poita

Stinear should have been moved on after the third year when we inexplicably missed finals again with the best list in the competition. He hasn't improved the playing group in his time and the game plan is still a dud. I was all for moving on O'Dea at the time, and probably Newman as well. The reality is that we hadn't turned over the list enough in the first four seasons, and had very little younger talent coming through. It is a real concern that we have not been able to attract established talent to the club (other than Birch, who we arguably overpaid for), but have lost decent players such as Cordner on the way through. Is it coach? Is it location? Is it profile? Is it money? At some point Richmond and Geelong will get their act together with the resources at their disposal, and we will find ourselves at the absolute bottom of the pack at a time at which the remaining clubs are seeking entry into the competition.

I feel for the kid, but the sad reality is that some players don't have the bodies to play football at the highest level. I get that we wanted to do the right thing by Aaron and give him another chance, but it was a poor decision at the time and in hindsight. At best we should have allowed him to be a train on player and have a look at him through the pre season. I wish Aaron all the best for his recovery and the next phase of his life.

A truly woeful performance by a team that is completely bereft of skills and confidence. If we get a favourable draw from here, and other results go our way, we could slip into sixth spot, but what would be the point? We are miles off the top four sides and would get flogged in the finals. I said last week that we had too many players lacking confidence in their skills and seemingly unwilling to win possession. This week I thought that our senior players had lost confidence in their teammates, and were second guessing themselves, which allowed Collingwood to put us under huge pressure when in possession. Stinear simply has to go. I'm sure he is a nice bloke, but he is a terrible match day coach. I don't recall a single move in his time at the club that has changed the course of a game. Collingwood are sitting clear top of the table 18 months after changing coaches, and I don't believe their list is significantly better than ours. They do have a game plan that suits their list though. My plan for the next four weeks: 1. Our forward line is top heavy and slow, our backline is undersized. Zanker and Scott move into defence; Lampard and Heath into the forward line. Zanker has been at all sea this year, but she has four weeks running in straight lines at CHB to regain confidence. Scott always should have been in defence this year with her attack on the ball and our other forward options. We need a couple of speedy types in the forward line to provide defensive pressure, and their disposal issues will be less costly. Cunningham is a deadweight whose only role should be to contest high balls in the goalsquare - I think she's finished. Give Hore & Parry the run of the forward 50, with Heath and Lampard at their feet. Hopefully Downie is ready to return to strengthen the defense. 2. No switching the play inside defensive 50. Most of our players are poor kicks, lacking accuracy and penetration. I lost count of the times we turned the ball over in that part of the ground. I'm happy kicking down the line to contests and then switching in the middle of the ground. 3. No handballs to the player running past the mark. Most of our players can't handball, and certainly don't have the distance to clear the player manning the mark. Part of the issue is also players like Paxman and Mithen demanding the ball when under pressure. In general this play on at all costs game plan only works when you have quick, skillful players, and we have neither. 4. Bannan and McNamara are being wasted at the moment, and Bannan in particular looks low on confidence. These players are our future and need to be played regardless for the next four weeks. Put both permanently on the wing, with Bannan having the licence to push forward and trying to create mismatches. If there are any other promising kids on the list, give them a run. 5. Daisy Pearce has clearly been a great player, but she reminds me of Jordan Lewis at the moment, ie she is playing with a healthy degree of self preservation in mind. We also haven't been able to get her match ups right such that she can zone off and direct traffic. She needs to be playing across half back, and not get dragged back to the goal square.

This club cannot afford to have a coach who does nothing to market the club. An underachieving football team, a small membership and a coach with the personality of a lettuce leaf is going to ensure we remain largely invisible for the foreseeable future.

Probably because we have a $700K a season CHB who won't play on a man.

I can't see a single benefit to the proposed structure in normal times, and even less so in the current climate. Expect to see an exodus of players to local comps after this season.

The communication with members has been woeful in recent years. If that was his brief, then a change was long overdue.

Another year gone and another year wasted by a board that is asleep at the wheel. Last year's lockdown has allowed them to cover up a multitude of issues, particularly in respect of a dwindling and disgruntled membership base, and declining non-football revenues. Having a training / members' facility in the MCG precinct is not going to happen, and I'm not convinced that is what our fan base wants either. We should be looking at areas within 5-10 kms of the arc from Cheltenham to Glen Waverley, which covers off the population centre of Melbourne and the majority of our fan base. I've said it before, but Moorabbin would have been perfect. Casey is hardly going to be an attractive proposition for the playing group long term and, as attractive as it would be to entrench ourselves in the local community, I simply don't believe that a significant portion of the local population cares about an AFL club (particularly not one that requires an hour long trip to see play). If we were prepared to play half our home games there at a remodelled, boutique stadium, then that is a different proposition entirely. This whole situation feels like it either it has been put in the too hard basket (again) or it is a convenient excuse for the club to hang on to when justifying ongoing on and off field under-performance.

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?