rufus

Thought the effort was the one thing Roos would fix in his tenure. Sadly not. This is why I've started to wonder whether the supporters should shoulder a lot of the blame for the players not putting in. We have offered up so many excuses for the shocking performances over the years and many supporters still do. We have made it acceptable at the MFC to go less than 100%. No excuses for the Dogs. All those injuries but all they want to do is compete. A great example for youngsters watching sport to learn about how it should be played.

As an MFC supporter watching the bulldogs feels like watching football in fast forward. And I don't mean from a leg speed point of view. Their intensity around the contest gives their fans so much value. Ours was good last week but sadly it took a bake in the media to get a one off effort like that from our lot.

Fair enough. Let me ask you a question though. How would you say Essendon are going this year? My personal view is that I think they are having a genuine crack each week and have done well to avoid any absolute thumpings. Now, if it had been Melbourne in their position, I have no doubt we would have lost multiple (probably majority of) games by triple figure margins, and every week it would have been ok because of x, y and z. You see, not having a crack isn't acceptable at other clubs. Why is it excusable at Melbourne? And there are genuinely times when our club just puts the queue in the rack and gives up. It's blatantly obvious. I just don't understand why so many are willing to excuse it. The win/loss column isn't the start and end of it for me. All I want is to be able to go to the football knowing that my team will exhaust every avenue to try and win. I still don't get that feeling.

Our problem now is the same problem we've always had. Deep in the bowels of this club there just is no real demand on competitiveness. There is just excuse after excuse after excuse. Our players don't truly want to get their hands dirty, you can see it every time our opponents step up the physical pressure. We are powder puffs. Who is going to the person to change that? And when?? Viney looks like he wants to change it but does he have enough committed and capable mates? Unfortunately we lack the pride/spirit in the jumper that you generally get from the players at Ess/Car/Coll etc., and this is the most disappointing thing about the MFC.

Half as many tackles as Hawks. Tells you everything you need to know about this team.

What's concerning is, we spent the previous two years serving up garbage dressed as 'learning how to defend'. Now that we've added some attack (which in the AFL pretty much means being prepared to play through the corridor) our defence looks awful. Our players individually don't seem to be great defensively and we are generally poor in 50/50 contests. It is very similar to the Dean Bailey era right now (nobody would run back to help out in that group). I guess it's better than the last few years but if we want to be able to play with the big boys we are going to need to get far better in the real contests.

Beaten by a side who probably have more talent than us, are better coached than us and have a playing group with a deep seated desire to beat their opponents. It's going to be hard for us against any kind of quality opposition given how far behind we are in that last category. From ground level it was clear in the first that we didn't have the same level of intensity as them. Good to see we played the game out and finished with good tackle numbers.

Suppoters of those clubs, possibly excluding Brisbane, will turn up next week knowing there is a very good chance their players wil come out and have a red hot crack next week and every week after that. Us suppoters may have a 50% chance. And it will be a 0% chance if North come hard at us physically in the first 10 minutes. We are bruise free and have been for 15 years. Zero pride in the jumper. There is little for supporters to admire about what our club is.

Deal! I don't want to be right but I've seen this movie before.

Correct I don't think we'll win as many as we did last year. The Bulldogs will not relax when playing us this year (they were clearly not switched on the first time they played us last year, you could see it as they were doing their warm up). Richmond will probably be swtiched on when they play us this year after losing to us last year. No way in the free world Geelong don't bring their intensity when they play us this year. Not sure who we are going to beat? Maybe Brisbane at the 'G? St Kilda play with significantly more pride than us and will beat us twice, I'm certain of it.

What scares me most is that our playing group are historical white flaggers. Most seasons, the players seem to chose at what point they've chucked it in and refuse to compete for the rest of the season. Will it be after this embarrassment? Or will they wait and see how the next few rounds pan out? There'll be people around who will blame Roos, blame the players behind tired, blame the fact that the players like Goody more than Roos, blame our lack of experience, blame our pre-season, blame Hogan's contract talk, probably blame the parking around AAMI stadium, who knows what else. The players will happilly hide behind those excuses and put the queue in the rack at some point.

