25 minutes ago, DeeZone said:

There are a lot of variables that have been raised and countered whether we rise or fall further, winning 7 and losing 6 by less than 10 points in ‘25. The loss of Tracc, Clarry and Fudd have been countered to a high degree CJ = Fudd, Steele/Culley/Langford = Clarry

Rivers/Windsor/Vines/Kolt = Tracc?

Mihocek and Heath immediately improve our list, XT, Trelly, Mathews, White and Onley provide upgrades to our list as well.

Tracc is the 5th highest ranked player for score involvements in the league and difficult to replace, so we need to rely on game plan to help negate his loss. Also a lot of our youngsters were a bit in awe of our two former champs with good reason, however with them no longer here, I expect that a number of players will now be given the responsibility to step up and replace them. I personally expect Dees to be a better side in ‘26, barring serious injuries winning 9-12 games. We top up again at the end of ‘26 and hit the ground running in ‘27 and beyond.

Agree with your synopsis, the plus to me is that we may now have a coach who is not overly loyal to a few players and may not be afraid to make changes during a match, should things not work to his liking. Some players may get an extended run of games to prove themselves rather than come in for 1 or 2 games as the sub and them dumped the following week never to be seen again during the season. Not expecting finals next year, but an improvement on the 6 close losses in season 2025, which Petracca and Oliver both played in, and Kossie playing in the first round, next season may make next season worth watching. We may finish in the middle bracket next year, here's hoping. Just my opinion.

30 minutes ago, kallangurdemon said:

Sadly its going to be a long long season ,very much like the Neeld years .

Well kallangurdemon, for a lot of us here on Demonland we only have to go back to 1997 when we finished stone motherless Last, 4 wins, 18 losses 66%.

Come 1998 - Enter Neale Daniher, Jeff White, Travis Johnstone and quite a few other youngsters and their more mature teammates and guess what happened K. We won 14, lost 8 and finished 4th.

Not that I am expecting such a turnaround But the Neeld days are over and long gone our level of leadership and talent is superior and our Want is greater. Try not to be so pessimistic or you will miss the Fun of the Chase, along with the rest of us.❤️💙

Prelim bound

Lock it in

The Ox has a habit of being badly wrong.

But with Viney injured and Steele not the most dynamic recruit it looks like a pretty full scale midfield rebuild.

Whilst our backline has enough to play well and forward line could be better than the last 2 years teams generally go as the midfield goes.

The good news is a midfield mostly made up of Langford, Pickett, Rivers, Windsor, Lindsay, Kolt, Culley could jump right up within 2 years.

11 hours ago, chookrat said:

The flipside of the Ox's argument is that we have underperformed with our list over the past 2 seasons and eith the talent on our list should be performing much better. While we wont cover the loss of Trac, and to a lesser extent Oliver, an extra preseason into Langford, Windsor, Lindsay, Rivers etc, and the addition of Steele should mitigate this loss and hopefully we play with a bit more freedom.

Its worth noting how Collingwood really struggled late in Buck's tenure and then started their unbelievable run with McRae which also came off the back of the Daicos boys.

Collingwood were gifted the Daicos brothers but Buckley was gifted a premiership side before that. He didn’t design a game plan around his players strengths but just how he wanted them to play.

King is on record saying he has an atttacking game plan but will also tailor it to revolve around our players strengths. That is what good coaches do and a key reason he got the top job.

I hope Tasmania get a team and Buckley coaches them so I can bet on them to win the wooden spoon

17 hours ago, bing181 said:

You enjoy losing? Because according to Schwarz, that's mainly what we're going to be seeing.

100 % agree with The Ox

He said he's worried about Melbourne then says Fremantle will win the flag. No chance they will just be making up the numbers.

Let them all think we're going to stumble and fall over our feet.... happy for them to do so.

I said quite a bit earlier we will surprise some. We will. We wont be so marvellous a Melbourne as to crash into the 8 ( thats 27 imho ...and be there with menace )

No, 26 is transitional, a sorting kind of year. A few bumps along the way...and then the gears WILL mesh. When that happens you can put the pedal down a bit more.

It will be progressive, definitely not regressive 😉

Lets let the naysayers wallow in their ill-will.

