The Demonland Podcast will air LIVE on Monday, 4th September @ 8:30pm. Join George, Binman & I as we preview the Demons upcoming Qualifying Final against Collingwood on Thursday night.

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Seems that this one (or a very similar question) has been on the agenda for most of the season:    
-  who will our key forwards be, now that the injury curse has once again deprived us of a ‘first choice’ player?
Love your work, as always guys!   It just becomes even more critical, now that we have reached the ‘pointy end’ of the season.

It’s not strictly about the game but about the grundy trade talk. Let him walk.. or try to keep him? 

Will the same game plan work against the Pies as it did on King’s Birthday? Will we try to strangle the corridor and stop Collingwood’s run and carry? 

If it rains as expected on Thursday, in what ways would it hurt Collingwood’s game style?

My final observation is that we well and truly have the ‘wood’ over the Pies in terms of finals historically. According to the AFL Tables website, the Demons have won 16, drawn 1 and lost 5 out of 22 finals we’ve played against Collingwood.

Are we going to hear any more Cometti-isms from Binman this week? Last week's "As a backman, Turner goes into overdrive" was gold. Was surprised that Binman's witticism seemed to go unnoticed by his co-commentators.

We’ve experimented with having both key position players and smaller running players as sub this year. What’s the thoughts for the strategy this game? Do we roll again with Laurie or do we something out of the box like T-Mac or Grundy as sub?

 

Hi Guys, the podcast has been great this year, thanks for all your efforts.

I was wondering since there is so much talk about the weather, what games did we lose in the wet versus what games we won in the wet, at what grounds and by how much?

Go Dees

What are the chances Tommo gets a guernsey?

2 minutes ago, Wadda We Sing said:

Hi Guys, the podcast has been great this year, thanks for all your efforts.

I was wondering since there is so much talk about the weather, what games did we lose in the wet versus what games we won in the wet, at what grounds and by how much?

Go Dees

Good question Wws.

I was looking at how many night games we have played and won. Thinking about a greasy ball at night.

Our record is pretty good. The losses were interstate against Port and Bris . The other one was Carlton.

 

 

Here are my 5 questions for the podcast this week.

 

1) What do we need to do to beat Collingwood? A team that finished on top of the ladder and are minor premiers. We need to beat the best to be the best and this is a massive challenge.

 

2) Who replaces Jake Melksham? Brodie Grundy or Tom McDonald? Or do we play both in the team?

 

3) Seeing as Adam Tomlinson played a great game against Collingwood last time, does he go back into the side? Or does that third tall defender spot now belong to Daniel "Disco" Turner?

 

4) How do we combat Collingwood's two ruckmen in Darcy Cameron and Mason Cox? Of particular concern is who will play on Mason Cox if he drifts forward?

 

5) Will Bailey Laurie play in the qualifying final against Collingwood? Or would it be better to bring in a more experienced player like Charlie Spargo?

Edited September 3, 20231 yr by Supreme_Demon

Jeez, I'm super pumped. We really should win this quite comfortably but Collingwood never lie down and their supporters will be at fever pitch. Better bring the A game.

Does Goodwin have a couple of barely seen tricks up his sleeve or even something new?

How do we stop Moore, Quaynor and Murphy from intercepting our forward movements?

Will Fritsch's foot stand up?

How big a loss is Melksham?

Tmac and/or Grundy if Cox is teaming up with Cameron?

Is Bailey Laurie the Jake Bowey of 2023?

Are Collingwood or Brisbane are biggest threat for the flag?

Is Grundy jumping ship without really giving the Gawndy experiment enough time to flourish? (I think he is)

One exercise might be helpful as the masses on here are convincing themselves of our superiority - if we were to lose, why would that happen?

What I see; we may struggle to take advantage of periods of dominance if Fritsch or CP5 aren’t firing, we may be cut through with the Pies ball movement and because of high press they may get 4 great looks in a hurry, we might fall back into some bad habits around slow ball movement out of the backline and tied with losing stoppages it would just invite pressure…

Anyway, exploration of those scenarios would be helpful - because you will talk plenty about the reverse.

I still have the thought that the gawndy experient is not over yet

I think that Max will play around the ground and behind the ball and Grundy 

will take the CB with his leap and ground ball skills.

It would be good if grundy was leading to may on the other flank opposite Max

If we bomb the ball inside 50 we will be wasting our opprtunities even with TMAC as an inclusion.

Make JVR the target and lower the eyes to aid fritisch and let Joel leap.

Chandler kosi and anb can contribute and tracc can also be a target

The flexibility we have on field should see us win

Am I overthinking this?

