Deecisive

While I would have obviously liked us to win, it was pleasing that we were so close to port at the end and not just due to poor kicking or us rushing lots of behinds. We were not competitive for a good portion of the match. Yes there were howling stuff ups by the umps, and poor decisiions by players, they will hopefully think more carefully next time. I think we need to remember that we have not had too many occassions where we have been just ahead of the opposition and only have a couple of minutes to go. I am sure Roos will be helping the players reflect on what they should have done. good effort dees

I dont see why we are blaming Dawes, Jones, Grimes, Howe or any individual players as a team they all pretty much made mistakes at times that could have won the game for us. Our disposal efficiency was woeful for quite a few players, still we were playing in adelaide, in front of a very one sided crowd which does unfortunately have an adverse effect on the impartiality of the umpiring. All in all I was pretty happy with the teams performance, it was not pretty football but they played as a team and applied pressure most of the day and did not rollover. These final matches are not so much about winning but about keeping the lessons going and identifying which players will be leaving us at the end of the season. Which will probably mean that we may give games to players who would not necessarily be in our top 22 so that Roos and co can see if they have a future with the MFC or not,

What about a 1 year contract for Maxwell? would not cost draft picks, or trades, just $$

Roos needs to give a few players who are on the cusp of being cut a chance to play for their spots so you may see slightly more changes than usual. I would like to see fitzpatrick at FF and dawes at CF. he can also help out in the ruck when needed. Blease in, Fitzy in, clisby in. Out Mckenzie, tappy, Terlich

Essendon are probably stalling for time, i.e. see if they can hold off until their finals tilt (if they get one) is over then they can find a quick resolution and serve out their six months between September and the following year, maybe miss some pre-season games.

Tappy out for JHK, Bail out for Blease, riley to the wing and mat jones has a rest, Garland forward and georgio in (replacing matt jones).

Did anyone actually expect us to win, the margin was not huge compared to the poundings we took last year. I think it was not so much the size of the loss but the fact that Geelong did make us look pretty poor that irritated me the most.

We look to want to hold on to players for what they could be, not what they are. We live on hope that they player will start to show the promise that they have shown glimpses of, sadly all too often they do not live up to expectations. I would expect Roos to keep his trading options open on most of our players, if the deal is right for MFC then I would think that he would trade Jack Watts. As for signing some other players like Spencer etc.. if they are still on our list as contracted players we can still trade them.

Lets not forget that we played a very SUCCESSFUL, well drilled and settled team who have adopted a game plan and play to it. We are still very much work in progress. Tyson, Riley and Vince are all new to the club and are really in the first year of learning and understanding the strengths and weaknesses of each other. We will be a much better side when we can have a midfield that works on equal terms with our opponents so that we do not have to be a man down in attack. The Cats and most other teams have made us pay big time by using the spare man in defense to launch their attacks off the half back line, which results in our players running around trying to cover. I am amazed considering how well the cats played that we did not loose by more, this was looking like a 100+ point drubbing and last year it would have been, this year Roos plan has made us more competitive. We still dont have the players with the fitness and skill necessary to play the level of attacking football that the swans do, but with Hogan and hopefully Trengrove coming back to some of his early form (with perhaps a bit better disposal efficiency) will be big pluses for next year. The rest of our list improvement is going to be trade and swap to get the players we need, you can bet Roos and Co will be very focused on the type of player they want. The deals and trading done last year was pretty damn good, if we can do the same or better again then we will be far more competitive next year and we will win a lot more games. There has only been a couple of games that we have been smashed in and that is a real positive if we can get that incremental improvement next year to win most of those.

Frawley needs to spend the rest of the year up in our forward line, preferably at FF. This way his poor performances are likely to be less notices and have little impact on his compensatory value, if he stays in the backline we will be lucky to get a round 2 draft pick for him. Frawley has always had a casual approach to his football in the backline which has often resulted in turnovers or him getting caught. Our game today was pretty bad, but given the the Cats dominance i am surprised that the loss was so little. Yes they could have kicked straighter but they didnt. Riley did some excellent things, a hard nut to help out viney and N Jones is what we need. Until our midfield can hold its own with the opposition without having an extra man in on the ball we will always have trouble scoring. A couple more decent midfielders and half forwards will hopefully allow us next year to keep numbers in our forward line even that should make it easier for Dawes and hopefully hogan. We will he be having another list clean out at the end of the year, how many years in a row have we been doing that now. Hopefully we can get some decent trades and draft picks, though there is always the possibility that we can pick up a couple of older senior players who may not be getting games at their clubs that will work for us, ala Cross.

