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

[beema limapep]

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.

 

[Outback Footy]

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.

 

[roos_fanatic08]

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]

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]

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 .

 

[danster168]

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

 

[danster168]

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.

 

[danster168]

even with all these losses Hogan would only make things worse. He is the kingpin of the no chase/accountability club

 

[Rod Stroker]

Just saw the highlights, looked like a decent game. Would have preferred if Essendon lost, but I won't slit my wrists over the result.

Melbourne are in all sorts. They'll be the disappointment of the season.

 

[JackFlash]

The Demons should win their next two games (Swans and Saints), drop just one and it's curtains for 2019

 

[Drewie11]

The Demons should win their next two games (Swans and Saints), drop just one and it's curtains for 2019

The way they are playing, you couldn’t bank the Sydney game as a win

 

[Wackajack]

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.

 

[PieLebo87]

That was one of the best games of footy I’ve watched in a few years. Loved it and hope to see many more. How great would it be if we had 38 goal games more frequently.

 

[citizen-erased]

No mention of Cale Hooker?

He is without a doubt the most important player to Essendon who is currently missing.

Will remain to be seen if hooker plays back or forward on return.

Does he replace Ambrose or clarke/mckernan?

 

[citizen-erased]

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

 

[Lance Uppercut]

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]

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.

 

[Great8]

50k is soft for a Friday. The case for essendon switching to being an mcg tenant is not helped by crowds like this

Wasn’t our home game though.

 

[OnceWeWereKings]

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.

 

[Dave]

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.

 

[PieLebo87]

What are Melbourne supporter’s views on what is going wrong in defence to have conceded 40 goals from 100 inside 50s in the last two games?

 

[evo]

I couldn't understand why Brayshaw got so little gametime. Dees seemed to dominate when he was in the middle, but when the heat was on in the last he was either halfforward or on the bench.

 

[Bludd]

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?

 

[TheGreatBarryB]

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]

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.