Deecisive

we are playing better than Geelong, just need to keep up the pressure, Hogan has to get moving and needs to chase, he is a lazy football, who seems to figure once his jumped for the mark he does not need to do anything else. Tyson needs to learn how to handball, seems like he is trying to do some clary jump and handball over the player moves that are just not working out, he keeps loosing the ball. Another half like the first with straighter kicking and we will win this one.

yes i think its a bit premature to start calling for his delisting. his first game in a while and he did a lot better than some others. Showed a little give him a little more time, he could be pretty handy.

well hopefully having the dogs so close will spur these guys to come out and play football. disappointed in the poor tackling and the way the dogs are waltzing around groups of melbourne players all too intent on something else to go after the man with the ball. if we cannot put this team to the sword in the second half then you can kiss our finals goodbye.

difficult conditions they may have been, but Freo managed to kick 7.6 so the did not seem to find kicking for goal as hard as our lads did.

fritch should always play in the forward line he is good mark and goal kicker. putting him in defense was an absolute waste. Viney should not have been tagging, the last quarter proved that, sad that it took so long for the penny to drop. Trac, Hogan and Tyson another poor performance. How many in a row before we do something about it. Petty and Smith both selection choices, they really must hate Frost. Without Max it would have been a 10 goal loss instead of 2 points. another game where we went in thinking we had it won before the ball was bounced, so no need to chase or put in. oh we will hear about the lessons learnt, etc.... when you are behind in a game why the hell do you not man up.

so many players just did not turn up for this game

regardless of the umpiring we have a lot of players not doing anywhere near enough especially in the forward line. These guys need to put their bodies in and need to chase and tackle. i wouldnt mind if they tried to kick a few goals as well. We are keeping port in this game, with the sheer weight of inside 50's we should be miles a head at the moment we are damn lucky to be in the lead. if these guys want to play finals they need to go out and prove it and not just leave it to Viney and others

the final score did not emphasise how bad we played. Collingwoods run out of defence which is an area we have tended to excel at did us in. our forwards except for Tom gave us very little. Pederson was a major disappointment, as were many others. we just do not get up for big games, when it counts we just dont turn up. We did it when after Jimmy Stynes dies, we did it last game last year against collingwood and we did it again today. i dont know if these players just get ahead of themselves thinking they have this won, or just being lazy when then need to put their footdown. We were fortunate to only lose 10% in percentage it could have been more, lets hope that such a percentage loss does not come back to haunt us like it did last year. gutted again!

another insipid, gutless lazy effort when it counts. too many easy goals from Collingwood as our players fail to man up, chase, tackle, they obviously came out again as they often do thinking all they have to do is turn up to win.

games is not over yet there is a lot we can improve and hopefully if that is our worst quarter for the game then we can still win this.

it is not the fact that we lost that worried me it was the failure to cover geelong when the ran and chipped. they had some many easy possessions because melbourne players did not chase, did not tackle well and did not deliver into our forward line well enough to give our forwards a chance. A lot to improve. We had quite a few players who kicked points in the last who could have won it for us, we were just not good enough.

gratz to Jack, his a nice guy wish him luck.

Does look a likely lad

if Jack was running 6th in our b&F after 14 or so rounds, can someone tell me how long has Jack been in the rut for!

i would love to know if we can get to the point where we can get stats on players conversion rate of opportunities. for instance how often the ball was kicked to jack or his area and how often he got it/lost out. It would be a better stat than just kicks etc, it also comes down to realization of opportunities into worthwhile stats.

seems that many think Watts should go because he is not a chaser or a tackler hard at the football. Then how do you reconcile this with the way Hogan plays. his approach to football seems to centre solely on the marking contest. If he marks up the ground his always very slow to move the ball on and once oppositions spoil his mark he tends to sit back and watch more so than seriously chase and tackle. Today was a hectic pace game lots of tackling etc. one of the things that stood out to me was the marking inside richmonds forward line and their goal kicking both of these jack does.

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 for one will be disappointed to lose Watts, yes he is hot and cold but i think his kicking in the forward line both at goals and to our players is the best in the team. He obviously has not shone as many would have wanted a number 1 draft pick but I think he provides better value in our forward line than Kent and many others. Part of the problem with Jack is our delivery too him is often not the best, or his leads are not honored. It will be disappointing to see him putting playing against us.

the afl will let him play, they will say he was going for the ball, accident. To me he turned his shoulder into the GWS player and hit him high which left the GWS one very good player short all game. I also thought there was another gws player whitfield perhaps who got a bit of a elbow or shoulder to the head in the last quarter i wonder if that will also get looked at.

so when was the last time we were on the winning end of a trade with collingwood.... i dont think swapping Weid for a possible pick 6 even if it was offered would result in a good outcome for the Dees. Keep the boy and let him grow into the man/player we all hope he can be. no point starting again with another youngster and being another 1 or 2 years behind in development.

something like 3m tonnes of explosives dropped, about 20% of the population destroyed. I read somewhere that there have been a number of treaties between NK and the west and that at least 3 of those had been broken by the US, who failed to live up to their end of the bargain. Given the current climate where the current US president rips up agreements, trade deals at his leisure can you trust anything the US does at this time.

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.

Nothing is certain in football when it comes to trading. Hogan going home would depend primarily on if he wants to be traded back to WA. if he does the club will do what they can to extract what value they can out of the deal. There are very very few footballers on our list that are untouchable.

why would we not just take freo's pick 5 for Hogan and maybe swap some other back end picks, as he is worth more than just pick 5 as he is an established mature talent that lifts their side immediately. We then give adelaide our pick 10 and our second round pick.

A lot of sense in what you say oh bearded one, yes when you kick it forward in a hurry you take your chances, if you have more of your players around the ball then chances are the opposition will have more players ahead so the greater the chance of turn overs. I think people accept that is part of our game plan. I think what burns most supporters is the pitiful handpasses that dont hit a target 2 meters away. Or the dumb kicks and poorly executed foot passes that we see far too often, Hunt for instance running and bouncing, running and bouncing and then shanking the kick direct to an opposition player standing by himself, which results in a rebound goal. or the regular 'bernie' kick in the backline that inevitably results in facepalms from coaches and supporters everywhere. We need players with a real competitive spirit like Viney and Oliver, guys who battle all day long. we have too many players who will sit back and not run the extra 10-20meters to put pressure on a player, because they have already given up and figured it is not worth the effort. So if the opposition player fumbles or drops the mark we have no one there to pressure them. The sides I think play the best brand of football make you earn every kick, mark, goal or point, if you make a mistake, drop a mark, bobble the ball then they buried you. A lot of our players try to corral the opposition instead of attacking them, yes it probably is better percentage football but putting pressure on all the time may mean next time they opposition player may fumble because he knows he will get pressured by any nearby melbourne player. We are not that competitive as yet, i hope that some day we will be.