chookrat

Yep and if we make finals, even in 8th spot and provided our players are health going into finals, we won't be making up the numbers we will be having a serious crack at the Premiership.

Credit to Selwyn for our teams fitness. Despite our fitness bei g poor for the first 9 rounds and struggling to run out games he has weaved his magic the past couple of weeks and got us 25% fitter. Only a few weeks ago vs Hawthorn we ran out of steam at 3/4 time (75% of all game) and the last couple of weeks vs Brisbane and Sydney we dominated the 4th quarter making up an extra 25% fitness. Give it a couple more weeks and he may get our fitness to 125%.

I don't think Gawn won any votes from passing his shot at goal to Melksham. Oliver was outstanding and deserved his 7 votes. It was pretty emotional when he kicked the goal, his teammates got around him and the Melbourne faithful have him a standing ovation. We are building something very special.

I can't remember us losing the toss this year. Has to count for something when the heat is on come September.

Max Gawn to win the coin toss again.

Fantastic win tonight. So proud of the boys ❤️💙

I reckon we offer Michael Hibberd and our second round pick to Geelong in exchange for their first round pick. While Hibbo is no longer on our list he is 35 years old and I reckon Geelong might go for it.

I reckon Kolt is doing alot right and is pretty close to having a breakout game. He does the team things really well and is staring to be a bit more dynamic with the ball. He is an important part of our forward half pressure which is so important in the modern game.

Absokutely, Viney had 6 tackles at quarter time v West Coast. Assuming the suspension was caused by the swining arm from Allan it is poor that it was only 1 week - could be the first time a 1 week suspension was handed out for an incident causing concussion.

Interesting Gerard Weatley on AFL 360 last night discussed Green's comments and said that the AFL Mrdia had been respectful while Oliver was away from the club and only reported on his return to the club. I was waiting for Gary Lyon to interject with the articles from Clark,reporting from Jon Ralph etc, speculating on game time, trades to Geelong etc while Oliver was away. Goody was pretty clear that the reports impacted Clarry's wellbeing.

Bring him home, I'd love to see Grundy in the ruck and Gawn as one of our rovers hunting the ball.

Re player manager they have a duty of care to act in the interest of their client and I reckon building and maintaining a reputation for doing this would only be good for business.

Loved this comment from Goody. He always plays a straight bat re incidents on field but dropping this one in makes it clear the club will expect the MRO to look at it closely.

It will either be no suspension or 2 weeks. The act was careless, it was high contact, and while the actual impact was low the potential for injury could upgrade to medium. My take is 2 weeks given it was a swinging arm action which could have easily resulted in a serious injury.

Will be interesting to see if Gibney is put on report especially given Goody's comment in the post match presser re Petty. If he is reported does the AFL review each Melksham v McGovern and Gibney v Petty separately or as a single incident. Also fully agree that Melksham is competing only for the ball and is allowed to use his hip to protect the ball drop.

Paul is certainly doing alot of media for someone who doesn't start until September.

I have it on good authority that the Geelong Football Club have asked Oliver to attend the unveiling of their new scoreboard and will honour him with cutting the ribbon on their Victorian taxpayer funded scoreboard.

Absolutely agree DemonOX. I member seeing he'd had something like 3 touches when he kicked his goal and thinking he's been involved in alot of our forward 50 pressure to that point without being rewarded with stats. He brings alot more than his stat sheet would suggest and I reckon he will start to have some real breakout games soon.

Too many feathers in Peter Bell's hat

I'm of the view that jail shouldn't be mandatory but that the defendants position in court is effectively having to justify why they should not spend time in jail.

Thanks I am a little surprised by this. I'm not expert and assumed that if you are on assault charges that you have to justify why you should spend some time in prison. Its no wonder we have so many problems with violent crimes

The sentence does seem really light on given the seriousness of the assault. I'm not sure what an appropriate penalty looks like but I think he is lucky to avoid jail. As for the curfew it seems an overreach from the judge for him to not be granted an exemption to attend work. The point of a curfew is for him to keep out of trouble and if he's playing football on national television there is a good chance he will keep out of trouble. Assuming the judge had limited options re sentencing and so threw in the curfew to bump it up a bit. In any case I reckon he would be relieved at avoiding jail.

Best half of footy all year and its only quarter time

Looking at positives we've been pretty good at winning the toss this year.

For what it's worth we started the change to our game style after our straight sets exit in 2023 and drafted accordingly in 2024. Goods is on record that we wavered from our new style after big losses to West Coast and Freo and reverted to our contest and defence style in the second half of the season and we're still in the frame for a top 8 finish before succumbing to less than a kick losses to GWS, Brisbane and Port. We have been a bloody good side since our 2021 premiership and I look back fondly at our finals wins vs Hawthorn and Geelong in 2018. In 2022 we were banged up going into finals and 2023 managed to have our forward line functioning well in the back of of the season before losing Melksham in round 23 v Sydney and then Brayshaw in the first final. The straight sets narrative is lazy and doesn't recognise that we were very close to going all of the way in 2023. Goody's message has been consistent that we will stay the course and I still think that while we probably won't play finals we will start to play some really good footy particularly in the back half of the season and go into to 2026 full of optimism.