rufus

Just glad it's over and I can ignore football for 6 months now. I appreciate that the players only lost to a degree that wasn't going to pour more fuel on the fire of how hard it'll be to convince someone to coach us. Shame it's come to this again but such is the MFC. Some are going to want out...and we must demand compensation based on what they are likely to deliver for their new club (i.e. how much those clubs want them and what they are capable of), not based on what they've produced for us over the last few seasons. We shouldn't be punished by these guys twice.

Although it'd be great to win, this playing group doesn't have a super record of bringing intensity for games that actually mean something, so it is not going to happen in the final round. All we need them to do here is avoid creating an even bigger story of how unappealing a club this is for external talent (including coaches). Just end the season with some pride in the club, the jumper and yourselves. They owe a bit to quite a few at this point.

This is the scary part. History is repeating itself with our 'star' players almost all regressing through their prime years. IMO this was always the root of our problem, not the coaching. I don't even know how it is possible for our senior guys to go backwards so badly. Normally with experience a player can't help but be a more effective player...the whole idea of experience is that things become easier for you. You've seen all the scenarios and you've developed ways to handle them. How are these guys so bad (Max excluded)? Is it laziness? Hubris? What is wrong at the core of the player culture at this club? Who can fix it?

Maybe the board are more switched on than many think (assuming reports of them believing we are a ways off are true). I reckon Buckley is possibly a mistake for both parties...our group is no good and the top end needs an almost complete turnover (pardon the pun).

Wow. These guys killed one coach's career and now they're going to scare anyone off wanting to come near the joint. Look at the age and experience profile of the 2 teams today...pretty similar but us with a bunch of 200+ gamers. Have our guys forgotten how to play football? The fulness of time is going to judge Goodwin as a coaching genius. These guys are legit plodders. Please let us get through one more week without a full Melbourne scoreboard implosion (I mean a 4 qtr one, not just a last qtr special).

Could he go to a lock down back pocket type role? I know his ball use is poor and he'd get done for pace but maybe he could make up for it in the contest...who knows maybe he'd just get too exposed for size and pace...

Good effort against a very good team. All that really matters this week and the next 2 weeks is that the players present a product that looks appealing to a high quality prospective coach. They held up their end of the bargain today.

The players have every right to be ropeable right now...with themselves. Reality is, rightly or wrongly (and whether it was going to last another 12 months who knows) Goodwin would still have the job right now if not for the players' 'laydown Sally' a couple of weeks back. They made the situation untenable. If the players are seriously more annoyed with the board than themselves then I am hugely concerned that they might be the most delusional group of people ever assembled. They had their chance to show their desire to see Goodwin safe in his job and they burnt him. Now over the last 3 rounds we get to see if they'll burn the club down too. 3 bad losses may significantly hurt our chances of trying to convince someone to take the coaching job. If they do lay down over the last 3 then it might just confirm we are better going with a young coach and a rebuild than a reset anyway.

I am in the minority and felt like Max and Jack both played the media thoroughly during the week. I don't think either of them believed what they said. I think the club would have sat them down after Langdons comments and let them know that unless they want to set the club back another 5 to 10 years (player acquisition, membership, etc.), public comments all need to suggest the players are on board and on the same page. We will find out today I reckon. Bulldogs are playing so powerfully offensively that if your defence is slightly off you'll get battered. It feels like a Melb player protest game incoming and could easily be 20+ goals. If our playing group veer away from Goodwin’s defensive demands I don't think they are good enough or internally driven enough to deliver anything competitive. Hope I am way off here. These are just my gut feelings.

They have a worse list than us...but they have had a significantly worse list than us for the last 5 years yet they routinely beat us or run us within a couple of points. They get more out of their players than we do (and that's scary). I'd be shocked if any coach with options willingly put the fate of their career in the hands of our players.

Yes please x 1000

Unbelievably grateful to Goodwin for what he did for us. Delivered one of the great sportings days of my life and one that i will not forget till the day i die. An all time Demon great.

Throw every last cent at him to come here in some role to fix our low player expectation culture. Look how filthy he was with the missed kicks by Papenhuyzen last week. There's no excuses, no buts. He expects effort and competence. Two things that we don't expect enough of.

No idea what he actually does these days, or if he has any coaching experience or interest, but this club needs a person like Luke Hodge who would not accept an of the cr@p we've been served up by the players over the last few years.

