Lucifers Hero

Review undertaken at the end of 2020 by the same people who are doing this review. No idea what they expect will be different. This has 'scapegoat' vibes around it - maybe Dodoro and assistant coaches! They are hoping to do a Thompson, Hardwick, Goodwin assistant coach change that then delivers a premiership very quickly thereafter. But tey do reviews, fiddle around the edges and get rid of someone: Neeld, Worsfold and now others but they don't solve the underlying problems because they refuse to acknowledge their messed up recent history and won't look past their sense of entitlement.

BB was a 'close contact' and the rules changed just after he came out of covid protocols. Close contacts no longer need to isolate. So Lever, Viney, Jackson, Petty, ANB, Pickett and Sparrow all had covid.

Having prepared the 'What they are saying...' threads for a few months, I'm surprised how decent opp fans have been. There has been the odd but rare nasty poster, which I don't bother including. The most common sentiments are: respect, fear, awe. This probably wasn't always the case. tbh there are more nasty posts on DL toward our opps and their fans in the pre and post game related threads. Shall see myself out...

Bigfooty Before our Freo loss We go in with absolutely ZERO expectations of a win so should be no pressure on us. Look at it this way: We lose: we get a better draft pick via our first. We win: we get a better draft pick via Melbourne’s first. Happy days. I'm low key confident we'll win this game. It'll be the first game where we put in a 4 quarter performance. As for this game, it really comes down to Melbourne. ..it is only natural they're due to drop their intensity and lose a game. It is just a matter of whether they do it this week against Freo or next week against us. They are due a stupid loss, and I would love it to be us but I reckon it would take a full four quarter effort with very few brain fades. Gonna win this by under a goal and the post game thread celebrations will be going for a while May out helps but if they drop freo they will destroy us Mommy I'm scared After our Freo Loss I had a feeling either Freo or Swans would break Melbourne's win streak, I guess Freo got there first. Is back-to-back losses too much to ask Unfortunately for us, Melbourne couldn't wait one more half of footy before putting the cue in the rack. We now face the best team in the comp with the added spice of having a point to prove. Anything within a 30 point loss will be a respectable outcome for us. Melbourne will come out absolutely firing next week to dispel what happened last night. We just gotta go with them, not saying we win , but think against the best we usually bring from full effort and fire up Sure, they'll re-group & plan for a game without May - but I do sense we're catching Melbourne at a reasonable time. I reckon Warner will be like a cat on a hot tin roof this week. Saturday night at the g, against the best team in the comp with the 2 best bulls in the game playing in his position. He would be frothing at the mouth to get out there this week... ...I guarantee he will be looking for a moment to put either tracca or clarry on their [censored] this week to really announce himself Dees loss to Freo has done us zero favours. Hard to see Petracca having another shocker. Can we just forfeit, will be a massacre. The matchup I’m really keen to see but unsure if will happen due to injury is the flying Ed Langdon v Jmac. I still think Jmac is not full speed from his knee injury but would love to see them go at it streaming down the wing of the G. Can see the former 400m runner Jmac reeling him in. Just hit them hard from the get go pressure and intent goes a long way to winning any game. Swans are 1 and 3 against the current top 8. That’s not finals calibre. July 16. Freo at Optus. The stuff of nightmares. By comparison, this week is a walk in the park. Of course Melbourne get back Salem, McDonald, Harmes and Langdon this week. You just knew this would happen. I honestly don't elevate Melbourne to these lofty heights that some have. They're a good side. No doubt. However they have their weaknesses. They were exposed and out coached against Freo on the weekend. Trac is carrying something and coming off a bad bout of the flu, I'm not too scared of him this week. After Buddy’s Appeal Announced. If he gets off it will be because he's Buddy. It's worth doing. I'm genuinely terrified of what Gawn, Oliver & Petracca will do to us if we have our usual 20-40 minutes of nap-time. We have any lapses against that trio and we can forget about any comeback as they'll put it out of reach, something that Carlton, Brisbane, Richmond etc. all failed to do. Watching it again just now on 360, not sure how we're going to argue it though when the second had a much bigger follow through so can't really be argued as the same action as the first lol. It's a different Melbourne team this week: Harmes, Langdon, Salem, McDonald, a healthierPetracca. Freo didn't have to deal with them. If you head butted me, I'd ******* punch you in the face too My favourite Buddy challenge is interesting. Wonder what the hell they can actually argue... ..that cotchin is a [censored]. LH note: The DL censor has spoilt the joke. Censored word is a translation of: Richard Cranium.

