poita

Aside from the result last year, it was a great night and anybody who chooses not to turn up is as pizzweak as the team was on Sunday. That said, I suspect the crowd will be closer to 65K. We will lose a few off the top with Richmond 11 game members not getting entry this year, and then a few more for soft Melbourne types not turning up. Anything over 70K would be a great result in my eyes.

This rubbish about str Rubbish. The structure that was planned for all summer was that Hogan and McDonald would be the talls. When McDonald went down, the structure required that the next in line (presumably Pedersen or Weideman) would fill the void. What Goodwin has done by dropping Pedersen and replacing him with a small is exactly what you are arguing against. It just shows that the guy is making things up as he goes along.

It is amazing to me that people continue to support Bugg. Do you ever wonder why it is that he gets shots on goal? It is because his opponents don't respect him and know that he won't hurt them if he gets possessions inside 50. Far better to play 2 on 1 against Hogan, and leave Bugg free, rather than allowing Hogan to compete 1 v 1 and wasting someone on Bugg. It wasn't just his missed shots either, it is also the three-grab chest marks that prevent him from playing on quickly and the numberous ground ball fumbles.

Gawn's ruck work was truly awful on Sunday. 66 hit outs, approximately none of which benefited the team. Obviously our midfield were extremely poor and didn't work nearly hard enough, but in those circumstances Max would be better dropping the ball at his feet rather than into open space. I love Max's work rate around the ground, but his goalkicking from inside 30 metres is abysmal. I find it astonishing that he hasn't tidied this up in the past three weeks.

- Simon Goodwin - Senior Coach - Brendan McCartney - Player/Coach Performance Manager - Matthew Egan - Head of Player Development - Ben Mathews - Stoppage and Contest Coach - Troy Chaplin - Backline Coach - Craig Jennings - Game Analyst and Education Coordinator - Jade Rawlings - Casey Demons VFL Coach I assume all of the above names have something to do with the current state of our defence, but the buck surely stops with Goodwin & Chaplin. How hard is it for six defenders to each have an opponent and the spare, if we must have one, to provide cover against the most dangerous forward/s? It seems to me that we have a lot of coaches making things more difficult than necessary, just to justify their positions at the club. Some of the goals we conceded on Sunday were unbelievable. Players not rushing the ball through the points from a metre out, spoils directed to the goal square, everybody up in contests leaving multiple Hawks on the ground, and so on. None of these are complicated. How can seven responsible coaches not ensure that we have the basics sorted, before they go about reinventing the wheel?

In: Pederson, Hunt, Tyson, Hannan, Stretch Out: Lever, Harmes, Bugg, Lewis, Melksham Very, very lucky: Frost, Fritsch, Neal-Bullen, Wagner, Vince Safe (for now): Hogan, Jones, Salem, Petracca, Brayshaw, Gawn, Oliver, Hibberd, Kent (can't believe I'm saying that), McDonald, Garlett, Jetta. Not playing a CHF / backup ruck is just ridiculously dumb, particularly given the way we bomb the ball forward. We don't need 3 tall defenders against Richmond, and Lever is just slightly more woeful than Frost. Tyson is a given. The others are just shuffling deckchairs on the Titanic, but Bugg has Z-grade skills and I'm sick of Melksham's one handed marking attempts. I would have dropped Lewis before his injury was announced.

Regardless of the appearance and the fairness of the tactic, ultimately it is yet another match day tactic that Goodwin has failed to combat. His inability to read the play, so to speak, on game day is astonishing.

Lever is making Lumumba look like a committed, competent footballer at the moment. His lack of composure and awareness, together with his atrocious disposal, surely warrant a stint at Casey. If I didn't know better, I'd wonder if he'd actually played the game before at a decent level. Yes, our defence collectively has been woeful (with the glaring exception of Oscar McDonald), but Lever is the biggest culprit. As a loose man he has had zero impact and has offered zero support for his teammates; as a true defender he has been flogged by everyone from first gamers to D-grade hacks.

Amazing how often you get injured when you don't give 100%. If the other bloke is going harder than you, of course you will come off second best.

Wagner's been good, without being super. It is certainly noticeable that when his intensity drops off, even by a few percent, he looks very average, very quickly (1st half Geelong). When he is really attacking the ball and his opponent at full bore, he looks so much better (2nd half Geelong). That said, I think his decision making and disposal is questionable under real pressure, and I don't think we have seen the team under much pressure in the last two weeks. The next two weeks will be a much better test of whether he will make it.

Jesse's work rate was extraordinary on Saturday. There are times he needs to play from the goal square, and times he needs to play up the ground. We are very lucky that he is so capable at both, however we definitely need another big body up forward when Jesse is not there.

In: Pedersen, Brayshaw Out: Pick from Melksham, Neal-Bullen, Fritsch, Vince, Jetta (looks injured to me) Lever and Frost both lucky, but I think we need three talls against Hawthorn. One will go for Richmond.

