Earl Hood

Petracca needs to stand up in the second half. 

3 minutes ago, leave it to deever said:

Calling you tmac.

Plese dont let last week be an anomaly.

I noticed late in the second you can hang off him in marking duels, no free but don’t try that on King. It must be an age, experience thing with the umpires. You know I always thought the rules applied equally to all players regardless of age. 

1 minute ago, leave it to deever said:

Whats the point ?

12 to 5 frres against us.

Fair shake of the sauce bottle.

I just want consistency.

12 to 5 and we are winning.

 

??????????

Amazing the umps put the whistle away in the first 15 minutes. That’s okay if they stay consistent but no by second quarter they are picking frees out of their [censored], mostly to the Saints. Again we are own worst enemy with our goal kicking, should be 2 goals up at least. I am a great fan of Fritsch but if you can’t kick a goal from 30m on a 30 degree angle I think we have to look at alternatives once we have our big forwards available. 

1 minute ago, Better days ahead said:

Jeez King has come on a lot. Giving May a tough time of it.

Well if every time you touch him he gets a free any backman is going to struggle. Which rule was that last free? Blocking apparently when you are bodying up on your man. Can’t chop the arms, can’t hold, now can’t body.

22 hours ago, Red and Bluebeard said:

Not sure this guy will help much, OD ...

 

Marvin? 

Interesting watching the Hawks match. Wonder how our backline would function if we still had Frost playing for us, say instead of Tomlinson. Working in with Lever and May would be interesting.
 

Why is it the Hawks with a young side, saying they are rebuilding, look more organised than us and showcase better skills overall and of course they nailed nearly every set shot for goal. That accuracy kept them in the game. What was our set shot conversion rate today? Less than 50% for shots inside 40m I suspect.it is a problem we have had for the last 3 years but the usual suspects continue to struggle to nail set shots from 30m. And not helped by the fact that Jackson has the total yips. 

6 May

5 TMac

4 Lever

3 Oliver

2 Langdon

1 Petracca

3 minutes ago, P-man said:

[censored] you Richmond.

Why do they do the little things so well? Doesn’t even take talent. But they do them better than anyone.

Dusty is an absolute freak though.

Yes but take Dusty out of that contest and they probably lose. But that is why teams win multiple flags there is always a  great player driving the success. Barassi, Matthews, Hodge, Hird, Dusty. 

Umpires loosing the plot here. And the over the shoulder decision was [censored]. 

44 minutes ago, Travy14 said:

Did you watch the game? Clearances were double in favour of the dogs.  Win a Clearance and get the ball into our fwd line and see how much more we score!

I take your point but I also look at 2019 and 2020 we didn’t make finals but we never struggled to get the ball inside our 50m zone. We nearly always won the I50 count but our forward conversion ratio was appalling. The midfield is not our greatest problem. Our backline is pretty settled but I say again our forward line is dysfunctional, underperforming, you name it. We have 2 or 3 big forwards out for the first few matches, how do we make our forward line work early? I say get Tracc forward more often than not, to give us more scoring power. The midfield will improve thru Oliver, Brayshaw and then Viney in 2 weeks. 

7 hours ago, bobby1554 said:

Yep, great idea! Let’s take the bloke who finished 3rd in the Brownlow last year out of the engine room. Ridiculous

 

You didn’t watch the practice match last week I presume? The forward line is dysfunctional, the midfield will improve with Oliver and Brayshaw to come in. 

3 minutes ago, RalphiusMaximus said:

With Viney out there's a spot in the guts for him.  That's where he needs to play. 

And Tracc plays predominately forward, out of the square till we get more of our big forwards back. No mention of Mitch Brown tonight so I suspect he is an unlikely starter, round 1. 

5 hours ago, Cranky Franky said:

I'm going to keep calling out people suggesting Petty play forward. He is a natural defender NOT a forward. Mark my words.

Trouble is we are desperate at least for the first 5 weeks of the season. We need a couple of tall forwards. I would be pushing for Mitch Brown if fit, to work in with a combo of TMac or LJ or Petty. At least 2 of those in the forward line.  With Trac playing predominantly forward early in the season. Add these to Fritsch, and small defensive forwards, Spargo, Viney, ANB. Maybe we can construct a functional forward setup? If Kossie is fit I think he will be playing further upfield early on. 

