Deecisive

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.

Not sure I agree about spencer jumping into opposition ruckman. From what i saw of the game you could see spencer concentrating/watching the ball as the umpires through it up, while the carlton rucks looked at to size him up before they jumped into him and used him as a step ladder all day long. Spencer needs to be aware of that and change the timing of his leap so as to nullify that.

Pederson, Rodan and Gillies are still new to a club that is playing crap football, they have not shown what they can do, but the same can be said for most of the team. Some time with Casey may help bring them along. I agree we were lacking a tall against the blues, we had no one to contest in the air. Everyone has noticed Jack has been slow and getting slower, he must be rested or dropped back to Casey, its a tough decisions but if the coaches cannot make a hard decision then they are making a further mockery of MFC aspiring to be the hardest team to play against (without falling over laughing).

Trying to be the hardest team to play against is not working, as someone aptly pointed out earlier in this thread our players are too busy watching their opposition players to get the football first. When opposition players have the ball each of our players are too busy chasing their own players to go at the player with the ball, yet still opposition teams can sweep it from side to side with easy and have 100+ more uncontested possessions than us.

There were some positives in todays game, given the high number of very poor disposals that cost us goals as well as our own poor kicking. We should stop this BS about team rebuilding, and young list. The problem with melbourne is their intensity, poor decision making and their poor execution skill level. Our disposal efficiency is terrible, our tackling is terrible with our players just getting brushed aside. We play bruise free football. - Positives, Garland, Dunn, Evans, jones boys though matt needs to pickup his disposal accuracy.

Greate game Col.

Getting 3 or 4 new players is not going to be enough, if the other 18 players out there are still playing dumb football. we need a better strategy than playing a loose man in defense and zoning. We need to play hard man on man football and have everyone accountable for their man. we have 8 lions players with over 20 possessions and 3 with 30+ possessions, which tells me we had quite a few players that were not manning up and were not accountable for their man. If we start to play accountable football then we will win games now, until then it wont matter if you bring in gary ablett we will still loose using our existing game plan and approach. if we can do this then lets see what sort of players we need, because at the moment we are not seeing how competitive and good our players are because they are protected patches or grass or chasing their man.

so with mitch out for 8 weeks, do you think this is going to hurt our premiership chances this year?

We were woeful again. Brisbane had 8 players with 20 or more possessions and 3 with 30 or more. we had 2 with more than 20, our best was terlich with 24. Opposition knows take out Jones and we have no one else. Thats the reality, everyone can talk about how lucky we are to be able to rotate grimes, Trengrove, Viney, Blease etc through the midfield reality is only Viney looks as if he is hard enough to be a sucessful, even then its going to take some time for him to get there. I hate the idea of playing Mckenzie, i like that he tries, but he is just not up to it, yes people say he stops the opposition, i personally didnt see that today. I would rather a player in there getting the ball and competing rather than have someone like mckenzie breathing down someones neck hoping to tackle them once they get it, truth was brisbane players shepherded him out or got rid of the ball before he could stop them. Our game is VFL standard at best. How can every other team take it so easily out of the centre without us applying pressure, they have players running everywhere while our guys stand around trying to figure out what blades of grass they should be minding. Tackling was a disgrace. Grimes effort in the last quarter was a true demonstration that we do not know or at time appear interested in tackling. Players play on and run themselves into trouble then handpass to someone standing still, aka sylvia's great run down to the 50 where everyone expected him to kick it and he hand passed to a players standing still who was tackled immediately. Melbourne was truely blessed today, blessed that brisbane did not kick straight or we would have had another 10 goal loss.

wow thats awfully professional of him, so how much were we paying him per game to not put in. Even if he does not like the coach he needed to put in for the team, that he did not do, could not be counted on to help his team mates out.

They had 13 more shots than us so if they had kicked straight it would have been 78 point loss would he also have been so positive of our performance. It was woeful as we are playing a bottom 6 side. Pretty soon he will be praising the team for winning 10 minutes of a quarter.