Changes for next week?

[andrewb]

Welsh and Lovett-Murray should be available.

Jetta injured.

Ins: Welsh, Lovett-Murray, Atkinson (promote to replace LTI Lucas)
Outs: Jetta (inj.), Pev, Stanton

Welsh and Lovett-Murray are automatic selections when fit and if Pev can't tag anymore then he doesn't add much value.

Stanton needs to have a think about playing for his teammates. Terrible effort in front of Fev. This will give an opportunity to Atkinson in the big league given that Hislop, Myers, Jetta, Dempsey and Hocking are all unavailable.

Disappointed that we can't get Neagle or Gumby fit at the moment - it's the perfect opportunity for them with Lucas out.

[KaaN10]

Same as yours but, you cant drop Stanton just after 3 games. Give him more time, we know what he can do at his best.

[andrewb]

I'm one of Stanton's biggest supporters - he always presents, he runs all day and he is consistently the only bloke prepared to provide an option at wing or half back as quarters wear on despite the fact that he is so young. Because of his age, I'm willing to wear a little bit of a lack of accountability and the occasional skill error (it's not his fault that we don't have three or four solid 100-150 game mids to take the pressure off him).

However, the Essendon Football Club does not accept squibbish efforts and he will need to learn that lesson if he's going to be the player he can be. Mark McVeigh called him out after the game for being soft with good reason.

I'm not used to seeing the red and black #5 shirking the contest and I don't want to have to get used to it.

He looks a little bit like Luke Ball with his new hair-do... needs to take the trip up the highway to Bendigo and learn to play a bit more like him.

[BenDoolan]

I'm one of Stanton's biggest supporters - he always presents, he runs all day and he is consistently the only bloke prepared to provide an option at wing or half back as quarters wear on despite the fact that he is so young. Because of his age, I'm willing to wear a little bit of a lack of accountability and the occasional skill error (it's not his fault that we don't have three or four solid 100-150 game mids to take the pressure off him).

However, the Essendon Football Club does not accept squibbish efforts and he will need to learn that lesson if he's going to be the player he can be. Mark McVeigh called him out after the game for being soft with good reason.

I'm not used to seeing the red and black #5 shirking the contest and I don't want to have to get used to it.

He looks a little bit like Luke Ball with his new hair-do... needs to take the trip up the highway to Bendigo and learn to play a bit more like him.

Is that right? If so, f***'n good on Spike!

[jimmyc1985]

Stanton won't be dropped, regardless of whether or not he deserves to be. Having not been there at the Carlton game it's hard for me to know whether he was as bad as is being said on these boards, but can i ask: was his infamous squib in front of Fevola worse than the one against North Melbourne in the first quarter when he jumped out of the way of a leading Nathan Thompson (who marked and goaled about 20m out from goal, i think)? That effort made me sob a few tears into my beer a couple weeks ago.

Anyway:
IN: Welsh, NLM (assuming he's available);
OUT: Pev (sorry Pev, Bulldogs are too good a running team), Jetta.

[Madden]

There are two interpretions of the Stanton incident in the third quarter:

1. He made a conscious decision, assuming that Fevola would drop the mark, to wait for the crumbs rather than get into the marking contest; or

2. He squibbed it.

I would suggest that the answer is probably No 1, but that the decision was severly influenced by his propensity to avoid the rough stuff where possible.

Regardless, it happened right in front of where I sit (M11, Essendon reserve seat area) and it looked terrible. Everyone sitting around me was going ballistic, although maybe it was the angle at which we were looking at the incident from. Would love to see it again on the replay.

[Doctor Fish]

Same as yours but, you cant drop Stanton just after 3 games. Give him more time, we know what he can do at his best.

Agree. He wasn't horrible the other night. Just seems like he's down a bit on confidence. He helped set up quite a few plays by the games end. We'll need him for the Doggies for sure.

Also agree with you Andrew that his pulling out of the Fev contest was unacceptable. Hopefully he'll learn from recent mistakes and turn things around.

[andrewb]

There are two interpretions of the Stanton incident in the third quarter:

1. He made a conscious decision, assuming that Fevola would drop the mark, to wait for the crumbs rather than get into the marking contest; or

2. He squibbed it.

I would suggest that the answer is probably No 1, but that the decision was severly influenced by his propensity to avoid the rough stuff where possible.

Either way I'm disappointed. Fev was absolutely on fire and he had a couple of yards on Mal. Stants could have floated in, taken the mark and taken the hit - he had time to get there first. Even if he got injured (unlikely) it's the kind of courageous act that could turn a game and the coach could use to fire the rest of the team up.

JimmyC... missed the Thompson incident but if so even more reason to give him a spell. There's no room for that kind of behaviour at this club.

BTW... Any ideas why Mal (who had been playing 10m in front of his opponents all season) reverted to his old habits on Saturday? Certainly didn't do him any favours. Fev killed him on the lead.

[andrewb]

Is that right? If so, f***'n good on Spike!

-----------------

McVeigh answers challenges from Knights - http://www.mytalk.com.au/Stations/Talk/ ... veigh.aspx

Essendon midfielder Mark McVeigh responded to being started on the bench against Carlton on Saturday night in the best possible fashion.