8 hours ago, DubDee said:

Injury list form yesterday

PLAYER  INJURY   ESTIMATED RETURN

 Angus Brayshaw        Foot Test

 Ben Brown                   Knee 4-6 weeks

 Michael Hibberd         Ankle TBC

 Marty Hore                  Knee Season

 Jay Lockhart              [censored] TBC

 Steven May                Chest Test

 Jake Melksham         Hamstring Test

 Aaron Nietschke        Knee Season

 Christian Salem         Hamstring Test

 Joel Smith                  Finger Test

 Jack Viney                 Foot 2 weeks

 Sam Weideman        Leg 4-6 weeks

 

So assuming May plays on the magic 12th day we will definately be without Viney, Weed, B Brown and likely Hibberd

Brayshaw, Melksham, Salem will need to prove their fitness this weekend you'd imgaine

BAU, 10/12 on the player injury list. Same old same old. Will it ever change? 

5 hours ago, DeeSpencer said:

I'm led to believe the club went in with 5 options they thought were going to be an upgrade on Vanders and superior to bloating the cap with Tom Phillips - a short term gain but possibly not enough of a long term answer.

1. Harmes. He has the tank, he can win aerial contests and his decision making/kicking errors are less concerning on the wing. We just haven't seen a lot of him in preseason because they've used him on ball. The issue is with Fyfe in round 1 are we really going to go head to head against Fyfe? Or trust Jordon. Either way, Harmes has some solid pros if we can settle him in the role.

2. Melksham. Concerns over his defensive aptitude are certainly fair but he puts up good kms and clearly the best of his disposal is super damaging.

3. Baker. A fitter version of Baker - and he does seem to be covering the ground well is a more suitable athlete. Sadly he just doesn't seem to read the play well or make good decisions. Throw in some poor contesting and it's not a good combination. Not 100% ready to rule him out after a string of VFL games because I think he improves as he goes on in a season but it's been a rough start.

4. Jackson. He lacks forward craft and struggles to pick the ball up in the air but he can really cover the ground and his size, unpredictable movement and clean hands makes things happen. If we had 2 tall forwards ahead of him there'd be a strong case for trying him as a ruck/wing hybrid for a strong point of difference.

5. Tom McDonald. He can run all day and he loves running to receive the ball when he has his head up. Disposal obviously a worry as is stoppage play but he could find confidence to use it better when he's rolling. Obviously he's been used forward so we haven't seen this option.

Interesting in these ideas to plug the problematic hole of the other wing is there is no discussion of trialling Joel Smith, if he was ever fit of course. We know he has good size, 190 cm and that he can run and cover ground. Then we were told by Richo last season that this guy is an elite endurance beast who can run all day. We know Smith is an elite athlete lacking in the footy smarts that limits his potential as a forward and has limited him so far as a lockdown defender when fit. Could he be released to the wing and just told to keep running into space to receive the ball when we have the pill and running down the opposition when we don’t? Apart from the Jackson option, the others just don’t look to have the attributes. Harmes and TMac are on the slow side. Does Melksham have the engine? 

2 minutes ago, Flemo56 said:

Have watched both our praccy games, and other games also and I just reckon we are still nowhere near good enough. We seem so disorganised as a team especially against a well drilled side, doggies. I hope I’m wrong. Go Dee’s 

Basically agree with this but why is it so? You watch the Bulldogs and they just instinctively know where their team mates are, where they can handball out of trouble, often out of sight, behind the ball carrier. Some of Libber’s handballs over his head backwards push the boundaries of credibility for the Umpires surely.  But yes in comparison we seem disorganised despite year after year of training drills but it all doesn’t seem to work at AFL level, we still depend on the individual supremacy of Max, Tracc, Oliver et al to be competitive. That is individual dominance rather than a playing system that can dominate. 
 

For the dogs there are always team mates ahead, sideways and behind. That builds confidence for the risk taking ball carrier trying to break defensive lines, that he will always have an emergency out. I don’t believe we create that confidence on game day. We provide it in our practice drills at training but come game day, under pressure the daring plays go missing. Is that because players don’t have support around them and players presenting forward of the ball? I don’t know. 

2 minutes ago, Docs Demons said:

Have to agree Kev. Unfortunately our 1-3 year players are either just not good enough or are not trained properly. I think it maybe the former. Most other teams have a smokey that comes to light in the praccy games but not us. I cannot see anything in these players to give me confidence going forward and boy they missed tackles or gave stupid frees away. Our depth is poor. Adding to this is the mid range players like Jones, Harmes, Tomlinson, Jetta, AVB ( who was pathetic) and of course the normal culprit in Spargo. These guys gave us nothing and when the team needed them big time to stand up. We may get about 3 players back for the first round but will still need a couple of these mid range or 1-3 year players in the side which to me is a worry. Again it will be our bottom 6 or so players that will drag us down.

