This is not a six retrospective as I was locked away like everyone else.

2021 - Hope is eternal but for demon supporters' life is a [censored]. Lock down continues.

Free Agency Melbourne sit on their hands.

In the trade period Melbourne swaps pick 53 and a future 3rd round pick for Brisbane's pick 43 and their future 4th round pick. Adelaide gives up pick 33 and 50 for future 2nd and 4th round picks. Braydon Pruess is packed off to GWS for pick 31. Pick 25 arrives from the Swans for picks 31 and 43. Ben Brown, pick 28 and a future 4th rounder are traded from North for picks 26, 33 and a future 4th rounder. Pick 18, 19 and a future second rounder are traded from the Lions for picks 25,68,69 and a future first rounder (eventually pick 1). Pick 46 and a future 4th rounder (tied to North) are traded from the hawks for a future 3rd rounder.

Harley Bennell and Kade Kolodjashnij retire. Kyle Dunkley, Oscar McDonald, Aaron Nietschke, Coery Wagner and Josh Wagner are delisted.

The National draft sees Jake Bowey (21), Bailey Laurie (22) and Fraser Rosman (34) added to the list.

Jay Lockhart is elevated from the rookie list.

No one is selected as a rookie.

Majak Daw and Deakyn Smith are taken in the pre-season supplemental selection period.

Ben Brown, Jake Bowey and Bailey Laurie are added to the list of men still standing along with Jack, T.Mac, the skipper, Salem, Christian Petracca, Angus Brayshaw, Alex Neal-Bullen, Clayton Oliver, Jake Melksham, Joel Smith Jake Lever Charlie Spargo, Bailey Fritsch, Harrison Petty, Stephen May, Tom Sparrow, Kade Chandler, Marty Hore Ed Langdon, Kysaiah Pickett and Trent Rivers.

The season was played during the second year of the COVID-19 pandemic. Games went ahead with largely no crowds and teams in quarantine hubs all over the country. Melbourne for the first time in a long time ended the season on top of the ladder, 2 points and percentage clear of Port Adelaide.

The rest is history, and the majority of Demon fans watched the mighty demons barn storm their way to a 13th flag still locked in their homes under a curfew. (Thanks Dan ---- Not)

Enjoy.
2021- Bang.... bang, bang, bang 4k ==> https://www.smugmug.com/gallery/n-KwQXsG/i-MVQjQLL/A

2021- Bang.... bang, bang, bang Mbl ==> https://www.smugmug.com/gallery/n-KwQXsG/i-zkmqMXX/A

You never get sick of that footage do you! 
Thanks Six6Six.

Edited February 14, 20241 yr by Neil Crompton

Who's cutting onions?

The utter disbelief on the bulldog players faces at the end of that 10 minute annihilation.  It gets me every time.  

The whole of the 2021 season is worth watching if you have the time.

From a very scratchy win over Fremantle you can see the team build week by week. Then the finals.. still not perfect before delivering 45 minutes of football that words cannot describe

Thanks Dees

Since the weekend I've listened to the SEN call of the 2021 Prelim and GF while forking about in the shed.
Last night I got home and watched this .... 
 

 

  On 14/02/2024 at 12:41, Fork 'em said:

Since the weekend I've listened to the SEN call of the 2021 Prelim and GF while forking about in the shed.
Last night I got home and watched this .... 
 

 

From mid way through the third quarter, that really set the tone for our finals series to come.

We'd been good and building in the games prior, but I think beating the Cats the way we did on their home deck built belief that we belonged.

Hahahaha thanks, that was great to re-watch. Knowing how it all pans out through the finals it makes me chuckle that a few in the media went with the ol' "they over-celebrated" the win after that game. 

  On 14/02/2024 at 13:36, Rodney (Balls) Grinter said:

From mid way through the third quarter, that really set the tone for our finals series to come.

We'd been good and building in the games prior, but I think beating the Cats the way we did on their home deck built belief that we belonged.

Finishing on top was huge.
Proved to themselves they were the best team of the season.
I know I shed a tear when Gawn put it through.
First time they'd been even near it in my lifetime.

I shed another couple a few weeks later when Gawn slammed this one through.
The captain was on a rampage and the boys were takin' us to the Big Show.
Happy Days.
 

 

Edited February 14, 20241 yr by Fork 'em

  On 14/02/2024 at 15:17, Fork 'em said:

Finishing on top was huge.
Proved to themselves they were the best team of the season.
I know I shed a tear when Gawn put it through.
First time they'd been even near it in my lifetime.

I shed another couple a few weeks later when Gawn slammed this one through.
The captain was on a rampage and the boys were takin' us to the Big Show.
Happy Days.
 

 

When we are loosing in games, I'm normally eternally opermistic that we can fight back and somehow win, but I'd given us up for dead that night against Geelong.  It wasn't just being down by 40 odd points, it was also that we'd only kicked 4 goal for the game and seemed like we couldn't buy a goal.

When we came back and won, with Max taking that mark in the dying seconds and then actually slotting it through, I went bisurk.  The next day my neighbors at my place in Qld (who arn't big AFL people) told me, that they could hear that Melbourne had won.  In the minutes after the game I got calls from my MFC supporting dad and sister and we couldn't beleive we'd just won that game. 

It was similar with that bang bang bang, the way we turned the momentum from looking like another GF going down the toilet half way the 3rd to the most dominant MFC premiership in history. 

After all that pain we'd gone through in the ten years prior and the 2 other failed GFs I've been to in my lifetime - absolutely unbelievable.  Still craving the feeling of winning one at the G and being there though.

Edited February 14, 20241 yr by Rodney (Balls) Grinter