Lucifers Hero

Oliver still tracking nicely in the AFLCA votes: This week: 8 Ben Brown (NM) 8 Clayton Oliver (Melb) 5 Andrew Swallow (NM) 5 Jack Ziebell (NM) 3 Tom McDonald (Melb) 1 Shaun Higgins (NM) Overall: AFLCA LEADERBOARD 101 Dustin Martin (Rich) 94 Patrick Dangerfield (Geel) 69 Tom Mitchell (Haw) 67 Zach Merrett (Ess) 66 Dayne Zorko (BL) 62 Clayton Oliver (Melb) 62 Rory Sloane (Adel) 61 Gary Ablett (GC) 61 Joel Selwood (Geel) 60 Sebastian Ross (StK) A great chance to win our B&F with Hibberd and Jetta not far behind.

Nick Reiwoldt is about to call time on his career! Finals much harder than a few days ago. The teams in our last 4 rounds will be highly motivated or at their best. GWS - Virtually back to full strength injury wise, while we have a few of our best nursing injuries. StK- Adrenalin flowing and will play for Nick! And, like North they set themselves against us. BL- Will have Zorko back and near full strength. Pies - beat Port last week and drew Crows this week. Will try to win it for Bucks' last games. There are no 'gimme' games left for us. But I am relying on 'colly wobbles' to kick in in round 23! We must win 3 of 4 as Ess, WB and WCE are nipping at our heels. Will be shattered if we don't make it.

Thanks Jr. North won everything in the last: hitouts, Centre clearances, tackles, contested possession and of course free kicks. What stands out is we had only 80 interchanges. With Hogan off why didn't use the full 90?. Especially as Viney, Petracca and Melksham had less than 75% game time. Looks like they were being nursed through the game. Petracca, Melksham and Hannan were hardly sighted in the last quarter. That is the majority of our small forwards and with Hogan out, no wonder we were at the mercy of North's talls every time the ball went into our i50. So, the i/change numbers suggest we ran out of able players to put on the field. For me this explains why Goodwin was accepting of the result. He was his usual calm self but there wasn't the frustration nor contorted facial expressions after other close games when we should have won had we played more aggressively. If this hunch of being the 'walking wounded' and injured players is right, it doesn't bode well this week vs GWS when they will be back to near full strength. Maybe it wasn't poor attitude and effort. Just maybe, our players did give everything they had but we didn't have enough to field a semi fit team in the last quarter.

We made it!! 42,102 With 102 over! That is a whopping 20% increase on 2015! Major, major accolades to the Club and the 3,000 extra that have jumped on board this year. I'm sure Jackson and co will be absolutely rapt!! Make finals and we should get off to a great start for next year.

And of course the betting agencies need to also be looked after...

Thanks for fixing visuals and functions in Firefox. All working perfectly! As an aside, should a list of who is on-line/reading a page appear at the bottom of the thread? It appears on the Home page only on my screens. (pc, firefox and samsung android)

My bad...will go back and edit. Still worried by the low game time % for key players. Something not right.

https://www.foxsports.com.au/afl/patrick-dangerfield-says-tackle-on-matthew-kreuzer-was-fair-but-footy-greats-predict-dire-mrp-ruling/news-story/4c0d71f7efa87128bee12060cd4c653f Fortunately, Bartel won't be on the MRP to adjudicate this case. But since when do the AFL tick off the decision: "The decision will also have to be ticked off by acting footy boss Andrew Dillon..." Independent MRP? The farce continues!

Had a look at player % playing time. Some real surprises: Viney 74%, Petracca 72%, Melksham 69%. That is 3 of our in form/better players not in the game for at least a full quarter. It suggests they have injuries and being managed through games. I can think of no other reason to have them on the bench. We know that Jetta and Gawn were touch and go for the game. Hannan appeared injured and came back on out of necessity. Were we a team of the walking wounded?

Colly-wobbles- alive and well! Seeing Ess and Pies lose (after the siren) takes some of the pain out of our loss...

Even if he gets 2 weeks down to 1 from the MRP Geelong will appeal knowing they have the media on their side and the blessing of the AFL. They will get the silk David Grace, QC who will argue 'insufficient force' as he did for Schofield vs Oliver. The Tribunal now knows it has to do the AFL's bidding and Ipso facto, Dangerfield gets off. Dangerfield will not miss a game and is protected for the brownlow.

