Deecisive

If we dont have enough talls then work on a game plan using smalls and keeping the ball moving and low to the ground running the big fellows around. just need to be thinking abit more about how we play and not try to play the way we would if we have a decent tall and functioning forward line.

Roos has often said that most of his work is done before players run out onto the ground. yes he can makes some moves but a lot of it is in the hands of the players. It is sad that some of our players just could not rise up to meet the challenge. given last nights performance even with a few extra talls would not have made such a great difference if our disposal both under pressure and not under pressure does not improve. Turnovers killed us last year and they have already shown to be a major problem with our skill level. No point putting some of our valued players like Toumpas and Grimes, Trengrove back to casey the level of pressure there is far less, they need to step up there maybe a couple of players who really are not going to make it, if so dont play them give Salem and others a go instead give them AFL pressure and experience other 2013 draftees showed they can walk into an ALF side and play. Gawn or King will probably need to be bought in to play full forward and at least provide some height. players need to think seriously about their possession game, too often players up field found themselves free but our boys with the ball were too busy looking over to the side and backward to notice, not taking those forward options quickly just resulted in us kicking back, etc.. playing with the ball until we could turn it over. there were some positives but progress was not as much as I and many other had hoped for. our supporter and possibly team over confidence has bitten us on the butt and made us look like fools.

did not chase the st kilda players near the end, just sat back and watched them kick it around. poor defensive pressure in our half.. Woeful delivery into the forward line, regardless of us being down players no named forwards, etc we had the ball often enough but farted around with it. too much looking sideways instead of moving it on quickly, its great for stats but poor for winning football games. looks like they did not pay much attention to what hawthorn did to us a week or so ago when they moved it on quickly all the time going backwards only when they needed to. our first reaction is to go back or sideways. a very poor effort. not a good start to the season against possibly the 2nd or 3rd worst team in the competition...

I think Byrnes will play a lot better when he can concentrate on being a forward, in the last year he had been getting a lot of his kicks way up the ground and then trying to deliver it into a forward line where the opposition out number our one or two forwards. He would also significantly benefit from having forwards to crumb off. not something you saw too often last year,

i would prefer to see JKH sit out the first 20 minutes or so, as the saints will be hard at us. let him come on after the initial rough stuff has died down and the saints players have been using up their energy, then they can spend their time chasing him. I would prefer to see matt jones as the sub. Georgiou has to be on the field to help handle the st kinda talls.

We are putting what Roos and other believes is our best team on the field. Roos has shown that he has been able to get the best out of some ordinary players or players others had discarded at Sydney, we are looking for the same thing here with our guys stepping up to that next level and playing as a champion team instead of a team of champions. Toumpas has the class to be in the team, Byrnes has the experience and skill to be there where as i believe Bleese is still work in progress. He needs to step up, he needs to learn how to chase, for someone reputedly so fast he has trouble finding the ball and chasing down the opposition players running off him. Hopefully all the team now know they have to compete far harder if they want a spot in the side, no free rides. also that the end of the year will give Roos his first real chance to cull those not committed or able to deliver.

Coaches will not let players who are not well play it is not a matter of how tough but how long they will be out for if the do more damage. Dawes and Mitch have injuries that they will recover from in time. In the meantime we are still putting 22 players onto the field who need to play to the best of their ability. it gives some other players a chance to play now with a much better midfield than we had last year.

Hawthorn has a pretty full list, its going to be a long season and they will have their share of injuries and reports. A lot of teams have started the season well but not finished well enough. It will be interesting to see how they go as the year progresses. The Dees have had a bit of a reality check, which is good, they know when they executed Roo's game plan we won or got close to finals sides, when we did not execute it well we got killed. People learn from mistakes more so than from doing the right thing. So I can see these guys will improve as time goes on and they bed down the game plan. As for the debate on Toumpas and missing out on wines, why not go back further an bemoan the fact that we did not get Garry Ablett and then jnr.... Toumpas is a melbourne player and a damn good user of the ball, give him time and lets move on from debating past decisions.

playing 2 finalists was meant to show how far we need to go, we did ok against geelong and not so well against the hawks. They probably had their best list while we were still missing a few. They have a settled lineup with a team game plan they have been playing for years while we are just starting. Early days, lots to learn from today, we never expected to play finals this year we just want to see big improvements, there will be days like today, hopefully far fewer than last year. and a few more where we get to sing our song after the match. looking forward to the year and better things.

twitter feed must be broken no hawk goals for 7 or 8 mins

its a shame buddy isnt there to help slow them down

its a practice game. though I doubt we need much more practice at loosing by large margins.

more like baby seals

our club tweets and quarter by quarter summaries are both pretty poor. need to provide more detail even if is not all good, people want to know more than a tweet every 4 or 5 minutes

Give them all a break, they are playing better football than they did all of last year. Most of them are making mistakes from time to time, but these are far less than the sheer number of turnovers we did last year. Toumpas will still be a great player for us. give him time and a bit more experience. He will probably learn more from that mistake than all of the good kicks he did tonight.

