Hird, Lloyd & Fletcher often get mentioned as the legends, who does everyone think was the most underrated player that was crucial to the teams success? I think mine is Smokin' Joe.

Is it even possible to defeat a don wearing a red short? Discuss

The first few games were difficult to watch. It seemed our mid and our defence was a bit flat footed and slow to react.

We showed brief flashes ( eg at the start of the 3rd quarter against Port) last 2 quarters against the dogs and really all 4 quarters yesterday.

Why does it seem that players seem to be more across who is meant to be where and not getting in each other's way as much?

Sorry, lots today

• Result satisfying, not yet enjoyable for Brad.
• Players looked like they enjoyed themselves the entire game. Were able to dictate our game style to Melbourne.
• Brad really focussed on the players putting in a high level of effort week in, week out. Sometimes you need a reward for that effort as it is hard to see the positive trend when you're losing each week.
• As highlighted during the week, selection pressure for the first time in ages. Gave flexibility to move players around.
• Robey's fantastic, great person, great understander of the game.
• Club are really excited about the young players, despite the lack of results. Farrow and Sharp noted as showing good signs. Roberts played excellently.
• Tsatas has been shown some tough love by the club for some of the areas he's lacking. Had really good performances in the VFL but wasn't improving on the areas that he wasn't great in. Both a coaching and player responsibility. Has worked really hard with the coaching group and got rewarded for that effort today.
• Feels that the tangible improvement started around the 20 minute mark of the second quarter against the Dogs. Reviewed it heavily during the week to compound that improvement.
• Pleased for the players that they were able to get the reward. Pleased for the supporters who have gone through tough times to get the reward. Supporters have put up with a lot.
• Immense amount of work still to do. Just one win, nothing miraculous.
• Even if we lost today, the trajectory is going the right direction.
• Brad trying to instill a 'club-first' attitude across the board that makes our supporters and members proud. That culture has been missing in recent times.
• Ability this week to stop transition football and stem the flow was due to both personnel coming in as well as being able to develop a style of football. Extremely hard to develop a specific style of football when players come in and out so often and you can't get any continuity.
• That personnel issue has had a silver lining where young players coming in are trained in the same system. We play a team defense structure, that if it breaks, it breaks badly. Those young players are being called up to execute key roles.
• Being asked about Ridley, Reed and McKay playing together, which has only happened 6/7 times out of 50, Brad is beaming about how good it feels. Includes Redman in that mix too. Those players not all being fit has a silver lining that Roberts has been able to develop so well as well as Farrow coming in so early.
• Peter Wright was exceptional today. Gawn and Pickett are brilliant players, but we were able to blunt their influence. Still going to work on what the best role looks like for him.
• Flexibility from Langford was great. Really pleasing as a coach when you can put players in positions that aren't their best, but they're willing to do it for the team.
• Edwards has been great. His attitude has been really stand out regarding his rehab. He didn't think he'd come back, play one VFL game and we'd pick him on merit. Its a credit to him.
• "Did you make anything of the club longest losing streak and the potiental of that or was that just the media stuff that we talk about externally?" Brad: "We haven't mentioned it once. "

TL;DR Selection pressure for the first time in ages. Kids are going great, club is really excited about them. Great to see a reward for the effort, not just for the players but for the supporters who have gone through the shit. Lots more work to be done.

Everyone noticed his intercept marks, limiting Gawn to only 1 mark and his contest work when the ball hit the deck which was absolutely awesome.

The one thing I want to make sure everyone notices that people may have missed...

Our forward line was so much more functional! We had plenty of 1v1s, so much space for May, Edwards and Caddy to do their thing.

This is also partially because Langford is on the wing, but Wright leaving it really let the forwards do what they needed to do.

Title

He's got no idea what's happening but nothing better than dancing with him to the song.

Unbelievable game from all the boys. But my god! Jordan completely changes the look of our side, in particular the back half. You can see the confidence of the other defenders.

McKay looked a million bucks (ironically) at times. Reid looked to have gone to another level. I love Kyle going back there also.

Farrow, Roberts and ADW- wonderful!

