Deecisive

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

i would prefer to see melksham rested, his kicking at goal and forward pressure has been woefully, and giving away stupid frees and 50 meter penalties is not smart either. Weid for melksham. Bennell has to be given a chance, he should replace Hunt on the forward line I really am not sure about Smith, he did his job most of the time, but gave away some dumb frees, the main problem with our backline is they all like to jump up and punch the ball, no-one likes to stay on the ground which results in the opposition getting easy goals when the ball goes over the back. these guys need to either trust each other more rather than competing with each other. rightly or wrongly our backline has not given up a lot of goals so i would tend to keep it as it is. I must say i am bemused by our bombing the ball into the forward line, and how often we kick it straight to an opposition player, with no melbourne player around to mark or challenge. I often wonder how come the opposition players can read the ball but our players cannot. Tom Mc needs to be given more room so that he can lead up the field to mark as that is his strength, unfortunately we are kicking it onto his head when he is surrounded by opposition players. our forwards need to disperse and not bunch up, giving players down the field more options to kick to in their own players in the forward 50. Pickett's a keeper, yes he did not get a lot of touches but he was in there chasing and was starting to look dangerous. i think he will settle down once he gets a goal or two. He needs the experience working and bonding with the team. Vdberg i would rest and bring in Jones again to play in the forward line, Jones is not the fastest, but he is able to mark and kick better than many for goal. May on his kickouts, he did some nice kickouts but a couple of times he kicked the ball to Gawn who had 3 or more players on him. I would have thought that would have left a few melbourne players to run around by themselves and would have been a better option. But May still kicked it to contests where we were outnumbered. Lastly Oliver, he is a brilliant player, but his turn over with no pressure on him in the dying minutes of the game was heartbreaking not only for Oliver but the whole team. As a team we need improve our disposal efficiency, especially in those instances where players are not under pressure and turn the ball over, if we could cut that out we would win games.

We need to give the guy a chance to feel comfortable playing CHF, then maybe he can play the type of football that we have seen glimpses of. Hell he cannot do much worse than some of our existing forwards. If we dont play him then he will be wanting to be traded and we will lose him for a round 3 pick because we dont value him as much as another side will. He is young enough and talented enough to hold down CHF for the dees, so give him a chance.

What a pitiful effort, don’t have anyone on the goal line and let a goal through, leave Geelong players unmarked for two others. This is not the coaches fault it’s the players out there not thinking about manning up., not marking, not being able to kick straight. Our disposal efficiency is consistently worse than our opponents, as is our forward entries.

i would bring brown and possibly Weids back into the forward line and move Tom to the backline maybe give smith a rest.

With MacDonald playing so badly why did they not throw him back on to McGovern that would perhaps give him a chance to get into the game, as he was a total waste on the forward line. Having jettas speed and aggression on the forward line would not have hurt any more than McDonald contribution.

It was if we substituted an new team and totally different game plan after the first quarter. Far too many players had little or no effect. The first quarter gave us hope that we were back as a team, then the second and subsequent quarters reaffirmed that no the dees were back to their 2019 form. Does not give me confidence that we are going to have a good year

We slacked off a lot more than five minutes it was just that the kicked their goals in the last few mins. They had lots of the ball just kicked inaccurately during the quarter.

I think the flip has worked well the problem was the lack of a melbourne player running through there.

a man with incredible poise able to use his slight build to nudge bigger players out of the way. he had an amazing ability to twist and prop to, avoid tackle after tackle. In a fair majority of times in the clips after he marked he played on and moved the ball quickly how different from today where we stop and look around, go backwards and sideways. He had the confidence to mark take on any opposition players near him and still deliver the ball to a team mate or kick a goal. A brilliant player and wonder person.

But he runs all day!