Lucifers Hero

Oliver has another perfect 10! And taken the lead!! One of these days he will get the recognition he deserves from the media and the rest of the industry. And, hopefully from umpires when they do their Brownlow voting. The votes for Keays and Seedsman show where the damage was done by the Crows Votes 10 Clayton Oliver (MELB) 7 Ben Keays (ADEL) 7 Paul Seedsman (ADEL) 2 Jake Lever (MELB) 2 Taylor Walker (ADEL) 1 Christian Petracca (MELB) 1 Ed Langdon (MELB) Coaches Split: 5/5 Oliver 4/3 Keys/ Seedsman 2/0 Lever, Walker 1/0 Petracca, Langdon. Leaderboard Surprisingly, Petracca has dropped off the leaderboard. 52 Clayton Oliver MELB 50 Marcus Bontempelli WB 50 Hugh McCluggage BL 44 Samuel Walsh CARL 39 David Mundy FRE 38 Darcy Parish ESS 37 Jarryd Lyons BL 37 Touk Miller GCFC 36 Zach Merrett ESS 36 Ollie Wines PORT 34 Max Gawn MELB 33 Jacob Hopper GWS 33 Jack Macrae WB 33 Christian Salem MELB 32 Tim Kelly WCE 32 Dustin Martin RICH 30 Travis Boak PORT 30 Mitch Duncan GEEL 30 Cameron Guthrie GEEL 30 Taylor Walker ADEL

Richmond quietly slipped out of the 8 this week...may they stay there!!

More likely his info is from reading DL.

Being one of the teams that adapted to the kick in change and the general 'stand' on the mark rule it helped us early in the season. It certainly helped us transition the ball end to end. How many times did we see Langdon and Hunt speed and overlap down the wing. It was a joy to watch. We are still going end to end but (without checking stats) it doesn't seem so frequent . There were a few teams that also made the most of the extra distance at kick-ins and the ''stand' rule in general: Bulldogs, Port and Sydney. However, most clubs have now developed tactics to defend both the kick in and the territory around the man standing the mark in general. And learnt how to use the new rules to their advantage. These are key reasons why Cats and Lions have improved so much in the last 4-6 games. It is no coincidence that those teams that adapted to the new rules in the season so far, are the top 7 on the ladder Not sure Richmond have adapted but they are the 'Bradbury' team at the moment in 8th spot. They will adapt. We had a head start but we need to keep refining our tactics and adapt to counter tactics. The tests will come vs Lions, Port, Bulldogs (x2), Eagles, Cats (again). They will be fascinating games to watch as they have the best and smartest coaches. They will put a lot of work into us and our game plan. From now on I don't see the rule changes giving us an advantage.

Can't comment on any issues in his youth at Wang but the issue at the Dees was very minor. iirc it wasn't an accident. He had a + alcohol reading while on P plates (should be zero). He was not over .05 which means he could not have had many drinks. I'm not condoning his mistake, just giving more context to your statement. There was no police action. The club asked him to get education and he apologised to the team. His behaviour since the + reading has been exemplary on and off the field. He is one of our hardest trainers and takes his football very seriously. I'm sure you don't intend to cast dispersion on his character but claims about 'issues' need a bit more substance.

Oliver has shot up the Leaderboard of the Coaches votes after a perfect 10 this week. He is now on 42 votes outright second to McCluggage on 44. The Bont is 3rd on 40. Doesn't get enough credit in the media.

Coaches votes: 10 Clayton Oliver (MELB) 8 Tom McDonald (MELB) 6 Jake Lever (MELB) 4 Samuel Walsh (CARL) 1 Christian Salem (MELB) 1 Sam Docherty (CARL) Split: 5/5 Oliver 4/4 McDonald 3/3 Lever 2/2 Walsh 1/0 Salem 1/0 Dcherty Very consistent coaching view this week. Leader Board 44 Hugh McCluggage BL 42 Clayton Oliver MELB 40 Marcus Bontempelli WB 38 David Mundy FRE 36 Ollie Wines PORT 35 Samuel Walsh CARL 34 Max Gawn MELB 34 Touk Miller GCFC 33 Jack Macrae WB 33 Christian Salem MELB 32 Dustin Martin RICH 31 Tim Kelly WCE 30 Mitch Duncan GEEL 30 Cameron Guthrie GEEL 30 Jacob Hopper GWS 29 Tom McDonald MELB 29 Zach Merrett ESS 29 Darcy Parish ESS 28 Tom Hickey SYD 28 Christian Petracca MELB 28 Taylor Walker ADEL Oliver outright 2nd! Well Done. Gawn and Salem in top 10 McDonald has flown up the charts Petracca is sliding.

