Deecisive

so which melbourne football team will turn up today, the one that will play good football and get us all excited about the possibility of playing finals, or the one where we are a top 8 side playing a bottom side and who capitulates. Until about 2 weeks ago i had hoped we had turned the corner and were starting to play some good consistent football, with some awesome patches and I looked forward to us playing a major part in the finals. But if these players cannot rise to the occasion with finals on the line against bottom dwellers then our chances not only this year but in future years is grim.

the hail Mary or Hollywood handpass over the back of players heads in the hope that it finds a melbourne player is killing us. I love Oliver but he needs to cut that crap out of his game.

yeh lets get a new coach that will fix everything, like it hasnt every other time we have a team of players not prepared to put in, lack skills, or lack the will to chase. Rivers when he got pushed off the ball as he was running forward, stood around while the freo players swooped in and picked up the ball. that is the type of players we have. those guys on the field are to blame for tonights performance not to thcoach

i dont suppose we have another 20 or so players back in quarantine (not including those dropped from last weeks farce) that we can bring in for next weeks game, cause this lot are shot. you would think freo was the side wanting to play finals not melbourne from the way we are playing. Freo have free men all over the ground which allows them to get all of those uncontested possessions, if we dont player more man on man we will lose this.

i think the question is why do opposition players read the flight of the ball better than our players.

and here i was thinking our game against the swans was bad

yesterday defeat was a compilation of a lot of a lot of the same old issues: - players believing they only need to turn up to beat a bottom side, only have them have their a**e kicked - not understanding how to play the wind. I understand we turned up a few hours before the game while the Swans turned up earlier, i expect they had a lot more chance to understand the ground and the wind. Even after watching the Swans kick goal after goal with the wind in the second quarter we still could not know how to use it in the 3rd quarter or 4th quarter - Players slow to move the ball, too busy looking for the easy backward or cross the ground pass. Missing easy targets i.e. langdons kick out in the last few minutes straight to a swans player by himself is a prime example - Minutes to go in the game and our players show no urgency when marking and going back to kick for goal the extra 15 seconds they took certainly didnt help their accuracy. - Not manning up when the opposition has the ball and wants to waste time. - Players and the so called hollywood handpasses. the move it on at all costs, is killing us with turnover after turnover. - poor kicking for goal from some Fritch,Langdon, Gawn, Jones, etc.... - Almost total lack of forward pressure - lack of chasing, lack of tackles, and overall pressure on the opposition or ball carriers, they swans players danced around us like our players were witches hats - damn stupid zone defense, which running sides use to effect to cut us to ribbons with the running overlap because our players dont chase. - picking the same old failures or out of form players time and time again, ANB, Jones, OMac, smith and probably wagner. - Too many experienced players not stepping up or missing Weiderman, Viney, brayshaw, jones, melksham - handpassing instead of kicking. and lets throw coaching in there though i blame all of the above things that go on the ground before the coaching.

we are not out of it. if they can pull themselves together and kick straight, preferably straight to our own players and the goals then we may have a chance we have had a good record in last quarters, lets hope that repeats. i dont understand why our players do not man up. we had the wind and we let them chip it around and waste our wind advantage. hopefully the umpire will start to pay some of the many holding the mans against viney that are going unnoticed at the moment.

given the many examples of poor football i have seen from the dees over the last 50 years, i am pretty sure its game over. probably finals gone as well.

i would rather they superglue Jones to the bench

it certainly looks like the type of score line you would expect when 8th is playing 16th.

Sorry but l see we just barely beat stkilda. Not a team that l would call a serious threat. Yes they are in the top eight but this is a year where when and who you play really matters. The saints still have to face some top teams, we don’t. The saints out scored us over the final three quarters, their poor shooting for goal was the difference. We need to do a lot better if we are going to play finals football.

On the positive side we have a lot of players who can play a lot better this next half.