I'm not sure you read my post or the context of the one I was replying to. Anyway, I shall respond. Yes, I think not everyone was on the 'one win at a time' train. Don't know about you D_J but many on here were saying 'relax we have this' and talking top 4, double chance etc. etc I have no idea why you think I don't want people to dream about success or that I begrudge optimism - nothing in my post suggests either. In fact I said I think that we will still make finals. I'm just not gushing OOT about it but I have no problem with others gushing about it. I will remain a one week at a time person who doesn't drink the bath water (see McQueens' original post).

Not all of us Steve. There were some of us still on the 'one week at a time' train. Even od was telling me to throw the lid far away. I still think we can make finals. But yesterday we gave up a golden opportunity to get a home final. Even if we didn't go beyond the elim final to see our team play a final at the MCG would be magical. Now it is likely to be Adelaide or Sydney.

I didn't say finals was my expectation in 2016. My expectation is that they turn up to play each game; win, lose or draw. And yes the results showed there wasn't enough motivation to win the last 2 games and make finals. The Carlton loss was inexcusable, youth or no youth. And can't say much for motivation in the 100+pt loss to Geelong to farewell Roos. By some magic of reasoning you think in 2016 motivation for finals in the last few rounds is 'stupid expectations' but you offer the same motivation/expectation this year. Logic doesn't seem quite right!

Ling Jong came back after 2 weeks with the same injury to be BOG and win the Grand Final for the Footscary VFL team (against Casey unfortunately). Did a google search: Greg Hoy was the surgeon. I wonder who Jesse has? So it isn't unrealistic to have Jesse back in round 22 (3 weeks recovery) or round 23 (4 weeks recovery).

Wouldn't be surprised to see Maynard come in after being promoted this week. His latest VFL review was: "Corey had 30 disposals, including 20 contested possessions, seven clearances and five tackles. I thought he was the most influential player on the ground on Saturday night. In a game that was tough, due to the conditions, it required players to be strong over the ball and really drive through contested situations...Plapp." Given that North won the clearances, tackles and contested ball in the last quarter we could have done with Maynard in the game rather than as emergency. Who comes out? We have a few players who look underdone after injury (Watts, Gawn, and Viney) or carrying an injury (Hannan, Jetta and maybe Hunt who have take a few hard knocks in recent weeks). Then there are those who had a shocking day yesterday: ANB, Harmes and maybe others altho I wouldn't automatically drop a player for a bad game when the whole team played badly. It may sound sacrilegious to say but Viney may need a rest as he is playing in great pain and was severely hampered yesterday. We will have Jones back next week, albeit underdone but he will provide a lot of the grunt. With Maynard in it would help the midfield contested cause. In summary, Maynard in. Take your pick as to who comes out.

Will Dangerfield go for his sling tackle which drove Kruzer head first into the turf in the 3rd qtr? Dangerfield pinned Kruzer's arms and he didn't go back on. If Carlton club doctors are true to form they will put a damning report. At least 'medium impact'. Maybe 'high impact'. Will be interesting to see how the MRP get their pin-up boy brownlow favourite off: Maybe: '...the momentum of the tackle rotated Kruzer and he accidently landed on his head... It was just an accident as evidenced by no free kick being paid...' Anyone else would get 3 weeks. As an aside I thought there was an AFL ban on players/coaches talking about potential MRP incidents. Scott and Dangerfield have gone to air with 'nothing to see here, move on'.

Really? It didn't motivate in the last 2 rounds of 2016. Same prize on the line then. Gave up the season and finals in a spectacularly inglorious fashion.

So right! North deliberately went tall, knowing that is how we play. We didn't wake up to it nor change our methods. Poor coaching and poor play especially in the last quarter when we couldn't get it past our HF line. Their last qtr defence was excellent and we had no plan B!

Have calmed down but still unhappy. So much at stake: A Home Final was up for grabs!!!! So little given by so many: they expected the wind to magically bring a win, well it didn't. Just didn't work hard enough. Can only count 3 or 4 players that won their position. Very disappointing

Just when we thought Jesse's year could not get worse. Life just doesn't seem fair sometimes. Feel really sad for him. If he comes back to play this year it will be a bonus but right now I would just like the lad to have a bit of normality in his life. Best wishes for a speedy recovery.

Thanks to all for getting DL up and running again. Normality returns.

Own. Bathwater. Again. Two 2nd half goals...pitiful!

Again, their danger player is Higgins! Bernie took care of him last time. No Bernie this time. No Bugg either. I think in this game we will miss both of those outs. Others need to shadow Higgins and neutralise Cunnington and Zeibell in some way. Hopefully, our midfield can be first at the ball and stop those guys doing any damage.

Lots of high draft picks or contracted players - we do not have any OOC players with reasonable currency - only Frost and ANB