Awesome that we are 9 - 0. The ladder has now settled and our biggest challenges are yet to come: between rounds 11 and 22 we play 6 games against teams sitting 2nd to 6th and only one is at the G. All 8-point games. And a few other tough games along the way eg GWS. We need to get past Bulldogs and Lions in the next month to lock in our credentials.

Hardwick's arrogance is most nauseating: “Mate, I hate coming here... {Marvel}". hardwick-press-conference-marvel-stadium-crowd-home-game-complain He is becoming as big a whinger as Scott. They are now equal as my most disliked AFL coach.

And the thuggish Petrevki-Seaton isn't playing so expecting a 'bruise-free' Carlton. He, he.

Nothing to fear from Carlton's changes: Out: Jack Newnes, Michael Gibbons, Jack Silvagni In: Marc Murphy, Will Setterfield, Nic Newman. Cripps will probably put in a blinder as he did a few weeks back when the media put the blowtorch on him. Harmes to take care of him. May will take care of McKay, if the ball even gets down there. A dark horse is their ruckman, Pittonet. Last year he really lifted and was the reason they got back into the game and nearly won. Max needs to be on the ball and dominate. Hibberd to keep Eddie quiet. There will be a day when we lose but I don't think it will be tomorrow.

I wouldn't be too hard on Hayden Kennedy. Being the Head of Umpires, I think he has little choice but to support umpires in an interview. As it is he has resigned and next week will be his last game. umpires-coach-hayden-kennedy-leaves-afl-suddenly There seems to be a bit of friction between how the AFL (Hocking) wants rules interpreted (HTB) is discussed in the article. I feel for umpires: if they pay the HTB/throwing etc the AFL cans them for slowing the game; if they don't pay them the media and fans can them for letting them go. A no win situation. In the meantime some clubs take advantage of the laxness. Soon the skill of Hand-ball will be a novelty of the game.

Good to see Ratten call out the lack of frees for the dropping and throwing the ball by Geelong. It used to be mainly the Bulldogs but now more teams are taking advantage of the lax enforcement of the rules. Not enforcing the rules may speed up the game which is what the AFL wants but if all clubs start dropping and throwing the ball and go unpenalised then it will be a free for all.

Thanks Andy. That is fine. A good suggestion by @daisycutteras having the latest and the original chart shows the changes for the year at a glance I will 'report' any post I make with a new chart.

This is what helps make a champion: "Petracca has been using his day off each week not to study or play golf or surf or even sit at home on the couch playing FIFA. No, the superstar Demon has enlisted highly rated assistant coach Adem Yze as a personal coach to get extra work in...The two are usually dressed in plain clothes and head to an oval where they can work together for more than an hour on touch and craft. Speaking of Yze, he’s fitted in seamlessly at Melbourne. Essendon was chasing him last year, but he couldn’t say no to returning to his old club. He wasn’t far off the Adelaide job which Matthew Nicks eventually won and judging by his lofty reputation at Hawthorn and Melbourne, his time for a senior gig might not be far away". man-on-the-mark

Yes, easy to copy into a new post at the end of a thread. But I do not have access rights to 'edit' the first post or insert the latest table at the start of the thread.

Good idea. 'George' is a mod so he is able to edit and update the membership thread. The chart is an embedded image so it would be difficult to update and keep the formatting. An option might be for me to have open ended 'edit' facility for this thread but perhaps not technically possible and I copy the latest to the start of the thread. Or the mods may find a way to copy and 'lock' the latest version to the start of the thread. I would like to also keep the updates in the body of the thread so the on-going dialogue makes sense, especially to infrequent readers. @Demonlandwhat do you think the options might be?

I had a different take on that article. I took it as a huge endorsement of giving Petracca a long-term contract (without knowing what monies he is on, nor do I particularly care). In terms of 'value' the graphs showed he is in the elite category so for mine whatever money he is on is good value. I'm not worried about Petracca's contract starting problems. Our President last week outlined the governance process the Club and the Board go through for contracts over a certain length. She didn't say what it was but I would guess > 3 years. I trust that our players we want to keep will be well rewarded. Will they get as much as other clubs will offer, probably not. But if we are in premiership contention for the next 3-5 years and a player chooses to leave for more $, then such is life. Jackson has one of his best WA mates at the club: Rivers. Lots of reasons for Jackson to stay. If he gets homesick well that is a different matter.

