Deecisive

I think Roos and MFC supporters are seeing some daylight at the end of a long and dark tunnel.. While we lost the first few games we were far more competitive than we were last year. The absence of all of our tall forwards obviously hurt our scoring ability. We still have quite a few good players to return and the team as a whole are trying to come to terms with the Roos game plan and style as well as having rucks and new mid field get to know each others style and learn to read each others movements a lot better. Once we settle we will be a far better team, still a long way to go, but far better than the last few years. As for getting more priority picks, I would rather see the guys win more games so that we dont get it, as the wins mean more to all players than us getting one more 'potential' high draft junior.

Re the continuing wines issue, my take on it is, approach him and see if he wants to come back to Melbourne both city and club. We should have some $$'s to spare to encourage him to move. That way we have Toumpas on the outside wines and viney on the inside.

Dunn was good up forward with Dawes and Frawley, I dont think we should tinker with something that is working ok. We need someone with pace to replace Terlich while Blease has pace I dont think he is capable of playing accountable football and has trouble winning his own ball, so if garland is not available then Clisby is probably the next best option down back.

I think Malthouse has done the right thing by dropping players that were not performing, the problem was that those left did not perform or step up after their embarrassing loss against the bombers. The blues kicked themselves out of the game with poor goal kicking. Mcclean getting touches in the vfl is an after the fact stat, what did he do the weeks before to see him in the reserves in the first place.

Tagging ablett is damn near impossible, he has amazing poise and reflexes and seems to find a way to dance around in the traffic, Jordie did well on him last time we played if I recall correctly but there was a lot of scragging and holding, etc that resulted in Ablett getting a a few frees, Hopefully jordie can do the job again this week. The GC need to throw ablett forward a bit more so that their midfield can learn to not rely on him so much, i think they may give him more time forward against us than other sides as the risk to their midfields output without him is probably going to be easier against us than many other teams.

Minimal changes, anyone coming into the side needs to prove TODAY in the Casey game that they are playing well enough to TAKE the spot of someone in the team. That is the culture we want to get to, not well lets drop Spencer, or drop JKH and bring in someone else on the vague hope that they may play better. They need to be showing they are playing better before they should be considered. Sadly we have been working from the position of weakness where we have have players playing so bad we keep swapping them for someone else in the hope they will do better. Please let those days be gone.

Loved todays effort, I loved Dawes being a big target that allowed frawley, dunn and even watts to have a bit more space and be effective targets. Loved the tackling and even saw a few shepherds, JKH put in a lovely little block on a carlton defender in the 3rd or last quarter to allow Dawes to take an uncontested mark, those are the sort of team things that is great to see. Almost all of our team stood up today and played well. a well deserved win.

Loved his effort today, was great to see.

Spencer need to concentrate a bit better on his jump, he does not seem to hit the ball out at the top of his jump. He also needs to learn to jump into his opponents a lot more, punching the ball away from his feet would not be a bad idea as well, he will learn with more time and more games.

We loose on turnovers and poor disposal, does not matter how much experience you have, if you keep doing this you loose. Forget the fitness running laps, etc, practice skills.

I sadly do not believe we can win, but I would love to see them actually trying, contesting, shepherding, tackling hard and going hard at the ball and the man with the ball, essentially allowing no easy kicks or marks. basic stuff that they obviously have not being doing, oh and as this is a wish list, I wish they could kick the damn ball forward quickly to one of our own

Ah I still remember Big Carls last game for us, there is a man who drew quite a few lines in the sand on that day. Sadly that was another era, last week the GWS kindergarten squad came out and pushed us around and ran all over us. This week we face Carlton at probably their worst perhaps since the Kruizer cup will come out swinging how our guys respond is going to give Roos and supporters the best view of their future with the melbourne football club.

It is not a matter of if we deserve a priority pick its a matter whether the rules allow us to be given one and if the AFL want to exercise that right. They had a chance to exercise that right last year but chose not to because a few of the top teams complained we did not deserve it. The issue will be the same we are still crap we are still likely to be eligible for a pick, its a matter of the AFL and the pressure from other clubs as to whether we get one or not. I suspect they will say no, self interest is always a major motivator.

I think we will find other clubs still reluctant to let us have extra picks, there is no value in it to them so they will not be keen.

i think him putting a figure on his value is a good thing, he now has to show prospective clubs and MFC that he is worth it. If we do not believe he is worth it we will let him go and accept whatever compensation we can get for him, plus room in our salary cap for the salary we are not paying him. If he improves then we win at least for this year and then can assess how much he wants to stay with the dees. My biggest fear is that no one will want to pay the sort of money he wants, including melbourne. then what?

