Deecisive

It would be very disappointing for our players if the ground was only filled with opposition supporters. We should be there for our players not theirs. This is a game that we dare not take to lightly, they will have 24 players out their trying their best to beat us to prove a point. We need to have our best 24 players out their to prove our point and to take the points. Essendon's VFL side pantsed us last year, we must not let that happen again. Every demon support who can go should be there to cheer our team on and boo the opposition when appropriate. Go Dees..

A great second half. It was very encouraging to see the forward line pressure, this is something that we have sadly been missing in the past. Too often the ball would be kicked into our forward line and either end up with a score or bouncing back out. Saturday the guys put loads of pressure on port which resulted in turnovers and goals. We need more of this type of pressure.

Great tackle by Oliver, the Port player turned which caused the spin. The port player had his hands free so could brace himself. It will be interesting to see if such a rigid stance remains all year or just the start of the year as often happens with the AFL. Umps come in and over officiate and after a few rounds the rules are sometimes enforced and other times ignored, so players no longer know what rules they are playing under.

Is anyone flying their drone to the game?

Olie looks to be a gun. Tomorrows practice match may give us a first real look at him. While the coaches may not be looking at him for round one, I am sure Olie will still be doing everything he can to get picked for our first real game. Looking forward to hearing how he goes tomorrow and seeing him in the nab cup matches. I personally think he has what it takes to play round 1.

I wish grimes all the best on the wing, he definitely needs to improve his disposal his turn over rate and putting other players under pressure undoes a lot of the good things he does. Hopefully the wing will allow him a little more freedom and less pressure.

A lot of factors at play here. We will be better this year than last, injuries to our players will determine how much better. Thankfully we have more depth but we cannot afford to loose key players like Hogan and Gawn. Then we have factors such as everyone else's draws, ours appears harder, but who knows some of the less fancied teams we play once could be on the rise, so playing them once maybe a bonus for us and a pain for others. The we have how other teams have fared with their list management, injuries, draw and game style. I think many agree St Kilda and Carlton are unlikely to improve drastically this year. Brisbane is still lacking depth, the suns rely on Garry and a couple of others, GWS is up and down, while some of their players re getting more mature they are still not consistent, the loss of Cameron and a couple of others will upset them. Collingwood, we saw what happened to them after they lost cloke and Elliott, no forward line and an aging midfield. They have recruited a couple of guns but that's nothing new, Collingwood has a bit of history buying in expensive recruits to help lift them, it has not worked too well so far, I hope the trend continues. Richmond will be around 8 or 9 as usual, as they are such an up and down side. Port two years ago were wowing everyone have now fallen back into the pack, the loss of their ex-Essendon players and toumpas is not going to help them improve this year. Adelaide, lost their number one player, they rely on Tex and a couple of older hands, they maybe slowing down. Norf, is a real mystery they could go anywhere unfortunately they are consistent enough to do that from week to week so are only likely to be around the edge of the 8 with richmond. Footscray will improve but they will miss cramery and may have a little trouble scoring if tommy doesn't come good for them, but I would expect they may challenge for the 8. and Essendon they have stacked their side with top up players who are all likely to be playing every week while the normal essendon list tops up the side as these older players succumb to injury and tire from the workload. They may win a few games but no finals this year, maybe next year once their get a new first pick in the draft in November. All in all the final eight is likely to be Geelong, Hawthorn, Eagles, Freo, Sydney with 3 spare spots being raffled, so maybe, just maybe Melbourne can get one of those spots.

Looks to be a modest kid. A real competitor, he will be trying to get into the seniors as fast as he can, for as long as he can.

Poor, poor James he forgot to read the bottle again insurance policy. Strange he has a lawyer wife that should have picked up that he was not covered if he instigates suits against others, and didn't he notice all those bills coming in every month from his insurer were directed at him? Well lets see the Essendon football club put their hand in their pocket while they still have some money and pay his bills, after all he is still their favourite son. Better to give the money to James than all those drug addled footballers who will be suing them soon.

We need a settled and consistent approach to our football, letting Roos goes means another turnover and change of direction. I would love to see him stay and continue to support and give direction to the club. Happy for him to hand off the coaching to Goodwin and others, his skills and the respect the players, supporters and the football world has for him is 2nd to none. We need the influence of someone like roos to inspire our players.

I believe Garry has tried to do his best for the dees in what ever capacity has been asked of him, he was not alone in choosing coaches and you can only choose from those that apply based on the resumes and their interviews, game plans, etc... In hindsight it is easy to criticise when things don't work out. I wish him all the very best.

