Deecisive

meek is a big bloke and can mark may make another tall option forward if he can kick,

we recruited him because he can kick goals, but we are telling him to kick goals with our crappy strategy of kicking to the pocket where he is surrounded by packs of players. He contest, his marking around the ground has been good. we should be delivering the ball to him on a lead not to a pack'

i would like to nominate myself as our new forward coach at half the price of the current guy, how hard is it to say kick it long into the pocket. Job done and i can even do that from home. I cannot recall when we last played 4 quarters of football, even last year we had handy leads to see them evaporate and opposition take the lead, but our 3rd quarters were some of our best football, gawn/Jackson to oliver or trac, who would either handpass to each other or boot long and reasonably direct into an open forward line. i dont recall too many of those chains in the last few months. Even when we beat the lions last time we lost the last quarter by a lot. we seem to take our foot of the pedal, but last year and even earlier this year we were able to reassert ourselves, this latter half of the year we just seem to stop. what has been our biggest winning margin compared to other sides. We have a massive number of inside 50's so we cannot say we are purely defensive we have lots of chances but our forward approach is crap. BBB is a goal kicker but not able to take a mark in a pack of 6 or more. one on one or leading is his strength, we are trying to make him play our kick to the forward pocket game, that is not his style or how to get value out of him. We have too may players who move the ball on too slowly. Sparrow for one constantly gets the ball and ignores simple short passes to open players, he instead holds up play and eventually kicks long down the line. not great football. though i must admit some of our short passing has been pretty poor. Goody unfortunately does not seem to like to change things, does not change our playing style, does not change players even when they are not playing well, does not make a lot of changes in a game to change their flow. We have a brief window of opportunity with the great playing group we have and new players coming through if Goody does not learn to manage change better then we will miss that window of opportunity.

Jacksons a great guy, but unfortunately has not been pretty average this later half of the year. For a guy so tall and mobile his stats have not been great. i wonder if its because his heart is not in it, that in his mind he has already left and just going through the motions.

fitness? not sure that is the case, the start of our season was fantastic we looked unbeatable we just didnt lose our fitness overnight and continue to maintain that lose for the rest of the year. more to it than that. We did not get the same drive from our midfield, Oliver was the only one who always stood up, Trac was reasonable but not in the same form as last year or earlier this year, our Dynamic ruck duo was not the same by a long shot. I think we found we could not continue to carry some of these other bit players that we play week after week and even into finals. Any team that ran and carried found us out. we did not chase. I dont know if we have an aversion to tackling, i know several times last night players did not go at the player with the ball, we do not cover lose opposition players well.

our 3rd quarters last year were some of our best, tonights 3rd quarter effort was a far cry from the melbourne of 2021. Too many passengers, too many poor disposals, not enough chasing and manning up. a disappointing end to the year.

I agree dunstan should be either in the team or medical sub in case Trac has issues. I would like to see ANB go out and someone faster more talented come in. I would also love to see our forward line work together to all lead in different directions so that we have options going forward and that we dont have every man and his dog going up with Fritch and Ben Brown. We are extremely wasteful going into our forward line because we just pump it into pockets time after time, need to use short passes and running players near by to move the ball quickly in to leading forwards. We have had some injuries but sounds like everyone is still pretty fit, we need to go out and repeat our flogging of Brisbane. hopefully brisbane is getting over confident with all this talk about the Dees injuries.

we slaughtered them when we played 3 quarters of football. i dont think we will get away with only playing 3 quarters again. I just hope our players dont get ahead of themselves, this will be tough they will come at our players hard and will try to crush oliver. we need everyone playing well,