Both great marks! It seems the loss has caused us to gloss over these achievements. moty-demon-duo-nominated-for-high-flying-efforts Vote for our guys: https://www.afl.com.au/mark-of-the-year The other contender this week is Goldstein. One of Sam's best contested marks. Loved seeing Charlie flying high. Well done guys.

I had a different interpretation. It was a chance for Petracca to learn what his body can and can't do. Really, neither Petracca, Goodwin or the Doctor would know how it would go until they tried. We don't know whether the illness was ok during the day but got worse as it went on. I think someone posted that he was seen vomiting at the ground. Anyway, we had limited options on who to play instead of him.

Agree he has a right to be peeved off but I come from the school of 'praise in public, criticise in private'. He had options. Even Steven May said he had to curb his on-field demonstrativeness to teammates. Parish clearly cares for their preformance but for mine making a beeline for the likes of Kelly isn't showing care for a teamate's wellbeing or being a 'good teammate' to use a demon term. Interestingly, Rutten walked up to the group for a few seconds, walked away and let Parish continue. Not sure what to make of that...

Encouraging news for Petty according to our Doc: “MRI has cleared him of any structural injury, and he will look to full train this week leading into our game.″

Usually Tuesday night.

Votes Really didn't expect any dees to get votes but Oliver deserved votes for his first half but only one of the coaches gave him the credit. 8 Rory Lobb (FRE) 8 Michael Frederick (FRE) 5 Sean Darcy (FRE) 3 Brennan Cox (FRE) 2 Clayton Oliver (MELB) 2 James Aish (FRE) 1 Andrew Brayshaw (FRE) 1 Lachie Schultz (FRE) Coaches Split 4/4 or 5/3 to Lobb/ Frederick 5/0 to Darcy 3/0 to Cox 2/0 Oliver 2/0 Aish 1/0 Brayshaw (Freo) 1/0 Schultz. Coaches roughly agree with Lobb and Frederick. Then all over the shop But 5/0 for Darcy is seriously weird!!! One coach didn't rate him 🤔 Leader Board Oliver still in the lead. Max has dropped out of the top 2o. 63 Clayton Oliver MELB 58 Lachie Neale BL 53 Patrick Cripps CARL 50 Christian Petracca MELB 48 Andrew Brayshaw FRE 44 Callum Mills SYD 42 Jeremy Cameron GEEL 41 Darcy Parish ESS 40 Touk Miller GCFC 40 Bailey Smith WB 39 Jack Crisp COLL 39 James Sicily HAW 37 Charlie Curnow CARL 35 Sam Walsh CARL 31 Jordan De Goey COLL 31 Hugh McCluggage BL 31 Jack Sinclair STK 31 Tom Stewart GEEL

Darcy Parish went on quite a rant yesterday - his diatribe lasted over a minute. No respect for his captain or care for his teammates. From the 15 sec mark of the video herein: https://www.foxsports.com.au/afl/i-hate-that-three-afl-greats-split-over-bombers-stars-tense-clash/news-story/c8f6e072256055e13e3b6e3d0718367a Such a bad attitude. Ess is in a very bad place.

A lesser known player won't get off. Buddy had deliberately already struck Cotchin on the chest with an open hand. The one on the chin again was deliberate with a closed fist. The Tribunal should give due weight to this being behind play and bad for the optics. Not to mention potential to do harm Of course being Buddy those things will be conveniently ignored.

I would quickly duck for cover when @WalkingCivilWarsees that!! Unless she decides you are trolling and ignores you...

On SEN Goodwin just talked very confidently about Gus staying.