Bernie was on the ball and closing players down a lot last year, if some of our younger players can take on that role then I would love to Bernie moved to the half forward flank, the guy kicks like a mule and loves a goal, he could be very dangerous hanging around there all day.

One wonders how many other Essendon players were subjected to the injection program, and why were they not asked to sign waivers? do these other guys worry about what they were given. So are these Essendon players in trouble because they signed waivers and others didnt? I would have thought everyone in the injection programme would have been included.

One would have thought that they needed fitness and skills coaches not game day coaches? but then if it wastes Essendons money then I am all for Mick coaching them

Howe's intercepting marks will be missed, but his sometime poor disposal after such a mark will be certainly be appreciated a lot more when we play the pies. Cross probably took more intercept marks than Howe across the backline and added a lot more once the ball hit the ground. But that is a lot easier when your the spare man floating around in the backline. My concern with Howe is that he went missing a lot for someone with the potential he had.

This years draft has given us some excellent quality to work with, some of which we should see later in the year. Petracaa will be a significant upgrade on Jimmy T, who while skilled just could not pull it together for us, did not accumulate possessions and did not always dispose of the ball well. Frost will add a lot more depth to our forward line and MacO Jnr will help bolster our defence. Players like Grimes, Lumumba, Matty Jones, need to lift their game to keep their spot, if they can do that then that will be a significant improvement over last years form, if not we have players waiting in the wings to do so. Hullet looks to also give us another option forward where in the last year if Dawes was not there we were looking for Pederson and when he was not available we had to take backs to cover. And if Max can stay fit all year that will be a significant bonus and give our mids more first use of the ball. We have a much better team this year more mature, hopefully fitter, and more attacking game plan. Yet that by itself does not win games, as we saw last year in some of the games we won and lost. We won against sides that had much better teams, balance, attack capability etc... the difference is that their disposal was usually worse than ours which resulted in them turning the ball over or kicking points instead of goal.

I find it interesting that these are supposed to be top up players to help essendon be able to field cover injuries etc. One wonders how many of these so called top up players will be playing ahead of the remaining bombers. does not sound so much as a top up but a bloody big helping hand.

To win more games we need to do the basics a whole lot better. We need to hit targets and stop turning over the ball. We need to tackle and apply pressure consistently and we need players who go hard at the ball whether we are winning or loosing badly.

Insurance companies are not benevolent funds, they are funding this to try to save money, presumably hoping something will come up that will help reduce how much players will be seeking when the sue. This also delays when they get sued so that a few more players will hopefully have left, retired, etc. as life could get pretty nasty down in bomber land when you have players playing for the club in an active suit against the club during a playing season. The club and the insurance company have shown their approach with the way they are going at Hal Hunter, something for all the others to look forward to/

howe dumb to think he could lie to the club about it. And howe dumb of the club to suggest they believe the frisby was the cause of his injury and not that soft cricket ball. new clause will be inserted into his... contract no playing Frisbee with a dog.

Great photos, Smith has a pretty good build, and oliver practically looks skinny!

I really don't want to see the dees go out there thinking this or any other game that they pull the Melbourne jersey on is not important. I want our players to be competing all the time, a bit like Viney today at training.

I am still wondering how the playing Frisbee with a dog can break your hand, surely the dog was not throwing it that hard, or I guess Jeremy forgot to catch in his mouth.

Essendon players need to realise they were fooled into taking drugs and they didn't even seem to ask or know what it was they were taking. They were lazy and have to pay for it. The smart things is to forget the swiss adventure and call slater and Gordon and sue the crap out of the Essendon football club for damages, loss of earnings, hardship, pain and suffering, mental anguish, etc. etc. etc. The reason I suggest this is that Essendon and their lawyers will probably continue to fight this all the way up to the high court so any settlement or payment may not happen in these players lifetimes, but at least they will leave something for their kids, that is if any of them can have kids still.

I see the NAB challenge as being pretty important to the club. If we go out and get whooped then some supporters may be turned off signing up. If we go out and play attractive football we may attract a lot of new members. This is the first time we get to see some of the young guns, which is important to for the players themselves as well as the members. They put in a good game or two and they may begin playing round 1, they don't, we may not see them at all this year. Quite frankly I don't understand why the MFC is not doing more to have replays or streaming of Casey games so diehard fans can follow their progress of our new players and draftees. It is also a chance for us to see how the game plan comes together in a real game and to tweak it before the season begins. And lastly we have not had that many wins over the last 20-50 years that we can write off a chance to get another one up on the competition.