AFL 2019 Round 3: Melbourne v Essendon, 7:50pm AEDT MCG

Who will win?

  • Melbourne < 10 pts

    Votes: 2 5.4%
  • Melbourne 10-30 pts

    Votes: 11 29.7%
  • Melbourne > 30 pts

    Votes: 13 35.1%
  • Essendon < 10 pts

    Votes: 1 2.7%
  • Essendon 10-30 pts

    Votes: 4 10.8%
  • Essendon > 30 pts

    Votes: 5 13.5%
  • Draw

    Votes: 1 2.7%

  • Total voters
    37
  • Poll closed .
Oct 29, 2017
18,407
35,552
AFL Club
Richmond
Something wrong with Melbourne. They were pure garbage and player for player should have won comfortably. Essendon finally playing team football.

As for the umpiring, Im more confused about the rules.than ever. Particularly HTB, HTM and high contact. Each contest seems to.be a lottery.in this respect and when they pay 51 free kicks in a game (no less) yet miss numerous others, its quite baffling.
 
Mar 5, 2015
1,711
2,061
West of Woop Woop
AFL Club
Western Bulldogs
Other Teams
Marconi, Arsenal, GreenEdge
Tippa back in form.

Stringer putting his back into every contest.

Fantasia kicked straight and got the ball (his first 2 games of the year he had 22 touches, 5 marks with 0.7, 3 inside 50s and 0 goal assists, tonight he had 21 disposals, 10 marks, 2 goals, 4 inside 50s and a goal assist)

McKernan, well, still McKernan. No in game or round by round consistency but hey he can be dangerous.

Add Daniher and a resting mid like Smith/Parish.

I like the Bombers forward line.
Don't judge their forward line on last nights effort. Melbournes defence was abysmal. "Defending grass" said the commentators and for once they were right. Melb made Ess look much better than they are.
 
Sep 21, 2008
27,887
64,418
Vic
AFL Club
North Melbourne
Quite possibly one of the worst adjudicated games I have seen in a long time. Some of the push or holding decisions were laughable.

Speaking of laughable is there a player in the league that torches the footy out of the middle worse than Dylan Shiel?

Essendon would’ve won by 6-7 goals if Shiel could hit a target in the first half.
 

Stopher

Brownlow Medallist
Jul 19, 2012
10,022
15,946
Gippsland
AFL Club
Essendon
Other Teams
Liverpool
Bigfooty has this thing where everyone tries to show what sophisticated superfans they are by intimating that only the greatest of the great games are good enough for their standards.

Plenty of games are highly entertaining if you just relax a bit and enjoy them for what they are.
Yep. Like those sad cases that spend a whole movie trying to guess the ending or pick mistakes. Just enjoy it FFS
 

Peel67skin

Norm Smith Medallist
May 21, 2017
8,387
3,941
AFL Club
Gold Coast
Other Teams
Liverpool
Bigfooty has this thing where everyone tries to show what sophisticated superfans they are by intimating that only the greatest of the great games are good enough for their standards.

Plenty of games are highly entertaining if you just relax a bit and enjoy them for what they are.
If people really enjoyed AFL , they don't post here , simple .
 
Apr 29, 2016
10,157
8,956
AFL Club
Melbourne
Smashed? You won those games by 5 goals. You weren't that impressive in either game, truth be told. A really good team would've won both those games by 10 goals. Hawks and Cats were both cooked and you blokes were in good nick.

Do you wanna know who got SMASHED last September?

Preliminary Final half time score:
West Coast 10.9.69
Melbourne 0.6.6

The Eagles destroyed the Demon pretenders

Yeah, I think you're overrated

You can't be that good if you're sooking about injuries to Charlie Spargo, Mitch Hannan, Jeffy Garlett, Aaron Vandenberg, Jordan Lewis and Jay Kennedy-Harris

And I also think Clayton Oliver is overrated. People pump him up as one of the best players in the comp, but he just isn't. Good player, but not Top 10
Also laughable that some pundits think Max Gawn is a superstar on the same level as Danger, Dusty, Buddy, etc.

Mate they were very comfortable wins. The scoreboard doesnt say everything against geelong. we won the midfield all night but couldn't convert. Against the hawks, the game was seemingly over at 3/4 time only to take the foot off the gas.

And we still had Lever and Hogan out injured. that's half our spine.