What do you do with someone like Tom McDonald, in some areas excellent in others down right 3rd rate. todays disposal efficiency was 44% his turn overs cost us goals.

Sorry Tappy but 44% disposal efficiency on a very low number of possessions, is not good enough. I dont see any sense in giving him another week or two as he has demonstrated over the past 40 games he has played that he is just not going to make it, the games is too fast for him and he does not seem to be capable of using his size to any great effect. I would rather we give another youngster another seniors game.

Tappy appears to be too slow, the senior games the opposition run off him far too easily, he does not use that muscle to get into good positions to take marks and has rarely had any influence on the game. I hope he can turn it around but i fear he is what he is. As for trade bait, i doubt anyone else will want him if we dont.

While we need midfield talent we still need forward talent, we have see what injuries have done to what was looking to be a magnificent forward line last year, that is totally reliant on Dawes at the moment. We get the ball down in our forward line enough times to improve our win ratio if we have forwards who can kick goals. Roos will be trying to get the best deals he can through both trade and draft. Our midfield/team performance would not look anywhere near as bad if we could cut down our turnovers.

I think one of our problems is that we have so many players pushing up onto the ball that when we do get a kick out of the defensive 50 or towards our forward 50 we have no players there to receive it, which results in it being turned over a lot. yes we also had some dumb @$$ handpasses and kicks in our back 50 but I think we lost the ball usually further up the ground. As garland is not playing his best football maybe bring georgio in and run garland up in the forward line. he does have talent and skill and has shown he can kick a goal, it may give him a chance to get himself back into form. i would obviously love to see our players try to stay a little more in their positions as we just seem to kick the ball into our forward line where we are sadly out numbered and out played.

I personnally dont care where he goes as long as it costs the side his going to a lot of $$$'s and chews heavily into their salary cap and enhances our position for compensation, i.e. we dont want another beamer non-compo outcome.

I dont think playing Maxy was necessarily the wrong thing to do they had Sandilands and Pav in their team selection so putting peterson up against Sandilands was probably a bit too much. I believe the problem we had is that we did not play a brand of football that allowed us to use his height to advantage. our ball movement is pitifully slow, our players first instincts are to stop and look backwards and sideways. when we did move it quickly we actually got a couple of our very few goals. There has been a lot of criticism of Dawes, the guy is trying his hardest, he has to contend with multiple players on him ever week, being manhandled and rarely getting a free and p*ss poor delivery. Yes he sometimes runs into the wrong spot but that is because he is running himself ragged leading up and being ignored, leading back, and being ignored, etc.... We play an extra man around the stoppages and oppositions play an extra man in defense, we need that extra man at the stoppages to make up for the lack of skill of our midfield, we pay for that when we send it forward because we have the opposition sitting there with extra numbers, usually someone trying to hold out Dawes and any other forwards who may have stayed back (not that that happens often) and their spare man in defense cleans up, from there they switch and create an overlap that has our players chasing tail all the way up the field. we cannot kick goals if we cannot get the ball down there quick enough to an even contest, our players are not that good enough at this time. Dawes needs help, he needs a fast crumber near him all day long, someone that does not go too far from him so that he can benefit from spoils and can put pressure on the opposition backs. Skill errors have been a highlight of our games all year long, with a number of games where the buik of the oppositions score has come from our turn overs. Grimes and Dawes should not have missed the simple shots from 15-20 meters out. Instead of dropping them send them back to the old school practice it, kick it from the same spot 50 times in a row, you miss then the count restarts, then maybe move them back 10 meters, rinse and repeat. handpassing practice should also be undertaken in a similar fashion, practice, practice, practice basic skills.

