rufus

Dogs for mine. Great midfield depth, now have bigs standing up at both ends, and are hitting form and fitness at the right time. They are also amazing momentum riding football club.

I like watching good, hard, competitive sport. I don't trust that we're going to produce it. Coming off a straight sets finals exit last year, our crowd turned up ready to rumble vs Coll in the first final, only for the players to come out with the intensity of a pre season game. They lost trust. The whole club proceeded to blame an unfortunate injury in the 1st quarter of that match for our season's demise instead of the astonishing level to which our players got out-muscled and out-hustled to start that match. It was yet another indication of how little this club understands of how to harness the passion of the supporters. The players and FD have fumbled a golden opportunity to regain trust within the supporter base, and respect across the football world, over the last couple of years. I also don't trust our senior players. I don't trust that they will not lose way too many genuine one on one contests, or that they won't make the most calamitous mistakes that belie their level of experience. I have no idea what it is about what we expect of our senior players that sees such inconsistency with them. TLDR. I don't really enjoy how the MFC goes about competing.

Yes. 10 players with 150+ games of experience and I feel for the coach...you just don't know what you're going to get from those guys who you should be able to bank on. We've unearthed some decent young talent this year but are we just going to see those guys fall off a cliff as they hit their peak years as mostly seems to be the way at MFC? We won a flag with a pretty young and promising list and their overall ability to execute in the contest has just been poor for 3 years. Commitment to applying pressure seems to just be when they feel like it...it isn't a non negotiable. After trying to recruit players by spruiking that we see 3 or 4 flags in our short term future, there will likely be 8+ teams that have won at least a single final since 2021, and we won't be one of them. We are about to be passed by Hawthorn. Again. The fumbling of the whole thing by the whole FD is jarring. And on the crowd thing, it needs to be a two way street. These guys continually find ways to let interstate sides come here and embarrass us on our home turf...and why exactly would people want to turn up and cop that?

We are a completely different team when we are applying high pressure to our opponents. We are able to force turnovers in much more dangerous positions on the ground which generates so much more space forward. All of a sudden our forwards look capable. It was really evident even from the way our forwards sprinted to man the mark as Essendon chipped around their backline. These things make a huge difference to how teams are able to exit from the back half. Like it or not, it has become clear that we just don't have the talent levels of the other great sides of the past 10 to 15 years...so once we drop of our pressure we become very ordinary. Hawks of 2010's were good enough to ebb and flow their pressure and when they turned it up they could just bolt away. Richmond's successful team seemed to be able to bring the pressure very consistently which is what made them so successful. Our pressure hasn't been that consistently good since about quarter time in the GF in 2021. If we can bring it to last night's levels more consistently then we may still eek something more out of this group.

I guess another way I've been looking at it is by asking this question: Which of our players are meaningfully better players than they were when they played in a premiership in 2021? I am struggling to think of any that have gone from average to good, or from good to great or from great to superstar. Maybe Rivers and ANB are slightly better? Of that list of 9, I don’t think a single one is a better player now than they were. None seem to have reached a level where their output in terms of helping a team win a game of football is any better than it was then. Our list profile was nice at that point in time...many of our best contributors were not even at their peak age yet. So how did we get to where we are now? A flag should have provided a springboard to better performance from the individuals. I just don't think Goodwin is able to bank on the baseline output that he should be expecting from the experienced players. It would make it very hard to coach IMO.

I think we had 9 players with 150+ games of experience to 3. We are getting absolutely burnt by the experienced players for the umpteenth time is recent MFC history. Someone seriously needs to study how we can have so many players regress to looking like rookies when they hit peak AFL age of 27 to 30. These guys are meant to be guiding the ship. This has happened for us, with a few exceptions, this whole century. It has to be a cultural thing. I am absolutely staggered that we might even be witnessing it with Oliver now too...a guy who improved every year early is his career and seems to have smashed into a brick wall.

Sad to say but he just doesn't go hard enough. His physicality picked up at the end of 2021 but since then he's looked like he's avoiding contact in many cases. Wouldn't be tolerated at clubs like Collingwood and shouldn't be getting away with it here. He's not alone either.

I'm struggling with how to assess Goodwin as a coach now. Is he an outright genius for managing to find a way to get these generally soft one paced plodders to a flag? Or has he wasted the prime years of some very good footballers with a bizarre philosophy on how to defend and attack. In 2021 we regularly had windows where we would burst out of the middle and pile on 5 or 6 goals in 8 minutes. It now looks like we're actually trying not to score. I don't even buy that we are any good defensively. Our players get exposed any time they don't have a numbers advantage in the backline. And that goes for all of them from the experienced players to the new ones. Our 'defense' is just to attack in such a putrid and timid fashion that we always have time to try and outnumber when it comes back. At some point maybe, just maybe, we could have a go at trying to score a bit. You know in a game where the team with the most points wins it might be something worth having a go at.

We are a diabolical football team. 15 scoring shots against a bunch of kids. Overrun by a team we have huge amounts of experience over. This club is quickly sending us back to the depths. Like it or not, it is very simple. We are the softest football club in the land. We have been for a long time. We had an aberration for about 15 months a few years ago but normal service is resumed...we are always gettable because we have soft players on every line, and as a club we've never demanded anything else.