I thought the same when I read it this morning. I don't know the authors but at last sports writers who actually analyse data and present meaningful information that provide great insights. Their tables and graphs are multi-dimensional and worth taking time over. The first graph 'On the Right Tracc' shows how good his 2021 season. Best season in nearly every measure. Mainstream sports commentators/writers can learn a lot from these authors. Talking of which would someone like to send this to Cornes! I doubt he will ever stop making platitudinal and banal football comments but he could learn a thing or two about making useful contributions to a discussion.

Just for fun how is this? Australian Capital with damaged fallboot and golf stick where a fan has tossed (arid+some+n) Number of letters in each word: 9,8,4,9,8

The split looks like: 5/5 McDonald 4/3 Mills 4/2 Oliver 3/0 May 2/0 Harmes 1/0 Hickey 1/0 Salem So both coaches gave votes to McDonald, Mills and Oliver. No agreement on May, Harmes, HIckey and Salem.

Now he has two dodgy feet! We will just have to nurse him to the end of the season and the finals, like we did in 2018.

Here is a thought: 17/4 against on Saturday but is it an outlier? From the article about Viney (new thread): "(Goodwin) was concerned by the 17-4 crunching his side took at centre-bounce clearances, but a deeper analysis shows this has not been an ongoing issue. The Demons were beaten in this key area four previous times, but only by three clearances at the most. Conversely, they have also outscored their opponents by 3.5 points per game from centre clearances, ranked fourth". So, we are much more effective with our CBC than the opps. Ranked 4th is pretty good for scoring. Not saying CBC's aren't an issue just that it isn't costing us games. Yet. Imagine how awesome we will be when we dominate the clearances especially vs the good teams or those that usually beat us in that regard.

Agreed, they do. And I don't have an answer. CBC have been a problem for us since 6-6-6 was introduced at the start of 2019. We 've had plenty of experience since then on what individual teams and the comp as a whole are doing to win the clearances, regardless of whether we dominate the hitouts. Yet the fix eludes us. It makes no sense to me that we have the best ruckman and 2 of the best midfielders and we can't dominate the clearances. Teams have often said: "Let Melb win on the inside and we will beat them on the outside" so we are first to the ball but they run off with it. We should now be able to stop this as we an elite and a very good wingmen in Langdon and Brayshaw. So I wonder if we are making the most of them at CB. I haven't paid too much attention to them at CB but I think they move 'in their lane' rather head to the middle to stop the exit. Just a random thought... And I think our midfielders are still being sucked into the contest a bit ('old habits die hard' when under pressure). A few times Parker held back and just waited for the ball to exit and moved it forward. Now over to Max and the brainstrust to fix!

My two pence worth: For the last two years we had many games where opps were happy to cede hitouts but win the clearances: Bulldogs, Geelong, Lions, Cats and sometimes Hawthorn or even Eagles when Nick Nat was out. We would often get first hands to the ball but the opps would get the clearance. iirc having Viney in there in those years didn't make a difference. On Max, until this week he has played no less than 90% game time, sometimes as high as 97%. He looked beaten up vs north after all the clips across the back of the head from Richmond but and I couldn't tell if he was carrying an injury but thought he needed more bench time to rest. He was given this vs Swans. As @Pollyannamentioned he played 'just' 84%. Interestingly, Jackson's game time (usually 70-80%) didn't go up to compensate Max's time on the bench; in fact it went down: 79% to 70% this week. It looks to me we are 'managing' Jackson's game time rather than rest him for a whole game. How many times do we see Max drag himself up off the ground. They must be heavy knocks to fell a 204cm giant. He is getting no protection from the umpires and I'm glad the club saw fit to increase his bench time this week. I don't think Max should be given a week off. He is our captain, a proud man and incredibly courageous. Give him more bench time if necessary but he has to play, unless he is injured. I truly don't think Max or his hitouts are the problem. I think the opps develop effective strategies against us, strategies we are yet to counter in games or at training. I would like us to try different centre bounce setups during the next few games if we get an unassailable lead. I read somewhere that this is what Clarkson does. We can practice at training but there is nothing like game conditions.