Earl Hood

I was at 186! Never fully recovered. Never have nor ever will, visit the site of the massacre again.

I was listening to SEN this evening in the car and they had the Champion Data guru on. He was talking about the work they have done to build up 7 years of data on ball speed, which clubs are the quickest and the slowest etc. Brisbane last year took ball speed to a new level and many sides are trying to match them this year. What interested me was that he said Brisbane’s ball speed required multiple players who were elite kicks and many sides generating speed this year don’t have them so it’s not working, e.g. Carlton. He did mention that Collingwood in 2023 generated speed by handball not by foot. He believed McCrae recognised that he did not have the kicking ability so instead developed a game plan built around immediate forward handball to break lines, rather than a succession of short accurate kicking. Is that what the Dees game plan should be to generate ball speed?

I agree I was sceptical of the Jones appointment and his ability to bring anything innovative to the midfield. However how many centre bounces and stoppages have Gawn, Oliver, Viney & Tracc attended over the past 10 seasons? Like thousands! They should be coaching themselves by now. It’s difficult to fathom why this core group has dropped from top 5 to 18th so quickly. Didn’t they used to say the great midfields at Geelong and then Hawthorn hardly needed a coach, they operated on auto pilot knowing instinctively what each needed to do and was going to do. That’s gone missing at MFC.

Interesting thoughts. I was at the game and my overall impression was that we couldn’t run with them, we lack leg speed and our midfield just didn’t run both ways hard enough to compete, main culprits Oliver and Tracc. I just had a look at the AFL tracker data for the match and the raw data says we more than matched them for team kilometres run and seemed to match them for speed and matched them in sprints, having the top 5 speedsters in attack! You would need to do a lot more investigation into the gps data to make total sense of it, but Tracker indicates we are doing a lot of running and sprinting for no reward this season.

Not sure but I think the rain on the day round 1 gave us a slow, wet track and a chance for our slow footed, bull midfield to match GWS and go close to winning. Once we have faced young quick sides on fast decks the old firm have been exposed for lack of speed big time.

My only hope is the smaller, narrower ground allows us to compete on pure grunt. A bit like the rain affected, heavy track in round 1 allowed us to go head to head with GWS on the MCG to the point we should have actually won if we could have thought our way through the last 2 minutes. Once it’s a fast and wide track I think we are cactus, we just don’t have the legs.

Its hindsight I know but I will say in my defence that I thought we and that is Simon’s game plan were worked out in mid season 2022 when Freo ran us off our legs for our first loss and an actual thumping for the season. Yes We were competitive after that 2023 but the writing was on the wall that the game was evolving and about rapid ball movement and leg speed. So I see a lost opportunity was the 2023 draft when we rolled up picks 14, 27 and 35 for pick 11! Which became pick 13 for Koltyn Tholstrup. I hope he becomes a great player for us but the opportunity cost of that decision I believe is 2 extra running players we need. If we left Jason Taylor to do his thing we might be better off than with Tim Lamb’s blueprint for success.

Langford worried me all game, I am still on the fence as to whether he can fit in to our midfield machine. He is just that too fluid, too natural and instinctive in his movements and ball use. He needs to fumble more, stop, prop, hesitate and then bomb after ignoring players running past or forward in the clear. But given time he will learn the Melbourne way!

Hold on I was at the game today and one of my take aways was that of all our veterans, TMac seemed to be the one who was still playing to his normal level. The old midfield/ruck firm are all well off their best, May had a shocker, Melk looked rusty but TMac seemed to me to be up for the battle and performed well under a lot of pressure.

Bedford or Jordan might have been useful today for tagging Rowell!

6 Bowey 5 Langford 4 Langdon 3 Oliver 2 T MacDonald 1 Sharp

Sitting above that one he seemed to kick it as the siren sounded unfortunately.

Is the MCG sound system set high for the hearing impaired?

