11 minutes ago, Little Goffy said:

I like this point but I really, really like how the auto-censor has hit it to create knee-[censored] reaction. Strong fetish vibes.

Reminds me of early attempts to auto-censor words in corporate emails, which were countered by staff agreeing upon euphemisms/dysphorisms. So [censored] became 'turkey slice' or [censored] [censored] became 'fire hydrant'. Sure enough, once management realised they were being called a bunch of turkey slicers who had added even more fire hydrants to the reporting process, the censorship had to be extended... and the cycle proceeds...

The Demonland auto censor is tuned a little too sensitively in MHO. I can understand it being in use for the most offensive expletives, but it actually limits the ability to express even some fairly benign things at times, which actually pisses me off, but I'm over trying to work around it or edit posts to use a alternate expression.

Perhaps that could be the topic for another thread, regarding the relaxation of the auto censor, if the admins are open to it?

Edited 22 hours ago22 hr by Rodney (Balls) Grinter

I'd say that review is pretty much bang-on target. Glad I live on the other side of the Pacific ocean so I can be insulated from the noise

Did he review his own basket case of a club? FFS, their captain wanted out

Honestly, the pre-season predictions are generally a massive waste of time. The best anyone can do is roughly predict clubs will finish approx the same place they did the previous year plus or minus 1 or 2 ladder positions up or down.

Almost no one ever predicts the big falls or climbs. I think most MFC supporters rightly see this year as a reset with low expectations, I will wait to assess our current coach and list at the end of the season.

Of interest, here is the AFL 2021 expert ladder predictions:

afl.com.au

Crystal Ball: Our predictions for the 2021 AFL season are in

Premiership, Brownlow, recruit of the year. We make the call

Edited 21 hours ago21 hr by MaccaR

I like to keep optimistic at this time of the season but I'm struggling a bit to come to terms with us being a long term [censored] team again. It was so nice watching games and expecting a win for a few years there. A predictor or gauge I like to use is to consider which of our players would be picked in a Brisbane side. I'll have a go:

K Pickett, Gawn - walk up starts

Rivers, Fritsch - quality players that would get a look in

and the rest, Turner, Windsor, Langford - good young brigade, then Salem, Langdon, Viney, Lever, Steele, Mihocek - handy veterans

So who makes way from the Brisbane team to fit in Pickett and Gawn? Not sure how you could get many more of our players into the Brisbane team.

It's not looking good ☹️

As with any sport, the biggest element in success is an elite strength and conditioning department and luck with injuries, generally every year the healthiest list wins the flag, (provided they have enough talent). Happy to wait and see how we go this year with no expectations, bit of luck with injuries and we could push for wild card spot, but really just want to watch exciting footy with players having fun. Very boring watching the ball being kicked down the line to a contest or being bombed into the forward line whilst 30 players are in their like u9s footy.

I reckon if you were to ask any trackwatcher for an opinion as to whether King seems to know what he's doing... I'm going to suggest nearly all,if not all would give a resounding ...YES.

Whether that translates to the scoreboard is obviously yet to be seen but there's 'buy-in' out there. There's excitement.. As opposed to going out there and Doing this or doing that.. dont do etc etc I sense and got to see ( little bit ) ... go out and PLAY Footy ... but when you are...keep these things in mind and remember what was practiced. ... but play footy...trust your team mates... They're trusting you.

Just watch... 😉

2 hours ago, Little Goffy said:

I like this point but I really, really like how the auto-censor has hit it to create knee-[censored] reaction. Strong fetish vibes.

Reminds me of early attempts to auto-censor words in corporate emails, which were countered by staff agreeing upon euphemisms/dysphorisms. So [censored] became 'turkey slice' or [censored] [censored] became 'fire hydrant'. Sure enough, once management realised they were being called a bunch of turkey slicers who had added even more fire hydrants to the reporting process, the censorship had to be extended... and the cycle proceeds...

I am reminded of this segment on one of the late night American TV shows

2 hours ago, Rodney (Balls) Grinter said:

The Demonland auto censor is tuned a little too sensitively in MHO. I can understand it being in use for the most offensive expletives, but it actually limits the ability to express even some fairly benign things at times, which actually pisses me off, but I'm over trying to work around it or edit posts to use a alternate expression.

