Deecisive

another quarter like that last and we will lose this. we should be 6-8 goals up. i am not a fan of the zoning, it works when the opposition makes mistakes but when they dont they get a free run into their forward line.

so who is James Jordan??

oliver's game was hampered by constantly being held and pushed with little response from the umpires. a lot of frees went by the wayside today. a lot of poor disposals as usual where we could not even handpass it to players 5 meters away or kick it to players 30 meters away. poor defensive pressure allowing opposition players to hand it off to a team mate and then run on to receive it back while our players wander around. it amazes me how often we kick it into our forward line directly to one or more opposition players. If i was the coach i would make the whole team watch a replay of that game every day next week with the sound up so that they can hear the commentators assessment of their game. maybe even watch last years final against the eagles. Then find a game where we played well and make them watch that in the hope they can see what they should and should not be doing. that and give petracca, hunt and jeffy kicking lessons.

Nice

lets not incite violence, with our luck if one of our players bumps mumford they will likely get reported. I expect mumford will be targeting max so it will be interesting to see how max copes with it, he did not go well against port when they tried that.

fritch and salem both turned the ball over. i liked frost and oscar both did pretty well. shame our forwards cannot kick straight, or mark, or tackle, or chase, or handball

we still need to win this, and can. just need to be a bit cleaner with our ball movement. this is by far the best we have been playing this year. keep on playing like this and we may well play finals football again.

a lot of positives so far tonight, playing well as a team. poor disposals are still there but not as many and not hurting us as badly as past weeks. we certainly in with a chance regardless of the umpires.

I dont think you can hang all of this on Clarry, he gets the ball and kicks into the forward line usually to a contest which our forwards lose more than other teams. How many marks do we take inside forward 50. Backman have a far easier job against melbourne forwards this years as opposed to last year. We have similar numbers of players inside 50 to our opponents but our opponents win position 75% of the time, that tells you that its more than Clarry its the forwards not doing their job.

Many years ago i remember a melbourne player who regularly kicking out from full back with a drop kick anyone remember his name?

i would love to see melbourne kickin with a reliable kicker sending a torp down the center of the ground. Surely you could figure out a play where players run to the flanks then double back to the center for the torp. gather bounce kick for goal.

when you think 49 seconds or so to go down by 6 points, it was an extraordinary effort by the team to win. hope that inspires them to go hard at the eagles next week.

I see improvement in this weeks effort over our previous games this year. Yes it was at times putrid especially the way we went into our forward 50. But we continued to go win the ball back and pound it forward again time and time again. We will be better for the run, if we did not kick so poorly for goal we would have won by 5 goals instead of a point. Happy with the win. Better that the westcoast does not see us as serious contenders for next weeks game. Great to be on the end of a last second win for a change.

a long term injury does that provide us with another pick in the mid season draft?

i would prefer if we took the best forward option. We have already proven we can get the ball into our forward line often enough to score heavily if we have someone down there who can mark or crumb it. Also another forward could allow Tom to go back into defense if required.

i understand ANB is one of our fastest players, has the best endurance. has anyone seen any of that this year. All i saw was him running around in circles half chasing tiger players. he got a luck goal, because he was so far away from his player at the time who would if he had got the ball would have sent the tigers into attack. I do not see why this guy keeps getting games. he was dropped for a poor effort a couple of weeks ago and gets a recall based on what. .

wow, after the 4 previous weeks i had thought we were turning a corner after the first quarter, unfortunately, the turn turned into a u-turn and we were back playing the same crappy lack of style football. Players not prepared to run, to chase, and only prepared to throw an arm out to tackle. we had the same number of players as they had, but wherever the ball went we were outnumbered, except for those rare occasions when all of our players were fighting each other for the same ball. we kicked the ball out of defence to the tigers time and time again, who is it that our midfield or forwards were never there, is that part of our game plan to have all of our players in their forward line, or just stupid play. Whichever stop it. need to seriously drop some players send a message that if you cannot complete then you will not represent the melbourne football club. they had younger players who ALL did better than most of our team, why because they were hungry for success, our players kind of think they have made it so dont need to put as much now...

it is winnable but given the poor way we have been playing it would really take some effort to get up from here. just no one up forward standing up, the tigers are tearing us apart from defence and our players cannot take a mark cannot chase and cannot tackle. I think weidermans kick to jones sums up our night. even when there is no pressure our players cannot do it right.

our players have been slipping over and fumbling the ball all night. conditions maybe a little slippery but still these guys should be doing a lot better. where is ANB, hunt, harmes, weiderman and petracca? we are running around with 5 less players than the tigers.

we are lucky to still be in the game given our [censored] poor disposal. i dont know why they waste a spot on ANB every damn week he is proven to be a waste of space. If Max can only get his mojo back in his hitouts to advantage we could have a chance. What i dont understand though is we kicked the ball out of defence at least half a dozen time and there were no melbourne players there, what gives. why are they not staying up the ground to cover the opponents. and give our backs something to kick to for a change, as they are getting sick of kicking it to richmond players.

we had the same number of scoring shots as they had! we just played a pathetic band of football and were lucky to not lose by more. We had our chances but our disposal was woeful, kicking and hand passing to the opposition when under pressure, occasionally when not under pressure. they were first at the ball in defence and in attack, so where were our players. Every team we have played this year has burnt us big on the overlap run out of defence and still we have no solution...... It is not a new problem, happens every game so why are we not prepared for it. I hate the zone defence. it seems to me that you are essentially trying to take advantage of the miss kick and pick up cheap interceptions. problem is when the opposition does not miss kick then they have an easy run all the way down the field.

swap tom with fritch that may give a bit more stability to our backline and give us a player who can handle membrey its not is if tom is doing anything up forward. and fritch can kick goals, given the running shambles of our forward line a faster fritch maybe a better option

we are playing so damn poorly, very few players actually playing well and we are still in the game, thanks to their poor kicking for goal. i just wish they would stop this zone defence and man up. When sydney runs and gets the overlap like every other team that has played us this year we are toast.

our midfield got the ball into the forward line more than Essendon. we had just as many players as Essendon down there it was just that ours always seemed to be in the wrong spot or could not win the ball. yes delivery at times was bad, but that should not have resulted in as many rebounds as it did, it still should have statistically given us more chances at goal than what we had. Our forwards just did not put in, as has been the case all year so far. We lost the game with our [censored] poor defence. Too many of our players getting sucked up the ground to cover an opposition player not covered by a team member. That often left the player he was on free, and so on down the field. Too many players were flying for the same marking contest in the backline spoiling their own men more often than not, while essendon smalls crumbed to us. Essendon had at least 6 goals and multiple points from players standing all by themselves in the forward line unattended, and no pressure on them. how many times did that happen for us?

i cannot believe these how poorly we played. When I look at the stats I see our best players were average in the 60-70% range for disposal efficiency the bombers were much higher. our skills and disposal were crap. Our players left essendon players all alone in the forward line time after time. Port, Geelong and now essendon have shown how to beat melbourne. Switch across the backline a couple of time to get the overlap and then waltz into goal. yes the umpiring was woeful, but if we cannot beat essendon with even poor umpiring then we are going nowhere. I dont understand how in the last quarter our players had no urgency to kick it in, move it on, you would think they had a 5th quarter to make up the score. No attempt to try going down the middle from a kick -in. no manning up. ANB may be fastest on the training oval it certainly does not translate to any real value on the field. Oscar and Frost both look all a sea. Tackling was poor, too many essendon players danced around our players like they were witches hats. certainly a great opportunity for those playing in Casey to find a place in next weeks team.