Welcome to season 2010

[The Chazz 4,077]

Amazing what a week can do in football. Last week we copped a hiding, and most on here were suicidal, calling for Bailey's blood. Fast forward 1 week and guess what, WE STILL LOST!!! We are now 0-2, and have Adelaide - a team considered by most as a potential top 4 side at the start of the season. Big chance we will be 0-3 at the end of next week.

However, credit has to go to our coach, regardless of your opinion of him. When he first took the job, he had a lot of work to do. Our list looks totally different than when he first started, while he has won 2 wooden spoons in a row, it has also given us the opportunity to draft Watts, Scully and Trengove. If Bail's gave in to the demand of the members, chances are we could take Trengove off that list - I for one would hate to see that. Now, as he promised, he is putting games in to these kids, and the result, as he predicted, was for a roller-coaster ride over this season.

People of Demonland, let's face reality, the results over the last 2 weeks are going to happen over 22 weeks. If you take a hiding personally, then ban yourself from AFL for the next 12 months. There WILL be more of them, but then there will be more performances like yesterday - where we play so well for 4 quarters but still lose.

The big concern is that we will play teams like Richmond, Freo, West Coast at the MCG, and everyone on here will EXPECT to win. God help us if we drop one of these "winnable" games. I for one however would not be concerned if we did. All I know is what I saw yesterday from our kids and our kid coach is that as this team gets bigger, stronger, more developed and more settled, we will have an exciting era coming up. Will this means premierships? Who knows, they are bloody hard to win.

We need to realise that while we are playing these kids, there is no such thing as a certain victory - even if we are playing Richmond. If they turn up to play like they did yesterday, they will win their fair share of games regardless of the opposition. But, we CAN'T expect that performance week in week out. These kids are still learning and growing in maturity.

Regardless of our position at the end of this season, this will be a great year at the MFC in terms of learing and developing. If we lose to Richmond, I'm sure it will be a very valuable lesson, and I'm sure that it will make them better players. If we end up with 6-8 wins, it too will be a valuable learning experience.

Let's stand by this team people, and when I say team, I mean coach as well. The last 3 years will make him a better coach, so by the time our players are starting to win regular games, he will have learnt more than anyone through this time.