.

Whilst there is hardly anything I would like to see more than an MFC flag, I honestly don't feel like it is the most important thing for this club to achieve over the next 3-5 years. We need a sustained period where we are competitive, hard and fight out every game from start to finish. We need to try to find a way to emulate our neighbours at Collingwood and build a club that is ruthless and expects nothing less than absolute commitment to winning relentlessly. I would be happy if the next 5 years saw us defy any percieved lack of talent, or bad luck with injuries, or bad runs with umpires, and just give every team we play a tough time week in week out. That will provide my kids a reason to watch this club with pride and give them a reason to love them (instead of turning to the Bulldogs).

Other teams have lost important talent and managed to stay competitive. The Dogs lost Ward and Griffen, two of their more valued players, and then went and won a flag. If we lose Petracca we lose him. We clearly still don't have the right personalities in our playing group to truly affect a meaningful change. Maybe it's actually best for us to keep moving through these guys (provided we get fair compensation) until maybe at some point we arrive at a hungry group who compete relentlessly. As much as we all want a flag, this club doesn't need a flag as badly as it needs a group that just has us competing consistently through games and through seasons over a number years. This would give us a stronger foundation for a viable and more enjoyable long term future.

There's been a few rumored in various threads over the last few weeks/months. All I know is that history says we don't get much out of the guys who prefer to blame the club for their average output rather than looking inwards. We've had plenty over the years (Frawley, Sylvia, Moloney are a few that chucked it in while playing for us).

A deplorable season from a habitually soft sporting club. Players and FD should be embarrassed about their inability to compete at a macro and a micro level. Have put to bed any hope of enticing competitive people from other clubs to join the club to drive us forward. Back to the days of 5 years ago where players refuse to be involved in trades where they end up at MFC. The first ones in line to be moved on should be easy to identify. Those who've delivered f*#k all while expressing their concerns over where the club is heading. They aren't going to help us when the going gets really tough. Move them on.

Not all that fussed what happens with Petracca. Reckon he's pretty fumbly under physical pressure. Plus with player attitudes being one of our biggest problems, I don't really see him as someone who will help much in that regard. If we replace him with a decent talent who has the right attitude then I reckon it'd be a win for us.

I am probably naive in thinking that the general feedback of the stakeholders can have influence in this setting. A place like DL is probably the most prominent platform for supporter feedback for the club. I would have imagined, much like in other sports around the world, that players and club officials are active online and interested in knowing what people are saying about them. In your own work, if you deliver something that deep down you know isn't that great, but you hear through whatever channel it might be that your stakeholders loved it, wouldn't that influence the standard that you hold yourself to the next time you're delivering something? As an isolated example, surely the fact that last year's prelim final seemed to be written off as 'just a bad day' amongst the majority of stakeholders was reflected in how it was treated by the club. I imagine if the same were served up by Collingwood or Essendon that the supporters would have been rightly [censored] off and the club would have received the message loud and clear. And that this in turn would have had some influence on the expectation of how the club worked to stop it from happening again. I'm not sure why the message doesn't get through at Melbourne. Or maybe the message is getting through and the message is "it's ok because we were tired and it'd been a long tough season, a performance like that was to be expected".

These insights from Lewis seem to have tipped a few people over the edge. Hasn't it been obvious for years that what we've seen from the players this year is about par for the course from this club? There's been enough evidence over pretty much this century that the cultural issues run deeper than you'd think possible at pro sports level: - Players deciding what they will and won't do during pre-season consistently over (at least) the last 10 years. - Players delivering 186. - Players delivering 148. - Players delivering one of the most embarrassing halves of professional sport imaginable in the 2018 preliminary final. - Many stories of the Melbourne Storm players commenting on the lazy and unprofessional approach of the MFC players. - Many many off the record comments from opposition players and coaching staff on how pi$$ weak they see the collective MFC playing group to be. - All the stories of the bizarre arrogance of a group of players that opposition clubs see as ripe for the picking with a hint of physicality. And the main problem? There have been excuses made and excuses accepted for all of this. If the absolute heart of a club, which has to be it's supporter base, doesn't demand better then I just don't see how we're going to get afforded much better. It's seems clear that the playing group aren't showing a lot of pride to elevate themselves off their own bat. I don't know how you change the culture of a supporter base. But I do know that I am way past having had enough of hearing stories of player divisions, or this player doesn't like playing in x or y position, or whatever else the players don't like about the MFC. I'd like a line in the sand moment. If there's something you don't like, and it's going to effect you in a way that culminates in a lack of desire to compete in a meaningful way for this club, then hand over your jumper and f*&k off. I really no longer care whether they're a perceived star or a first year player. It's all gone on for way too long.

We have a history of seeing our players approaching their assumed peak years and either plateauing or declining. Nathan Jones is one of the few exceptions. This doesn't appear to have changed given that, despite injuries, it certainly looked like we were served up sub standard stuff from Tom Mc, Jetta and Hibberd. Wonder what it is about the culture of our club that sees this trend.

If we were showing any desperation to compete and win then fine. We are getting out tackled every single week. These guys haven't even seen what might happen if they genuinely compete in the physicality stakes. I'm not kidding when I say the fact that there are still people in the MFC community who think what we are being served up is acceptable is the absolute root of everything that is wrong with this football club.