Lets face it Freo is not likely to be worried about melbourne, their coach can fire them up as much as he likes the players will still be saying to themselves we are playing Melbourne, whats the problems. This does give us a chance to be far more competitive, the issue for the Dees as always is can we put 4 quarters together and can we minimise the number of turnovers. If yes to these two things we have a chance, if we fail in either we will loose.

Not a big fan of the glove, if players use them it is because they believe it gives them some benefit over using their bare hands, therefore I see that as an advantage, it maybe small but it may make the difference between a mark and a score and an almost mark and a turn over. Ban the glove.

I think that Essendon is just digging a bigger hole for themselve, where Asada was prepared to do deals with Essendon some of that may now disappear from the table. If Essendon is allowed to get away with their players having banned substances and surviving the penalties all other sportsman have to suffer then all of sport will be worse for it. I have heard a lot about essendon trying to keep the players names out of the papers for their own welfare no duty of care, but sadly do not even know what they were injected with, nor have they to my knowledge come up with a health and monitoring program to check on the impact. Being able to check on their health actually means you need to understand what they were injected with, which Essendon obviously believes neither the players or Asada need to know. It appears that essendons actions are to do with Essendon and coaches, not the players. There has been precious little responsibility taken by senor people at Essendon for the damage they could have done to the sport, the club and to the players themselves. The AFL has in my opinion been trying to smooth things over with the intention of sweeping this all under the carpet to make it go away, i.e. similar to the tanking investigation that only investigated one club. Essendon now believes they were tricked into being honest due to the AFL's involvement, whereas they would not need to have be so honest if Asada was doing the investigation alone. you have to ask what are these guys smoking.

Salem has done some really good team things, he needs more game time to bring him up. Toumpas is an excellent talant but he needs to work harder to get into the fray more often. He has had a lot more freedom to wander around and pick up kicks, etc playing on the wind and half back. So numbers alone do not tell the whole story. As for Blease and JHK Roos is making them work hard to earn a spot, its not just put in a few good games other clubs have players who have been waiting YEARS to get a game. I like the idea of keeping the side settled and making players force their way in. Salem, Blease, JHK etc will be swapped in and out during the remaining games so Roos can see who is a keeper and whos a goer. We know that our chances of winning too many more games this year is remote, so Roos will use this to provide an education experience for those players he is looking to keep.

All this scrutiny on holding the ball by the umpires means that this week we are going to see another interpretationn of the rules which could mean that they then reinterprete others, i.e. during the doggies game a melbourne players legs legs were taken out by a doggie on the ground resulting in the melbourne player falling on the doggie and him getting a free kick, which is a departure from the taking the legs out paid weeks earlier. players are not going to know how to play the game until they start to see what the umps pull out of their bag.

Instead of continuing to look towards new players coming in to save us, maybe we need to spend more $$ on skills coaches and skills training, as even our better players turn the ball over far too often and that is where we are getting killed.

Dean, not sure you can compare the delivery to Dawes in his days at Collingwood. At Collingwood, he played second fiddle to cloak and a lot of small forwards, at Melbourne he is pretty much the whole shooting match. So he gets the best defenders and as we allow the opposition a spare in defence he may also be out numbered, it at least seems that way from man of the games I have seen this year anyway. So in some ways he is actually playing better than he did at Collingwood, given the obstacles he now faces at the MFC.

Tyson does get caught a bit, but then he is in the middle of the pack with someone hanging off his coat tails all day long, he needs more support from those around him to help him get the time to dispose of the ball. JHK going back to Casey seems to have worked for him putting in a pretty good performance on Saturday by all accounts in a poor display from Casey. Re the coach at Casey not liking the Roos plan, well his plan does not seem to be doing much, dont see him getting too many offers with what he is doing with Casey, maybe if he worked more closely with Roos our players would have a more consistent game plan playing a different game style in Casey and MFC is likely to get them confused. We play a lot of the top sides in the next 5 weeks or so, so it will be interesting to see how the players respond, I am not expect us to win any but I would like to see us play a better brand of football than the crap that they dished out today. Roos maybe giving some of the fringe players a bit of chance to see if they can step up to AFL level he does after all need to free up some spots on our list. Today would have given him a bit more of an idea about a couple of players value, or lack thereof s