Straight Sets Simon

He had a falling out with Goodwin last year.

1) Learn how to use the sub 2) Hire a chauffeur In all seriousness Tomlinson deserves first crack at the third defender position. Straight Sets Simon was made to look very silly after he came back into the team and played well after the horrendous decision to drop him after the Collingwood game earlier in the year.

Too little too late. I’ve said from the start, the issue wasn’t the attempted smother it was the bump he turned it into after he missed the ball.

Bad time of year to have it, not surprised about the low turn out. Interest in football at its lowest for the year, lots of other activities on and the club has shot itself in the foot the last two years through poor team selection and player management. Personally, I’m not interested in the training base, it’s nice to have for the club in terms of future security, being closer to the city and so on but we won a flag almost exclusively training out of Casey so that’s all that matters to me.

This will be good for improving culture, finish training then go and have a punt on the nags afterwards.

Grundy would have not only been better than an unused Schache, he would have been better in the ruck than no one and Petracca, two options that Straight Sets Simon went with in the semi final.

Got to keep our sub tactics top secret.

Me too.

They need an advisory board to sit each week to run team selection through so that the mistakes highlighted by @Bring-Back-Powell don’t ever happen again. I may have also mentioned these once or twice.

I hate it when I forget to use the sub, oops!

I can’t make it so will be subbing in Schache as my replacement.

It’s disgusting.

Tomlinson won the time trial but was dropped straight after.

What a wasted opportunity for Melbourne, we had a chance to double down on our strength in the ruck and continue the two-ruck strategy that worked so well previously. It might not have worked as well as we hoped, but it was still a hell of a lot better than the alternative (Gawn with broken toe and Schache spending all game as an unused sub). Heaven forbid Gawn gets injured again next year.

We still have a decent list still (albeit our stars are either coming to the end of their prime or have gone totally off the rails, the forward line is a massive concern as is ruck depth after the mishandling of Grundy), what it will come down to is the coach’s ability to manage and select the correct team each week. In 2022 we limped into the finals as the coach refused to manage or rest key players throughout the season while Casey was full of players in form who only lost one game all year. Geelong of course did exactly this and won the flag in a canter. In 2023 team selection was a constant mess, particularly around the selection or lack thereof tall defenders and forwards (May and Lever totally at sea without Petty/Tomlinson, Briwn playing for Casey after retuning from injuring, Joel Smith being played as a forward four years too late and so on). It of course culminated in the greatest coaching blunder in modern finals history of selecting Schache as the sub while an in-form Hibberd was dropped and Grundy sat in the stands while Gawn had a broken toe and then the sub wasn’t even used!

Just two years in a row of straight sets exits after winning a flag with a list that should be making a preliminary final at minimum.

Questions for track watchers: 1) Were the tennis racquets out today? 2) What kind of magnet on whiteboard drills were the coaches practicing?

Spot on.

Shocking timing to announce this, totally lost amongst the draft. Purely as a visual the logo on the jumper Hertz my eyes.

Hertz is the new sponsor in the back replacing Jaguar. Purely from an aesthetic point of view that’s yuck when compared to the Jaguar logo.

At least in the W it wasn’t the result of totally inept team selection, not playing the second ruck that was recruited to play that role but instead either having no one contest the ruck or worse risking injury to one of the game’s best midfielders in that role. Oh, and totally getting the sub selection wrong and then deciding to not play them in a must-win final at all. It’s important to look for the positives.

Our best midfielder who we can’t afford to get injured.

We don't use the sub.