I will give LJ some slack but he also needs to start showing me he can be the star we are waiting for. Dogs just pushed him off the ball to easily for my likening and he is not jumping for someone who is supposed to have a great leap.

Finally TMac has to stay. We just do not have anyone else.

 

 

Also on TMac. He must stay in as we have nothing else at present

I hope we get at least another 7 back for round 1. Oliver, Viney, Salem, Hibberd, Melksham, Kossie and Brayshaw. Hopefully we can also work Mitch Brown and Petty into the mix, up forward as well. These players will improve the side but I do worry that our forward problems remain unresolved. And I see no real changes to the game plan, if you can call it a plan! Slow ball movement out of the backline, kicking long down the line is not how we train, sorry to sound like a broken record. 

11 minutes ago, Redleg said:

I can play a bit of tennis but will never win a game against any of the top 100 players in the world. Why is that I wonder?

Is it your backhand? 

28 minutes ago, stinga said:

It was a practice game and when many of your best players are out, you take the opportunity to see what the next level of potential will show.  The trouble was we lost it at the selection table.  When you rely on the CHF or F/F in Jxn to be the fill in ruck, so that you just have one tall forward -Tmac and a whole lot of lightweight four footers, there is just too much pressure on that next level to get any idea of what they will be like.   Why they didn't pick 2 of Brown, Daw or petty to play half a game each beats me

 

Did Mitch Brown play in the twos today? If fit he needs to play forward round 1. He at least is a natural tall forward and we are desperate. With our best mids back playing we will be able to play Petracca deep forward. That May paper over our weaknesses. 

We were always on a hiding to nothing today with 10 first pick players out against a top 4 side. But was seriously unimpressed with Traccs game. If he is to go to the next elite level he should have shown more dominance, he at best, had a few good cameos. But really the story was there was no evidence today of an improvement in our game plan or skill levels, no evidence that we have worked on the so called transition by the mids to our forwards. In short our old problems are still there. With 2 of our big forwards out for weeks not sure what we do to be competitive in the first 5 or 6 weeks. 

4 minutes ago, DeeSpencer said:

Came up against a premiership midfield without half of ours and struggled.

The most frustrating part though was we had most of our backline and refused to counter attack. 
 

And it wasn’t just that we didn’t go fast but that we didn’t go move it around ball movement either. Just do nothing then bomb.

At times when Rivers took it on and mixed it up we scored.

Our forward line out the back plan requires counter attack. Otherwise our forwards just run out of position.

Our midfield would’ve had to dominate for this plan to work and it never was going to.

The dogs are not a good forward pressure team. And sure they had the exits sealed but we had to move the ball around to be any chance of playing well. 

Yes I have only seen 2 training sessions this year but watching the game I noticed that we were not switching play or moving the ball in any way that resembled the what I have witnessed. I know we were missing  perhaps 10 first pick players but I thought in a preseason match you would keep trying to play to the system you train? 

1 minute ago, DemonLad5 said:

How many guaranteed best 22 players do we have out? 
 

oliver, brown, Weideman, Salem, Kozzy, Hibberd, Brayshaw, Viney, Melksham

thats 9 that I can count 

Ben Brown as well.

10 minutes ago, dazzledavey36 said:

Nice push by the fat spud in Josh Bruce

The umpire had good vision of that! That is a perfect example of why that rule was created, push the guy forward when he is in the air so you can take the mark. Unbelievable miss. Yet umpires will pay in the back if you fall onto someone who is already on the ground! 

13 hours ago, In Harmes Way said:

"Overall, Melbourne’s issue has been that they are a team that is less than the sum of their parts, less than the accumulated output of individuals."

Beautifully put Jake.

I thought this for the last two seasons. The midfield can be so much better if it works more as a coordinated unit rather than a number of talented individuals. I am hoping Yze can recreate a cohesive unit similar to the Hawks midfield at their peak. Not  asking for much I know. 

Rode past Gosch’s this morning. Oliver, Viney, Hibberd and Melksham doing ball movement drills and Salem later on doing some laps. All were moving freely and looked sharp. That’s 5 pretty handy players that would be normally be amongst the first picked. Hopefully all will be available for round one.