chookrat

We could always rest Max and play Charlie Spargo in the ruck in protest, citing the Max Gawn rule and cost of giving away frees in the oppositions F50 because is ruckman is too tall and skilled.

I'm concerned that the weight of captiancy is putting extra strain on Viney's foot. Just as dropping a couple of kg's body weight not having captiancy would free the weight off his mind and help ensure his foot isn't overloaded.

I'd look at Harley Bennell as well, late pick or rookie spot and wouldn't cost too much.

Petracca stood out v Doggies for his strength and ability to clear the ball (to our advantage) from stoppages. He's been building very nicely and with an uninterrupted pre-season could become anything next year. Harmes has been very good for us on the wing and linking up forward. I'd rate him as our most consistent player over the past couple of seasons whether he's playing on ball running both offencively and defensively, mopping up out of our backline, generating run through the midfield, kicking into our F50, or sneaking forward to take a big mark and kicking goals. He's also a handy tagger. Super reliable and set to become a 200+ game player who is widely respected across the competition.

I think our poor kicking is less about skill and more about confidence and trust between players. That is the player kicking has enough time, space and options to execute the kick or handball to recievers advantage and trusts the recieving player to mark or take ball cleanly and not turn it over. At the moment we don't have this 'connection' which means we either cannot score because we are playing too defensively or we get opened up and opposition scores when we turn ball over.

Rather than using the reference 'drug saga' can you refer to it correctly as 'The EFC performance enhancing drug program'

We've been impacted far more by injuries than any other club both during the season and in the offseason. It's not as bad as it seems and we have a core group of players that will make us a very good side for a long time to come. We will also have some good trade currency this year and I'd expect us to be busy picking up some outside pace and x factor. Keep the faith.

Nice that we named Petracca as if it would trick them into thinking he'd line up in the VFL.

Stop it, you are ruining a good joke

Frost no good on the wing. He's great when streaming out of the backline because he doesn't have to worry about whats behind him. Play him on the wing and it adda another direction he has to think about and then turns into a headless chook.

We've got a season to play, pump it full of the good stuff and get him back out there. Two weeks off max.

Lighten up bro. If you listened to what Goodwin said re Preuss is that he's been playing VFL to develop parts of his game whoch we saw today and that the plan is to play both Gawn and Preuss in the same side. Carlton played well and were very dangerous in the third when we managed to kick 7 goals. While we're not at our best it's a win against a side that is playing well in an even competition when we had onpy one on the bench.

I'm furious

Goes to show that you don't need to kick goals if you kick enough behinds

It doesn't help that the Port players arms are thicker than Cale's legs.

What happened re Joel Smith's groin? Havent heard much about this, seems he has flown under the radar.

Rubbish - think of the talent we could bring in via the draft. FWIW I think we will lose to Carlton and lose well. Dees!

Good post. I think Trac has been very good for the past month and will continue to look better as our team play better. I also think he will rip a few games apart in the next 10 weeks. Good times ahead.

I'd love to see us go in with 20 during the regular season, mix it up a little.

It rubs the lotion on its skin or else it gets the hose again

This, the Clarry goal was a great piece of play and Weed's muptiple effort to spoil, follow up and hand off the Clarry was crucial.

To those saying we should have taken Joel Smith off the ground, we had a JLT cup game to win and he kicked 4 while planted in the goal square. I don't see what the problem is.

Morton, Gysberts, Fitzpatrick

I love that Max doesn't play for frees or conplain to umpires. In fact our players are pretty good in this respect. Compare our players to the likes of Walters, Dangerfield, Ablett etc who all winge to the umpires whenever things dont go their way.

Negative - Box Hill is a wasteland and too far away from our heart (MCG and Melbourne's Yarra area) and where our supporters are strong in numbers (Bayside). We should build a replica MCG literally underground kind of like the base in the last Matrix installment.