Agreed. Not enough players willing to have the hard conversations in recent years.

And so, the chronic underrating of Zach Merrett continues.

You couldn’t be more wrong about Merrett. And by cherry picking one specific stat in one specific game, all you do is undermine your case. Dig a little deeper – honestly, not even particularly deep at all – and you’ll notice that this game as a whole was bruise-free. Only two players on the park notched double-digits in contested possessions. De Goey and Daicos, who were lauded as two of the best on the ground, had 6 and 5 contested possessions respectively.

It was a meaningless, fizzer of a match. Essendon’s season was dead in the water before they set foot on the park, and the contest itself was over at quarter time. The intensity completely dropped away because the Bombers couldn’t win it and Collingwood didn’t want injuries. Both sides ended up well below their season averages for contested possessions. Yet this is the game you pick to tell us all that Merrett is not a leader?

Despite all that, Merrett was one of the few in red and black who played like he cared. He got the footy more than anyone else, gained more metres than anyone else (at 83%), had more score involvements than anyone else and laid 5 tackles. In other words, he played his role as an outside midfielder. It wasn’t his job to be on the bottom of packs. He’s capable of doing it, but Essendon at the moment has plenty of the in-and-under types. It was his job to receive, spread and deliver the football, which he did very well. You might as well criticise Taylor Adams for not taking enough contested marks.

And it’s a shame you picked this path to go down, because your general observation about the club being to soft, too nice and lacking leadership is 100% correct. But the problem isn’t Merrett; he’s not even a symptom. The problem is that there is no one else who seems to have the willigness and the ability to go with him – as demonstrated by too many of his teammates meekly surrendering on Friday night.

You say that Merrett doesn’t fit the playing mould of the best leaders of the modern era, and you’re right. There aren’t many outside midfielders who have been hailed as great captains because it’s hard to pull off that team-lifting play from outside the contest. But I’d counter with two arguments.

Firstly, what Essendon needs even more than inspirational on-field play is someone who will set standards. Someone who won’t accept shortcuts or a lack of professionalism, and wants to drive a shift in the culture. That’s Merrett. That’s the guy who got kicked out of the club’s leadership group a few years ago by a bunch of entitled senior players for being too demanding. Since Brendon Goddard left the club I can’t think of anyone else who meets that criteria.

And that brings me to my second point: who the hell else is going to lead the club forward? Parish? Too selfish (6 years lol). Shiel? Too introverted. McGrath? Too young, and still has to fix flaws in his own game. Laverde? I’m not convinced he’ll still be the best 22 in 2 years’ time.

The only names you could sensibly put forward are Redman, Ridley and Langford. Redman, as much as I love his passion, still lacks the discipline to lead. Not even bothering to put your hands up when you’re standing the mark doesn’t scream ‘non-negotiable standards’. That leaves Ridley and Langford, both of whom I think could potentially do it, but neither of them fit the mould you’ve suggested either.

Essendon will never be more than mediocre until the players themselves buy into a cultural change. And Merrett is the only one with the demonstrated capability to be at the centre of driving that change.

That’s my concern. There aren’t many killing it with the bat in the Shield lately. We keep seeing players have a good season and then follow it up with a modest one.

I suspect that once we have moved on from Warner, Khawaja, Smith, Starc, Hazlewood and Lyon in a few years, people might start to realise how underappreciated this side has been.

But the rule about changing the ball has nothing to do with the actual age of the ball. What matters is purely that the condition is comparable, and in this case it clearly wasn’t.

There are images doing the rounds online that show the box of balls. It looks like there were other balls in a closer condition to the one that was replaced, so I don’t know how they ended up picking one that was much newer.

https://imageresizer.static9.net.au/0AJpuzP6_aPRtpqroUc1KWVhzfY=/1024×0/https%3A%2F%2Fprod.static9.net.au%2Ffs%2Fd4cc8511-46bc-4e6c-8d91-1936a915bf7a

That said, there is a lot of natural variance in how Dukes balls behave anyway, so even a ball that looks similar can offer more or less swing. IMO they are an inferior ball to the Kooka because of their inconsistency and the fact they tend to go out of shape pretty easily.

And Starc isn’t that sort of bowler. His strength has always been attacking the stumps.

Lol I was expecting mopre than 4 runs in 3 innings from a guy touted as a good player of spin. Even by Australia-in-India standards, that is absolutely ‘failed miserably’. Handscomb batted next to him and did vastly better.

As for batting out of position, Renshaw has spent plently of time batting in the middle order in FC cricket. It’s where he got his form back after his initial stint in the test team.

In any event, I just acknowledged his efforts vs NZ A, which should put him in contention for Warner’s spot.

What Tim said.

I agree it shouldn’t have come to this point, and Warner probably deserved to be dropped 6-12 months ago. But here we are, and the fact remains that Warner has had only one genuinely bad game this tour where he didn’t contribute anything.

