Pirlo

Still nothing, and Goodwin didn't sound anywhere near as certain last week as he has previously. Any ITK to soothe my fears? I thought Judd looked well off the boil in the first quarter, wasn't running or chasing, but he improved by the end.

McVee - Petty - Turner Bowey - McDonald - Salem Langford - Oliver - Langdon Chandler - Jefferson - Petracca Melksham - JVR - Fritsch Gawn - Pickett - Rivers Viney - Lindsay - Windsor - Mentha - (Sharp) Out: May (inj/sus), Tholstrup In: Petty, Mentha Petty should be in defence, he has no future as a forward. Mentha fills a need and this is the right time for a debut even if he didn't set it alight at Casey today. Lindsay has had his rest and can play the full game. Sharp is only good as sub.

No it doesn't. Tribunal means it didn't fit the matrix. Its a better result than Christian prejudicing it with a ruling.

Jordon always had two weapons and everyone knew about them. He could kick it 50 metres and he could run all day. That wasn't so valuable on the MCG when teams just set a man down the line on his wing, but is much more important at the SCG which has 10 fewer metres at each end. Sydney saw his attributes and decided he could be a contributor. That's what good scouting is. Bedford told us he wanted to leave, he had plenty of admirers at MFC. He was a victim of the 2022 "let's never, ever rotate a Premiership player, even if they can barely run they're so tired/injured" policy.

On balance he is still unlikely to make it, but key forwards really do take time and the best chance he has of setting himself up for a break out season next year is to stay in the side and learn from Melksham and what is looking like a rejuvenated Fritsch at last. I worry that confidence will always be an issue for him, but the best way to give him a monster pre-season is to have him in the side.

Goodwin looked angry in his post match press conference. Can't help but feel he earmarked this four game run as a way to demonstrate to the board we are on the right track and to get us up to 9-10 wins for the year. If we lose this one, I have a feeling he's closer to the sack than he's ever been.

He might still make it, but people have huge blinkers on. ANB took time, but he was an exception, a late draft pick and clearly the kind of character the club wanted around pretty early. As was his mate Stretch, as Oliver mentioned in his 200th game interview, but he just couldn't put it together on field. Kolt has yet to show more than a handful of glimpses in 19 games, and that's the occasional goal or good kick inside 50 rather than anything groundbreaking. He has, for example, yet to deliver anything more exceptional than what Brown did on debut. It is hard to see how he keeps getting senior games, even in our current rudderless phase of the season. Jefferson also doesn't look ready, but he's a year older and dominates at Casey. He plays on the HFF but rarely kicks goals. He is not a particularly good mark. He isn't very quick. He covers ground ok but looks exhausted by the time he gets separation. He has laid a total of 58 tackles in his 19 games, which puts him at just over 3 a game. Tackling is the one thing you can do when nothing else is going to plan. I desperately hope the injury is the reason for his lack of output, but I can't help but feel this is a bit delusional. Right now, if you're comparing him to another one of our draft picks, its the Toump. And we really couldn't afford to mess this pick up.

He was a great player, but that rough patch is undoubtedly still happening. He is better than last year, but a shadow of his best self.

Surely the wing requires a bigger tank than HFF? It could be a good education for him, but Langdon and Langford are much better there and he really struggles to mark the ball in transition which is a huge part of our wing play right now. So often we get it to him and he drops it or makes heavy weather of a chase.

I've done a power of work and now I understand him

Loved the decision to drop Lever. If he can't see that it was justified, then I don't want him at the club. Having said that, it is shocking that none of Goodwin, Richardson or Bassett saw it fit to explain the decision to him.

On another note, which the Sun brought up in their McVee article, the decision to hire Nathan Bassett and shoehorn Chaplin into the forward line has been a disaster. Bassett was an assistant coach at the Bombers until 2015, then at Port until 2023 where he was let go. He then went to Norwood as "coaching coordinator". Reading between the lines, we had the best defence in the league from 2021 - 2023 and were close to the best in 2024. Chaplin, meanwhile, was our forward coach early in his time here when we were poor offensively in 2017. He was shifted back in 2018, when our unusual ploy to run off half back at stoppages led to the 6-6-6 rule being introduced and took us deep into finals. He's now been shifted forward again to make space for a bloke who coached two teams who were notoriously poor defensively. So what are his credentials? 210 games played alongside Simon Goodwin, and a stint coaching alongside him under James Hird where a number of guys lost their careers due to malpractice. It stinks. It absolutely [censored] stinks.