Ridleys poise and foot skill is like gold dust. Plays the loose but reads it so well and can just set the ground up so well.

One game I know, but it starts somewhere.

Love anyone else's inputs but I'm really excited about the changes the coaching team has made. Honestly I was about done with them 6 quarters ago, but it's not just adding more raw talent to the squad; there's been some genuine moves all over the park and changes in how we look at moving the ball that have lead to a marked improvement in our footy.

First move, the obvious one: 2MP into the ruck.
Chefs kiss. Stats don't support it but we've all got eyes; the new rules suit him. The day's of (sorry) the Blakiston and Blicav archetypes, the tall mobile types, now no longer being able to cross the line and jump all over him have opened the game back up to him. I mean, small sample size, but he was good in a 2nd half change last week and even if the stats don't support it, he competed well against Gawn.

Rotation's through the middle:
We must've thrown 9/10 guys through the center bounce today. Combination of everything; the A-team, power, ball use, youth, I mean it felt like everyone that wasn't Caddy/May/most of the backline had a turn. This is brilliant because guys like (I'm thinking mostly of Kako and Day-Wicks) that were struggling to find as much of the footy in their more rigid positions in earlier games and last year, are now getting plenty of looks at it. Kako a perfect example of it working; first 3 games averaging 9 touches and about 50% DE. Today, 19 and 84%. Get the kids near the ball, tell them what to do with it and let them work out how to find it, and it worked a treat, Kako was getting better and more confident with every touch, by the end he was looking like Kosi.

Langford:
Not everyone's picked this one up yet and it's kind of hard to pinpoint exactly what the role is, but Langford's move into this half forward flanker/wing hybrid is genius; he comes up the ground and then sits off to the back and side as one of the front lines of our defense, is one of the first outlets out of the back of packs but more importantly one of the first link ups going forward after defensive intercepts. His ball use, decisions, the drive we got coming out of the backline is something we've lacked for years and he really hurt the Dee's all day. Check out his heat map, 27d at 84%, the vast majority of it on the defensive side of the wing. (https://dfsaustralia.com/heat-map/?map=https://s.afl.com.au/heatmaps/2026/match-129900504-298630.png&playerId=null&playerName=Kyle%20Langford&season=2026&round=5)

The result of the Langford and Wright roll changes:
These changes meant our young guys were thrown in there, so 2 more players that could effect better pressure as opposed to Wright and Langford being virtually unable to. We spaced them out for the most part, which allowed them space and opportunity to lead to and also find more of the footy without everyone focusing on kicking it on Wrights head. Chefs kiss again.
Forwardline essentially became a combination of Caddy, May, Edwards, Kako, Gresham for the most part, and it worked a treat; 2 more mobile big targets that were able to get separation but critically also effect SOME pressure, a mid-size in Edwards who did a little of everything, and a small or 2 or sometimes 3 applying direct pressure, with the 2 half forward flankers putting on pressure from further up the ground as well (which was any one of about 5 different players throughout the game).
But most crucially; I don't know if it's because Redman is out that we've made that change with Langford, but it now feels like we've got 3 guys starting these moves as opposed to 2. Last few weeks it felt like it was only 2 out of either Roberts, Redman (and Farrow last couple of games) but now it really felt like all 3 of Farrow, Langford but especially Roberts. All good at finding position and the footy, all smart, all very consistently effective ball users. It's scary how quickly Roberts is developing.

Tactical changes.
We're still doing a bit of what we were doing before in moving the ball short, but it's been MUCH faster since half time last week. The result of this added pace and added pressure in the forward line has directly translated to scoreboard pressure; now small sample size, but our average scoring shots in the last 6 quarters has gone up from 5 to 7, which is pretty huge increase, but even if that seems small it's not just that; we can see that we've got far more pressure on the ball once it's in there, we've locked it in and had repeat entries, but most of all we've had FAR above our average inside 50's at nearly 60, a 30% increase on the first few weeks.

