North Melbourne V Western Bulldogs R17, Thursday 3/7/25 at Marvel Stadium at 7:30pm

[Mantis]

These high floating handballs from Sanders are ****ing horrible… get the ball on your foot son.

[BornInDroopSt'54]

9 day break coming up… we need it.

Bring it on. You're not telling players much.
Gotta be good to just not need to work leading into a club historic campaign with a possibility of a double chance.
Next phase involves real tests to forge ourselves for finals. We have a decent opportunity this year and no better in my long lifetime.

[jeemak]

That's filthy from West.

[BornInDroopSt'54]

The only excuse umps have for not giving frees to Darcy is fear of impact on the scoreboard.

[BornInDroopSt'54]

I think I predicted 51 pts.
This club is a great historic club pre VFL, the earliest of clubs in Footscray with the Maribyrnong as our moat.
We are are great part of Melbourne, such a vibrant and populous city with diversity between suburbs, ours now influenced by the Vietnam war and desperate boat people who love Footscray and brought their gratitude for freedom, culture, education, knowledge and banh mi to us.
It is a great season in the history of FFC, worthy of our history and North too will remember tonight.

[JanLorMill]

Booooo

[JanLorMill]

McNeil get used?

[jeemak]

Cracking win in the end. I'd have taken four goals, let alone eight.

Norf gave it absolutely everything after setting themselves up for the night, and class prevailed.

We need to settle a defensive half quickly though. And whoever we settle on we need to protect up the ground. If I was a defender for us I'd be mortified by how easily it comes down sometimes.

[whythelongface]

We did what we had to do. Well done. Lots to work on but if you can win big when you are not at the top of your game you must be doing something right.

[whythelongface]

mcneil get used?

b.o.g

[ledge]

Umpiring was horrid tonight .
Who would have thought it would be 49 points at 3/4 time .
Good to get it done and see the problems ,
Thought Garcia did well and I think he is in front of McNeill.
A few changes no doubt with Davidson coming back

[merantau]

We got the job done in the end and won convincingly. North had a real crack. Well played by them. Darcy got nothing from the umpires but kept showing up to boot four. Naughton's best game for the year. Libba? Magnificent. Say no more.

[doggies ftw]

Pretty good win, probably can’t discredit how much heat North brought early - it’s a tough one we probably actually rode it out well enough in hindsight, and if you were playing a good side you’d be happy with that but just because it’s North it felt a bit worse than it was. But they were really really hot.

We’re still very very susceptible to easy goals out the back. I give our backline a LOT of shit but in reality it’s the hardest job in football playing in our backline. I don’t know the answer, we stick to our guns that’s for sure. Again though when we start to even it up on the inside we dominate possession and it becomes a bit less of a problem. I think we just have to play more defensively in the back half with how we set up when our midfield is not on top.

When we start winning the contest, sure push forward play aggressively but we HAVE to even it up down back when our midfields struggling, and as good as they are they will struggle at times especially against rucks like Xerri who really grind Timmy down.

Overall solid game, wore them down and gritted out a big win. Always happy with that, but lots of lessons learnt I think

[Bornadog]

North kicked only 5 in the second half to our ten

[Boots]

Some thoughts from the ground:

For 2.5 quarters they absolutely had our number. Our core ball movement game has been exposed by Geelong and Hawthorn (and to a lesser extent Sydney) and we’re back to looking slow and old. For that first phase of the game, Bont couldn’t get near it, and we were constantly forced wide or pressured into turnover.

What turned it in the end was our fitness. They ran out of puff before we did.

Richards and Naughton were incredible during that period. Without their strength and composure we’d be sunk.

The second bit, where we started to dominate, was still marked by the same lack of composure that mjp pointed out last week. It still worries me. We still can’t stick tackles. We lay loads but they rarely stop possession chains.

The umpiring this year is diabolical. Bizarre non-calls everwhere, especially around marks in the forward 50 (for both sides, but especially Darcy). Ball continues to be an absolute crap shoot. North supporters were rightly livid by the end after a run of frees to us, not because they were soft, but because they didn’t pay the same calls earlier. The Sydney game was similar. The rules are just in an abysmal state at the moment. All the tinkering seems to have just confused everyone.

Happy with the win for Libba’s 250th. Got to see some great Darcy grabs and a magical Bont goal.