Changes for Rnd 10 v The Doggies

[Ruck'n'Roll]

Ok so the Swans made a selection booboo last week. A lot of us realised we could get into trouble speed wise, plenty here advocated dropping a tall defender and including a small. Unfortunately we didn't, and then we exacerbated our lack of speed when we made a small the sub.

On the other hand we were lucky. Imagine if one of our quicker players, say Shaw or Jetta had done a hamstring in the warm up last week, replacing one of them with last weeks travelling emergancy (Everitt) would have made us even slower. Things could have been worse.

Anyway while I can't see the solution being found in large scale changes to the personel, or worse yet the structure of the forward line. Wasn't the inside 50 count worse than the scoreboard result? In any case, even if it was a good idea, I don't think we have the players to adopt a Footscray style small forward line, and changing the teams playing style midseason could be cataclysmic.

Anyway, speaking of the Dog's, they only play 2 talls up forward atm: So give AJ a rest and bring in Armstrong or Harry, is as good advice this week as it was last week.

I'd make two less obvious suggestins:

1) One of their two tall forwards doubles as a ruckman (Roughhead/Minson). Now Grundy often gets nervous around ruckmen (ofte giving away frees by hanging on), he's also recently shown signs of ill discipline. So perhaps return LRT to the backline. Have him follow Roughhead everywhere including into the ruck and onto our backline.

2) Lake is apparently back in form, so perhaps whoever we play at full forward needs to play a negating role (rather like Jessica did on Scarlett last year)? I believe we must keep a 3 tall forward structure, so if we select Jessica then one out of Reid, Walsh and Spanky need to miss out. Which one depends on their fitness and confidence (there's question marks on each).

Although replacing AJ and Grundy, with Jessica and Harry doesn't cure our overall pace problem. It should be enough in the confines of he SCG.

[caj23]

Oh no, you've outed me. I am John Longmire!

I've looked at your suggestions and I need to talk to the assistant coaches because even though we have thousands of games experience playing and coaching we've just never put enough time into analysing our players' strengths and weaknesses. And a game plan? We should have looked at that too. It must be time to get caj23 and Wolftone into the club as consultants as it is obvious that they are spending more time than us on analysis and planning and their depth of football knowledge must surely dwarf ours. Perhaps the game looks different through the cross-hairs from a high camouflaged nest.

You should just copy and paste the same post over and over again "the coaches know best, supporters know nothing blah blah blah"

Instead of some generalised sweeping criticism of what I posted, whey don't you respond to the points that you actually disagree with

I don't even know why you bother posting on this forum because by your own logic if you're not John Longmire your opinion is worthless and you know nothing about football

[Plugger46]

Pyke was OK but the opposing ruckman who is 189cm probably beat him on the day. Dropped a few marks that I thought he should have taken but hopefully that will come with more games at this level. I certainly don't see any point in dropping him while Mumford's out.

[Mr Magoo]

At first I thought it was a pisstake, then maybe you left a 'not' out after definitely. Now I'm confused

Sarcasm/ Pisstake call it what you want. To suggest the problems from Saturday could be fixed by Morton, White et al is ludicrous.

[Triple B]

Sarcasm/ Pisstake call it what you want. To suggest the problems from Saturday could be fixed by Morton, White et al is ludicrous.

Totally agree, but I can't say it was easy to read the sarcasm in your post the way you phrased it, hence the confusion...

[Dosser]

Totally agree, but I can't say it was easy to read the sarcasm in your post the way you phrased it, hence the confusion...

Try using 'ctrl, S' when using sarcasm.

[Dosser]

From the Horse's mouth:

"Longmire said Matt Spangher is pushing to make his first appearance of the season and Tony Armstrong is a chance to play this week, but there is plenty of focus on their No. 1 ruckman and his ongoing back problem."

[Bloody Hell]

There are some major overreactions in this thread.

There are 3 main reasons why we lost.

