Lucifers Hero

I'm pretty sure he is an RFA as he has been there 8 years and would be in their top 25% earners. If he isn't in the top 25% he would be an FA - altho that would be very unlikely. So Ess can match.

Ess love trade time drama and would match just about any $ offer and demand a trade (ala Cameron @ Geelong) to extract more than the AFL compensation draft pick and or players. Dodoro will do it just for the sport.

We are in the queue port-adelaide-eye-bombers-star-merrett "Melbourne are another club to have shown strong interest in Merrett, who would add run and ball use to a formidable ball-winning midfield". If we get him we must be planning to trade some reasonable players out to make sal cap space s I doubt the players that are likely to not have contracts renewed this year, will free up anywhere near enough $ after their replacements are recruited. Not to mention our talent need to be rewarded. Will be an interesting trade period. We would be looking very attractive to him and any other FA's looking for success.

What is it with Goal of the Year this round? Whoever nominates them has a preoccupation with flukey, dribble kicks from the boundary - one of the three nominees was even described as an accident by the commentators. Meanwhile, Max roosts one from the center square at a critical time of the game and crickets!

I didn't see the incident. From what Clarkson said last night I doubt they will appeal.

Mitch Lewis suspended for a week so won't line up against us on Sunday. MRP decisions have favoured us this year,

Such a heart wrenching plea, ding. Simply and beautifully said.

Correct. The coaches votes split after Petracca and Gawn were: 4/0 Oliver 3/0 Langdon 2/0 Lever 2/0 Salem 1/0 McDonald 1/0 Pickett Pure guess work as to which were Goodwin votes and Scott votes. They certainly saw the game differently.

Coaches Votes: By Coach: 5/5 Petracca 4/3 Gawn The rest are obvious. Again agreement on the top 2 but no agreement at all on the rest. I guess it reflects the team effort and overall contribution by 22 players. Leader Board 28 Taylor Walker ADEL 22 Max Gawn MELB 22 Jack Macrae WB 20 Clayton Oliver MELB 19 Dustin Martin RICH

And info for members?

It seems odd that we have had no press conf, press release nor member email to announce the appointment. Tom Morris who leaked the story of Bartlett standing down seems to have gone to ground. And the Pert email he thought had been sent on Saturday night doesn't seem to have existed or he was misinformed. Wouldn't mind seeing something official from mfc on Kate's appointment.

Nothing from/gy the club yet, od. This article we-have-got-to-be-better-equality-key-to-roffey-s-melbourne-presidency is based on an interview on the ABC. Listen to the interview on the link in here: melbourne-football-club-kate-roffey Having now listened to the whole interview, the 'equality for all subject' is one of quite a number of goals. Just shows the earlier tweet failed to present a balanced report of the interview.

It looks to me helping deliver a flag is a top priority. From the article: 'While Kate Roffey wants to do all she can to lead the Demons to premierships and off-field stability, the new Melbourne president spoke passionately on Monday morning about pushing for equality on a number of issues'. 'Roffey ...said another priority was to secure a home base for the Demons...' There is no reason why she and her Board cannot have more than one goal.

Other Board members would have known what she stood for and in choosing her have endorsed the goals she has laid out. Impressively, our Board managed to pull off a 'bloodless coup' when success is on the horizon. We don't know the reason for ousting Bartlett but they must have had a good reason to change. We need to trust their decisions.

One thing in our favour for Mac Andres is that clubs are unlikely to use a top 20 pick on a pure ruckman who probably won't play for a few years. We used pick 3 on Jackson but he is seen as ruck/forward/tall midfielder. I don't think 'the top 20' cutoff for NGA players is adjusted for Northern Academy and F/S players taken in the first round so that would help him slide to outside the top 20. In the AFL article: "During the upcoming recess of the NAB League competition Melbourne is expected to increase its work with Andrew, including the potential of him featuring for their VFL side Casey Demons". early-season-blitz-puts-ruckman-on-demons-nga-radar Good to see he gets an early start start with us. That is partly why Sydney Academy players are ready to play in their early years.

Listed on the umpires website each week: https://aflua.com.au/umpire-appointments/ Round 4: https://aflua.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2021-AFL-Season-Umpire-Appointments-Round-4-edit.pdf

Geelong rely on outscoring ops early in the game in the hope they will hang on and win. In the last two games they were well ahead at 3/4 time only to be outscored in the last. vs Brisbane 4.3 to Geelong 1.1 in the last qtr who were lucky to win by a pt vs Hawthorn 4.3 to Geelong 1.2 in the last qtr who again were lucky to win by 5 pts Those games and their fade out in the GF says they can't play out a full 120 min even at the smaller Geelong ground where the Brisbane game was played. There will be nowhere to hide at the MCG. The key is to stay with them (or be ahead) on the scoreboard at 3/4 time and then run them off their feet. And kicking straight will help this immensely. The other key thing is their scoring efficiency - not many scoring shots vis a vis the opp but get more goals than points which has been a feature of their game for a long time, especially against us. We need to force them to kick for goal from further out to reduce that efficiency. We will win.

