Deecisive

I thought davey was one of our better players today, he was in there trying and his disposal is usually pretty good, a lot worse than him out there.

We need to move forward with the list we have, as it is all we have to work with. My thoughts after watching todays tragedy are: 1. man up, stay with your man and put pressure on him, it was pathetic to watch freo running around all day passing to their own players all by themselves all over the ground. There is no accountability. FFS no more of this we will keep a man spare in your defense and Freo keep one in ours, its a defeatist attitude and we ALWAYS loose from such an approach, so stop it. 2. p@ss off the press, man up... make them kick to a contest every time, no easy kicks anywhere. and try keeping at least some of our forwards in the forward line, so on the odd occasion we get the ball there is someone there to kick it too. 3. Attack the ball, dont stand there waiting for it to come to you. 4. Tackle, Tackle, tackle, 5. Shepherd, help out our fellow players, i dont know how many times I saw a Freo player holding off someone from chasing, not sure I saw too much of that from Melbourne players. 6. Think what you are doing with the ball, i.e. kicking it into your own team mates head and other party tricks does not help win a game. 7. Drop players who cannot or will not tackle, contest, run or who cannot deliver the ball consistently. 8. Keep neeld until after collingwood and hawthorn if no improvement by then, then time to release him and put in an interim so as to stop the further erosion of confidence, skill and commitment to a game plan that is not working.

No point sacking Neeld with Collingwood and Hawthorn approaching, who ever takes over is going to get their butt whipped so no point putting a caretaker coach in to take us to even lower depths.

we have an VFL team where players need to go to find form and to fight for a place in our side, as sad a side as it is. We are never going to get anywhere if we continue to pick players without making them earn their places. Nicholson needs to get some form with Casey, i would suggest mckenzie needs to get another dimension or two to his game again with Casey, he maybe hardworking, but skills let him down and he does not provide enough drive himself.

Loved his approach, loved his attitude and chasing. He will be an asset, especially if we can get some decent delivery to him.

play him on the wing that way he can go back and he can go forward.

Loved Daveys game, we need to use him more, which means other players have to help break tags so that we can get the ball into his hands, maybe have him play a little behind the play at time as well as ahead. We need his pin point delivery. I thought Garland was good, he always seemed to be spoiling, he did not win them all but I liked what I saw. Dawes played well, as for stopping, part of that may also be the high ball delivery. Loved that we tackled, need to take that and ratchet it up even more for next week. Tackled players make mistakes and cause turnovers. Hated our kick ins, how can we kick to the boundary line repeatedly and be out numbered or kick to Richmond players who are in a better position than ours. Hated the failure to move on quickly at times when we have someone in short and by the time we try to take a short kick everyones covered. Hated the way we failed to man up in our forward line when the Tigers have the ball. Its in our forward line 40meters from our goal and we are allowing them to have free players running around and take it out of their with little presure. Why are we not putting pressure on everyone of their players while it is in our forward line is beyond me. We just leave opposition players alone so that they could chip it around from side to side until they get melbourne players leaving players down field to cover and they just chip over them and start opening up a series of free men all the way down to the goals, or points as the case was often for the Tigers. MAN UP ALL THE TIME especially when the ball is in our forward line, its so much better if we put in more effort there to turn it over there than shaking it free in our backline and then having to deliver it back up forward.

The way we were turning the ball over and richmond was spreading he got lost in transition. Needs more time to get his feet, he also needs team members to support him and deliver the ball well to him.

I dont think he should have played today, was not fit enough to be competitive all day. did try but but body and skills are just not up to it yet. needs time in with Casey to try to get himself right.

Ah the good old days for melbourne with hardeman doing torps from centre half back and tassy johnson doing drop kicks from the square on kick ins...

There are a lot of talented players who dont have leg speed but they have a great ability to dodge and weave, and deliver the ball well. Not seen any of that this year from Trenners. I would have preferred he found a bit of form with Casey (if possible) before he was bought back in, bringing him back in, if he is in the same poor form does neither of us a service.

Umpires are encouraging players to take head high tackles to get frees which is going to end up with someone ending up with either a broken neck or brain injuries. While they talk about protecting the players head they also have to take into account the damage they do by getting sucked in to paying such frees, they just encourage more people to do it. Not a good look for the game.

Neeld may as well see out the season and then make a decision. While i admire his determination and direction, i am not a big far of his game plan. that aside the players out there are just not putting in, we can talk about not having talent all we like, but that still does not change the fact that the players on the paddock are not putting in. Regardless of their reasons for discontent, they are all being paid well and paid professionals, right or wrong they need to put in and deliver the best THEY have to the best of their ability. Then we can truely judge whether it is the players, the coach, gameplan or combinations thereof.

what we need is the right attitude by the players Sylivia included. Not sure I agree with the lack of experience is causing all our ills. Other clubs have young players in playing well and winning games.

can he play as a mid fielder?

I still think it is too early to judge all of these players as duds, given that virtually our whole side is playing well below their best.

We need to try to develop whoever is on our list, especially if we have made a long term commitment to them, I like the suggestion of putting to work down back, he seems agile enough, it is at least worth a try.

