Deecisive

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...

i would like to see the dees go back to having two ruckman on the ground one resting in the forward pocket and one on the ball and have them rotate more regularly between these two positions. as both max and preuss can mark the ball and i think preuss may be a better kick than max.

I really like the look of this guy he holds his ground and palms to his players, one problem I have always seen with Gawn's fantastic ruck work is that he does have trouble with more physical ruckman like grundy who push him off centre. I think Prueuss is a great get. I particularly liked his highlights where he kicked a 60m goal off one step. This guy has talent.

time to walk away from the freo negotiations. leave them to chase us if they have something substantial and acceptable to the club. Talk to GCS about how we can facilitate getting May across to the dees without Freo's pick. If freo eventually come back with a decent offer we could spend that on an early draft pick. Personally i am not a great hogan fan, he has enormous potential that he is just not harnessing, he gets lazy around contests and is not a noted chaser or tackler. Yet he has kicked a big bag of goals, so his upside is huge. May is a reasonably good backman i doubt he is going to get much better. so i see we are likely to be the looser out of any deal.

What north want to give us draft picks as well?

see if tyson wants to go to the GCS and put forward next years 1st round draft pick for May and maybe another 2nd rounder. see if that floats. and if Jessie goes and we get a couple of nice early draft picks, then bonus.

I like the idea of another tall, we got towelled up by Mason Cox because we had no one tall enough to stand and compete with him. Prius may give us that option. He may also allow us to play Gawny forward a little more, either standing in the goal square or a decoy to worry the opposition's defence.

the only concern i have with going after lever is that we will be paying him big $'s, then in the next few years we will have others throwing big $'s at Hogan and Trac, Hunt, etc. which means we have to offer them big $'s to keep them.

i thought one of the articles said that lever had been on $300k and the crows had offered him more but he still saw this as a low ball price.

we start paying big $'s to get or even try to lure kelly then we will start to see our better young player holding out for more $'s too eventually which will see them poached by other teams. We need to have a team we can afford, and we need a team that can play together, just having individuals that can play well is not as good as having a solid team.

maybe essendon are worried we will have a great year next year if we finish say 4th the our first pick without any compo being given to any team would be 14, our second pick would be at around 32. with compo, father and son etc that could be anything. if essendon dont believe we are going to go any good next year i.e. finish 8, then our 2nd round pick could be 26th without compo, etc... so maybe essendon have faith that we are going to have a good year next year

i wonder if we looked at the various areas that each club now controls and go back over say the last 5 years at what each area produced I wonder how balanced or evenly spread the talent would be, and who would have gone where..

What I find interesting is that Roos knew we to win the ball out of the centre at the start of the last quarter and start scoring, he had enough confidence to put oliver into that pressure situation, and that he came through for the team. He is something special.

slot petraca in the midfield with oliver and boy what potential.

I wish he could pick up from where he was a year or so before his injury.