poita

Very well deserved honour for two wonderful club men, and hopefully there are many more games and accolades to come for both.

That plan would work if (a) Max could kick and (b) we had another ruckman on our list.

Maybe they would sell more merchandise if they didn't plaster sponsor logos all over the polos and jackets. Football jumpers I understand, but that's it. I get that these companies pay us plenty of money, but who wants to walk around with Zurich and Jaguar logos on a polo?

I thought this group had found a bit more resilience this year, but that performance was as bad as any we have seen in the past four and a bit years. Yet again we suffer a completely inexplicable loss against a below average side that will cost us dearly at year end. Bad kicking is bad football, but they also kept kicking to contests on the flanks inside of attacking the goals. As soon as Cunningham starts getting beaten, our entire forward line collapses around her. The game plan was all wrong and the coach doesn't do nearly enough to change things up when they are not working. Kate Hore was a massive loss, as one of the few players in the team with both skills and football nous. Hopefully she is right for this week. Our bottom 5 players are still a real concern, not just with the lack of ball winning ability, but especially the lack of confidence in executing basic skills.

It continues to amaze me that the club doesn't recognise the asset that it has in Demonland and use this forum to communicate directly with members and supporters. The club website is abysmal, not everyone has facebook or twitter, and email communications are mainly ads. All you need is one staffer to have an account and post factual information such as training times on a regular basis.

If Gawn is about to sign a new deal, I hope it is for significantly less than the $900K he was reportably paid in 2020. Great player, and he deserves to be well paid, but gun ruckmen don't win premierships, and he turns 30 this year. I would hate to lose Oliver or Petracca because we we are paying Gawn overs and therefore can't pay market rates to the players who will have a bigger say in whether we win a premiership or not.

Not commenting on this issue directly, but I note the AFL was patting itself on the back over the last few days about its financial performance last year. They've done a great job managing the AFL competition and ensuring those 18 clubs are okay, but this has come at the expense of every other competition in the land. There must be a truckload of competitions and clubs, junior and senior, that won't survive another interrupted year.

The guy is a great athlete with absolutely no football nous. He has been in the AFL system almost 10 years for 54 games, and there are pretty clear reasons for that. He is also 30 in three weeks. This would be a laughably stupid move, so pretty much in line with our list management over the past few years. Maybe, just maybe, Goodwin, Lamb and Co shouldn't have offloaded every key position player from the 2018 list and we wouldn't be in this position.

Thanks for the update. With 20 - 25 players being so impressive, I assume we're basically premiership certainties at this point.

https://womens.afl/news/59995/injury-wrap-eagles-ruck-a-chance-flag-crow-eyes-return Lively Melbourne forward Krstel Petrevski has been ruled out for the season after suffering a hamstring injury against Richmond. Midfielder Maddi Gay (quad) is likely to play her first game for the season against North Melbourne, with Sarah Lampard (ACL) ruled a test. Defenders Meg Downie (ankle) and Shae Sloane (ACL) are 2-3 weeks away.

I love the idea of building a forward line around a bloke who can barely get on the field, and is often pretty ordinary when he does. 12 weeks of recovery, then at least a month to build fitness and confidence takes us into June, so his chances of having a significant impact this year are low even without any setbacks. Hopefully we haven't completely destroyed McDonald's confidence and he can perform this season. Time to end the Kobe Farmer / Deakyn Smith experiments, and bring in some key position depth with our vacant list spots.

Very interesting video and thanks to the club for sharing. I'm pretty convinced that Goodwin was unhappy with those first two picks, and this is hardly surprising given that Taylor seems overly fixated on smalls with decent skills who can't find the football. I am very much interested in the relationship between the coach, the list manager and the recruiting manager. Surely the first two need to be setting the direction for the third - is that what is happening here?

As nice as it would have been to get a win against St Kilda as per the original fixture, a genuine test against the best team in the comp is timely. I suspect we're a notch or two below the best teams at this point, but nothing that can't be fixed over the remaining seven games with some players returning from injury and improvement from fringe players.

As with Hawthorn taking Scully & Patton from GWS on seemingly favourable deals, the eagerness of NM to be done with Brown should have been a warning sign for Melbourne. But yet again we were so desperate to add talent from other clubs, instead of developing our own, that we rushed in to sign Brown with $3M worth of contract. Thankfully we had talked McDonald's value down so far that there were no takers, otherwise we would be looking at starting another season with Weideman as our only true key position forward.