We do this by concentrating too much on protecting patches of grass or trying to look after our own man, instead of trying to get in and help other players. You see the best teams tackle in twos and threes at times, and when we have played well (for those who can remembers such rare passages) its when we have been aggressive in tackling. I think we drop so many contested marks and kick into the man on the mark too often because of the play on at all costs mentality, these guys are trying to move the ball quickly to generate some run, but they are looking to run on before they mark the ball or they are not aware enough of where oppositions players are. No one is talking to them to tell them to go, or to hold.

We not only need a lot of the devil or fight in our players but we also need to the to show a bit of skill. I wonder if all of the sport science has gone too far, i.e. when were they allowed to begin to kick the football in the preseason. Maybe its time to go back to very basics, stop all the pointless running drills and give them run 30meters for the mark drills, make them run and bounce the ball 50 meters and handball and handball receive back, link up with other players type drills. Everything they do they do with a ball in the hands, have them have to bounce every 10meters. Get them living and touching a ball all day long handpass to themselves, bounce it off walls what ever it takes to get them handling, feeling and using the ball.

We how do we find the silver lining out of all this darkness. I personally dont believe the players we have are as bad as they are playing at the moment, that playing there best we can be competitive and give even good clubs a run for their money. So how do we get them to commit and deliver. 1. Stop protecting space, today I say players standing around in vacant space with no GCS players near, while GCS players we left unattended. other times melbourne players were standing alone in the back 50 while their opponents were hunting the ball in our forward line and midfield - Man Up. 2. Help out team mates - Shepherd, talk to them, encourage them, support them. 3. Dont play on at all costs, quit a few times today we played on with no idea of where we were going, or who was around us, in the end lack of decisions caught us out. 4. Talk some more when going for marks etc... lets not have everyone up. 5. Scout the front of the pack not the back 6. Learn how to tackle, too many players played all game and did not lay one tackle, you have to ask why is that, where they always too far away from the action picking up easy kicks, or they just could not make tackles stick. 7. Learn how to kick to position, especially going forward, run a lot more drills on how to deliver the ball in front of the players, unless of course you are kicking to Gawny, then up high is probably ok withhim. too often we kick the ball too high so it makes it easier to spoil, other times we just kick it into the man on the mark. 8. Be aware of where your opponent is, - man up (it is worth repeating) 9. Learn to use your body in marking contests, both as a backman and a forward. 10. Accept that we have a crap mid field but get the ball back. 11. Give no easy kicks, none, zero, zip. make the opposition earn every kick, we did reasonably well in contested possessions, so make everyone a contested possession and who knows we may do better, cannot do much worse.

I worry about the continued inclusion of mckenzie and nicholson. While nicholson has endurance and can get his own ball, his problem is the more he gets it the more he turns it over in our back half. mckenzie just does not do enough by himself, just running behind players and trying to tackle immediately is not enough these days, good players dish it off too quickly, need someone who can be defensive but still get the ball and do something with it. Dunnies effort last week was excellent, need more of that attacking / defensive role out of all midfielders.

I suspect that our players are trying too hard to maintain their press and positions that they become fixated on that role instead of adapting it to the conditions, i.e. leave your man at times to contest or put pressure on someone elses man. Our poor disposal is obviously the biggest issue in my mind. When we have the ball our players start to move into attack then we give a garbage kick or handpass to an opposition player who either kicks a goal or links up with other players free because our players are going the wrong way. Our players also have a play-on at all times mentality even to the point of being suicidal, while some players will hold the ball and ignore short leads from free players and then end up kicking it to a contest. I would love to see a game where our forwards actually stay in the forward line so they can kick goals, instead of having to roam around the backline to help get it out of defense. When we take it out of defense we often cough it up or kick it to a badly out of position player. I suspect that in part is because we are always leading to the boundary which makes us extremely predictable. It also means that when we cough it up the opposition can skip through the centre corridor because again our players are on the boundaries. We need to replace guys with poor disposal with those with better disposal. No point getting the ball 10 times and having a disposal efficiency of 40% as you we are getting 4 kicks but the opposition is probably getting 6. its almost as if we they have another man on the field playing for them.

Investigation will go on until september at least. Essendon will be found guilty of some lesser charge than charging their tank with illicit drugs. 6 month suspension for maybe a player or two which they would begin serving immediately, should be back after missing say the first nab cup match.

How are are players expected to get better at kicking, the very best of them would have no more than 15 kicks in a match, the worst 2 or 3. I really think these sport medicine, physios, etc have a bit to much power, and forget these guys main purpose is kicking, marking, tackling, shepherding, handpassing and not just repeated 50 meter sprints

Some of our guys need to practice kicking and handballing. Film it, replay it analyse it, adjust and practice.. until they are consistently hitting targets. Sad to see players kicking into the mark so often, or kicking directly to an opposition player. Worse is kicking high drop punts to players who have to sit and wait for the ball and an opposition player to come. There really is no excuse for guys missing targets 2 meters away with handballs, that is unforgivable in my book. I like Brynes, in a Geelong team he would be sitting around the forward line waiting for the ball to come down and crumb, in our team he is having to go and get the ball in the back line and try to run it forward to an often vacant or out manned forward line. I also like the way he held onto the ball (without giving away a free) so we could reset it was smart play (not something you see often in our team) as it was far better than turning it over, unfortunately a lot of our guys gave blind handballs that go anywhere or go straight to blues players, poor percentage football that usually cost us. The swans are masters of this, when in doubt create a ball up situation.