Quality teams with good intercept marks will destroy us if we persist with this strategy. With Hogan roaming far and wide, and Pedersen and McDonald out of the team, who exactly are the big bodies that are crashing packs and creating opportunities for the crumbers? So far we have been lucky that Taylor & Henderson at Geelong, and then Tarrant at North have been missing. Arguably Majak Daw was our best forward on the weekend. Hawthorn and Richmond will be licking their lips if we try it against them. Rance might just set a new record for marks in a couple of weeks.

Good on Christian for turning things around, but it is a little disappointing that he had to be told these things at year end. It should have been apparent to him throughout the year that he wasn't fit enough and, if not, the coaches should have been all over him about it. Obviously injury and illness were a factor initially, but he has basically wasted the first four years of his career by just cruising along. He was very good on Saturday, particularly in the third quarter, so hopefully that level of effort becomes his new normal.

Clayton is a star. Yes, he was relatively quiet by his very high standards on Saturday, but 2 goals and 20 possessions against a hard tag is pretty handy for quiet day. We've had plenty of good players in the past 30 years, but most of them have had an enormous gap between their best and worst football. If Clayton can still contribute on his lesser days, as he did on Saturday, he will be the best of the bunch.

Lever has been a major disappointment to date. I never expected to get a quality lock down defender, because he was never that at Adelaide. But his poor positioning, his lack of workrate / intensity and his inability to help out Oscar at any stage have been a damning indictment. As I've said before, I suspect the club significantly understated the impact of Daniel Talia as a reliable, intelligent footballer on the game of Lever. Perhaps Jake needs Jordan Lewis to be telling what to do and where to be at all times, just as Luke Hodge is doing at Brisbane. Either way, Lever is underperforming himself, and he has thrown the entire defensive group out of sync. Something needs to change pronto, or we will be flogged this week.

The more I think about this decision, the more I hate it. My 7 year old son has probably never seen a poker machine in his life, and certainly wouldn't know what to do with one. For most people they are out of sight and out of mind. I certainly can't see anybody forcing people to use them. On the other hand, sports betting is absolutely everywhere - at the football, on the TV, in the newspapers. My son certainly knows all about the odds, even though nobody in the family gambles. It is a far, far bigger problem, not least of all because it can be done any time, any where without anybody knowing. For the AFL community to decide that pokies are the work of the devil on one hand, but support the betting agencies on the other, is incredibly hypocritical. However this is fairly typical of an industry that chooses to go all in on certain causes and turn a blind eye to others, depending on the views of its financial backers.

Yet another example of a small minority of people not wanting to take responsibility for their actions and hence the majority who do the right thing and have some self control suffer.

Here's a tip for the simple minded who don't like this thread: don't read it, don't post in it, just ignore it. Carry on with your lives as though it never existed. Let those who want to talk about Jack Watts do so.

There are far too many Goodwin apologists on this thread. Allowing the opposition to have 1 or even 2 more extra players around the contest all day is just dumb, particularly given the lack of leg speed in the side. All it does is allow the opposition to win easy clearances, stream forward in number and pepper our defensive 50. Playing loose men in defence can be okay if those players are getting to contests and helping out their teammates. I assumed we paid a fortune for Lever for this purpose, not so he could be outmuscled by a first gamer. Having guys like Lewis and Wagner bludge around by themselves at the top of the 50 getting cheap kicks is pointless. When you are getting smashed in the clearances you need to put more players around the ball, not less. And you need to get players spreading to provide short options to maintain possession for a time, rather than just kicking down the line to a 1 on 3 contest forever.

1. We had ten players who did absolutely nothing, and still gave Geelong a real contest. Some of those, including Lever, Salem & Jetta, could not have played worse if they had tried. 2. We didn't throw in the towel in the second half, and put ourselves in a position to win the game. 3. Simon Goodwin gets another reminder that he is not as smart as he thinks he is, and can not afford to play games at selection.

I love that so many people around here believe Goodwin when he says that both will be back in 6-8 weeks, when he has been less than honest (or at best, so very wrong) on this subject in the past. I have zero confidence that Viney will play this year, and am losing faith that we will see McDonald play any meaningful part in our season either. Goodwin should just say "we will take the time to get these injuries fixed, we don't know how long that will take, we will update you when we have something definite to tell you", rather than providing a running commentary and looking like a fool or worse when his deadlines are missed. That said, I do expect him to explain why McDonald played AFLX and JLT.

If stupidity was an Olympic sport, there are a number of employees of the MFC that would be strong favourites to bring home the gold medal in their respective weight divisions. Not only do we allow Jack Viney to destroy his foot by playing him early against all prevailing medical wisdom, we allow Tom McDonald to do the same thing six months later. At least Viney's problems stem from regular season matches - the club was stupid enough to let McDonald play a shitty exhibition game two months out from the season. Given the countless half truths and outright lies spoken by everyone from the coach down since Viney's initial injury, I can only assume that we will spend the next 23 weeks enduring the same regarding McDonald's problem. Time for the club to man up and admit to their errors of judgement and give honest timelines for the returns of both Jack and Tom. PS. Vandenberg - indefinite, McKenna - indefinite. So glad my membership dollars are paying for these two to not play football for the club.

Double post, sorry.

I would like to join.