Strap in people. Given how well the football department and admin cashed in on our 'peak' period, I expect we're going to have a ripper of a time during our slide. The arrogance of the club from top to bottom coming off '21 was just astonishing (including supporters with comments like 'why would player x want to go and play for club y when they could play at the Dee's and win 3 or 4 flags). The ball was dropped massively on a chance to rebuild the image of the club. And despite the fact that our stubborn coach enforces a style of 'attack' that borders on mind numbing, he gave the players a style of play that he proved to them could win big games against good teams, that was predicated on applying pressure and forcing turnovers anywhere more than 40m from defensive goal. Yet these clowns just completely stopped applying pressure. A pressure rating in the 150s today? Seriously? And it must have been in the 140s in Q1 of our final v Coll last year. WTF? I mean, really WTF are these guys doing? Does it get a little bit of adrenalin running when they start getting touched up by VFL players? Like make them run harder and throw themselves in to the contest for a bit? They really just don't seem to mind too much.

It's very rare for teams to stay right at the top for 4 seasons...3 happens pretty regularly but getting to 4 is hard. Naturally fringe players look for opportunities elsewhere and the depth just isn't there. Ultimately we didn't cash in on our 3 year window. 2022 was always going to be tough as Geelong were humming...but to choke away decent leads in finals at your home ground against fairly ordinary interstate teams raised real red flags about the competitiveness of our players. And the less said about last year the better...choking in front of goal 2 weeks in a row and watching probably the most ordinary premiership side of a generation take the cake was embarrassing. In the first quarter of our final vs. Coll our intensity levels looked like it was a pre season game...just bizarre and emblematic of a playing group that has just struggled to maintain the physicality required. Glad we snuck one in '21 and gave this generation of fans one to hang on to. But the club, mostly the players, talked the talk but didn't walk the walk and we squandered a golden opportunity to return the club to former glory.

It's our style of play. We try to beat every opponent exactly the same way...and by 10 points. It is like pulling teeth to watch. We are told it is 'built for finals' but when we get there and watch the inevitable calamity unfold it just drains all enthusiasm. I think deep down nobody trusts what this club is going to do so they don't want to make too much noise fearing the inevitable ridicule.

I'm sure there's a way we can outdo Brisbane on that list. Top 4 next year and 2 more choke jobs and we'll be the standout anomaly on another list!

Also gets the fumbles way more than other elite players in the comp. I think he's a great club man and shows great passion for the club, but he's overrated in general and also can be very poor defensively.

Agreed. The club in general was arrogant coming out of 2021 including proclamations of the 'changed culture'. Did the stuff about aiming to be at peak fitness on preliminary final weekend come from the club or from Demonland? How about just winning a single final before worrying about preliminary final weekend.

Not saying they mightn't have helped, but I'm suggesting the reason we didn't win is because we are chokers and it wouldn't have mattered who was out there. We generated so many chances to win and once again we shrunk.

Who knows what we might’ve served up next week. You'd have thought after the Petty controversy last year we'd have been fired up to take them on in a final ON OUR HOME GROUND. Yet once again we sh@ the bed.

We didn't lose because we were missing those guys...we lost because we produced and epic choke job for the 4th final in a row.

Another great record for the fans to be proud of. When we're a bad team, we're absolutely diabolical, but that's ok because...insert excuses. When we have a good team, we are world record choke artists. Thanks again MFC.

We need to worry about winning a single final...not about winning it all. On the evidence you've seen, what makes you think there's any chance whatsoever that we could win 3 finals in front of big crowds at the MCG? There's literally no chance with this group, who have proven to be massive chokers. We're going to need to reload and hope that the next generation that come through have some bottle.

We are an out and out joke. Just a club that has no idea how to find a way. I have no faith in these guys whatsoever. What's the point of us scraping into top 4 again next year? Seems like we all know what's going to happen when the pressure really comes on.

Strangely I feel that if we lose tonight it will only reinforce what an extraordinary feat it was to lead this club to a flag in 2021. I mean, if we lose 4 finals in a row (on our home ground) then I guess it's enough evidence to say our players just aren't that good. And yet he managed to organise pretty much the same guys in a way that enabled us to grab one when the stars aligned.

I think Carlton are a better side than Collingwood so we are going to have to make this hard for them. I generally love everything that Max says, but hearing him on breakfast radio earlier in the week scared me when he said the group discussed their start last week and felt they were just a tiny bit off. They were way off and it was home and away intensity (barely) and it cost us the game. Any period of the game at that level tonight and its curtains for us.

This game won't be won or lost at selection. Like almost every other game of professional Australian rules football ever played, it'll be won by the team that can apply and absorb pressure for the longest. Like it or not, as a club we've spent the best part of 60 years (bar one) finding ways to lose. It's up the players now to just find a way to win.

Goodwin is apparently quite a measured and calm coach, doesn't lean into the emotional side as much as imploring the group to follow the process. If the coaches can get the players to start the game with say the kind of intensity that Collingwood started last week's game, we may be able to get on the front foot and not be chasing tail all game. It's a big if though, because we haven't seen many 4 quarter efforts at that intensity level over the last 2 years. So which quarters will we choose? Also, if we happen to see manic intensity to start the game, I think people will be surprised to see just how well our forward line can function when the ball is coming in quick off turnovers forced around the middle of the ground.