Losing McVee would be another hammer blow too. We'd struggle to get a pick inside the top 25 given the role he plays, even though he's worth far more than that. Will be an elite rebounding defender in the coming years.

Lever felt "blindsided"! An indictment on the coach if he didn't communicate it properly, but it is just extraordinary that he felt so safe despite having played such ordinary footy for so much of the past few seasons. Our cultural issues in a nutshell.

It really depends how committed Steven Smith is to the job. We have spent a season treading water under Green who has no leadership or corporate experience. Standards at the club are slipping, nobody ever takes responsibility. We hired a CEO in Guerra and were caught by surprise by his notice period AFTER WE HIRED HIM. What does that say about the board in its current state? If they can't sort back of house out, its no wonder they've decided to believe Goodwin and his spin rather than make proper hard decisions about the football program. At the start of the year, Goodwin would have laughed in any journalist's face who suggested we would be 5-11 and have lost five in a row twice. For a guy who doesn't come across as particularly intellectual, he has a peculiar talent for selling himself. Even Roos initially said he only took a meeting with Goodwin out of politeness rather than thinking he had senior coaching chops. The guy can sell himself. And hey, we won a flag, which I'll always be grateful for, but its been four years and we get worse every season. Smith needs to get the whole joint back into line. I personally expect next year to be a lot like 2007. The playing group has talent, sure, but their standards are pretty shocking. A world away from the early starts culture in 2021, now they spent the off-season lobbying for "fewer contact hours". It is up to Smith and Guerra, the latter who we just have to hope is the right man despite having no footy experience, to turn this ship around. That includes shuffling off any coaches and senior players who are not committed to elite standards.

We've kicked like [censored] for four years. The odds of that improving under the current coach are minimal. He clearly doesn't see it as a priority, or he would have done something about it.

As I said in the other thread, his run and chase was shocking today. He laid 1 tackle today. 1. We could see he was a kid with a big ego when he came in. If we were going better from a leadership perspective, we'd probably be able to manage him better. Right now, we have a huge void. If this kid was mouthing off about Sharp when he came off, I hope he's pulled into a meeting on Monday morning with coach & captain.

Jeffo at least was taken in a shocking draft. He may well end up the 15th best player taken if he gets to 20 games.

So if we'd doubled our wins for the season we'd be close to making finals?

Barely even blue collar. It's mostly just celebrating with his teammates.

How about Viney scoring a try and not being pinged?

Goodwin still believes, after all this time, that the big three can get it done. When Adelaide started to peg us back in the 2nd, he immediately threw them in there together. I just can't stand it.

Did anyone watch him closely today? For a guy who doesn't do much with ball in hand, his work ethic is seriously lacking. There was an instance in the 3rd about 70 from Adelaide's goal where he was in a 50/50 with Berry (I think), and gave the most cursory chase. Landed a few metres behind Berry within a few seconds and gave them a clean look inside 50. Sorry to crack into a kid, and I think we can all see the talent is nowhere near where it should be for a pick 12 but haven't been giving him a bake given he's so young, but you lose that protection when you refuse to run, chase and tackle like your life depends on it. If we didn't hand out long contracts like they're lollies, I'd say that next year is a serious crossroads.

So the cliff is almost here. That was a reasonable performance but there was never a moment where we looked like we could win. They held us at arm's length from the minute we kicked our 5th goal in that run. Just a matter now of how quickly and effectively we can rebuild the list. We're going to be bottom 6 for the second season in a row, so rebuilding on the run clearly hasn't happened. Need to go very hard at trading assets like Oliver, Salem, Lever, Fritsch and hope that Gawn, May, Viney have enough decent footy in them to stop us from falling into a 2007-09 style hole while the kids develop. Could also trade Petracca, but I really don't want to see a guy with actual elite standards go when we have so many who half-[censored] it.

He never used to be.