I hate the timing and think it's poor form. Should have waited till the end of the year. While I think it was probably untenable now, I still think many on here are going to be surprised by the depths we are going to fall to in the coming years. Goodwin will go down as our best coach of the last 60 years and probably at least our next 10. Ultimately he was burnt by a playing group that claimed to love him but routinely wouldn't fight for him or the club when the moments got biggest.

His best mate is Simon Goodwin. Might be a bit complicated.

Need both playing well over the last month to try and inflate their value. Our focus should be put them in positions to accumulate lots of possies (because the footy media do love a good possie). Can't carry this senior group anymore so need to find ways to extract value for them.

It honestly will not surprise me in the slightest if we lose this game. And if we do, it won't even be our worst effort of the last 7 days. I reckon it would take an 80+ point loss to even get near the level of embarrassment of last week. It seems that not many MFC people are laying much responsibility on the players to show competence and consistent effort at this club (still). Play stupid games you win stupid prizes.

Yeah remember when our boys lost to the Essendon VFL team. Good times. Another proud moment to be a Demon.

Yeah expecting to get smashed here but the Pickett contract is going to be a problem down the track imo. If he decides in 3 years that he just can't do Melbourne anymore, are we going to be expected to foot the bill for him to play somewhere else? That's why the Petracca and Oliver stuff is such a line in the sand thing I reckon. Have to stand firm and say 'if you want out, you find someone who'll pay your whole contract and compensate us fairly, or you negotiate a new contract with someone else and they compensate us fairly'. Otherwise you knuckle down and pay us back for the massive investment we've made in you. I think that if the above is the accepted premise for the industry, then long contracts are OK. Yeah you still take the risk on injury but you just can't have a situation where players are dictating things once they've made commitments like these.

This is going to be a real litmus test for this club now. While I don't want either player with us anymore, we should demand adequate compensation from their destination clubs. I hope we hold a very firm line on that. Would not be surprised if both go on to be impactful players at their new clubs. We shouldn't be made to pay further for the fact that they haven't fulfilled their end of the bargain for us. That's on them. If we don't get adequate compensation, i reckon our approach should be one of them can stay and be told he's playing at full forward from now on (yeah i know he can't kick, but it's the best place to have him coming towards the ball and getting in one on one contests), and the other well I have no idea...you'd just have to hope the new coach can get him back to the great player he used to be.

I don't think I said he should stay. I think I might have said his position is probably untenable. What I did effectively say is, I don't think he's the root of the problem. As a club and a supporter base we have made some of the most creative and bizarre excuses for straight up uncompetitive, soft and incompetent efforts from the playing group for way too long. If we think changing the coach is going to fix our problems then I reckon we're going to learn some really hard lessons (again) over the coming years.

Agree with the first bit. On the second bit, I don't think we're going to be able to lure any external players here for some time. We are going to struggle to sell the idea of joining up with anyone who was on the field on Sunday to a competitive person (and those are who we need). We already struggled with this coming off a premiership when the lack of genuine competitiveness in our playing group wasn't yet outwardly clear to everyone (though opposition players probably already knew it). Things can change quickly I guess, but I think our only way to re-build is going to be through the draft.

I'm in agreement with you. Given where it's now gotten to, it might have become untenable for Goodwin, but I don't blame him as much as I blame the players. History says Goodwin is the biggest winner at the club. He won as a player and he found a way to win as a coach. I think that when everything settles, and people on this board see the unmitigated disaster that is going to unfold under the next coach, Goodwin will be looked back on as a genius for devising a style of play that: Took opposition coaches about 18 months to work out how to combat. Made a team that is incredibly one paced look like they could move at speed (at times) through the way they released to ball out the front. Got a group of players to buy in and apply pressure, when history says they generally just don't want to do that for extended periods. Helped a group of players who are historically bad from a skill and execution under pressure perspective to execute well enough to get to the ultimate prize. Maybe we do have to acknowledge that 2021 may have been one of the biggest examples of great luck and great timing in sports history (who cares, they can't take it off us), but either way we cannot deny that he guided what surely looks to be an extremely weak group of players to a flag...

Both senior players and both involved in the Sunday debacle. Neither should continue with us in 2026. Some people still don't see it, but until we put together a group of players to which that level of uncompetitiveness is unacceptable (in actions, not words) then we're on a road to nowhere. For various reasons neither are good enough overall contributors to help us avoid the disaster that is going to be the next 6 years. We need to come to an agreement with both to parts ways....see if we can somehow limit the damage to 3 or 4 years.