Last week I thought the game shifted when you put Bruce in the ruck in the third quarter and shifted English forward.

Why didn’t Beveridge go back to Bruce in the ruck against Geelong if English wasn’t working? (Or did he – I didn’t see).

North Melbourne’s average age yesterday: 25 years, 10 months

Gold Coast’s average age yesterday: 23 years, 5 months.

North was also more experienced: average games played of 84.4 compared to 63.5.

Even if you were right, and you had a younger/more inexperienced side, does that excuse 8 scoring shots to 31, and a 63 point loss to a side that hadn’t won for 7 weeks? Injuries/absent players certainly weren’t an excuse for Melbourne last year.

I’m happy for you to rely on the 1990s to give you something happy to think about.

I didn’t bring Melbourne up in my post, either. As I’ve said before, people like you who seem to only ever post negative things about other sides, particularly when they barrack for under-performing sides themselves, make this site worse.

Just what we need, another article inviting the usual suspects to pop their heads in and say Melbourne should be relocated, banished or demolished.

Surely North should be 17th? Absolutely awful performance.

Also not sure about Essendon and GWS both moving up two spots each when they beat bottom 6 sides respectively. I’d argue the Dogs should still be 9th, with GWS 10th and Carlton 11th.

Top 8 feels right, although Richmond stand to move up further if they beat Geelong.

Our win over St Kilda was huge. No one expected it (least of all Melbourne supporters) but it sets us up nicely to get into the finals. Nothing’s a given with us though, and for all our hard work to go 2-1 through the Collingwood-Bulldogs-St Kilda, we’ll undo that hard work if we drop either of the Sydney/Fremantle games.

Really disappointing performance from Carlton. Collingwood were surely there for the beating and with so much on the line, to go goalless in the second half is just such a dispiriting result. Which, as a Melbourne supporter, I am all too familiar with.

Essendon supporters have come out of the woodwork once more, trumpeting their amazing second half comeback. The more amazing thing is that they think they’re a lock for finals despite falling 36 points behind a bottom 4 side filled with kids and washed up 30 year olds. They’ve played one good game against a decent opponent all year (Collingwood). Would expect West Coast to put them right back in their place.

Conventional wisdom says the flag race is down to five. Surely, though, if Collingwood qualify (and a win over Gold Coast probably gets them there at 9.5 wins) and then get Treloar, Sidebottom, Howe and/or De Goey back, they’ve got to be in the running? And who knows if GWS have turned a corner and are about to click again, or if that was just Fremantle having a stinker.

I think Melbourne shades the Hawks. Round 18 is yet to be fixtured but in the previous 17 rounds we will have played at 9 different venues, more than any other club.

We’re currently in the middle of five consecutive games at five different venues (Adelaide, Gabba, Metricon, Alice Springs, Cairns).

It’s hard to complain about that given what COVID has done to the season, but then you look at some other sides and you see Hawthorn getting one fewer “home” game than the rest of the comp, and one of those “home” games is against Adelaide in Adelaide. And then you see Collingwood playing five (and possibly six) consecutive games at the Gabba, and you see St Kilda, who have made two trips out of Queensland since leaving Melbourne (and didn’t leave Melbourne in the first five rounds).

And that’s before touching on 4 day breaks and the uneven spread of those through the league.

Again, it’s hard to criticise the AFL given what’s happened and the fact we’ve had a season at all is remarkable, but despite it being a 17-game season there remain inequalities in the fixturing, and you wonder whether they were more in the AFL’s control this year than previously.

I’d have the Dogs above both Carlton and Collingwood but otherwise feels about right. The Dogs might end up losing to both Geelong and West Coast, showing that in reality their win on the weekend was mainly a byproduct of Melbourne switching off for the third quarter, but I get the sense that with their best 22 in, they’ll pinch one of those two games and take a top 8 spot.

Do you really have nothing better to do than insult Melbourne at any given opportunity?

The Roar, and the internet generally, would be a much more enjoyable place to discuss football if people did just that. Instead, we get people like you who seem to take genuine joy from insulting Melbourne and its supporters.

It’s nothing new, and you’re not the only one, but at least many of the others who engage in the continual Melbourne-bashing either discuss football from time to time or have a more solid foundation to attack the Demons (i.e. they don’t barrack for North Melbourne who on any given metric are performing worse than Melbourne).