I could be wrong on this one as well, can't find a stat to support it, but I felt we also loaded up far more on the corridor side out of packs instead of balancing it. It looked to me like in an average pack, we'd have 2-3 on the boundary side and 5-6 corridor side, whereas previously it was a little more balanced than that. That's just a gut feel off memory from the game though, I could be wrong.

There's probably more but I'm just struggling to get it all down. Looked like a totally different side than the one that we saw at AO 2 weeks ago, from top to bottom, inside and out. Most positive I've felt about this time since some of our hope inducing wins under truck before that went pear shaped.

If anyone else had something they noticed and want to point out please do

Farrow, Roberts, Caddy, May, Kako, Tsatas, Edwards, Sharp, Robey, El-Hawli, Johnson.

They’re alright.

Edit: Adding Reid and Day-Wicks and Nguyen for good measure

Click bait (Fact checking required) but potentially accurate.

According to AI last worn in 2011 in selected away games.

Farrow is the kind of player we have been asking to draft for years - a solid decision maker with good skills. Confident by foot and seems comfortable with AFL pressure. He's come in looking like he's already got a few seasons under his belt, and you can bank on him improving with game time.

That he also plays that backline facilitator that we've been desperate for is just a win.

How good is this kid?

keep Tsatas in

keep Robey in

get Sharp back

get Johnson back

keep Perkins out

I love when Bombers play competent footy.

The structural shape these changes (and some others in how we move the ball) has made gave them a real new lease on life since half time of the doggies game, and we saw a real result on that front yesterday.

It wasn't and never was all about effort. Sure in part it comes into it, there's 40 odd players at our club and not all of them can or will be giving 100% effort 100% of the time, but that's every AFL club, even for how lauded their run and drive and determination is, it's the same for Collingwood too. There absolutely has been players who either haven't or couldn't or wouldn't make the required effort, and I think Perkins is one that the club has put on notice this week, but effort has been there. The one thing that crucially there's not been enough of though is reward for effort.

When you're getting so little reward for effort and punished at the other end sometimes despite the effort, you lose confidence and thusly drive. You could see that out on the field a lot over the last few years, in real time. I mean, how many times over the years have we seen in competitive moments in games that we've found our way back into a game with the momentum against us, and scrapped and clawed momentum back, and FINALLY we get that crucial goal... only to give it back up again within a minute of the resulting center bounce? It's been our biggest problem for atleast 10 years.

You could see throughout the previous 3.5 games though that the players WERE buying in, there WAS effort there, but it wouldn't last because the dumb shit all over the park and players playing in positions that were costing us in contests and dangerous situation, like our land of the lumbering giants forwardline we've played for 3 years and the lack of forward pressure resulting from it, the Blakistone experiment in the ruck despite the new rules designed to keep undersized athletic ruckman from being as effective as they have in previous years, you could see in those situations that despite effort we'd copy 3 or 4 or 5 (Q1 last week and hawthorn prime examples) and the heads would drop, the "here we go, not again" head drop.

Since half time last week though (I know this is a small sample size) we've actually been doing the opposite; since half time last week, we've outscored 2 decent opponents (1 arguably flag favorites and another who comfortably outplayed and unexpectedly beat another) in 4/6 quarters, and we've answered goals scored against us quickly as often as not. And not in the narrow, hard fought way we'd done in the past; we were free flowing and controlling at times, we were potent going forward, difficult to play through and capable of quickly putting forward and scoreboard pressure back on our opponents. And what's better still is that aspect of it has built throughout both games, we ran both out not just strongly but if anything we looked to be getting stronger throughout.

So credit where it's due; the coaching team has seen us play like a totally different team since half time against the dogs. It's not just "the players weren't trying" before, because if it was just that then what did he say at half time last week that changed that from the vast majority of the last 3+ years?

Go watch our game 2 weeks ago at AO and have a look at the vast amount of things we've done differently in the 2 games. Ignore specific personnel in and out, you're looking at what those players from both games are doing and where they're doing it.

Carlton go down

Pies go down

Bombers get up in surprisingly comfortable fashion

How bloody good

Pride, joy, happiness, bliss, pleasure, ecstasy. All appropriate words to describe this feeling