Well to respond to one of your points...if Daniher is taking 15 marks in a game then his opponent should hang his head in complete and utter shame. To let that bloke dominate like that (the second time in a row he has done it against us) is a micro example of putrid level of competitiveness of our players. Lack of pride. He's not that good and some physicality makes him reasonably ineffective against 16 AFL clubs. I don't disagree that Roos' coaching style at times beggars belief. Never really liked his appointment from the beginning. But if the players brought 100% today then the game style wouldn't have mattered a $hite because it was effectively a (supposed) professional AFL team vs. a mostly VFL team. Your comments really just once again excuse the players. The $hitty coaching should have seen us with a 5 goal win instead of a 10 goal win. But of course it didn't.

No. Today proved that the underbelly of this club has not changed. They are willing to fold when an opponent is hungrier than us. If we get lucky and cop 5 days where the opposition is completely switched off, and we have some luck, we may win 5 more. Our win/loss will be 100% decided by how hard our opponents come to play... And the talk of numbers of wins and sneaking into finals has been laughable coming from the MFC. This is a club that 4 rounds of football back were 10 goals behind Carlton in the second quarter. There is very little heart in this club.

Melbourne had 50 tackles. Essendon had 444 disposals and we had 50 [censored] tackles. What a complete and utter shambles. The rest is all froth and bubble mate. Essendon were desperate to win and Melbourne thought they could do it without putting in the effort. If it was a once off then fine. It isn't. Easiest club in history to coach against. If you can convince your players to compete physically you win. Simple as that.

Essendon are a better club than Melbourne. Always have been and always will be. Their supporter base demands excellence and that is what they strive to deliver. Essendon as a club have done some bad stuff over the last few years (and with salary caps in the past), but in my opinion they have disgraced themselves in the pursuit of excellence. Melbourne disgrace themselves while applauding their own mediocrity.

We passed over him because the powers that be decided we have to draft 'competitors' because apparently all the talented players we previously drafted just weren't 'competitors'. Think maybe there might be a bigger problem with this club in that consistently competing just isn't a real expectation at Melbourne. If you play a good game, you'll be idolised and your next 5 games of bed $hitting will be excused. You know you're struggling when you have to pass up quality talent because you are worried they won't try hard enough for your club. This club was cooked long before today but today re-enforced how much of a joke it really is.

Let's not forget that he's part of the current coaching group that has been unable to stop our roll over merchants from throwing in the towel every time an opponent physically challenges them. What's going to change when he becomes head coach? If the players love him so much then why are they still prepared to put so much embarrassment on the club, coaches and supporters by being the softest group in the comp?

Yeah he's not much of a player and probably never was. But at HFC they at least expect him to go at 100%. During one game vs. GWS a few years ago I watched him literally walk behind Jeremy Cameron as he picked the ball up deep in the pocket, step around Frawley and have a snap at goal, to which Frawley stuck out one hand in an 'attempt' to smother. It was genuinely the worst single effort to compete I have ever seen in a professional sports match. And he did very similar things numerous times while playing for Melbourne. His classic play was when an opponent (not his direct opponent) was running towards goal and he would never leave his own man to try and pressure the guy. In many cases he just allowed blokes to run for metres and metres into the goal face to kick an uncontested goal. If he puts in an effort like that at HFC, he will never play another game for them. Their culture and expectations dictate that.

We're embarrassed by that performance and have resolved as a group that we will not let it happen again...

Yes. If you can force the opposition into turnovers 50 to 80 metres out from their goal, you can get the ball into an open forward line. And you force those turn overs by tackling, harassing and competing in the air. Then you run and spread and move the ball with intensity and don't jog around insipidly. You don't need great forward talent to score when you get the ball in like that. If you're only prepared to compete hard in your own defensive 50 (and even that probably only occurs because we have 18 people jammed down there) it's much harder to generate a scoring opportunity because you have to get past 18 opposition players and you give the opposition heaps more time to get numbers back.