I suppose I presume after 3 seasons of coach talk and then watching NMFC number 30 Charlie Comben take 12 intercept marks in our forward 50 from long bombs on top of JVR and Disco’s heads. I saw no sign of any intent to do things differently in regards to F50 entries.

I saw snippets of some of the commentary and analysis on the various footy shows, of our loss to North, the focus was on the third quarter when we had 19 inside 50’s for 2 goals before being smashed in the last. The vision the analyst showed was quite damning and looking at a replay this arvo of the third you just have to scratch your head at what is going on at the club. It’s total Groundhog Day watching Viney just banging it 40m forward to a nest of NMFC backs whilst there are 3 loose players forward of him, in the corridor, with their arms in the air. It wasn’t just Viney, it was Oliver, Rivers, Turner, even Lindsay blazing away for an out of bounds. Part of the blame sits with the players but really I am exasperated with our coaching staff. 56 F50 entries in the game for a 9% success rate! i still remember when we basically coughed up the 2023 Premiership with our 7 point loss to the Pies after managing 69 to 37 inside F50s! A sobering stat I remember someone posted back then was that final was one of only 3 times that a side had ever lost after having a F50 + differential of that margin. The sample size was 2000 plus games and guess what of the 3 losses listed we were the culprits twice. That failure should have been seared into our coaching staff’s collective brains, never to occur again, but no we have soldiered on with the same one dimensional and predictable delivery ever since, while saying every year since we are working on a new style to improve our “forward connection”! I just don’t get it. It should be drilled into our ball carriers to look for closer options at every opportunity. Forward of centre the ball carrier should be looking to a corridor option and our mids should be busting their guts to be a corridor option. After all at other clubs, players don’t have to look, they are handballing or chipping the ball inboard, knowing a team mate will be running onto it. We would all love a Wayne Carey up forward but it won’t happen, after 4 years of forward disconnection, what we do need is a new head coach!

Let’s hope Chandler keeps improving and Henderson clicks. Then a forward line of Chandler, Henderson or Spargo, with Pickett and Viney spending time as a defensive small forward/midfield and Rotate Tracc and Langford between HF/midfield. Fritsch close to goal in a forward pocket and JVR/ Turner as tall targets. Add AJ as forward/bench/second ruck. Might work with some better than average F50 delivery. Get Langdon and Windsor back to the wings, play Lindsay and Rivers off halfback to feed the F50.

First game back after 12 months. I will give Charlie another go. A number of Demomlanders were scathing of Chandler’s first game against GWS and look what happened last week, BOG for us. In a functioning side where ball carriers have their fair share of the ball and can lower their eyes to pick out targets, I think Spargo has a place. Big ifs I know.

Unfortunately this blind bombing is seemingly ingrained in our core mids, Viney, Oliver, even Tracc. Any attempts to change our delivery into our forward line is going to struggle when our engine room only knows how play one way.

I wonder are they going to stick with these “short, unregulated optional sessions after running out of steam in the last quarter of both games while botching a high % of set shot kicks at goal from inside 40 metres?

I think it was on Footy Inferno yesterday that Hird and Bartel were nominating the best tagger in the league and couldn’t agree on whether it was Jordan or if it was Bedford!

In hindsight I am not sure we shouldn’t have tried to manage the exit at a good price, of several of our best or better players for early draft picks over the last 2 seasons. Petty, Viney, Tracc, Oliver were trades all talked about but never happened. Get 2 of those done for first round picks (plus some) or swaps for the right player, we would be better off as a team.

We saw three fifth’s of f**k all in terms of on field leadership from everybody, Gawn, Tracc, Oliver, Viney, Langdon, Lever……

Sorry I misread your post as that you had some info or a theory. I myself am somewhat discombobulated after today’s debacle!

FFS these 2 at late 20’s should be in their prime physically and mentally! They are both pulling big $, sorry but what’s the excuse?

Maybe that explains the apparent, from afar, total lack of on field leadership? It wasn’t just Max, it’s Tracc, Oliver, Viney. I saw nothing, maybe I missed it.