Perhaps that could be the topic for another thread, regarding the relaxation of the auto censor, if the admins are open to it?

So true. I quoted/replied to someone's post with one line. It was totally innocent but it was totally held back to be reviewed by the moderators. It turns out that there was one word in the other person's post that caused this.... D*UGS

2 hours ago, Hatchman said:

I'd say that review is pretty much bang-on target. Glad I live on the other side of the Pacific ocean so I can be insulated from the noise

If you want to be insulated from the noise what are you doing on Demonland?

1 hour ago, MaccaR said:

Honestly, the pre-season predictions are generally a massive waste of time. The best anyone can do is roughly predict clubs will finish approx the same place they did the previous year plus or minus 1 or 2 ladder positions up or down.

Almost no one ever predicts the big falls or climbs. I think most MFC supporters rightly see this year as a reset with low expectations, I will wait to assess our current coach and list at the end of the season.

Of interest, here is the AFL 2021 expert ladder predictions:

afl.com.au

Crystal Ball: Our predictions for the 2021 AFL season are in

Premiership, Brownlow, recruit of the year. We make the call

Yep! So many mistakes! I bet the predictions at the moment will be the same kind of wrong come the seasons end. I love the people trying to predict the whole bloody ladder. There are (18 x 17 x 16 x 15 .... ) possible permutations which is more than 6,000,000,000,000,000!!! Also often there's so much recency bias

1 hour ago, Piano lifter not player said:

1 hour ago, Piano lifter not player said:

I like to keep optimistic at this time of the season but I'm struggling a bit to come to terms with us being a long term [censored] team again. It was so nice watching games and expecting a win for a few years there. A predictor or gauge I like to use is to consider which of our players would be picked in a Brisbane side. I'll have a go:

K Pickett, Gawn - walk up starts

Rivers, Fritsch - quality players that would get a look in

and the rest, Turner, Windsor, Langford - good young brigade, then Salem, Langdon, Viney, Lever, Steele, Mihocek - handy veterans

So who makes way from the Brisbane team to fit in Pickett and Gawn? Not sure how you could get many more of our players into the Brisbane team.

It's not looking good ☹️

Umm, most years you could do this depressing exercise and end up with nearly every defending Premier winning the next flag too. Predicting us to win this years flag is way too optimistic. But I really don't like your methodology to predict ladder positions this year

1 hour ago, Piano lifter not player said:

I like to keep optimistic at this time of the season but I'm struggling a bit to come to terms with us being a long term [censored] team again. It was so nice watching games and expecting a win for a few years there. A predictor or gauge I like to use is to consider which of our players would be picked in a Brisbane side. I'll have a go:

K Pickett, Gawn - walk up starts

Rivers, Fritsch - quality players that would get a look in

and the rest, Turner, Windsor, Langford - good young brigade, then Salem, Langdon, Viney, Lever, Steele, Mihocek - handy veterans

So who makes way from the Brisbane team to fit in Pickett and Gawn? Not sure how you could get many more of our players into the Brisbane team.

It's not looking good ☹️

Lester, Gardiner, Payne, Answerth are hardly world beating defenders they just play the system, Bowey and a 2024 Mcvee would have slotted in that defence as would Turner.

Charle Cameron of last season was well below his best and Kossie is streets ahead of him as Gawn is over Fort, Connor Mckenna is also just another player.

Whilst every player wants to be one the most overrated title in footy is Premiership player, just look at these groups of players

Stuart Anderson, Shaun Renouf, Brett Jones, Matthew Stokes, Stephen Gilham, Brad Pearce, Gary Moorcroft, Billy Frampton, Mike Pyke, Jacob Townsend, James Jordan

Then you have

Robert Harvey, Neiter, Robbie Flower, Gary Ablett Snr, Matthew Pavlich, Buddha Hocking, Brad Johnson, Paul Kelly, Nick Riewoldt, Lenny Hayes.