It seems unlikely that Downie and Gay will rejoin the team this week, so we'll need to go with last week's side again. I haven't seen Richmond play, but this strikes me as the sort of game that we have historically struggled with. Our forward line looked okay last week, but the defense looks undersized. I think we'll need to throw Scott back as reinforcement. Hopefully our midfield can dominate and we can keep the ball in our forward half much more than we did last week.

I'm looking forward to see whether the team has improved some of its connection issues from last year. There is no questioning the ball winning ability of the team and they generally create plenty of scoring opportunities, but the forward line setup rarely worked last year. The younger players are so much more advanced than most of the older players were at the same stage. It was crucial that we added some serious young talent in the last draft, and it will be a lot of fun watching these players develop over the next few years. With 8 of 14 teams playing finals, every team would be expecting to play finals each week. This group should be looking to finish 4th - 6th, all things being equal regarding injuries and fixturing, so winning the first two games is essential.

Unfortunately this is just the way Goodwin rolls. No ruck depth, no key defensive depth, starting to look light on in the middle as well with no kids coming through. Basically just cross your fingers and hope for the best. But why bother with these critical positions when you can have 27 small forwards on your list?

I'm more interested in Salem's future than anyone else on our list. At the moment he's a good, occasionally very good, player. There is no doubt he has the ability to be much better than that. Would another club, say Essendon or Hawthorn, make him an offer he can't refuse based on potential? Will he take another step forward this year and make himself indispensable at Melbourne? Or is he happy just being a top 10 - 15 player at a middling club? Gawn will resign, but hopefully on a reduced rate. The other five could all be gone by year end.

Laughable comment and totally unhelpful.

Great decision, she is a gun.

Some more information from the AFL website. Karen Paxman's haircut reminds me of Nathan Carroll. https://womens.afl/news/55794/practice-matches-pies-stun-roos-dees-and-lions-impress The Cats were on fire early, booting four of their five goals in the first term, but struggled to maintain their intensity as the match progressed and the Dees kicked into gear. Maddie Boyd was a dominant force up forward early, booting two goals, while developing Cats mid Becky Webster put in a solid performance and Denby Taylor was typically tough in her first game since an ankle injury ended her 2020 AFLW season in round two. Rising Melbourne midfielder Tyla Hanks – already earmarked to spend much more time on the ball in 2021 – was her side's best, while Lily Mithen was strong rotating between the middle and forward. Forward Jackie Parry, whose 2020 debut was delayed until round four due to a hamstring injury, found some space in attack, finishing with two goals. The Dees picked up two minor injuries, with All-Australian captain Karen Paxman (who was excellent in the half she played) initially sending some anxiety around the ground with what was ultimately a corked quad, and defender Meg Downie finishing on crutches with a sprained ankle. GEELONG 4.0 4.0 4.2 5.4 (34) MELBOURNE 0.1 5.3 7.5 8.7 (55) GOALS Geelong: Boyd 2, A. McDonald, Clarke, Purcell Melbourne: Parry 2, Paxman, Mithen, Hanks, Cunningham, Zanker

I'm in no way condoning Patton's behaviour, but I hope that all those laughing at Hawthorn's current situation are prepared for this story to expand in other directions. There is no way that he is the only listed AFL player to be acting in this manner.

I'm okay with him getting a shot as the last player on the list if he has some potential. The issue becomes when we give a bloke a shot, then keep him on the list for way too long (eg Bedford & Chandler).

Once again I think this club is taking it's existing, long term members for granted. I, for one, am bitterly disappointed that they haven't acknowledged our loyalty by waiving reserved seat fees and other such payments that provided zero benefit last year. This generosity is not going to last forever, and a club that has played finals once in the past fourteen years can't afford to be upsetting its loyal supporters. They acknowledge that we had one of the lowest cancellation rates in the league, and even with that we lost $2.9M. That follows on from a $1.6M loss in 2019 when we couldn't capitalise on playing finals the previous year. These losses are becoming ingrained and at some point we will exhaust these remaining cash reserves. Then presumably we resort to selling the Bentleigh Club, and eliminate our last non-football asset. We don't have enough income coming in from sources other than an under-performing football team. This is not sustainable in any environment, let alone one in which a global pandemic can reduce football income to nil in the blink of an eye.

Is there any chance that this poxy excuse for a website might be updated some time this millenium? The AFLW draft was more than 10 weeks ago and we still don't have pictures of the draftees on the website. The men's page has not been updated for any post season player movements, although it is good to see Oscar McDonald still on the list. I get that clubs are working with a skeleton staff, but surely someone can spare five minutes to add some pictures to the website.