We have used more shoulder tape on our players than melbourne..not strong enough

We are so good at making excuses and pretending that there is something far greater still to come!! If the MC are hiding the game plan, when are they then going to put it into practice? When the real season starts and then they realize it's not working???

The Truth is, We had no Game plan. It was a disaster in terms of defensive structure. We had none. They were scoring at ease because we didn't have any sort of plan.


Year after year, we ask the same question " How and where are we going to manufacture our goals from? I am convinced to believe it as a fact that Casbolut has no more improvement in him. He is never going to kick more than 1-2 goals a game and will continue to have kicking issues. Our hopes are on Young Mckay and Curnow, but clearly they are far from ready and won't have a huge impact.


In today's game, it was the same old crap that we had to put up with for years. One forward which was often Kruzer today, trying to mark a high ball against Multiple defenders.

Who is going to step up? We can not seriously reply on M.Wright to be our top scorer again? its embarrassing....

It is very realistic for many to have said that we might have to go one more backward step before we can go forward. Bottom 3 looks a Certainty to me in 2017.

Agree...my view is the spoon is a real option

Couple of things;
If that is our game plan, we are in deep sh1t and
The fact that Jaksch doesn't get a game in our forward line has me perplexed.

In my view the result of these games don't matter unless you get belted and that we did
Embarrassing for brand and supporters where every other game sides have been competitive in these games
And yes it wouldn't make me not renew my membership but those less rusted on supporters see these games and say what is the point
Only thing that keeps me going is that we were disgraceful in preseason match against Essendon* last year and rectified after that
Having said that we had a much more experienced side today than in that match

We got used to having impotent forward line last year but for the defence our best feature last year to leak like a sieve today really disappointing

Yes we need to be patient but if we continue into the season those efforts by about round 4 our season will be over again and many supporters will drop off
Have faith in Bolts but last 2 performances that crap game against Essendon* and today were Malthouseque

Just caught up with the replay.

If you call it as you see it, that was shit, especially from the senior players.

Specks of hope with Marchbank, LeBois, Pickett, Fisher who all look to have a bit of talent and a future if they want it bad enough.

Which may turn out to be pretty similar to the squad/positions we saw today. That's how I took Bolton's comments after the game.

So is a new board that will the AFL landscape!

Not in reality. Listen to Bolton's interview.

Round 1 is when you start judging.

Everyone seems a little jumpy.

I guess it's been a while and our passion clouded reality.

Melbourne were always due to be this year's bolter. They are great to watch.

Those expecting us to win I'd say are a little deluded.

Given this, I do agree we could've played better.

Liked Charlie in the middle. There's a future there.

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We are eternal, all this pain is an illusion.

I'm not at all disappointed in todays game.

1. Melbourne used their 26 players for the full game where as we used the 22 in each half. Those extra rotations would make a difference.

2. Played at Casey which is a shit hole. Be surprised if any of our players had ever played there.

3. Melbourne need to make a statement this year and I think they will. Got a pretty fair midfield and it bats quite deep.

4. I like to look at the positives and there were a few.

Marchbank and Charlie will be beauties.

Pickett ( did not think he would play this early) , Fisher, Le Bois and McKay all played their first game and definitely showed some promise.

I believe we are a couple of years away yet but we are accumulating some real talent.

We have 13 players on our list under 21 which is more than any other club and the majority of our talent are our youngsters.

I have seen us win 8 premierships in my time so I have been very fortunate.

This the first time in many, many years that I feel we are on the right track.

I have great faith in Bolton and SOS. It will take time and hard work but we will get there.

That post reads so differently when you have a Celine Dion victory song behind it.

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We are eternal, all this pain is an illusion.

it's only a practice match and results don't matter
the positives are mostly individual marchbank is a player
nice to see kruz take some marks and look at the ball at the centre bounce and not the opposition as a ruckman should then jump at the ball and not try to go under his opposition all the time
what does matter is in the way we play and the way we structure and that was appalling
we will get killed all day every day if we give the opposition the centre of the ground to attack from and let the forwards go goal side and run into an easy score
again the opposition scored too easily and we couldn't that's all that matters, if we go with this game plan it will be a very long year no matter where we play, who we play or how many rotation we have

Nailed it. Well said.

Hopefully the closed sessions have more to come.

Shit style of football IMHO.
As I mentioned in the training thread, snippets show our game based training revolving around maintaining possession by hand and running with and forward of the ball. If a dummy like me could see that, Melbourne were ready to exploit it. So much for hiding the details away with closed training sessions. They pressed up on us at the contests and smashed us physically.

Our possession percentage was 1.2 handballs per kick. Overpossessing the ball by hand. Secondly, all indications show us running too much offensively forward of the ball. A turnover saw the opposition scoring with little opposition. All reports Ive heard were we are compounding last years game style and improving on it. I hope so because what I saw yesterday was a total difference to how we played the game last year. Melbourne on the other hand have nailed down their existing game style and added a lot of team based values like blocking, shepherding, bumping etc to create space for their team mates. I was hoping thats what we were doing.
I hope this was an apparition because if Bolton is going to implement shit like that, we'll become almost unwatchable.

Positives? Marchbank was excellent. As was Kruezer. It was good to see Casboult fit and healthy again. LeBois, Pickett and Fisher showed plenty to whet the appetite. As did Weitering up forward.

Backline was to tall early and lets hope Murphy was blowing out the cobwebs.

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Looking forward to seeing our potential realised.

Sorta men against boys wasnt it.Pushed and shoved us around the packs.Hated how we were bullied.................in saying that i believe the Dees and Saints are right on the heels of the Dogs in natural talent.................we just have to find out who knows how to get a kick and who has to be spoonfed.Just not enough blokes who know how to find the footy.....................anyhow,Marchbank was terrific.And i thought Fisher was easily the best of the other newbies...................I thought our older players played OK................it was the next raft coming through who were woeful,and i'll name them...........Buckley-woefull,Silvagni although fairly new was also woefull,Cuningham im sorry to say was also woefull...............Charlie was good.......the other bloke i thought did a fair job was Simon White.Puzzled why he cops so much shit.A good reliable foot soldier.
Hopefully all the newbies wil be better for the run.....................i expect a much better showing against the Saints who are at least the equal to the Dees.

PS................i know its stating the obvious but Petracca is a million dollar player waiting to happen.Gonna be a superstar for the next decade.

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All my dangerous friends

Cripps will help. But I reckon we'll see a fair bit of that this year. Other than Cripps and Gibbs, we've got a lot of midgets in our midfield mix.

murphy, gibbs simpson kruezer kerridge docherty smedts rowe plowman palmer thomas casboult buckley ed curnow white wright gorringe- that is 17/22 that are not "boys" but men

the club spin makes me sick

Mozzie................certainly wasnt men against boys Mozz.What i meant was that it looked that way .They just brushed us aside so easily.

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All my dangerous friends

ok mick- but Petracca is a boy in the sense of age (21) and a damn good draft pick who has been developed

the fact that melbourne are setting a standard for watts ( a no 1 pick) by not playing him is another good sign for them - have we ever dropped gibbs or kruezer for a non - standard? Do we have a standard?

we are going to regret not having a dedicated recruiter for the last 2 years of the national draft..its showing now