other teams have tried new players all year long why are we afraid, we are not penalizing players that dont play well and dont reward those in Casey that do. That is a poor culture. we will loose these backup and developing players because they do not see a chance to be selected when playing well. can some of these players with good form play worse than players with poor form. I am not a fan of bring tom mc back too soon, we want fully fit match hardened players, he has only played 3quarters of a game and from what i understand was not overly impressive. ANB needs to go back to casey maybe he can find form there, trying to play him each week on the expectation that he will just find it is madness/stupid. Melksham's game was poor primarily because he missed goals, if he had kicked those goal then maybe we would think far better of his game. His previous games where he played well seemed to be when he was one on one with opposition players in the forward line. he was 1on1 with opposition players a few times last night but ignored, as players went for the pack. i am still not sure why you would put it to the boundary instead of the goal square. We tend to lose it either way, why not make it easier for our forwards who may find it easier to get goals not pushed up against the boundary line. I was surprised to see may kick the ball down the right hand side to BBB last night a great move, problem was no one else was prepared on that side, i think May needs to vary his kicking in a bit. he could probably run 30-40 meters on the right hand side before kicking the ball because everyone is set up for the left hand side.

There is no one thing unfortunately that will correct our current situation. yes we lack defensive pressure, we are too slow in moving the ball into our forward line at times giving the opposition lots of time to setup. We are crowding our forwards, how many times have you seen Ben Brown one on one with an opposition player, he is constantly being crowded by our own players and opposition players, he often gets his hands to it but only occasionally is able to clutch it. when the ball goes to ground our small forwards are just in the wrong spot to apply pressure consistently. We do not use the width of the ground once we get near the wing, we go straight down the line, in a predictable manner. our coverage of opposition teams that run and handpass and run to accept the ball back again always kills us as this often results in them getting an easy forward 50 entry. Some of our players just do not chase. often see players start to trot after a player in the expectation they are going to kick it, but then realise they are going for a run before they actually start to really try to chase. opposition players on the boundary line taking a shot from goal run inboard and open up the angle because no one is providing that defensive presence or pressure 10meters in from the line to stop or deter that. our fitness, we are not able to run out 4 quarters of football anymore. we have lost most of our games after leading and sometime leading well. free kicks and 50 meter penalties certainly dont help either. On the positive side we still have a very good team, if they can show up on the day and play their best football they will beat any team in the competition. We only have to win 3 games to win the premiership, and while they are top teams i dont think any of them are unbeatable by the Demons.

a disappointing effort picket needs a boot up the rear, 4 kicks and probably 3 came in the first quarter is a major concern. when he goes missing he really goes missing. ANB another game where he keeps getting caught, admittedly some of the handpasses etc to him in traffic did not help, but he was still more of a liability and an asset. We need players who can put forward pressure on, sorry but i dont see Tom McDonald doing that, Tom tends to lope behind his player, he is not a busy tackler or chaser, he needs more time to prove he can at least mark as that is his major asset, He did not set the world on fire in his casey game so we cannot take a chance on him. Tonight we had opportunity after opportunity in our forward 50, we know and they know that we keep kicking to the pocket, yet the opposition seems to be better prepared for it than our forwards. Luke jackson's game was probably one of his worst, 2 kicks and 5 handpasses and one mark. He was on the ball 1/2 the night, if not longer. Unfortunately when i heard that Viney was heard saying we are coming good at the right end of the season, i thought, dont talk to soon, dont get ahead of yourself. This team has be realistic, to win the premiership they need to play 4 quarters of football, i cannot even remember when they did that last. a disappointing effort from a lot of players tonight, just dont seem to have the hunger, or the stamina to do it for 4 quarters. i hope they prove me wrong next week and the week after that and the week after that, but we are now in sudden death playoffs so there is no more second chances.

Best way to get even with this guy is to do it out on the ground, show him up for the muppet that he is by beating him and his team.

The blue's only played one quarter out of the four, so were both lucky to be so close, and unlucky to lose. Mason Cox using his knee into players sides at the bounce when a player is to me a reportable offense. it is not just a free kick, you can do someone an injury doing that when the opposition player is not ready. I do worry about collingwoods style of play their run, overlap and run and carry that is where we have been vulnerable to all year long. We need to have far better defensive pressure and chasing to stop the overlap, whether that is collingwood, geelong, or whoever. They all know that is our weakness.

why is it that a player can be out of bounds and play on while out of bounds and it not be called out of bounds? Sidebottom moved off his mark while out over the boundary, seen other players play on by running outside the boundary line before kicking. am i missing something

Weids is young enough to turn it around, we know he has talent, he just needs to get his fitness and desire up. He has another year to run on his contract, i dont think he will be jumping ship, as his form is not anything that is likely to impress another club. And he knows if he can turn it around he could be playing in finals, which may not happen with another club. i would like to see the team support folk try to work with him to sort out his issues, he has potential, but just not realising it often enough, or consistently.