I dont know whether Oliver is top 10 or not but there is nothing cripps can do that oliver cant. Both handball it the same amount, both get clearances. Oliver far better hands
 
Apr 29, 2016
10,157
8,956
AFL Club
Melbourne
Melbourne need to swallow some ego. They're obsessed with trying to smash teams with purely attacking footy. The only way they don't beat Essendon is if it's an open attacking game where the Dons speedsters can do some damage. So Melbourne go with a wide open game. They'll smash some teams that way, becasue their on-ball brigade are so good, but it doesn't suit their list, they don't have great outside runners and their defenders aren't great one on one, particularly whilst their high priced interceptors are out injured and they have noone else who is a reliable third man up. At least until May and Lever are playing, they need to roll numbers back and against Essendon they needed to congest play more.

good post. I think the coaches are trying to contest it but dont know how. We seem very slow but most teams do when you dont have the ball. So I think it's a structure thing. It's so easy for teams to stroll forward into open forward lines. We made mckernan look like carey.
 

Wackajack

Team Captain
Mar 4, 2011
473
643
Darwin
AFL Club
Collingwood
I really felt for the Melbourne supporters at the game, they showed a quarter of football where they dominated but then fell off.

Unfortunately for their supporters the Melbourne players are mentally weak. Soft as warm butter.
 
Jun 11, 2007
34,086
29,320
Victoria
AFL Club
Essendon
Other Teams
Bayern, Milan, Boston Celtics
50k on a warm Friday night between two Victorian teams isn’t great. I get they’ve both had poor starts to the season but supporters need to be turning up to marquee games.
50k is soft for a Friday. The case for essendon switching to being an mcg tenant is not helped by crowds like this
 
Jan 7, 2005
61,600
68,995
Down the rabbit hole
AFL Club
Essendon
Other Teams
Fatebringer
Quite possibly one of the worst adjudicated games I have seen in a long time. Some of the push or holding decisions were laughable.

Speaking of laughable is there a player in the league that torches the footy out of the middle worse than Dylan Shiel?

Essendon would’ve won by 6-7 goals if Shiel could hit a target in the first half.
Probably would have lost by the same margin of he wasn't out there so, you know...
 

Corkintheocean

Premiership Player
Aug 15, 2009
3,558
5,462
AFL Club
West Coast
Settled in last night to throughly enjoy watching Essendon slipping to 0-3 after having so much smoke blown up their backsides all preseason. Little did I know I was in for an even better treat with Melbourne rolling over and getting their bellies tickled by, until last night, the most out of form 21 player collective in the league.

Just perfect.
 

OnceWeWereKings

Premiership Player
Oct 23, 2007
4,119
9,142
Melbourne
AFL Club
Carlton
Quite possibly one of the worst adjudicated games I have seen in a long time. Some of the push or holding decisions were laughable.

Speaking of laughable is there a player in the league that torches the footy out of the middle worse than Dylan Shiel?

Essendon would’ve won by 6-7 goals if Shiel could hit a target in the first half.

Agree, thought the umpiring was really ordinary.
They were poor all night.
That holding against Jetta, oh dear.
It’s a tough gig umpiring this game, but gee they don’t make it any easier on themselves with the technicality overview.
 
The ladder accurately reflects where these teams are at. Both can attack and look good in patches but defensively they are pathetic basket cases. No wonder Cats put 80 points on the dees last week. If their defensive organisation and effort continues in this vein neither side will go close to finals IMO

Conceding the league average number of scoring shots = pathetic basket case. Ok mete.
 

Bludd

Debutant
Mar 28, 2018
92
49
AFL Club
Sydney
Last season Melbourne's centre bounce setup was mainly having an extra man in defense (62%), second to only Richmond. Maybe that has also effected the Dees a bit?
 
Last season Melbourne's centre bounce setup was mainly having an extra man in defense (62%), second to only Richmond. Maybe that has also effected the Dees a bit?

Think congestion in the middle helped their mid. Now with so much more space at centre bounces their lack of pace hurts them.

Maybe their top 4 position last season flattered them a little
 

youbeautfyfe

Senior List
Sep 25, 2015
151
224
AFL Club
Fremantle
Love the fact that there will always be a team in more inept of winning a premiership more than Freo...... thank you Dees, you keep me sane.
 
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