Disappointing last minute. Reminds me of that game the saints won from a centre bounce with 20seconds or so to go. Junk time goals. We seem to have a habit of going to sleep in the last few minutes. Though tonight quite a few slept though that quarter.

i dont know how many years i have been seeing teams like footscray, st kilda and a host of other teams take the ball from the kickin all the way down the field and score a goal against us without a melbourne player touching it. i hate this zone concept. we let the opposition take an easy kick in, the guy who kicks it in runs by to receive the handpass and continue to use their spare man all the way down the field. Why give any side any easy kicks. We should challenge them for every ball, kick, mark, tackle. why when we can see it is so hard to kick it in when everyones covered do not do the same to our opposition is beyond me. what is the reason for allowing the dogs to virtually unchallenged from defense into attack. I must say i was very disappointed with Preuss, for all of his dominance in the ruck it was worth stuff all to us in getting the ball into our mid-fields arms or on the scoreboard. Dogs go in the understanding that they are not going to have to win the ruck contests, though i must say Preuss did palm it straight into their arms quite a lots. They won possession after possession at stoppages because they handpassed well to each other and could always find someone who's melbourne opponent was standing off from them allowing to break away. while pickett did not do a lot of damage he did get a couple of points and did pressure, the kid is young, i would keep playing him because he is a future champ. just wish he could learn how to tackle instead of pushing players in the back. I wonder which melbourne is going to show up next week.

back to our absolute worst, lazy, slow, disinterested, crap kicking for goal and poor decision making. Why the hell Tom macdonald did not have a shot at goal from 50 out is beyond me. he is supposed to be one of best kicks. Fritch seems to find new ways to miss the easy. Dogs ran rings around us time and time again, they see that getting a man free and the overlap is where we are the weakest because of players are either too far away from their man or dont chase hard.

time to turn up the pressure on the doggies and win this game.

we beat collingwood when our ruck and midfield were not exactly on fire. Pruess should be the better ruckman today given the doggies stats, and our midfield is unlikely to be having two bad weeks. I assume the dogs midfield strategy acknowledges they will lose the ruck so have their players ready to pounce on the opposition players when they take the ball to shake it lose. If we can continue our good form and Tom Mac can add some additional firepower up front then we will win this one. I just hope they learnt their lesson from last week it is not the number of inside 50's that count its the quality of the delivery and finishing off.

i like the concept of penalties being tied to the players match income, as others have said what is $2000 fine to some of these players. To make it more interesting have a sliding scaled based on the severity of the action, a high impact hit 50% of your weekly salary, low impact 15% and the money goes to the charity of the person you hits choice not the AFL. I was going to original suggest goes to the person you hit but that is just likely to result in a lot more annoying behavior by people hoping to get hit. I seem to recall awhile ago Clayton Oliver giving someone a tap on the guts nothing hard and he was made an example of at the time. was he suspended for a game or given a fine. i cannot recall

We should win this but whether we do depends on which melbourne team turns up. in the last few games we have seen a lacklustre melbourne for 3 quarters, fumbling, kicking poorly, bombing it away into the forward 50 and woeful kicking for goal from both set shots and snaps from relatively close in. If the last quarter demons that have played the last couple of weeks turns up for 4 quarters we should run right over collingwood.

bring in Preuss to do the ruck work and get him to use his strength around the ground. I also favor brown instead of Tmac. Brown kicked a few in a practice match that still seems a lot better than what we have seen out for TMac for a long time. While he started to touch the ball he was not marked well, or consistently, he was not great at chasing and i am not sure he even won a tap out as a relief ruckman. Brown has obviously shown if we can get the ball to him he can kick the goals, i think he is a safer bet than tmac at this time.

what is frustrating is that the commentators are not talking too much about the umpiring. They are watching the same game as us and can see exactly the same thing as us, they should be calling it for what it is. The melbourne players that took a mark after the north player front charged him and knocked him over in the forward line and while the melbourne players was on the ground punched the north player in the leg pretty meekly an in all and it got reversed. really....

what has happened to the umpiring of late. we got slaughtered everytme we touched a north player in the first quarter. countless frees against north were not paid, players legged, pushed out in marking contests, so many holding the balls not paid, is a disgrace and a blight on the game.

our players turned up expecting just to win without putting in the effort needed to win. Now they are in a match and they are fumbling to catchup. playing a rightfully last placed crows and we should be beating them by 10 goals not 5 points. so many passengers, dont know how to tackle correctly, dont know how to chase or kick. our disposal is woeful again. clangers galore and given away more frees than 6 of our players have actually knocked up. gods its hard being a demons supporter these last 50 years or so.

looks like the demons of old are back. our disposal and turnovers are killing us as usually. they are hungry for the ball and out players are just chasing tail. total lack skill