We have fitness coaches and skill coaches and still we dont look as if we can run out a game against juniors or constantly deliver the ball to our own players. Maybe its time the MFC called in career guidance councilor to have a chat with our players and see what they want to do once their football career ends because it will most certainly be ending for a few of them at the end of the year.

Carlton accused us of playing soft no bruise footy and i cannot see that we have changed. Players are not trying to put in shepherds and bumps when they can, tackling numbers especially on a day like today were poor compared to the giants, a bunch of kids toweled us up and gave our guys a football lesson, shame so few of our players actually learn anything from these weekly lessons.

From before the game the giants were pushing into our players and getting physical they showed intent. Giants tackled and put in first and second efforts when too many of our players fell over or slipped just gave up, Howe was a prime exponent of this, in the last quarter he went up for a mark on the kickout and spilt the ball, he stayed on the ground and got up slowly while the giant player fumbled the ball, then finally kicked it into towards goals with no pressure from howe. No second efforts from him and several times punching the ball away over the line when he was the only player going for it. Spencer seemed to try, but lacks the skill, just tries to get the hit out to his feet, so even when he wins a hitout its usually it can go to anyone. He was physically out muscled by mummys boy.. To be fair he was thrown around like a rag doll at times and did not get any holding man decisions. Until he can actually hit out to advantage he is a liability, put in a taller midfield and everyone rove to the opposition ruck man. Evans disposal was woeful, Terlich worse still... Grimes was noticeable by his absence. Watts, lazy does not commit to tackling, a few times he got goals after he spilt the ball and then the opposition players fumbled resulting in more of an accidental possession than a go and get it type, he needs to go in and get the ball. and he needs to tackle. Too many players pulled out of contests. it the giants had kicked straight this would have been a massacre instead of just a very embarrassing loss to probably the 2nd worst team in the competition at this moment. it saddens my heart as a demon supporter to see such weak hearted efforts by so many players.

jack needs to use his pace more, needs to stay in the goal square and constantly make leads from there and keep running his opponent around, he needs to use that pace so that he can take marks. other forwards need to give him a little bit of room to run into.

Not sure i agree that we did not have anyone capable of winning up forward, I think our delivery into the forward 50 was pathetic, long kicks to out numbered forwards, crappy little passes into a congested forwards line that went to eagles players more often or not, or high little floating chip passes that were intercepted. our ability to delivery is the issue, we seem to be able to get the ball and take it down 75% of the field ok then fall apart in delivering it to our forwards. It obviously does not help when we end up with the opposition playing a spare man back.

I would like to see frawley up at full forward, it may give him a bit of a kick along, it seemed to work well for garland not too long ago.

while trenners maybe better than some of the others on the bench he is a long way from where he should be as a footballer, dropping him is to get him to put in to be the best footballer he can. his absence gives some of the other kids a chance to see if they can step up.

Given our draw 6 weeks would mean back for the bulldog and richmond games. The bulldogs are probably one of the few chances we would have had for a win. hopefully in that 5-6 week the rest of the team can relearn how to take a chest mark, how to man up and how to kick the ball to each other going forward. if so we have a chance of beating the doggies.

Nat Jones was fabulous today as usual, Cross was excellent and dunn was pretty good too. We have a lot of players knocking up good stats based on the old keepings off strategy, so they are in many ways nothing stats. I dont think we can blame the lack of a forward line, we had the ball often enough in our forward 50 and just kept kicking it straight to west coast players, if we had actually hit our own players we would have had a much healthy score. we must have had 10 goals kicked against us from p*ss poor turnovers again. poor skills and bad habits are still very much there. Players mark on the wing and start to look inside and backwards before looking forward, I dont know how many times we took the ball from a reasonably good attacking position back into the eagles 50. hmmm does that count as a 50 entry for them? we are too slow at moving forward, I dont know how many times players had the ball and players down field were leading towards them and ignored. the constant holding the ball up until the opposition has all our players covered so we would go back as the safe option. It was just stupid, as is our inability to man up. West coast players were running around all day without players on them, their uncontested count was ridiculous. Trenners needs to sit in a forward pocket, he just does not have the run to be a midfielder or on ball player just not capable of chasing and too often does not deliver the ball well or turns it over.

We were not expecting to win this ever with our best team, it would obviously have been wonderful if we did, but it isnt going to happen. Best we can hope for is a good showing by the team doing the things Roo's has been teaching them and working on their game plan, etc using this as a practice match, which could be advantageous given we seem to play better in practice matches than real games.