He hasn’t played a Shield, County or PM’s XI game for 7 months, and he failed miserably in the tests in India in Feb, albeit in tough conditions.

However, I acknowledge that I did forget his excellent efforts against NZ A in April, which should definitely work in his favour.

I’m not sure what you’re getting at there. I kind of assumed your previous comment was sarcasm? But Marsh has always been a hard-handed player who is susceptible to nicking the moving ball, which is exactly what happened when he *did* come out in the first session.

Well he did nick off before lunch…

Prior to Headingley, Warner *wasn’t* in dire form, though. He played a crucial innings in the test at Lords, while at least contributing in the previous two matches. Broad had only dismissed him once in four attempts (although there might have been a dropped catch in there too). He wasn’t setting the world on fire but it was a far cry from the 2019 mess.

The question is whether the twin failures at Headingley are going to see Warner revert to 2019 mode, or whether he can go back to the handy contributions of the previous games. I don’t know the answer to that, and maybe the safer option is to pull the plug now and open with someone else. I just don’t think it’s quite so clear cut; particularly not when Renshaw has no real form to speak of.

I did watch the Australians against Wood on the first day when he was bowling his fastest, and the reduced footwork is simply a result of the pace. He beat Khawaja all ends up because the ball swung late and Khawaja had overcommitted to the shot, but outside of that it was mostly just the odd well-directed short ball that caused problems for actual batsmen (and that’s been the case all series, not just with Wood). I can’t think of many other instances where I thought the batsmen genuinely had ‘difficulty negotiating’ him.
Carey was left with only Murphy and Boland for company. To suggest he played that shot because he was rattled is pure speculation, and ignores the match situation. He actually hit the shot well but picked out the man. Head opted to play a similar way late in the second innings, as did Stokes in the first. It’s perfectly normal for the last recognised batsmen when the team is 8 down.
When Wood is pushing north of 150 he will always cause the odd bit of bother for anyone. That’s just what pure pace does. But his speeds dropped slightly in the second innings and none of the batsmen looked hugely worried about him then.
Australia ultimately lost because none of their top 4 fired in either innings. Of those 8 wickets, Wood got just 1 of them (although in fairness, he didn’t get a chance at Warner). It’s not like you can blame Labuschagne’s and Smith’s cheap dismissals to Moeen in the second dig on being intimidated by Wood.
Let’s also remember that the Headingley pitch was unusually fast and bouncy for an English deck. He won’t get the same zip at Old Trafford.

I don’t think our batsmen necessarily had trouble negotiating Wood. He took 2 top-7 wickets for the game, and one of those was Carey trying to slog at the end. It’s our tailenders struggling to negotiate his pace, so when we’re 6 down, we’re in trouble. That makes it all the more important that the top 4 don’t throw their wickes away like Marnus and Smith did. However, it also makes you correct that if we’re tossing up between Neser and Hoff, Neser’s batting should come into it.

It might be hard to replicate something no one has ever seen

And if we can’t handle that, what can we handle – right, Ollie?

In fairness to Bairstow, he hasn’t carried on post-dismissal. I don’t think that’s his style

It’s modelled off Jonny Bairstow’s slightly askew leg stump, sitting atop Mitch Starc’s outfield divot

That assumes the stumping was done with the intention of getting under England’s skin, though, and given it was concocted by Cummins and Carey I don’t believe that for a second. It simply doesn’t mesh with the way they have conducted themselves in their careers to date. I genuinely think they were surprised with the level of vitriol directed at them for something they saw as a perfectly legitimate dismissal.

To my mind it’s been England’s players trying unsuccessfully to get under Australia’s skin all series, with Robinson’s sledging, the provocative comments in the media and Broad deliberately fomenting the crowd’s outrage while batting. Australia has generally been happy to just smile and get on with the cricket. I’m certainly struggling to recall any other noteable on-field act by an Australian under Pat Cummins that evidences a deliberate attempt to get under their opponent’s skin. Suggesting that this incident is comparable to the spite between Aus and SA in the leadup to sandpapergate is nonsense. Cummins just won’t buy into it.

Keepers try this sort of stuff all the time at all levels of cricket. Bairstow himself had no problem waiting for Samit Patel to assume the ball was dead before stumping him in County Cricket. Likewise Ben Foakes to Andy Balbirnie in an ODI. England can’t have it both ways. Well, I guess they can, but it’s plain hypocracy. It seems obvious to me that the team, their supporters and the tabloid media are trying to latch onto this incident because the current Australian side has given them no other justification – before or during this series – to be viewed as villains, and the series is rapidly disappearing.

😂

This is just amazing. I actually laughed out loud a few times. Bravo

I thought that spell to Stokes at the start of the final day was brilliant. Stokes got him away a couple of times but it was the only period in his innings where he looked genuinely troubled.

😂

Yeas, how dare someone be stumped for recklessly and repeatedly leaving their crease when the ball is live…

It’s only become that because Baz wants dead pitches for his tonkers. On a better wicket you’d see a better spectacle