So what sort of compensation can the dockers give us given their position on the ladder.

A great team performance, everyone is to be commended for their great effort, this is one of the top teams in the competition and we gave them a football lesson. 3 more games like that to take back to back premierships. Disappointed in the commentators, they kept stating that Melbourne was essentially beating up the poor brisbane players and zorko was being harassed constantly. I dont know how many times I saw Zorko tackled put the tackler into a headlock and would not let him go, or punch and push players and the commentators blame the melbourne players.

TV already making excuses for the Lions tackle on brown. disappointing to see.

it is great to see us getting reward for our forward 50 attacks. Great goal kicking. Keep it going Dees.

we want second spot so if we play the Swans its in Melbourne, though if we play like we are now we can play there anywhere and win.

we need to make this side better not just continue to play players who are not doing enough constantly, small forwards are there to put pressure on but also to kick or help in kicking goals. we are not seeing enough of that from our smalls. for the sheer number of forward entries that bounce back shows we have problems. we need to face that is a major issue that needs to be addressed, doing nothing about it will only result in in continuing to happen. Brown was pretty good he constantly had 3 or more players on his back. and frankly should have bad a couple of frees for push in the back Max did an massive job last night. they kick it long to him all night and he kept grabbing them under enormous pressure. i do wish we had another kick out plan rather than going down the left side all the time. The blues did a couple of nice moves with open players down the middle that moved the ball on quickly. or even have a fast player run out to the right side, lets try not to be so predictable. with the field so open on the right you would think that a fast player kicking out could run a fair way down the right hand side before kicking the ball. Lastly we have a few players who just hold the ball up and stop the flow, in fact their holding the ball up actually allows the opposition to reset. The need to get the message to move the ball on, doing so would both help the team and make their game play more effective.

i would like to see some changes to the side to bring in new players, we have had a lot of losses in the last couple of months and we keep swapping in and out the same players and keep getting the same results. yes we won today, but we need to improve that means giving those who are showing good form a chance to replace those that arent playing well. give them a chance to get some form back in the VFL rather than hoping they turn it on. We are down to the last game and finals, we need our best players in the side based on form, not just rotating the same players in and out.

So if this was a match early in the year would they have over turned the suspension, i think not. While it was stated that Cripps was going for the mark, i personally did not see his arms out looking to grab the ball as we often see true marking collisions. Cripps turned and led with his shoulder. So is the AFL now saying if you turn your shoulder at the last minute and knock the crap out of someone that is ok, no consequences for hurting someone. How many others will use the Cripps defense going forward. He took an opposition player out of the game leaving them one man short and receiving no penalty. At what point in time do we see some mongrel deliberately take out an opposition player and plead that they were only protecting themselves. I would prefer melbourne to play and beat Carlton with Cripps playing as they may get complacent if he was not. But its the AFL's attitude and double standards that pisses me off.

jackson wants to go to freo, how about we try to get brayshaw from Freo

i think that while we lost for a number of reasons, at the end of the day I think we played better, we had far more forward entries, had a lot more shots at goal, more possessions, and unfortunately the wrong side of the umpire at times when it counted. So I dont think it is quite that bad. Yes we need to make some changes but a lot of those changes are probably mental, they are our disposal efficiency, our looking for players to give the ball to instead of kicking it long into the goal square. When we move the ball fast we get goals, when we take too long to move it into our forward line, our forwards rarely mark the ball and our smalls while they do get some goals dont get enough. sparrow, jordan and ANB (when he gets the ball) often are too slow to move it on, instead of taking short passes and moving the ball they hold it up and kick down the line. Lot at the stats on how many times a game we go forward into our 50 a game for the percentage of goals, or even scores we get. That needs to change, while we may be getting reasonable service from some of our smalls, and mids, probably not enough to warrant their place in the side.