As I said in another topic Stars win you big games and good defensive structure has you in most games. When Harris Andrew’s was taken away from playing the game on his terms that Brisbane side especially their defence came back to the pack.

It’s your role players and bottom 6 who make the difference, if you’re loaded with half a dozen big money stars and you fall away dramatically in your last 6-10 in your 23 and don’t have a sound system you’ll be found out in September if not beforehand- just look at these groups Dogs

1 hour ago, MaccaR said:

Honestly, the pre-season predictions are generally a massive waste of time. The best anyone can do is roughly predict clubs will finish approx the same place they did the previous year plus or minus 1 or 2 ladder positions up or down.

Almost no one ever predicts the big falls or climbs. I think most MFC supporters rightly see this year as a reset with low expectations, I will wait to assess our current coach and list at the end of the season.

Of interest, here is the AFL 2021 expert ladder predictions:

afl.com.au

Crystal Ball: Our predictions for the 2021 AFL season are in

Premiership, Brownlow, recruit of the year. We make the call

If you care to did deeper there's a terrific 'historic' video of Simon Goodwin discussing the season ahead. Full of optimism and belief. Come to the 'predictions' from the so called experts* they can be virtually dumped with the trump video into the sewage system of history.

* 'ex' as in "has been" , 'pert' pronounces "spurt" ie. a drip under pressure.

18 hours ago, Fritta and Turner said:

Really Bomberblitz? That we no longer have P&O onboard I think says the opposite.

Am I the only one who read this and for a fleeting moment thought we'd lost the cruise company as a sponsor I never knew we'd had?

47 minutes ago, Go Ds said:

Umm, most years you could do this depressing exercise and end up with nearly every defending Premier winning the next flag too. Predicting us to win this years flag is way too optimistic. But I really don't like your methodology to predict ladder positions this year

It's more of an exercise to compare one team to another so probably a bit of a stretch comparing us to Brisbane at this time. It works better to pick a combined team from 2 teams in the same bracket, say Melbourne vs Essendon, Carlton or maybe the Saints.

5 minutes ago, Piano lifter not player said:

It's more of an exercise to compare one team to another so probably a bit of a stretch comparing us to Brisbane at this time. It works better to pick a combined team from 2 teams in the same bracket, say Melbourne vs Essendon, Carlton or maybe the Saints.

Yes but if you did these comparisons at the end of 2020 you wouldn't have Melbourne coming anywhere near close to winning the flag or Richmond the back-to-back premiers missing the eight altogether(in 2021). Will Brisbane even end up being in the top four this year? I mean probably yes but who knows how much Neale's extra curricular activity affects the team. Anyway there's team morale , team tactics , team cohesion plus with 40 something players on each side some will improve some will go backwards and some will be injured. You're not completely wrong but there are surprises every year and that's because there are so many intangible factors or at least stuff we just don't know at all about.

The author mentioned playoffs and no one batted an eyelid

thanks AFL, you’ve officially americanised the game we loved

6 minutes ago, Go Ds said:

Yes but if you did these comparisons at the end of 2020 you wouldn't have Melbourne coming anywhere near close to winning the flag or Richmond the back-to-back premiers missing the eight altogether(in 2021). Will Brisbane even end up being in the top four this year? I mean probably yes but who knows how much Neale's extra curricular activity affects the team. Anyway there's team morale , team tactics , team cohesion plus with 40 something players on each side some will improve some will go backwards and some will be injured. You're not completely wrong but there are surprises every year and that's because there are so many intangible factors or at least stuff we just don't know at all about.

True and I think Brisbane will still go well this year. Neale's body of work on the field compared to off will help his team mates move on pretty quickly. Let's hope we can be one of the surprises this year.

36 minutes ago, La Dee-vina Comedia said:

Am I the only one who read this and for a fleeting moment thought we'd lost the cruise company as a sponsor I never knew we'd had?

No, the good ship Lollypop is preparing for this season’s cruise. Replacements (may) have been found for those who either walked the plank, were keel-hauled or jumped ship.

Edited 18 hours ago18 hr by Tarax Club

1 hour ago, Pennant St Dee said:

Lester, Gardiner, Payne, Answerth are hardly world beating defenders they just play the system, Bowey and a 2024 Mcvee would have slotted in that defence as would Turner.

