Earl Hood

Couldn’t agree more. We have had a fixation on a gun key forward to fix a 4 year old festering forward deficiency. It’s part personal but very much more about system or lack there of. Would love Hogan up front again but he would struggle in our forward line being double, triple teamed by opposition backs who know exactly where we are going to kick the ball. If we do have a coherent game plan, the players don’t appear to understand what it is or how to implement it. However if you take a glass half full viewpoint, although for 4 games our game style has looked disjointed and basically a shambles going forward, we have generated more I50’s in 3 matches than our opponents but with a losing scoring efficiency of 20%or less (goals to entries). Now if you watch the replays, and freeze frame many of our F50 entries you will often see our ball carrier about to roost the ball deep while 2 or more Demons are running free inside F50 or adjacent running in the corridor! The problem is the ball carrier, and so often it is Viney, Oliver, Tracc & Gawn, refusing to look for the shorter options, game after game, after game! And the coach tolerates this? It’s a problem but there is a fairly obvious solution to at least make us more competitive and unfortunately part of the solution is Viney has to go out or to another role. Why is this so hard for players and coaches?

I was thinking maybe a series of match simulations, get rid of the footy boots. Oliver, Viney, Tracc to be in bare feet. The other players in soft runners. Choose a hardish ball to discourage anyone wanting to kick it with bare feet. Then do repeated centre ball up set plays with our barefoot A midfield team vs our barefoot midfield B team. OK its left field, risky and really just a thought provoker but how else do you make our midfield change their ingrained behaviour to get ball, kick ball?

I think Viney has to go as a mainstay of the midfield. He has been a great warrior for us but the game has evolved and he hasn’t, either because he can’t or he won’t. I find it difficult to understand how a footballer at the elite level hasn’t got the peripheral vision and poise to pick out targets around them. I know not every mid can have the vision of a Pendlebury but surely you can try. And that’s the worry for me, that Viney doesn’t even try and fail but continues to just blindly throw it on his left boot to nobody in particular. It’s been an issue for some time. I still have flashbacks of that last dumped kick against Carlton with 30 seconds to go, straight to Walsh? while Tracc was running loose on his inside calling for the handball and us going out in straight sets in 2023. Can he play the defensive small forward role with brief stints on the ball? I believe he deserves the chance.

The main culprits are Viney, Oliver and to a lesser extent Tracc. They constantly burn team mates in better positions forward and on the inside. The fact we look like rubbish but yet are getting ample inside 50’s for an average 10% success rate indicates there is a solution to get us competitive again. I can’t believe the coach has tolerated this for so long. Viney, Oliver and Gawn should be drilled to handball at all costs and only kick as a last resort. Of course that means you need a system that ensures there are always receivers on the outside but that seems to be beyond us.

Free agent I believe.

Yes I was watching it live and was perplexed as to how someone at the elite level could be so one sided. It was as if he had a hand injury on his right. He seemed reluctant to hit through the ball with his hand, very little power on that side.

I agree but I did think coughing up picks 14, 27, 35 to get pick 11 and Tholstrup was just a little too cute. I assumed it was Lamb making those calls and negating Jason Taylor’s ability to identify talent in those second & third rounds of the draft. Given where the game was headed in 2023 it was obvious that we needed more leg speed and kicking skills on the list. Handing over our future first, 28,40,46, 54,65 for pick 9 to get XL last year is seeking quality over quantity. It will take a few seasons to evaluate the cost-benefit of this strategy. But that future first to Essendon (given we might end up on the ladder) could turn out to be extremely embarrassing for the club no matter how good a player XL becomes.

“players don’t know where their teammates are…” This is the most damning observation in today’s footy and an indictment on the coaching staff. All the best teams are playing in a system where they instinctively know where their team mates will be most of the time. In a tight scrimmage they know there will be receivers on the outside. We just don’t appear to have any system.

How do you lose the ability to tackle?

We are really struggling for skills, game plan, can’t stick a tackle but what we don’t need is to be battling the umpires as well as Geelong! That not 15 call on Kossie was ridiculous. And you cannot touch Danger or Cameron without a fricking whistle blowing! It’s doing my head in.

This is reminding me of the old Neeld days. The players don’t know what to do.

Another red time goal! Every fricking game.

Yep Viney for me. I just think the game has passed him by unless he can reinvent himself as a defensive forward maybe. The modern game is about ball speed and movement not the repeated stoppage game we perfected in 2021, where Viney once thrived. I think Vines is the one to go.

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.