If you assume 10 wins is the cut off, the loser of Carlton-Collingwood this weekend is in trouble. Would require Carlton to beat Brisbane (as well as locking in the three wins in the interim), and would require Collingwood to beat at least one of Brisbane and Port (not unrealistic if they get players back before the final round vs Port).

I rate the Dogs’ chances of beating one of Geelong and West Coast and getting to 10, and I don’t rate Melbourne’s chances of running the table if we lose to St Kilda (which is likely). So I could easily see the Dogs and Melbourne swapping spots on Sterling’s predicted ladder.

Whether it’s a conspiracy to raise money or simple incompetence, the system is broken.

And Tom Lynch is rapidly become one of the game’s biggest tossers.

I think it’s more likely that Geelong wins by 100 than they lose to Adelaide.

I don’t agree with a lot of your analysis of us in these two posts, but I do agree with your overall point that Collingwood and GWS are more talented sides with higher ceilings than us. Putting each best 22 on the park, we’d be fighting for 8th with St Kilda rather than those two sides. Certainly happy to concede that until we put more established form on the board.

In short, as to the rest of what you’ve said, we’ve shown as much good form against the top 8 as the Dogs, I think we were the better side against Brisbane for large portions of that game and the final margin was in no way flattering of us, we’ve worked on, and now balanced, the issue of speed in our forward 50, whilst not compromising on height, and I don’t think Bruce puts our backline under that much more pressure (Naughton can beat us without him, is my point there). There’s also a slight inconsistency when you say close enough is never good enough and wins are all that matters, followed shortly later by noting we nearly lost to Carlton.

It is such an important game for both clubs. We did OK in two similar games in 2018 (lost to Sydney but then beat a somewhat depleted West Coast in Perth the following week), but the memories of our abject failure in Round 23 2017 will probably never fade away.

Agree with the importance of the game.

Disagree with the argument that we can’t compete with the best sides. We’ve only had one game in which we couldn’t compete (Port). We were level with Geelong and Brisbane all game, and only lapsed against Richmond and West Coast for small periods (which is enough against sides of their quality to lose). I’m not sure the Dogs are much different: the best side they’ve beaten all year is GWS.

The point being that we’re absolutely capable of producing good enough football to beat the Dogs. Collingwood were missing some players and had injuries, which impacted their competitiveness, but the way in which the game played out was a sign that we might have taken an important step forward: we didn’t dominate in the middle or in time in forward half but still won by 10 goals.

Naughton will be a handful, as you say, but our defensive set up across the ground has been strong for a few months now, with the Port game the clear exception.

If we can’t limit their run off half back, or if Naughton is marking everything that comes his way, we’ll lose. But if we can limit their ball movement, I think we have enough talent through the middle and in our forward line to produce a winning score.

Hard to disagree with the argument that, right now, they’re the best side in it.

But I agree with the risk that arises from being so reliant on one forward to score, as well as their poor finals record.

Having said all that, Port might not lose again this year and if Brisbane beats St Kilda this week, the Lions might also win out from here. Meanwhile Geelong still has to play the Dogs and Richmond. So top 2 might be out of reach, which may therefore see them on the road away to Port or Brisbane in their first final.

I’d swap Carlton and GC. GC look decent each week but just cannot find a way to win. Currently on a streak of 1-1-6. Carlton are a decent enough chance to make finals.

I’d probably argue for Geelong to be 1st, but Port can stay on top for now: indeed, the Power may not lose again, with Collingwood in the final round their only really tricky opponent (Hawthorn, Sydney, North and Essendon are the other five. Not sure I see a loss there).

I think we’ve earned a rise up to 7th but we really need to back it up with a win over the Dogs this week.

Assuming you lose to Richmond, you’ll then need to beat all of Sydney, GWS, Melbourne, North and the Dogs. The latter three of those games won’t be played in Perth.

Would be a monumental effort if you made finals from here.

And as has been said, given your percentage is low and you don’t have the fortune of having Adelaide in your run home to boost it up, 9 might not be enough anyway.