On SEN Goodwin just talked very confidently about Jackson staying.

On the last para - it won't be up to us. If Jackson decides to go and picks Eagles we would not and really could not refuse to trade. If we did they would walk him to the PSD. But I don't think it would come to that. My observation is that WCE are 'honest brokers' as are we. But their backs are against the wall so who knows how they would play a potential Jackson trade. As an aside, if he chose to go I would rather he chooses Eagles than Freo not only because they have better picks but I think Bell is less than an 'honest broker' and like his Ess counterpart wants to 'win every trade'! While the Hogan trade didn't work out for them Bell played a lot of games with us and their best draft picks. But lets hope he stays and it is all hypothetical.

WCE can trade their 'natural' pick, likely to be #1 or #2 as long as they get one back for this draft. I see them trade their 'natural' pick for two first round picks, possibly two top in the top 10 Then they use the best +/- something else for Jackson and the other for one of the highly rated WA draftees and meet AFL rules.. If they really want to kick start their rebuild they can then trade up some of their later 2022 picks or 2023 picks for another 2022 first round pick. If they finish last, they also have pick #19 which is highly valued because it is the first pick of round 2 and usually highly sought. So they could easily have 4 picks in the top 20. There are 3-4 highly rated WA players in the top 20 so I reckon they will be aiming to max their draft currency via trading of picks. Further currency if they trade players. What would they give up for Jackson? Would they be happy to wait two years to get him? Who knows.

Can't believe I am barracking for Collingwood 🙄

All our defenders had a torrid time yesterday. The 'talls' have been much spoken about. A few words about our smaller defenders: Bowey, Hunt, Rivers and Brayshaw. Normally, Hunt would have had Schultz covered and Bowey would have Frederick covered. But they along with Rivers and Brayshaw had to cover their man plus back up Lever in May's absence and Petty's injury. Furthermore, some of them were attending stoppages because our mids couldn't get down there. And Brayshaw gave us great rebound in the second quarter. All up that was a mountain of work by those 4 guys especially when our midfield was depleted and couldn't stop the ball getting into our d half. Eventually the avalanche took its toll. Its easy to forget Bowey has played 18 games, Rivers 44 and Petty 36. A big learning experience for them. While the scoreboard says otherwise our defensive unit did a great job. Very proud of them all.

Tomlinson for Petracca would have been a good late change even without knowing May would go down in the first 10 minutes. We knew Petty had been injured the week before and we knew TMc wasn't playing so having Tomlinson in the team or medi sub was the %'age play. Whether Petracca played or not I think we missed a trick not having Tomlinson as medi sub. We may not have won the match with Tomlinson as medi sub but he would have prevented the breakdown in our defence when Petty went down and reduced the need to shuffle so many players into unfamiliar positions. Having said that may we selected Dunstan knowing Petracca wasn't well and kept our fingers crossed on Petty. The medisub was a real dilemma for the coaches. I would have leaned to Tomlinson. It was a 'Murphy's Law' day.

Hi Df, my post after yours isn't related to your 'depth' comment. i was typing while you posted and didn't see it so I wasn't criticising your pov.

I still believe in our depth but yesterday was a bridge too far. A lot of our first choice 22 were out: Salem, McDonald, Harmes, Langdon. All other things being equal we would have won with the selected team. But with May, Petty and Petracca 'not available' (and Max looked hampered) for much of the game it was too much for our replacements Bedford, Dunstan, Melksham and Weideman to plug those gaps. Altho credit to Bedford's work. Which 'absentee' was the 'straw that broke the camel's back'. I don't know. But we had to shuffle best 22 players to unfamiliar roles which weakened structures, ball movement and fwd half pressure. imv that has little to do with our depth.

I think you have the 'cause' and 'effect' back to front: Maybe we were well on top because Gus propped up the defence almost single handedly when others went down. And in the third when Petty was off the ground for part of it and when on heavily restricted, the dam walls broke.

Thanks.. iirc, I think the original question from Demostone was related to the MSD.

They are rookies. Only senior list spots can be used for the MSD.