Deecisive

Yes it was a practice match, but lets not give players the excuse its ok to loose. We played badly for at least 2 out of 4 quarters by the sound of things. We cannot hope to improve if we keep our trying to convince ourselves we dont have a problem. We need to assess what went well and what or who failed. This will ultimately mean we need more players so a number of those that played today or did not play at all will need to up their performance drastically else they will be leaving at the end of the year.

Bombers will come out of this without any issues, not because they are not guilty, but because the AFL would not like this to be the case. Given Danks past history you would have to expect what he used at other clubs would be what he used at Essendon, thats his formula. plus players having 40 injections of supplements over the year... The question is what were the coaches and doctors doing while all of this was going on, surely someone must have/ should have been asking questions on this.

mackenzie is frightened to kick, he is always looking for a handball and it gets him into trouble, not as much trouble as his kicking, but enough to make him a liability as turnover kill us big time. Sylvia, hmmmm drop him to give him a kick in the butt to try to get him to put in, he has not impressed in any matches that I have seen, and as a senior player needs to stand up. Davey, hmmm again an issue with performance, love the guy as a player, as when he has the ball he uses it better than most, he just does not get the ball often enough, he just seems to get lost and does not know where or how to go to find the ball. always being led to the ball by his opponents. Needs to find some form in the VFL. I would bring in Matt Jones for mackenzie and Terlich for Slyvia, Kent for Davey

Sylvia has not show enough so far, there is nothing in his performance so far to suggest that he has changed in anyways. At his age its a bit much to start to expect he is now going to turn it on. I would think Neeld is giving him time to see if he can come up with the goods, as he probably is with Davey if they dont, then they probably wont start round 1.

Brent maloney has given away 4 frees so far in the brisbane game, umps must think he is still wearing red and blue.

The free kick count is a worry, being second to the ball should mean we tackle but the tackle and free kick count seem to indicate that we did not catch them. players need more commitment to chase, unfortunately zone defenses often mean you are chasing. I hope we did not play a spare man in defense again, as we just end up chasing from one free player to another. Also with regard to Jamars taps were they to our players? or just tapping anywhere?

So has dropping the ball totally disappeared from our game, some good tackling but players these days just let the ball go, what a shame not to reward the tackler, after tackling so rarely results in a free for the tackler with such poor umpiring that usually call the tackler for in the back, high, across the shoulder and holding the man. they latter i find most frustrating especially after a player has been tackled and drops the ball, then gets rewarded. A bit like the WC duck.

can anyone explain what happened with that interchange non-50 meter debacle

It's a nothing game, give the kids a chance to show in full game what they can do and put pressure on some of the older players who have not really hit their top form as yet. Some of these guys may really step up and show something.

New year, new training regime lets hope he makes something of it.

Caro read it for him

Sadly there were some signs of the same old about some of our game plan. Both North and Richmond were able to get it back out of our forward line through loose men far too easily all the way down to have a short at goal, why? stop the damn zone and man up. Zones only work if the opposition kicks it badly so you can pick up a cheap stat and rebound, unfortuntely our opposition kick the ball too well for us to intercept. Our players were following not chasing. There is a lack of team work, Brynes was going for a great run through the centre and a melbourne player moved out of the way of the North Player that tackled him, blease i think poor defensive work not protecting their mates. Dawes I thought battled well always out numbered but he made a contest of it, the question is where was the other north melbourne players opponent. poor kicking skills were evident with lots of turnovers that burnt us badly. Our game against richmond was either less inspiring, thankfully their woeful kicking kept the scores from being a blow out. I trust the team will review the game tapes and learn from their mistakes and push those who cannot kick back to Casey to learn.

The AFL seems to have bungled so many things in the last few years, what is next. Watching so many players duck their heads on the weekend and getting frees I wonder if we are going to see issues with players suing for head and brain injuries as the AFL;s rules seems is encourage / reward players who duck.

club should see if it can do some sort of streaming of the match to give supporters the chance to see it. Surely the NBN has done 90% of country areas by now!

Well if its Cols last year before he becomes an Unrestricted free agent we may actually see the best out of him, as if he does not do well no one will be beating a path to his door with offers. If he does do well he may go, we may get decent compensation and then I suspect he will fall back to his mediocre ways. An enormously talented player who has done nothing with it, seen a lot of games where he has contributed bugger all.

Caro has stated that everyone did it but the difference was that melbourne held a meeting in the "vault", so we are more guilty than anyone else so we alone should pay. This does not mean others did not hold meetings, for instance tigers coach said he and presumably his support coaches in "the coaches box" agreed to leave things up to the players during one of their tanking matches, was that discussion not a deliberately action by the coaches to NOT TRY to win. The fact that the AFL has come out with the deal mentioned means that deal has probably been done between the various parties to shove this into the closet and close the door on tanking. which essentially equates to no investigation of Hawthorn, Collingwood, Richmond, west coast and Carlton. Problem solved. Who knows the AFL may even pass a $500k grant across to Melbourne somewhere in the next year or so to cover our fine. Which makes sense because if you had found a club had won a premiership with players they received from tanking there would be an outcry from some for them to be stripped of the flag. The afl has far too much to loose by allowing this to drag on.

Re: Don’t expect too much from Aaron Davey this year. While his delivery is simply sublime when he has it in his hands, he has simply lost the yard necessary to make the electrifying moves of years past. He was unable to open space between himself and his opponent constantly, and barely touched the ball. A loose bouncing ball in the goal-square would have been a certain 6 pointer years ago, but today only resulted in a scrimmage and ball-up. Last year the opposition would have swept the ball out of the backline and kicked a goal, so a ball up is not such a bad result... he will still add great value with his delivery... small steps...

Article says he will be turning 18 tomorrow so wont be a 17 year old. I think the more important thing than age is body maturity, that he has. He will be playing with men this year, while it is not AFL the physical pressure on him will still be pretty fierce, in fact having less skilled opponents may result in them hitting him more frequently than in the AFL. I think it will be good for supporters to catch a glimpse of him and perhaps encourage a few more supporters to turn up to Casey games.

Our players just have to get used to the fact that they are going to have to win the ball all over the field. If they spray it then their team mates just have to work harder to cover and make up for it. Eventually we will weed out the poor kickers.

I think we owe a lot to Moloney for his last year with the Dees, his extremely poor efforts helped us in snaring Toumpas. I am glad to see we now have some new players looking like they are able to produce now, i hate hearing year after year of the potential of the players we have and everyone expecting this year will be the year they burst out and be stars, reality is most never will, can just hope they turn into honest hardworking footballers instead of the one match a year wonder.

Re covering the cost of our tanking defense, why not put a special assistance request to the AFL?

Hopefully this will all go away now, but I suspect that the AFL will now decide to run with some sort of charge on someone to show they are doing something, so this is likely to linger on throughout the year. Sadly we have seen another example of the AFL in their delusions of adequacy today with the dob yourself in drug cheat rules similar in vain to the tanking, the AFL has known it has been misused for years but its only when the newspapers or someone comes out and rocks the boat that they turn around and start trying to look as if they are doing something about it.

I would expect clark and dawes to stay at home with Brynes and another small, with howe and Pederson roaming up the ground to mark and kick deep.

Surely melbourne would targeting sponsors like the army reserves, or some really tough hard to destroy 4 wheel drive or VW Amarok you know something that gets a few miles to the ....

With the tackling down low, does this give the player a chance to dispose of the ball, as I assume their hands are free? how effective was this style?