Deecisive

Clayton's having a bad night, hope he can lift in the next half, billings needs to improve his disposal efficiency is pretty poor. he is not the only one, but two of his kicks could easily have been goals. Which ever one cannot lift early in the 3rd quarter probably needs to be sub'd off. I dont understand this umpiring crows players are tackled and do 360 turns before getting rid of the ball or dropping it an nothing. we have one player stripped of the ball seconds after getting it and its dropping the ball. inconsistency in their calling of holding the ball and dropping the ball is getting ridiculous.

our tackling is still not great, and we seem to be constantly turning the ball over from the backline or going into attack. keep trying to kick to ben Brown how is getting out marked most of the time, need to have our small leading up. Kozzie needs to do more. well actually a lot of players need to do more. our backline all things consider is trying a lot of pressure on them, our forward line not such a great day so far, time to turn that around

The tribunal is a joke, they are now supposedly going hard on head high hits, when last year they totally ignored Maynard, more than ignored it, someone made a statement about not wanting a player to miss out on such an important game. Max gets hit most games in the head from spoils and is lucky if he gets a free. Mason Cox sticks his knee in to Max and every other ruckman as part of his ruck routine and that is ok with the umpires and the tribunal. i dont see what the AFL is doing is protecting players but trying to protect themselves from potential law suits.

well Casey does seem to be following the melbourne play book pretty well, very few if any are manning up.

so if we are down lever and may, who comes in to replace them. or do we just play two short

I think he is onto to something here, take the funds out of the clubs salary cap, but of the club that forced him into retirement and potentially long term injury. Now if that is not an incentive for clubs to behave better then nothing is.

Van Rooyen has had a couple of years playing in the seniors and really does not seem to do a lot, he has come out and kicked up a couple of goals in games often late in the game but at other times he can rarely been seen. I dont know how much time we give him, or how much time we can afford to have him failing to hit the score board or help get the ball to our smalls to kick goals.

i often wonder if our team gets ahead of themselves thinking that they have got a game in the bag before the ball is bounced and then go out and fine the opposition wants the ball more than we do. we have lost quite a few games to bottom sides like essendon that we really should not have.

i still think picking Schache over Grundy may have cost us going further in the finals last year, possibly the grand final. Grundy did tonight what he did in a few games for us when max went forward. unfortunately max could not kick the goals so we dumped Grundy. Tonight he showed that we are extremely vulnerable with Max and other teams will learn from that and will do likewise, they will get in front of him, stick their knee into his back and side, whacking around the head every chance they get. Max is not a physical ruckman who will jump into the opposition player, he tries to stand there any use his reach, even the swans second string ruckman beat him many times tonight. he needs to adjust his game plan so do our players in the centre can cover the opposition winning the tapout. very disappointing performance on so many levels.

What was disappointing from max is that he did not adjust to the swans ruck tactics he just kept doing what he normally does and they kept pushing in front of him and winning the ball. They kept pushing him off the ball and marking in front of him. Every other team in the league will have seen that and will adjust their game style on Max in that way. Very few players played well, well done Viney, probably the best Melbourne players out there. So much fumbling kicking it straight to the opposition. i dont understand the zone process where we let them kick it to players alone all night long, let them switch and fail to cover them. and our forwards, both big and small apart from fritter were no where to be seen. I really worry about Van Roen, he just does not have a presence on the ground. sad to say on this performance i dont see us playing finals.

a better quarter, but then that was not a particulary high mark to reach with only 1 goal in each of the first 2 quarters. really need to improve our disposal of the ball still pretty poor, lots of turn overs and kicking to the opposition. Gawny needs to change up his routine getting beaten too easily

poor disposals all night long, poor passing, players not manning up and allowing the swans to switch and run it into their forward line without a melbourne player challenging them. our forward line still just stands there and does nothing. how do we keep doing the same dumb things. hopefully we can lift in the second half, but so far not very impressive start to the season, players have not learnt anything. bring on billings we have quite a few players doing nothing surely he can replace on of those.

i am sick of this culture bull, i agree with Brad Scott it is a day by day thing where you have 40+ guys all wanting to play football being subjected to slurs, insults, praise, injuries and that's just their sporting life, it does not take into account there personal and family issues. players/people all need help from time to time, we all do. why does the media seem so intent in belting a player or person when they are down. i don't know how many clayton oliver health issues i have seen in newspapers, online, chats, etc in the last year. does anyone deserve to see their life dragged out and misrepresented so thoroughly as the media seems to do these days. they seemed to think printing a story that depicts a player in a poor light that is likely to have a very detrimental effect on the player is ok, if they put a line at the end that say if you have trouble seek help.. just not good enough media stop rehashing and harassing people.

the thing that disappointed me was our ball handling, our handpassing was poor missing targets, dropping short, same can be said with some of our kicking. Richmond ran rings around us their run and carry not clarry was unchallenged a lot of the time down from full back to the forward line. our players just did not man up. not a great start to the season, but it is only a practice game, hopefully it will encourage our coaches to get to work on some of these things. Sides that run and carry the ball always challenge us as we do not chase, hopefully we can address that.

I suspect westcoast will trade, they need multiple players to rebuild they cannot afford to waste all their credit on one player. I would expect them to hold out until the last moment to see what everyone will offer, after all what is the hurry, the longer they hold out the greater chance someone will increase their offer. Also, the AFL would like that drama to play out on TV on draft night. i have not seen the highly rated no1 player but i would be happy taking our existing picks to the draft. as previously stated it is a lottery, players can look really good but just don't develop. There are a lot of early draft picks that have failed to actually live up to their potential.