GAME DAY - Round 11

[Henrietta Lumbago 331]

Expecting a big game from Hogan today. He was tied down well last week by Frost, but you can't keep a superstar down for long.

All the best to Dunny in his 150th and to ANB on debut.

[deanox 9,915]

You know that it is two sides near the bottom of the ladder when they are ringing up Ben Holland for an interview as part of the prematch build up.

Melbourne look to end 2,864 day Etihad Stadium drought

[jazza 1,323]

On the way up for the big occasion.Expect BBO to do the shirt thing again when we win.

Brayshaw,hoges, and a few other young fellas have made the game exciting again.

[Tough Kent 2,137]

St.Kilda will bring a frenzied tackling pressure early that we must meet and be prepared for. They won't be able to sustain it. If we stay with them early we will get a chance to break the game open at some point.

[Gorgoroth 12,950]

These are the games we always lose, I hope for once we actually match them for intensity and let our better skills win the day.

[deeflog 679]

shut down rooey and bruce and we win. I don't see any other avenues to goal for them outside of these 2

[Gorgoroth 12,950]

Shut down Armitage and Stevens.

[praha 11,240]

Scared.

I'm in LA for work so I'll miss it. If I wake up and they've lost it'll ruin my day.

Don't let me down, Dees.

[Emerald 1,744]

Thought I'd be a nice uncle and bought a ticket to my niece's ballet concert this afternoon not realizing it clashes with today's game,hoping to rush home in time to see the last quarter and the Dees victorious.

[WhyAlwaysMe 237]

You know that it is two sides near the bottom of the ladder when they are ringing up Ben Holland for an interview as part of the prematch build up.

Melbourne look to end 2,864 day Etihad Stadium drought

for me the Etihad drought doesn't mean anything, its just a reflection of how poor we have been, we have had many different coaches & game styles over the time, the ground dimensions are nothing unusual, we play there enough to be able to adjust to the conditions, its just another excuse to be [censored] weak.

[JV7 2,351]

At the start of the year I would have penciled this in as a win.. Not so confident today. There midfield is better than ours, they have a superstar in Riewoldt who wins games off his own boot. Combine that with our long injury list.. I'm not looking forward to this because it's a game would have thought we would win if we've made any improvements

Edited June 13, 2015 by JV7

[highroller 112]

yeah our injury list is quietly getting freaking ridiculous. Last week against Collingwood i dont think people realise they nearly had a complete list to pick from compared to us with maybe a dozen injuries now if not more. Still think we should win today but having V'Berg, Kent, Salem and a few others out there would have made me more confident.

[Adzman 2,154]

Must win game for us. A win helps us turn the corner, a loss all but confirms we are a bottom 4 team that isn't progressing like we should be.

I believe the Dees will get up in a close one.

[deanox 9,915]

We may have improved but I still think we are a bottom 4, or at best a bottom 6 team this year. And i don't think that's a bad thing. Who are we better than? Carlton, GCS, Brisbane makes us notion 4. Throw saints and Essendon and we're bottom 6.

I don't think we are genuinely better than anyone else. But that's a massive improvement from bottom 2 over the past 5 years. Next year, with a bit more depth we will go past a few more and finish in the top 10.

[John Crow Batty 8,863]

Article from Tim Lane in The Age this morning.

The lot of the Melbourne fan has been tough lately and the outlook for Sunday is bleak. An opponent they haven't beaten in their past 10 encounters, at a ground where they've lost their past 20 games.

In fact the Demons have never won at Etihad Stadium.

Okay, they have won at the ground itself but not under its current name. The Demons' last win either under the roof, or with it open, was in August 2007. The venue was then known as Telstra Dome, and the Dees romped home against the Bulldogs. Only Nathan Jones and Lynden Dunn of their current crop represented the Demons that night, although Daniel Cross played against them.

Prior to that time, the Dees had displayed no obvious symptoms of Docklands-phobia. When the ground was known as Colonial Stadium they loved it: Death Valley it may have been to some, but Melbourne won 10 of 13. By the time Etihad won the naming rights, their record stood at a break-even 16 wins and 16 losses.

Since then, the Dees have won 37 games in five cities with a couple of draws thrown in. One year they even won an end-of-season exhibition affair in Shanghai.

But at the venue on the western edge of Melbourne's CBD, not a single premiership point has been garnered. The longest string of losses at any ground in the competition's history is University's 28 at the MCG. That was immediately prior to their dropping out of the competition, so you see Melbourne is moving into the stratosphere … or the subterranean equivalent.

So long as it's not your own team involved in these things, there's ghoulish pleasure to be had in discussing losing streaks. I feel qualified to write about them as in one dark winter during childhood the teams I supported in northern Tasmania's two competitions both went without a win.