Dees stagnating in 26 ? Yeah Nahhh .

We'll be fine 😉

( and then we'll be bloody good )

Edited Saturday at 23:081 day by beelzebub

I've always thought Schwarz a buffoon of the highest order. Like our very own Pickett, one of the great contrarian indicators.

That said, like most, I'm not overly perurbed by where we finish, as I agree it's a building block year.

As for losing the 3 players mentioned ?

McVee is a talent but was useless in 2025.

Petracca played bruise-free footy interspersed with some of his signature quality.

Oliver was a shadow of his former self, although the shadow as larger. No doubt that will be rectified this year with the chip on his leucous shoulders.

On 06/12/2025 at 08:10, Hellaintabadplacetobe said:

We are likely still bottom 6 or at best bottom 8 but I'm not worried, in fact stoked with the changes been made.

A lot to look forward to in the coming years.

Paying $2.75 for bottom 4. Think it should be shorter. Not high hopes and do think we go backwards. But also think the trac change had to be made to try and get some high end talent in the door before tassie holds all the cards and we get stuck down there like with gc and gws.

I would understand the clarry move if again got some value but we got absolutely embarrassed and I am not looking forward to constantly hearing the question is how did Melbourne let him go.

Anyway, I do hope as always to be pleasantly surprised and to see improvement and a game style that will be successful in a couple of years with the next generation of Melbourne HOFamers. And to see Gold Coast have everything go wrong and have a year like our 2019 after a finals drought ending the year prior. 2 top 4 picks is better than 1.

Given that we finished 14th there's not too far left to fall but I would not be surprised if North overtake us. Staying ahead of Essendon and Richmond will be a mini win.

I just want to be able to leave the footy proud of our team knowing that they had a crack and showed some fight. A nice attacking game style will be fun to watch. Also a year of no off field dramas. Give those media hounds nothing to report. Clean slate for King.

1 hour ago, hillie said:

Paying $2.75 for bottom 4.

Extremely enticing.

2 hours ago, Bring-Back-Powell said:

Extremely enticing.

I'll give you $3

Send me all your money...

I'll even give you half back at season's end.... less... ummm. Handling charges 🙄

Hmm, I wonder how our team has changed for 2026 since the disappointment of 2025.

I think we've hugely boosted our leadership depth in direct contrast to a couple of stars who were more 'consumers' than 'producers' in that area.

The thing I'll be particularly interested in for '26 is how a bunch of currently mid-level players respond to being out of the shadows.

Consider;

Midfield Sparrow and Rivers

Forward line Van Rooyen and Chandler

Defence Petty and Turner.

We may even see a little refreshment from the likes of Salem, Fritsch, Langdon and Lever who are all just young enough to believe that if they help push the rejuvenation through then they can still have one more run at the top.

I put the case to you - that is nine players (not including Turner) we could say were meaningfully short of their best form in 2025. Seven of those were premiership Demons, no less.

Absolutely beyond doubt we can attribute our string of close losses and bed-wetting quarters to the lack of assurance which should have been provided by these experienced players.

It's a bigger variable for 2026 than even the progress of the kids.

On 06/12/2025 at 11:17, kallangurdemon said:

Sadly its going to be a long long season ,very much like the Neeld years .

you must not remember the Neeld years very well if you think we are there

We’ve have to drop 40% on a poor 2025

Worried? About what?

Depends on your expectations

If you expect a rebuilding season of a new game plan and developing player and winning ~8 games. you have nothing to worry about

Captain obvious. We're in rebuild mode. I wouldn't expect us to play finals until probably 2028.

On 06/12/2025 at 00:51, Pirlo said:

Of course we are likely to fall. We just sacked a Premiership winning coach and cleared out our two best midfielders in the past 30 years. We have also brought in some mature talent to help hold the fort for a year or two, and added even more quality young players to go with those already playing good footy. The point was to bleed a bit now to avoid falling into a pit.

The selfless disappeared after 21, the selfish crept in within the players group, got their big contracts, Goodwin lost control and was about surviving and needed to walk away!

I see Zero Hanger has us as one of their three teams sliding in 26

Yeah Nahh !!!