poita

I doubt Jefferson could have less impact than Melksham has in the past two weeks. My only fear is that our ball movement and forward structures are so dysfunctional that playing him at this time could be seriously detrimental to his confidence and development.

Bevo has never been afraid of trying things and moving players around. Goodwin never makes a move until the game is gone. Their situations are poles apart.

We're playing kids, but how can you be confident that most of them will make it? McVee and Van Rooyen will be fine. Windsor can clearly play. That's it. I have real concerns about Tholstrup, Howes, Moniz-Wakefield and Turner. Bowey has regressed. Laurie is a bust. Woewodin and Brown are triers, but not sure they can step up. Kentfield was a bizarre swing and miss.

Any faint hope was lost in the first ten minutes when all our match ups were completely wrong and our players were just casual observers. If the Bulldogs had kicked straight we would have (deservedly) lost by 100 points. The sooner Goodwin, Lamb and their ship of fools departs, the better.

Terrible quarter from the first minute to the last. We have maybe three players who want to be there, the rest are clearly looking forward to going on holidays.

6 players with 3 or less disposals. Any chance Pickett and Chandler can do anything useful?

Should be ten goals down, but thankfully the Dogs are undoing the best efforts of the umps and ourselves to destroy the contest. Don’t know why we keep playing injured players, particularly when we have suitable replacements.

We've given him a decent go, but he's clearly not up to it.

It takes some serious coaching skill to get every single match up completely wrong. Well done Goody. Can't tackle, can't get a clearance, can't hit the ball to a teammate, can't man up, can't kick, can't take a mark. I don't know what we do at training, but it certainly isn't practicing basic skills or tactics. Add in McDonald and Chandler sleepwalking around, and a bunch of kids who are miles off the required standard, and the sooner this season ends the better. PS Bontempelli is the best player in the comp, how about we show him some respect and pay him some attention?

I'm guessing Laurie was dropped because his defensive positioning and efforts are well below the required standard, which might not be obvious to people who watched Saturday's game from the comfort of their living rooms. It was noticeable that he was not on the ground towards the end of the game, along with several other young players. That said, he is a little unlucky because I have the same concerns about Moniz-Wakefield and Tholstrup, and they seem to get multiple opportunities. Ultimately what I take from this week's team is that we love rewarding mediocrity, and that our depth is non-existent. 20 of the 22 who started in the terrible performance against Fremantle 11 days ago are playing this week. The other two are both injured.

I suspect he found that the offers coming from other clubs were nowhere near what he was being offered by North. Nobody is selling the farm to bring in a 190cm third forward.

Max's inability (or unwillingness) to counter rucks who block his leap at centre bounces is becoming a real issue for us. Clearly his foot injury was an issue on Saturday (realistically he wouldn't be playing if we had a suitable backup), but this tactic is something that has been successfully used against him numerous times this year. I also don't think fatigue is an excuse for the way we line up at centre bounces. It was quite clear that we were prepared to give up front position throughout Saturday's game, which led to us being second to the ball for the most part. Combine that with Max's erratic hitouts and it's no surprise that we were belted at centre clearances.

We may regret not giving some of our players more VFL games this year. In such a short season, the consequences of not being close to top form by round 1 can be significant. Some clubs, such as Hawthorn, I believe gave their players a lot of VFL games, so it will be interesting to see their early season form.

I can't disagree with those votes. We had a number of players do a few decent things and then disappear. The Giants players were more consistent across the game, and were clearly more influential when the game was in the balance through the third quarter and into the fourth.

The team is fighting for a finals spot, and their so-called supporters can't be bothered getting along to cheer them on. If you only buy a membership to get access to finals tickets, or attend only when you know you're going to see a win, you're not a true supporter.

First quarter was excellent, last ten minutes pretty good, but the rest was absolute garbage. As soon as we coughed up two soft goals at the start of the second quarter it was inevitable that we'd lose, and GWS went on a 12 goal to 3 run after quarter time. Gawn clearly wasn't fit. Good on him for having a crack, but our centre bounce work was atrocious once again and he was a major reason why. Not having a running player as sub was horrible coaching, and should never happen again. Our bottom 8 to 10 players are just not good enough, and most of them will never be good enough. We need to make significant, long overdue changes to the list in the next two months. Ditto the coaching staff, from the senior coach down. And finally, tonight's crowd was abysmal and says everything about the character of our so-called supporter base.

Yes, he's going okay (at best), but has done nothing to warrant a 4 year extension at this point. Why not hold for off 12 months? How's the ridiculous Laurie extension looking at the moment?

We really are determined to follow Richmond into mediocrity if we make short term list management decisions at the expense of longer term improvements. Just ask them how the Jacob Hopper trade is working out. The only way forward for this group is to bring in quality kids with high draft picks. Anything else is Goodwin trying to save his own [censored].

Is that a nice way of dropping Lever without actually saying he's been dropped? I'd be more than happy for Tomlinson to come in for him. May missing, on the other hand, would be a big loss given he matches up well against Hogan.

When in the next decade will this happen, and at what level will he be playing at that time? Keeping Laurie on the list is the equivalent of a gambler chasing his losses. I agree that Bowey needs to be tried elsewhere, because he is not working as a defender.

Richmond got a crowd of 19K to their game against the Giants two weeks ago on a Sunday afternoon. Given our respective member numbers and the poor forecast for Saturday night, are we in danger of falling below that number?

I'm more concerned about what our 2027 team looks like, and how we recruit and develop adequate replacements for Gawn, May, McDonald, Viney, Melksham and Salem in that time, whilst acknowledging that Lever, Langdon, Petracca, Fritsch and Neal-Bullen are also 30 by then.

Lamb has been a massive failure from both a personnel and a contract perspective, whilst we have been a top 4 side. How is he going to attract and retain top end talent if we drop out of finals contention when he can't do it now?

We definitely need to change our thinking. If a team like Geelong can get away with 1 year deals for their older players, we shouldn't need to lock players away until their mid 30s. The Brayshaw situation should also be a reality check for us.

Do you really believe that, if a coach says "please Mr List Manager, I need a genuine no 2 ruckman to back up my ageing, injury prone lead ruck", he is going to be ignored? He is absolutely responsable for the imbalance of the list and our obsession with recruiting undersized utility types.