A great start to the pre-season, a lot to like tonight and a lot of potential improvement still from quite a few of our players who played, plus those still to come back. After seeing Geelong, Collingwood and Hawthorne play, I say we still have a long way to go, but we at least appear to be on the right track to make a contest of it. I used to look at the stats of our games last year and rarely did we have more than a couple of players with 20 or more possessions, i cannot recall anyone having 30+ possessions. Fantastic job boys, a great start.

its a practice game, while winning would be nice tuning our structure, being competitive and showing improvement is what counts from whatever 22 players take the field. the loss of some of our best big men gives a few others who would not have been playing a chance to show what they can do and convert that opportunity to a more permanent place in the side.

Great job 666

we do not have poor quality playing surfaces any more so I would expect that we can run 3 bigs, clarke has proven he is pretty agile I seem to remember him crumbing quite a few of his goals. Hogan is reputedly pretty quick off the mark and lets not forget enthusiastic so I would hate to have him chasing me. We are going to stretch most clubs backlines if we can keep them all on the park, if we cannot then we still have fitzy and Watts in reserve all are capable of kicking goals, a couple of crumbing forwards able to apply good defensive pressure and we will see a lot more scores. I would expect seeing all three of those guys down forward will give players bringing in the ball a lot more options than they have had in the last year. and lets hope that we dont play that stupid extra man in defense type of football as the oppositions extra man usually kills us when we go into attack.

I would hope the change in coaching is going to mean that they all improve, question is then who even though they may have improved will not get a game. a few have nominated Jamar as a slider, i think he could probably do pretty well with a decent couple of midfielders at this feet as he did a couple of years ago, his main problem is running and around the ground presence. The pressure will certainly be on jones and clisby, but there is also obviously scope for these guys to improve after all last years was only their first year. i believe McKenzie is probably not going to get too many games, his stats are not great, though he does every now and again put in a pretty good game, i think his approach is too defensive going forward if you know what i mean. Bail possibly too many knocks, too great a risk in playing. Nicholson's future is going to be governed by his kicking if this does not improve he will be gone. the best sides do not waste the ball and dont turn it over, this is where nicholson fails badly. Jetta needs to step up given he has had quite a few years already I wonder if he can make that move. As I said above the rest i am hoping for at least some measure of improvement.

The brand of footy Roos is pursuing is similar to the running game that we were doing pretty well for a few games with Bailley before its wheels fell off. hopefully adding a strong defensive side to that game will stop that from happening. Far better this approach than the gollingwood around the boundary approach. I think stats show that last year we lost it out of the middle/clearances and we got absolutely crucified when we turned it overs so if we can increase in both of these areas, plus introduce Hogan, Dawes and Clarke into the forward line with Howe we should win a lot more games, a lot of clubs are going to have a real problem handling all of these players if we can get them out onto the paddock together. I think the club really needs to start to spend a few $$'s on technology, i.e. put together some video clips of training and think seriously about doing webcasts or streaming ALL of the Casey games, while melbourne has been going so poorly in the last couple of years supporters have been desperate to see some hope for the future by watching Casey, last year Hogan was the star attraction. This year we seem to have a few really good up an coming kids that supporters will want to see how they are going/playing, the club needs to feed that interest and passion. Also in broadcasting the game they may pick up some more casey supporters or opposition team supporters who tune in. This would be a better way of marketing MFC and they could obviously chuck in a few plugs for our sponsor or have their emblems flashed up, etc during the broadcast to give something back to our sponsors a good year by Casey will mean better exposure to sponsors and hopefully more sponsors wanting to get onboard. Streaming would obviously assist our interstate and overseas supporters.

lets stop digging up the past, not too many of our beloved team covered themselves in glory last year, this year will determine if they are going to be afl players or not, new coach, new attitude, a lot of new players. if they dont measure up, then there will be a lot more new players in Demon colors come draft time.

Lets give credit where credit is due, we would not have Roos if it was not for Neeld.

His role is to shutdown key forwards, stop them from kicking 4+ goals, it does not mean he has to be a rebound defender. Though it would obviously help. i think another big factor in Alexis's favour is the mental anguish he is likely to impart into the opposition, opposition players are going to feel silly being beaten by mr bean. Go Alexis give them hell, or your beanish version of it.

We need more players able to help rebound from the half back line, our midfield is not going to be dominate so the half back line needs to be our first line of attack.