1. We still have no forward line...
2. Without Mumford and Goodes our midfield is looking decidedly Ford Cortina-ish. Up against a midfield of Hayes, Dal Santo, Montanga etc. We were, unsuprisingly (in retrospect, (yes I realise that's an oxymoron)) made to look very ordinary.
3. Our backline played the worst I have seen for a very long time. They weren't playing for each other as they usually do and everyone was beaten by their man.

So in conclusion we were smashed in the forward line, smashed in the midfield and smashed in the backline....and we still only lost by 29 points (though it should have been more.)

[Ruck'n'Roll]

symptoms and causes

[The Big Cat]

You should just copy and paste the same post over and over again "the coaches know best, supporters know nothing blah blah blah"

Instead of some generalised sweeping criticism of what I posted, whey don't you respond to the points that you actually disagree with

I don't even know why you bother posting on this forum because by your own logic if you're not John Longmire your opinion is worthless and you know nothing about football

There are elements of your post which I agree with only you have them around the wrong way.

You should just copy and paste the same post over and over again "the supporters know best, coaches know nothing blah blah blah"

I don't even know why you bother posting on this forum because by your own logic if you ARE John Longmire your opinion is worthless and you know nothing about football

[The Big Cat]

I think we can take it as given that you are John Longmire

So a couple of suggestions:

Small forwards are a ridiculous option for the sub, particularly when the forward line is already diabolical, its actually worse than your Seaby stuff up cos you've done it twice and havent learnt from your mistake

LRT is not a forward and never will be, nor is he a 2nd ruckman. Either play him in the backline where he belongs or make the gutsy call and drop him to the two's.

Any coach with half a brain has cottoned on to the empty forward line bomb it long for Jetta to run on to trick. It needs to be a tactic that is used sparingly, not as Plan A FFS

Please devise Plan B and Plan C because Plan A is bollocks, as Wolftone (I think) mentioned earlier, if tall forwards are not our strength then build a forward line around mediums and smalls instead

Please stop shrugging your shoulders and saying "I don't know what happened, we just didn't show up tonight" after every Melbourne loss and do something about it

OK a few comments:

If our forward line is as diabolical as you think then having a forward as a sub is logical since it provides another option if things don't go as planned.

LRT has played his best football as a defender, no doubt, but we need someone who can relieve the main ruckman. White has been tried and gives less than LRT (even if he is a backman). Who would you select? Seaby hasn't worked.

Empty forward line with Jetta sniffing around is not Plan A. I'm not sure if you were at the game on Saturday - I was. On most occasions Jetta was inside the press and on the half back line when St Kilda had it forward. If kicking it long to forwards is not our go, what is? Spending ten minutes trying to spot up easy targets through the flood that St Kilda had back?

"I don't know what happened, we just didn't show up tonight" is a reasonable response. He did also say the pressure and contested ball wasn't there which is code for not showing up. He said that StK were harder. I was there. It was a fact. What do you want him to say? "The players didn't care"? or "We couldn't get hold of the ball because our structures were wrong"? The truth is our structures were under pressure because we couldn't get the ball. Why couldn't we get the ball? Because we were off in our intensity! In the first and last quarters (admittedly when the heat was off a little bit) our structures worked fine. Get the ball and everything else takes care of itself.

[Melbourne_Blood]

Saying we only got beaten by 29 points is a cop out. We were I think 50 points down at one stage. We kicked a few junk goals to make it look less like a thumping, but that is exactly what it was. It would be different if we were in the game until the last 10 minutes and they kicked away. We got our pants pulled down, pure and simple.

[Triple B]

Saying we only got beaten by 29 points is a cop out.....

What is it at 28 points?

[Melbourne_Blood]

I'm not sure what your point is triple B , did I get the margin wrong by 1 point? I took that from someone else's post. Forgive me if that is incorrect. My point is we were comprehensively beaten, and when people pull out the excuse of the final margin to try and make out the loss wasn't that bad, I think that's a cop out. At what point after the first quarter did we look like we had a snowflakes chance in hell of winning the game?

[Triple B]

Didn't say I disagreed with you, just checking...