It's all getting a little bit funny now. I can't laugh about it during the 3 hours that we play each weekend (easily the worst 3 hours of my week) but I have now reached a point where I can laugh during the week. Jackson and Roos are so concerned that the players will go the 'full 186' on the weekend that they've had to throw the supporters under the bus to try and placate them. This is such a simple game. If you bring effort then you compete on the scoreboard. You don't then you won't. We don't and haven't for a long time. That's not being negative, it's just a fact. Ask any neutral supporters who has been strong enough to sit through one of our games. Every single one that I have spoken to agrees that these blokes just don't want to compete. Scott Pendlebury said in an interview a few years ago something like 'AFL Football is an effort sport. If we bring high intensity we can compete with anyone, and if we don't we can lose to anyone'. The most concerning thing I have heard from Roos was the other day when comparing Lachie Hendersen to James Frawley when he said Frawley still gave 100% to Melbourne up until the end of last season. If Frawley's last 2 or 3 years at MFC were examples of the 100% that Roos expects from our players then it's no wonder we get served up turds 2 out of every 3 weeks.

What I would like to see happen, but obviously can't for logistical reasons, is for the MFC to be allowed to have an 'amnesty' of sorts. We should be exempt from the limit of players that can be turned over. We should once and for all interview each and every player to determine those that have some kind of issue with the club and don't really want to be there anymore. Every one of them should be put up for trade to find a mutually beneficial outcome, or delisted if none can be found, so that once and for all the supporters may have a chance of seeing a group take the field that seem to give a $ hit. I would not exclude any player from the process. If our best young players don't like it at MFC they will soon be producung the apathetic, sooky performances that have become so prevalent and expected at the MFC. This would be their chance to speak up and fark off. We would need to be granted more draft picks because from what we see there must be a large number who fit in the category of having some kind of problem with the MFC.

He'd be mad to leave MFC (if we offer him a contract) if he wants to stay in the AFL. At a real club he'll be gone at the end of the first contract he signs, whilst we will probably accept his performances for another 5 years. I would advocate delisting as I don't buy that he's giving it everything for the MFC.

That'd be good as it wouldn't make them much better. I believe it's actually Jake Carlisle though.

Our player culture gives us no hope of knowing how much better the WB and STK lists might be than ours. Those two teams tend to go at 100% intensity most of the time, and our players don't. We have made and allowed excuses for these blokes forever and it has now become so acceptable that the media don't even bother pointing out the insipid individual efforts by Melbourne players anymore. Even if the WB are more talented, they aren't so much more talented that they would [censored] a competing side by 98 points. MFC players lack pride in the club (always have) and don't even appear to show pride in their own individual performance most of the time. Easily pushed aside. And yeah the intensity was great the days when we beat Rich, Geel, WB, Coll. I wonder if that told the players anything?? Gee when we compete as hard or harder than our opponents we win football matches. The thing about professional sport is, there's a fair chance your opponent might be very hungry to win when they play you. So, they might just lift their own intensity when it looks like you might be challenging them. They might not be prepared to simply roll over. Never does the MFC stand up when this happens. The Bulldogs tackled manically on the weekend. They were obviously annoyed that they lost to us earlier in the year and wanted to prove a point. What would be nice, just once in an MFC supporters lifetime, would be to see our players lift their own intensity to match when that happens, because they don't want to be embarrassed by the fact that they can lose a game simply because their opponents are tougher and hungrier than them. The WB looked streets ahead of us on the weekend because they wanted to compete more than we did. That's it in a nutshell. I would consider that disappointing if it was an occasional thing, but I actually think it's contemptuous that it happens regularly. I thought that being individually competitive would have been the one non-negotiable message that Roos, through his high standing in the AFL, would have been able to get across to this group. Not even he seems to have been able to change these guys (maybe they sense he hasn't bought in so they aren't listening, and hey we've allowed all the other excises over the years so why not allow them that one too).