McVeigh told 3AW Football after his side’s exciting 16-point win that Matthew Knights was dirty on his game in the Bombers’ 99-point loss to Geelong, and as a result would be warming the pine at the first bounce against the Blues.

The hard-working midfielder, who was best-on-ground against the Kangaroos in Round One, was the difference in Essendon’s win over Carlton – McVeigh finishing the game with 26 disposals and four goals.

It was also his ability to curtail Chris Judd, who had his best game in the navy blue with 31 touches and two goals, when Knights gave him the job of running with the Carlton skipper just before three-quarter time that changed the course of the match.

“(Damien Peverill) had him for the majority of the game and then he started to get away a bit and they asked me to go and do a job,” said McVeigh. “You learn off the best in the league … he is someone you can learn from and there are bits of my game where I try to expose him and bits of his game where he tries to expose me.”

McVeigh said that while Judd was protected from going down back when playing for West Coast, he knew that Carlton would not be able to execute a similar tactic.

“Well obviously he doesn’t play back a lot and I have, so I know how uncomfortable it can be being a backline player when it’s coming in hard and fast.”

“I played on him when he’s at West Coast and they really covered for Juddy and I think with Carlton, where they are at being a developing list, they can’t do that as much … so I tried to get him down there and kick a few goals and fortunately it worked,” said McVeigh, who booted two last-quarter goals.

On starting on the bench, McVeigh hinted that it didn’t really take his fancy, but he just had to ‘cop it on the chin’.

“(Knights) wasn’t happy with the way I played last week and said ‘you are one of my better players and I don’t want you playing like that so you’ll start on the bench’. It was a wierd feeling, I haven’t started on the bench for three or four years – but that’s what he wants from his players and I understand that. You have to play your role every week.”

Knights was obviously more pleased with his No.10’s efforts in Round Three: “Mark did a significant job in the second half to get us over the line”, the Dons coach said in his post-match media conference.

Meanwhile, McVeigh also had a veiled swipe at some of his midfield team-mates, saying that their commitment at the ball needs to improve for the side to go anywhere this season.

“I don’t reckon we are aggressive enough around the footy in the midfield. It’s something we discuss - we do it in spates - but not often enough. If you look at the great midfields like the Brisbane Lions, they won through their sheer toughness and hardness at the ball,” he said.

“We need the Bachar Houlis and (Brent) Stantons to get a bit harder in there, and that’ll come. We work on it every week in training, a few of the older boys might have to whack them over the head in training just to get that toughness back.”

Essendon takes on an undefeated Western Bulldogs side at Telstra Dome next week.

-----------------

Don't know that Bachar deserved it... looked a bit underdone and he has only played a handful of games but Stants certainly deserves a whack over the head.

[jimmyc1985]

JimmyC... missed the Thompson incident but if so even more reason to give him a spell. There's no room for that kind of behaviour at this club.

It's here, at the 1:15 mark, if you've got BigPond:

http://bigpondvideo.com/footytv//0/?0_103=&

Score was 14-0 in Kangaroos' favour, ball comes in off a snap from the boundary line, Thompson's coming out and you can see Stants giving it a massive squib when he had the opportunity to at least spoil, if not take the mark. It was right in front of me and i was livid.

[robrulz5]

The one on Saturday night was very bad. He even ducked his head as if bracing for possible contact even though he didn't go for the ball.

[robbie67]

Anyway:
IN: Welsh, NLM (assuming he's available);
OUT: Pev (sorry Pev, Bulldogs are too good a running team), Jetta.

What she said.

[j-mac31]

Welsh to miss (see website).

Out: Stanton for at least three weeks.

[LND]

Out: Pev and Jetta

In: Slattery (one tagger for another) LNM (if fit)

[nathanskinner]

Wouldn't drop Stanton. His the hardest running midfielder we have.. against one of the hardest running midfields going around, would be idiotic. And for one mistake? That'd be insane.

Slattery In for Jetta would be my only change. Would ideally like to have Welsh in as well.. get a bit worried about the defensive side of things with this side.

[ealesy]

WELSH WON'T PLAY

He's only played one half of football in the past 6 weeks. Knights has said that if he proves his fitness he will be coming back through the VFL.

My changes would be:

In: Nathan Lovett-Murray, Jason Johnson
Out: Leroy Jetta, Damien Peverill

Like the idea of having the one big harder body in against the Bulldogs to help out Watson, particularly seeing they will be missing Scott West, but I would prefer Johnson over Peverill. Slattery simply doesn't get enough of the ball himself, and if he gets beaten by his opponent (as a tagger) he offers absolutely nothing to the team, because he hardly has an offensive side to his game at the moment.

[j-mac31]

Wouldn't drop Stanton. His the hardest running midfielder we have.. against one of the hardest running midfields going around, would be idiotic. And for one mistake? That'd be insane.

Yeah, hardest running to behind the play to get a cheap kick.
For mine, it's not just the incident where he didn't block Fev, he just doesn't run hard enough (or at all really) when the other team has the ball and doesn't get his kicks in anywhere nears as damaging positions as they could be.

Bolton ran really hard. Remember him? He was rubbish at AFL.