He is the Lachie Whitfield, Daniel Rich half-back type player. Worth their weight in gold even if not top money earners. A large part of why Salem 'looks better' this year is because we have better ball movement processes and positioning and a mid field who understand their roles better. He has always had exquisite skills and footy IQ and been very, very good and under rated on this board.

Beware the 'Trojan Horse'! Hardwick has an ulterior motive. He has a young ruckman (Sam Ryan) who won't get senior games for a while with Nankervis and Soldo there so he wants to get senior games into Ryan. As Drew said lots of teams play without recognised ruckman. Bulldogs is a team who have made an art form of not having one. Lions don't have one available right now either. We did very well without Max and Spencer in 2017 - quite a winning spree. Doubt Dimmer would lend his young ruckman to a team in finals contention.

Its a bit rich Scott complaining about 'the cost' of Syd Academy players: Geelong got umpteen father/sons for very late junk picks: Ablett, Hawkins, Scarlett etc etc. without whom they would not have won any of their most recent flags. Pies have 4 father/sons players and will get one next year; touted to be #1 in the draft and they have two top NGA players. Bulldgos got JUH and never invested a minute in his development - a quirk of geography gave him to them. At least Sydney invest time and money into their guys. And if other clubs thought highly of Gulden they should have bid for him earlier to force Sydney to pay a higher price. Lots of sour grapes among Vic clubs.

Agreed, we won't truly know until they are back, especially Brown who runs in a straight line and leads to the ball. So far the fast open play from the new rules have advantaged that type of fwd. So ?.

They should off-set all the free kicks against Geelong that weren't paid to the opps: throws, dropping the ball, faking 'high' contact etc etc. That would even the differential quite a bit.

From the horse's mouth: Asked whether he wants to be at Melbourne beyond his current contract, he replied: “Yeah, I do. I love the club.” He later added: “Being a one-club player is pretty special.” https://www.foxsports.com.au/afl/afl-2021-trade-news-christian-petracca-to-collingwood-melbourne-contract-news-afl-360-scott-pendlebury-trade-latest-news/news-story/7587605fdfec892de7455b8adccab4d0

This year a lot of goals are being scored by end-to-end ball movement from kick-ins after a point. One of the rule changes that hasn't had much attention is that the defender must 'stand' (ie not move) 10 mtrs from the top of the goal square; previously it was 5. This plus the 'stand' rule gives the kicker a lot more space and time to attack and he can get the ball to the center (the 'fat' part) where the width makes it harder for the opps to defend. If the ball is marked the 'stand' rule again makes it easier to attack. If it comes to ground there is less chance of a stoppage as players are spread and fast players (eg Langdon, Hunt) can turn on their jets. If the opp mark it is far less likely they will score than if the mark was taken at around the 50m line and it gives defenders time to set-up. Or the kicker can kick short (to eg Salem, Rivers) who can then kick over the pack and link up with Langdon or Brayshaw. Not many points have been scored in our last two games so not a good sample but it looked to me we weren't kicking to Max all the time at kick-ins and using our smaller defenders and wing men much more effectively after kick-ins. Without that extra 5mtrs at kick-ins I'm not sure the ground would be so open and end-to-end goals so frequent. Will be interesting to see how it pans out in the next few weeks as more teams wake up to the advantages of that extra 5mtrs. Sydney is a good example of making the most of this little rule change.

I think Port missed what Chris Scott called the 'paradigm shift'. "I think if you miss the paradigm shift, you can be left behind very, very quickly... we have got to find a way through and when we find our way through this little patch at the moment we have got to find a way to be a whole lot better." I believe he is referring to the impact of the new rules. And it looks to me that last year's Prelim finalists (Port, Lions, Cats and Tigers) have missed that impact. Perhaps believing their system/game plan was so good it didn't need much change. They are now playing 'catch-up'. Hardwick said something similar about needing to learn from their Sydney defeat and make changes to the way they go about it. It reminds me of us not adjusting to the impact of the 6-6-6 paradigm shift. Fortunately, this time we did anticipate the rules impact and have adjusted and practiced our game plan. I think it will take those teams 3-6 weeks to adjust but even then they will be experimenting with what works. Fortunately we play Cats and Tigers in the next few weeks so we may have a bit of an advantage which is why I believe we can be 6-0 or 5-1. By mid-year the best teams will have adjusted and the second half of the season will be more even. And as you say we will need to be better to match Eagles and other teams when they catch up.