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I'm not sure if this needs it's own thread except for the fact that I believe it's an interesting point of discussion, however feel free to merge it. I feel like I know the answer to why yesterday happened, again. We were all fearing it. You could feel and hear it in the crowd from the beginning. And it happened. Three major points came to me after yesterday's loss to confirm what I already felt about the team. 1: Conditioned - The MFC still have a core group of players who are conditioned to train and play a certain way. Let's take the midfield for example. They are reactionary when it comes to a contested situation which is why we were absolutely smashed on the spread yesterday. Players do not trust one another to win the ball, something that has clearly developed over time (during the Bailey era also). That mentality has meant we now have too many players go for the ball or ball gaze. Neither impacting or getting ready to spread. Yesterday, Nab cup, last year. You would have noticed many times how easily teams would win the ball and the next thing you know they have free men everywhere. Well, that's one of the reasons. It's absolutely caused by a conditioning in mindset. A laziness. A lack of awareness. An ingrained habit that's been developed from a lack of success. We have been down for so long, how could any of our midfielders trust each other enough to win the ball. Our midfielders ball watch. That is one example. It's very complex because as you can see with this mindset of not trusting each other and being reactionary, other aspects of conditioning are intertwined with this lack of trust. A conditioning to how hard an AFL player needs to work. Work ethic. It has been well documented that we have been training at a below par standard pre Neeld and Misson, meaning a conditioning of work ethic comes into play here also, which clearly adds to the lack of defensive pressure or our ability to 'work hard both ways.' Players such as Sylvia has never been pushed to work his absolute arse off which you can see when it comes to running offensively vs defensively. It is now in his conditioning. The first thing he thinks of when his opponent gets a few yards on him is not "I am not letting this guy touch the pill." It's more like, "Someone else will pick him up, so I'll take this guy next to me." This is a reason Moloney got the flick, I am sure of it. We have been conditioned and are now being re-conditioned by Neeld. 2: Stupid - Here is something that may not resonate with a lot of you but it is my view. Whilst I am still a fan of what Neeld is bringing to the MFC, I believe the next two points are major contributing factors to why we are cellar dwellers and I'm not so sure Neeld stresses this as much as he does for the re-conditioning of our players aspect. Stupidity is one. Just as is the case in any social group, organisation or in this case sporting club, you will find some people are smarter than others. In our case, the MFC have a plethora of stupid players. Frawley, Garland and Dunn are stupid players. Hear me out. Whilst I rate Frawley as a guerilla defender with reasonable aggression, reasonable (and at times questionable attack) and reasonable skills. I also think he is stupid. Those three at times make terrible decisions and there was an instance yesterday where the three of them all went for the ball at once, leaving two opponents free and of course they fumbled it, an opposition player got it and Port kicked a goal. Surely Dunn has the smarts to mix things up a bit from a kick out? Not just the under 15's long bomb down the line. Surely Frawley has the awareness to use his skill and not kick to a contested situation when there are free men? Surely Garland has learnt that this is AFL and he needs to show more desire and aggression as a senior backman in a young side? These players are capable but need to smarten up or we need to bring in some smart players! There are many on our list who make similarly stupid decisions. We need smarter players. Viney had his first game yesterday and whilst his kicking is not elite, you can tell he is smart! He used the ball extremely well through his footy smarts. Melbourne will continue to suffer if we keep drafting stupid players. Bringing in Gillies and Pederson will not help our cause. I understand it's about mature bodies but geez we have so many stupid players. 3: Skill - Not much needs to be said. Not only were we shredded by Port because of their spread, work ethic, player smarts. It's also about skill. They have more players with better skills. We are as skill-less as we are stupid. Too many players who are unable to hit a target. More than half our side yesterday. Matt Jones showed more skill and smarts than so many of our players and he is a 25 year old from the VFL! They can't be that hard to find ffs! We need to make drafting players with good footskills a priority. As well as footy smarts. I don't care if it means we have to build their bodies and wait 3 or 4 years. At least by the time they are big enough to contest, they will already have other aspects of their game covered. It's really tough to deal with. So much hope. We will take a long time to get the MFC back to where it needs to be and I really hope the recruiting over the next few years addresses those two points. Here's to a long year. End of rant.