Charle Cameron of last season was well below his best and Kossie is streets ahead of him as Gawn is over Fort, Connor Mckenna is also just another player.

Whilst every player wants to be one the most overrated title in footy is Premiership player, just look at these groups of players

Stuart Anderson, Shaun Renouf, Brett Jones, Matthew Stokes, Stephen Gilham, Brad Pearce, Gary Moorcroft, Billy Frampton, Mike Pyke, Jacob Townsend, James Jordan

Then you have

Robert Harvey, Neiter, Robbie Flower, Gary Ablett Snr, Matthew Pavlich, Buddha Hocking, Brad Johnson, Paul Kelly, Nick Riewoldt, Lenny Hayes.

As I said in another topic Stars win you big games and good defensive structure has you in most games. When Harris Andrew’s was taken away from playing the game on his terms that Brisbane side especially their defence came back to the pack.

It’s your role players and bottom 6 who make the difference, if you’re loaded with half a dozen big money stars and you fall away dramatically in your last 6-10 in your 23 and don’t have a sound system you’ll be found out in September if not beforehand- just look at these groups Dogs

We have 2 A graders I mentioned and some quality role players - I would love to see Rivers jump up to that level this year. I agree with the bottom 6 being important, so hopefully ours continue to improve and a few of our young guns take the next step. I want to remain optimistic as I'm not ready to go back to being a bottom side again. I wish Robbie had a chance to win one in 87!

Predictions for the 2026 season are in part based on how you view the past, and how this can be used to point to a possible 2026.

Since 2021, when we won the flag 😃 we finished top 4 in 2022 and 23. Then we tumbled and finished well outside the 8 in 24 and 25. As a result of these poor finishes we changed coach and exited several players who didn't want to be at Melb, or Melb no longer wanted. Without further revisiting all the details and issues of this period, it must be assumed that the MFC powers deemed 2024-25 as underperformance, identified and remedied the issues, hence the changes, and that with these changes made, we should improve. Reality may not support this, but the club's logic and strategy are clear. If the clubs assumptions, strategies and changes are correct, we should rise and the top 8 be clearly possible.

I'm open to believing that 2024 and 25 were the aberration, not the norm. So with the changes made, we're gonna rise like the phoenix...

Go Demons.

Edited 17 hours ago17 hr by PaulR

4 hours ago, Rodney (Balls) Grinter said:

The Demonland auto censor is tuned a little too sensitively in MHO. I can understand it being in use for the most offensive expletives, but it actually limits the ability to express even some fairly benign things at times, which actually pisses me off, but I'm over trying to work around it or edit posts to use a alternate expression.

Perhaps that could be the topic for another thread, regarding the relaxation of the auto censor, if the admins are open to it?

Surely any thread which mentions anything Essendon related is the right place to discuss relaxing censorship of expletives?

2 hours ago, Piano lifter not player said:

I like to keep optimistic at this time of the season but I'm struggling a bit to come to terms with us being a long term [censored] team again. It was so nice watching games and expecting a win for a few years there. A predictor or gauge I like to use is to consider which of our players would be picked in a Brisbane side.

I know it isn't really how football and list comparisons work, but I'll make the slightly tongue-in-cheek point that we beat Brisbane at the Gabba mid 2025. Just 8 games before we sacked out coach, we beat the eventual premiers. Weird things like that keep football interesting!

Now you've got me wondering, who would come out of our own 2021 premiership side to make way for who in our current team?

Oh, that took me to a dark place. Five our our best on the day are either still playing but somewhere else, or cruelly out of the game. Petracca, Oliver, Brayshaw, Jackson and Nibbler.

That said, Footscray have almost entirely turned over that list - Just Bontempelli, Treloar, Liberatore, Naughton, English, Bailey Dale, Bailey Williams, Weightman and Vandemeer still at the Dogs!

Anyway, without going too much into 'how much better is Pickett 2026 compared to Pickett 2021' and other players still with us I think you can make a case for;

Steele over Sparrow. Chandler over Spargo. Van Rooyen over Brown (with all due respect to Brown and moderate optimism on Van Rooyen). Langford over Harmes.