Yes I think the loser of Fremantle-Carlton was always going to find it hard to get back from 4-7. 5-6 just feels so much better.

Surely not just because of the North game? I think all of the top 5 have had a stumble somewhere along the line.

Not sure we’ll get comprehensively beaten, but we may well lose.

Beating the Dogs is the biggest step we can take to making finals until we play GWS. Will give us breathing space and confidence.

If we lose, the season’s not over, it just gets a bit harder.

In my view there is a clear top 5: West Coast, Geelong, Brisbane, Port and Richmond (not necessarily in that order).

St Kilda should make finals from here but I still see them as a rung below that top 5.

The last two finalists should come out of Collingwood, GWS, the Dogs, Melbourne, Essendon and the smoky in Carlton (GC could have been that smoky if they’d won either of the Essendon/St Kilda games). Although I’d write Essendon off: just not good enough and still have to play the entire top 4.

Carlton need a lot to go right to make it but their fixture gives them the opportunity. Collingwood and GWS are the best two sides of this group but can they get it together in time?

And as for Melbourne, we largely get to control our destiny. Beating Collingwood was huge, beating the Dogs this week even bigger as it will really make it hard for the Dogs from 6-7 with a sub-100% and Geelong and West Coast to come.

Important? Maybe.

Interesting? Don’t agree.

The irony in all this is that one of the criticisms levied at Melbourne supporters is a sense of self-entitlement. And yet here you are, proclaiming that Brisbane will be “more interesting and important than Melbourne, now and always”.

As I said: Melbourne is relevant and interesting, you just don’t like it (which, by the way, is fine. You don’t have to like us).

But I don’t agree with the premise of the article, not yet anyway.

Beating Adelaide and North (and Hawthorn) doesn’t mean we’re “back”. There have certainly been some significant improvements from earlier in the season, and there is the potential for us to make a finals run, but judgment should be reserved until we beat a side like Collingwood, who even with their injuries are a much tougher test than Adelaide or North.

The article does touch on some key issues for us though. One is the forward line and our indecision over whether we’re a one, two or three tall forward side. I think most Melbourne fans would suggest should always have been a two tall forward side and that Weideman and Jackson have been our best performers in those roles this year. Repeatedly trying to force Tom McDonald into form didn’t help us, and trying to squeeze him back in against Port was an obviously bad idea.

For an irrelevant, uninteresting side, we sure do get a lot of media attention.

Here’s a counter argument for you: we’re both relevant and interesting, you just don’t like it.

Relevant and interesting, by the way, doesn’t equate to successful, and I’m not suggesting as much. We’ve been hapless for years, and I would agree with anyone who thinks articles like this are misguided (we’re “back” after beating Adelaide and North? Seriously?).

But maybe you should leave your prejudice at the door and accept that we’re no less relevant or interesting in the AFL landscape than your club.

I don’t agree that Fremantle’s best beats us “comfortably”. To me, they bring others down to their level. The only exception that I’ve seen this year was the St Kilda game. Given the way the Saints have been going they deserve credit for that win, but otherwise I don’t think Collingwood was firing on even half its cylinders last week.

They only have one more home game to come so there is a 4/5 chance we get them somewhere other than Perth (and bearing in mind we’ve already been to Perth this year, I wonder whether we’ll be sent back). I’m happy enough to back us in.

You may well be right about needing 10 wins to make finals though. Only time will tell.

As I said, if we don’t make it, there’s every chance it will be because of our two losses to Geelong and Brisbane. Had we won even one of those games, not only would we be sitting 6th or 7th on the ladder, we would have a lot more credibility. Alas, we didn’t, so we’re not, and we don’t.

We won’t beat St Kilda: we struggle against them when they’re poor, we won’t get near them when they’re good.

But the rest are winnable. On current form I’d back us in to beat Fremantle, Sydney and Essendon, and probably one of Collingwood, the Dogs and GWS. To make finals we’re either going to have to win those four games and maintain a decent percentage to try to make finals at 9-8. Otherwise we’ll need to go 2-1 from the Collingwood, Dogs and GWS games (assuming we lose to St Kilda, which as I said, I think is a certainty).

We can do it, but we probably won’t, and if we don’t then we’ll rue the Geelong and Brisbane losses, both of which should have been wins.