The worst day of all was one in late July, so wet my brother and I weren't allowed to go to the footy. Relying on quarter-by-quarter scores on the radio, our hopes were sky high as "we" (Launceston) led at the last change and it was obvious we were coming home with the wind.

Eventually the final scores came through, given by the ABC announcer with the teams the wrong way round: Launceston 6-12-48, City-South 4-25-49.

In the big league it's hardly surprising University holds just about every record in this category. After a promising start in the VFL, winning 25 of 54 games in their first three years, the students lost their last 51 games in the competition.

There have been other extended feats of glorious failure with the Swans, despite two recent decades of success responsible for the modern-day benchmark. Their 26 straight defeats in 1992-93 is the longest losing streak of the past 40 years and one that almost put paid to the competition's first expansion venture.

The Sydney-siders eventually broke through in Round 13, 1993, not having run a team closer than 25 points in their previous 15 encounters. A 10-goal third quarter against … yes, Melbourne, was like a cloudburst after an endless drought. It would be the Swans' only win of the season, although failure on such a scale actually helped kick-start the northern venture. It was Sydney and Brisbane's non-competitiveness leading up to those disastrous two seasons that prompted the introduction of priority draft picks and various other game-changing leg-ups.

The same can't be said for the losing streaks Fitzroy endured in the 1960s or the 1990s. The earlier one, a forerunner to the hard times ahead, was most famous for the solitary win that punctuated it. Across five seasons from 1963 to 1967, the Lions won only 10 games, fewer even than University in its worst five years.

Through the long winters of 1963-64, Fitzroy achieved just one win in 36 games: a win so famous as to warrant a book. Ken Piesse's Miracle Match recounts how – with playing-coach, Kevin Murray, away on interstate duty – the Roys achieved a monumental upset over the year's premier team, Geelong.

The worst era endured by any club though, and by a big margin, is St Kilda's first five years in the VFL. The Saints won only two of 82 games in that period, losing 48 straight before experiencing a win.

In the last of those 48 games, a round-robin final in 1899, Geelong beat the Saints by 161 points, 23-24-162 to 0-1-1. It was by far the biggest score and biggest flogging the competition had known to that time.

The historic first win came in the Saints' next game: in the opening round of 1900. Naturally it was against Melbourne. And it occurred in circumstances to resemble the Siren-gate affair of 2006 in Launceston. This time – with scores level at full-time – the Saints came out on top, successfully arguing that Melbourne had scored a behind well after the three-quarter time siren.

On Sunday, 115 seasons later, the Saints and Demons will go at it again. This time it's the Dees who hope history's tide will turn. Perhaps there's another drought-breaker in store.

[Bitter but optimistic 22,239]

We may have improved but I still think we are a bottom 4, or at best a bottom 6 team this year. And i don't think that's a bad thing. Who are we better than? Carlton, GCS, Brisbane makes us notion 4. Throw saints and Essendon and we're bottom 6.

I don't think we are genuinely better than anyone else. But that's a massive improvement from bottom 2 over the past 5 years. Next year, with a bit more depth we will go past a few more and finish in the top 10.

I agree with your assessment deanox but it pizzes me to have watched our rubbish for years and I am just bloody sick of losing.

[Nasher 33,616]

I remember that loss against Sydney in 1993 (I was in year 4). I got mercilessly teased in the playground at school during the week after. Tough gig being the lone Melbourne supporter at the school.

[Bitter but optimistic 22,239]

I remember that loss against Sydney in 1993 (I was in year 4). I got mercilessly teased in the playground at school during the week after. Tough gig being the lone Melbourne supporter at the school.

Bit like being the only gay in the village I suppose.

[Biffen 12,943]

Bit like being the only gay in the village I suppose.

I was a strong supporter of the [censored] myself.

But the Roosters would often leave us deflated.

[Fork 'em 6,983]

Never ever confident these days.
Doesn't matter who we play.

[jnrmac 20,064]

It's pretty simple.

We have to beat a team like St Kilda

We have to win at Etihad. We have to win on QB.

We have to win two in a row.

We have to keep beating these ridiculous 'records' we hold.

[JV7 2,351]

The last 5 times I've been to this [censored] hole I vowed never to be back again especially if we lost.. Today is the last chance I give this joint

[Coup Cooper 610]

Just watched this youtube video to motivate myself to go!!

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=2noU_Aof3BY

[Uncle Fester 2,848]

If we bring the good mindset we'll beat them and beat them comfortably.

If we bring the bad one it'll be a dark day for us.

If we play in patches then we'll probably lose a close one because we'll gift them goals they didn't deserve even though we'll look the better side for most of the game.

[Ted Lasso 19,518]

Dees by 53, i just think our forwards could get on top