After that it is a matter of successors rather than comparisons.

1 hour ago, Fritta and Turner said:

If you want to be insulated from the noise what are you doing on Demonland?

Demonland is the tip of the spear for fine football observations and insight. How dare you call us noise!

40 minutes ago, La Dee-vina Comedia said:

Am I the only one who read this and for a fleeting moment thought we'd lost the cruise company as a sponsor I never knew we'd had?

Unless it is a reference to Trac and Clarry being told to PO, that is still my best guess! Next minute we'll be revealing that we've had an Ansett sponsorship deal officially on our balance sheet for the last 30 years.

4 minutes ago, DubDee said:

The author mentioned playoffs and no one batted an eyelid

thanks AFL, you’ve officially americanised the game we loved

My eyelids definitely batted. They batted as deep as a 2000s Australian cricket team. I'm still managing the cramp.

7 minutes ago, Little Goffy said:

Surely any thread which mentions anything Essendon related is the right place to discuss relaxing censorship of expletives?

I know it isn't really how football and list comparisons work, but I'll make the slightly tongue-in-cheek point that we beat Brisbane at the Gabba mid 2025. Just 8 games before we sacked out coach, we beat the eventual premiers. Weird things like that keep football interesting!

Now you've got me wondering, who would come out of our own 2021 premiership side to make way for who in our current team?

Oh, that took me to a dark place. Five our our best on the day are either still playing but somewhere else, or cruelly out of the game. Petracca, Oliver, Brayshaw, Jackson and Nibbler.

That said, Footscray have almost entirely turned over that list - Just Bontempelli, Treloar, Liberatore, Naughton, English, Bailey Dale, Bailey Williams, Weightman and Vandemeer still at the Dogs!

Anyway, without going too much into 'how much better is Pickett 2026 compared to Pickett 2021' and other players still with us I think you can make a case for;

Steele over Sparrow. Chandler over Spargo. Van Rooyen over Brown (with all due respect to Brown and moderate optimism on Van Rooyen). Langford over Harmes.

After that it is a matter of successors rather than comparisons.

Demonland is the tip of the spear for fine football observations and insight. How dare you call us noise!

Unless it is a reference to Trac and Clarry being told to PO, that is still my best guess! Next minute we'll be revealing that we've had an Ansett sponsorship deal officially on our balance sheet for the last 30 years.

My eyelids definitely batted. They batted as deep as a 2000s Australian cricket team. I'm still managing the cramp.

How could I forget the win at the Gabba! It was one of the best games I have been to since we beat Carlton in the qualifying final in 2000. I remember fondly Cameron Bruce and Brad Green both had massive beak-out games. Could Lindsay and Langford be the next Green and Bruce?

On the 2021 side, I would take Disco for Jordon as an upgrade. Disco would have been be a pretty handy sub on the day, can go back or forward 👍🏼

Team success prediction tends to focus on measurable metrics; these statistics are obviously built primarily on previous years.

What I find interesting, and ultimately much harder to predict, is the psychological aspect. Team first, belief and trust are huge factors, both factors I feel the MFC has been missing for at least a couple years, maybe longer.

In 2021, as a spectator I could literally feel the belief from the players, so much that it became infectious and I went into every game feeling like we could win. The only game that I gave up on was the final game of the season when we were 40 points down to Geelong (I was in the USA at the time so didn’t have it live on TV) and look what happened. 2021 was a team, 2025 was a bunch of individuals.

All through 2021 the players looked like they were having fun, they were enjoying themselves, believing in themselves and trusting each other to play a role. Max Gawn talked about changing a mindset from wanting to be AA and instead team first.

I feel like post 2021 we saw the downward slide of the team first mentality. Some players started to check out of the club while still playing for the club (e.g. LJ, Petracca). There was a loss of trust with each other (some players more than others). There was loss of well-liked players in traumatic circumstances (Bradshaw) and eventually the total loss of belief.

I am hoping we can see a bounce back of the players enjoying playing for the Melbourne Football Club.