The heart beats true

He handled himself so incredibly well in that press conference. Regardless of some of the internal stuff that’s clearly gone on, and continues to go on, at Collingwood Buckley is a very polished media performer. He’s very well suited to a Director of Football role at a club who is developing.

Buckley stepping down

What if they just aren’t very good? I feel like they have a few good players, but not enough players who are ‘good enough’. Their bottom 8 aren’t capable - either not yet, or probably not going to be. I also have thought that they are probably the team that’s been hurt the most by the debacle of the VFL over the last 2 years. They really needed consistency for the age profile of their list. It’s the same sort of argument you can make for guys like Chandler and Bedford at Melbourne - but times about 12 for the blues list.

Not of a fan of the commentary team (full stop).

I had a go at a poster in the game day thread who I felt was being particularly negative about a team that was 10-1 and 20 points down. I won’t do it again, as it’s not particularly inclusive behaviour. However, I do implore all supporters to give this team some credit, and let them use it. We don’t need to go to water and immediately start saying we are ‘cursed’ and ‘hopeless’ when we are simply in a contest. It’s a very high quality league.

To be fair Oscar and Frosty individually did good jobs in 2018. The issue in 2018, in my opinion, was that our defensive structure as a team lacked strength. We also lacked confidence in the team system, in that when we were challenged we didn’t need each player to try and be a match winner (attack the ball), but instead to trust their teammates and maintain their structure in our system. Sadly that became the blueprint to beat us for the 2 years after 2018, and the reason we all pulled our hair out screaming for some outside players. Now we are confident of the players behind the ball (without question Lever and May are massive upgrades here) which gives us confidence to maintain our shape at stoppages - so if we win we are set up to be much more dynamic. I used to only want Viney, Oliver and Petracca at every stoppage, but then get infuriated when they all fought for the same ball and dished out 1 metre handballs. Now we have a much better balance with Langdon, Jordan and Salem behind and outside the contest, and Oliver and Petracca doing much more work to get on the move away from the contest. For mine 2021 looks like a better ‘team’. I don’t feel like we are playing on emotion or a wave of confidence. The only team that’s beaten us beat our system by playing a very highly skilled game, but also with a very high risk/high reward game plan (take the game on down the middle with absolute precision foot skills). 9 times out of 10 that doesn’t work, but it was literally the only way they could beat us - and as such they played with the freedom of a team that didn’t have anything to lose. Full credit to Adelaide, but I don’t see it becoming the blueprint to defeat us like it was in 2018. In answer to your question - I’m all in on 2021 from what I’ve seen so far. Long way to go, but the sample is encouraging, and looks sustainable over the long run.

Am I right in assuming that theirs no one sitting in the first 2 rows at Adelaide because of COVID?

Gees its frustrating watching Adelaide. They played out of their absolute skins against us. Such good ball use. This week they are terrible.

Did they ever. Higgins has 2 goals a senior AFL player should kick. To miss them both was unforgivable.

We are an interesting supporter base. The moment I realised I loved the club was when Jimmy ran over the mark in the prelim in 1987 - it was horrible, but solidified my passion. I was 9 and sitting about 10 rows back from where it happened at Waverley. The history of the club for 23 year before 1987, and the 30 odd years since then, has been steeped in heartbreak. That year Robbie didn’t get to play in his grand final, Jimmy went on to become a legend of the club, and we lost them both far too early. Troy Broadbridge, Sean Wight, even the tragedy of Liam Jurrah. All of that doesn’t even take into consideration on the field we’ve massively underperformed, and bitterly wasted generations of players and potential. Our supporter culture has been built on disappointment. It’s important for us to change the narrative about our footy team too. We aren’t perennial losers. We are The Melbourne Football Club, with the longest and proudest history of any sporting club in the AFL. This team is the best I’ve seen - because we aren’t riding a wave, we are grinding a winning culture. I’m excited for us all. As Goodwin said ‘expectation is good. We need to learn to win when the pressure is on us’. Let’s not go to water as supporters. Keep the faith, yell louder, open the gates of hell - like only Demons fans can.

Listen up Dees fans. There will be ups and downs, but don’t EVER write this team off. We are a very good football team. Nobody wants us to win. Commentators and journalists want to maintain the narrative about our football club - soft, shaky, lazy. But we aren’t any of those things. We are hard and fast. Stick fat, stick together, and never ever doubt this current group. Go Dees.

You were saying?

I thought you’d given up hope? Still here I see.

Ok bye. Enjoy your weekends. Seriously some ‘supporter’

Hipwood is just trying to block in every marking contest. Someone has to make the umpires aware of it. It’s killing us.

The holding and obstructing of Lever is ridiculous.

We look lost at stoppages

They can’t play better, and we are going at 60%. Clean up around the ball, lift our intensity, and the umpires start being consistent with stoppages (some are given forever, while others they want to ball up after 1 second) and we’ll be right.

To be fair I could have guessed from your username ?

Be 9 when Merrett comes over.

I’m still traumatised by that Port game.

We played so poorly there last year.

I’m genuinely surprised at the level of criticism aimed at some of our players. Fritsch has been outstanding this year. To hear some people say he can’t be played anywhere else when his first season he played exclusively off half back is odd. He’s a very talented football player. And Gawn was ‘fumbly’ and out of touch on the weekend - but somehow picked up 9 votes from the 2 blokes paid $500k each to understand the game. I know we are in unfamiliar territory here Dee’s fans, but it’s ok to appreciate what you’ve got.

I’m going to go out of my way here to defend Angus Bradshaw. His role for the last 6 weeks has been almost exclusively playing the defending wing, which means he has to be hyper aware of his defensive positioning - especially for the switch. You’ll also note the amount of times he’s caught in between players and has to run back and throw his hands up to defend a player coming in to mark. That’s him doing exactly what he needs to do for the team. It’s a very unsexy position, but listen to how often the commentary is around how well set up we are. Angus is a huge part of that. I think he’s done his job amazingly well, and we should be very proud of him and his team first attitude.

That player I’d imagine. Everyone else is a secondary contact so needs a negative test only.