Melbourne coach Simon Goodwin warned his gamers about avoiding huge bumps on opponents earlier than livewire Kysaiah Pickett’s excessive hit on Western Bulldogs Bailey Smith ended with an enormous ban.
Goodwin revealed he had addressed the taking part in group previously about avoiding bumping opposition gamers as a result of clear threat of suspension.
Pickett obtained a two-match ban for the incident wherein each his ft left the bottom and he appeared to make contact with Smith’s head.
“I did speak to the playing group and Kozzy was involved in that about the bump,” Goodwin mentioned.
“There’s no element in the game where we should be bumping, and that’s the message I’ve given to our playing group, that it just puts you in a situation you don’t want to be in.
“We certainly won’t be encouraging our players to bump, we want them to tackle, we want them to play tough, contested footy, and that’s one element of the game we’ve got to get right.”
Goodwin mentioned he didn’t need Pickett to change his depth across the contest however simply the soccer actions he channelled it into.
“I’m certainly not going to talk to him about the way he plays, I love the pressure he puts on, I love the intensity he plays with,” Goodwin mentioned.
“We’ll try to limit that risk where we can – we want our players to tackle, we want to play tough, but we certainly don’t want them to bump in any situation that they don’t need to be bumping. Kozzy knows that, he knows he’s probably got it wrong.
“From my perspective I think (the bump is dead). Our game is about tackling, I don’t think there’s any need to bump in the game.”
Goodwin mentioned premiership quartet Steven May, Jack Viney, Bayley Fritsch and Christian Salem had been all set to be out there for choice forward of Friday evening’s conflict in opposition to Brisbane on the Gabba.
“It’s great for us, they’ve had a couple of weeks of training and they’re ready to go. May had that little calf … Viney has really started to increase his loads in the last few weeks,” he mentioned.
“We’re confident all those guys will be available to play and it will be a pretty strong selection headache.”
A call had not been made on whether or not Salem would play within the AFL or VFL after overcoming a pre-season thyroid challenge.
“He’s certainly put in a lot of work over the last three or four weeks and we want to set him up for success,” Goodwin mentioned.
“He’s had an enormous pre-season up until his thyroid, he’s clearly had a lot of downtime over that period, but he’s done a lot of work to get himself back in this position.”
Source: www.perthnow.com.au
