Earl Hood

Absolutely nothing wrong with fibreglass!

I was assuming players had the week off from all training. This mandatory week break before the start of the season was negotiated by the Players Association some years ago. So it wouldn’t mean much if the players keep training as usual. It’s all odd to me, the players haven’t played for 6 months and are chomping at the bit to play a real match for points!

I am worried now that they have added Lobb to their forward line.

That was a ridiculous miss by the umpires. Nankervis is getting frustrated and lining up Max whenever he can.

No mention of Pickett! I was expecting him to do significant midfield time and draw some plaudits but seems he didn’t dazzle?

Having lunch at Aireys Inlet pub this afternoon and note that our South Australian contingent has arrived and sitting outside in the wind with girlfriends and pet dogs. Petty, Chandler and now ANB.

Thought you would just use your sonic screwdriver to get through the locked gate surely?

Good God I never realised that this site is riddled with fifth columnists!

Begs the question why isn’t it Prince’s Park?

Good to see the President at training.

Girls are looking sharp at training this morning at Princess Park.

Nail bitting last quarter coming up.

Gee I would never have guessed😁!

Still say something could be worked out with the endless Melbourne Tennis Centre upgrades that keep happening. That massive complex lies under utilised for 10 months of the year. We still train at the upgraded Gosch’s ground but we have social and admin facilities in existing MTC buildings and a state of the art training facility built at the MTC in their next upgrade for use by the world’s elite tennis players for 2 months a year, in December and January and the MFC for the rest.

Yes that’s the same time and reason I promoted myself to Earl!

Because he can’t read the play?

Agree he has to be tried forward next season. Even if it’s a bit of robbing Peter to pay Paul. IMO we can afford to leak a few extra goals down back if we convert more of our inside F50 entries and we usually win that stat in matches. I suspect Goody isn’t going to fundamentally change the game plan so we need players who can take contested marks up forward.

South Melbourne trading the Daniher brothers to Essendon for Neville Fields?

We have Tomlinson but he is on the outer, then Smith and the young Turner as options to allow Petty to go forward. If they aren’t good enough, I would suggest a key back comes cheaper than a key forward. But then I don’t think either ready mades of these two types of Key Position Player are available for trading?

Yes he was but I thought Danger maybe as he was doing a lot of the inside hard ball get and distribute stuff that was tearing the Swans midfield and defence to shreds.

Might have something to do with our game plan vs the frenetic attack at all costs stuff Geelong dished up to them in the first quarter, I suspect.

Except it wasn’t a tackle or a push it was just body contact on a player over the ball.

I hopped off the bandwagon slowly in the second half of the season as we went 6 wins/8 losses! If you think our static, defensive second half 2022 game plan will cut it in 2023 with a set of injury free players you are mistaken. The best Teams are moving the ball at breakneck speed through the corridor (as we saw tonight) and delivering it fast and low into their forward lines all to negate our strengths, May, Lever intercept marking and Gawn’s marking down the line. The game evolves so do we need to review how we play.

The game plan would not have delivered us anything. As the plan evolved or maybe a better description is degenerated over the second half of the season, banged up players or not, we were barely a top 8 team.

Geelong is only doing to Brisbane what we did to Brisbane for 9.5 plus quarters of footy this year. It was that last 2 quarters last week where we inexplicably let the Lions off the leash and that stuffed us for the season. If we had flukes a win last week I suspect we would be copping exactly what the Lions are tonight. Geelong look very good. Hey the Cats keep moving the ball quickly and mostly through the corridor, that [censored] is not for us.