Thanks for the podcast guys

Thanks for the consistently excellent podcast guys. Keep it up!

Interesting to hear Gawn's comments recently about him being out of form when both he and Grundy were in the team a couple of months ago. How critical is Gawn's form to our chances of success against the Pies? And if Gawn is on song, is it better to have Grundy in the team for support (relieving JVR from rucking, which always gives me the jitters about the potential for injury) or to let Max run riot on his own?

Congrats on a great home and away season for the pod. 

I see the weather is looking slightly dicey. What's the pannels take on how this could influence selection. I fear that teams can over react to the forecast at the selection table and i hope we don't do that. For example I'd be bringing in Tmac for Melk rain, hail or shine and I'd stick with 3 tall backs. 

 

how do we limit their overlap run and ability to work players into attacking space?

Given the weather forecast is expecting rain, what do we need to do differently to ensure we can win this time? I worry about our ability to score in wet weather if our smalls have quiet games. If you take the Carlton game for example, our smalls struggled to fire. Collingwood has superior forwards in wet weather games. Miocek (pretty agile player), Elliot, Hill, McReery will all trouble us.

20 hours ago, Supreme_Demon said:

How do we combat Collingwood's two ruckmen in Darcy Cameron and Mason Cox? Of particular concern is who will play on Mason Cox if he drifts forward?

This is of fair concern.

The Sub,  who does the panel think will be the sub?

i think its between Laurie and Smith.

Smith for me is the perfect sub, can swing him to either end of the ground when needed and he will do a job.  I think he has done enough over the past few weeks to hold his spot though, and especially with Melksham going down.

Laurie has a bit of class about him and is growing with each game, i think he is going to be a very valuable player for us when he gets a run at it at the top level.  But that might be next year.

My question is hypothetical about selection:

If we did somehow lose this one, the one afterthought I'd really prefer to avoid is whether it might have helped to have access to Grundy. The Pies are going to come after Max as they always do and this could leave us in a position where a first year forward or returning T-mac has to carry even more of the ruckwork load. We have one asset who knows these Collingwood ruckmen, how they tick and would give them something else to think about if he was there.

Is it beyond the realms of possibility to name Grundy as the sub in this game? This way we go in tactically how we'd like but also have access to him if things are not going our way or we could use a new look. I know smaller runners are typically selected as sub but to me this is the true definition of the tactical sub and you could alter the look of a game instantly by activating it, especially if it turns out to be a wet night. 

I know It's bold but I'm interested to hear your thoughts. 

 

 

Huge game coming Gents.

Can we have a good pump up from Andy?

Or is the MFCSS taking over?

Starting to feel a bit nervous about Thursday night.

 

 

What is the ace up the sleeve for both teams? 

The Pies will be aware we will counter their overlap in some may, as we showed this gameplan in the QB game. I don't think they will adjust their gameplan much, but De Goey will be a major in for the clearance work. He shredded us last year. 

I think our ace in the sleeve remains Clayton Oliver. If let off the chain he can accumulate massive numbers but I have been loving his defensive mid work and I think he may sacrifice his individual numbers to use his physicality and pressure around the stoppage. 

20 minutes ago, MrFreeze said:

What is the ace up the sleeve for both teams? 

The Pies will be aware we will counter their overlap in some may, as we showed this gameplan in the QB game. I don't think they will adjust their gameplan much, but De Goey will be a major in for the clearance work. He shredded us last year. 

I think our ace in the sleeve remains Clayton Oliver. If let off the chain he can accumulate massive numbers but I have been loving his defensive mid work and I think he may sacrifice his individual numbers to use his physicality and pressure around the stoppage. 

I am hoping JVR can also excel and have a Weideman-like finals game (E.g. 2018 EF against Geelong).

Looking forward to tonight's podcast as I am each and every week.

How concerned, or not, are you that Darcy Moore and the Golden Boy Nick Daicos will be back this week? Moore is probably on the edge of when he would normally return from a hamstring injury but if Nick Daicos is back from his supposedly 6 week knee injury it will be about 2 weeks earlier than projected. Are they rushing him back?

12 minutes ago, smurf said:

Looking forward to tonight's podcast as I am each and every week.

How concerned, or not, are you that Darcy Moore and the Golden Boy Nick Daicos will be back this week? Moore is probably on the edge of when he would normally return from a hamstring injury but if Nick Daicos is back from his supposedly 6 week knee injury it will be about 2 weeks earlier than projected. Are they rushing him back?

Daicos was ruled out last night?