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Boxing Day means a lot of things to different people. Some relax after the festivities of Christmas, many head out on holidays, others head off to the big stores hunting for bargains while others still go off to the G and the Test. This day to me will always be associated with the 2004 tsunami which took the lives of a quarter of a million people as the big waves hit shorelines around the Indian Ocean in one of the planet's greatest natural disasters. Among the victims were many Australians included Demon defender Troy Broadbridge who was on his honeymoon at the time. We won't forget him - today, we celebrate his life and memory ...

I think we've learned through hard experience that one player will never be the saving of a club. What's needed is good administration, good people who are well looked after in all areas, innovation, hard work and a team all pulling together in one direction. Then if the right player from another club comes along and is available, I'm fine with that as long as you don't regard him as the focal point of the club, but rather as one member of a team.

Went to my girlfriend's place yesterday afternoon, during the exchanging of presents I unwrapped a copy of "The big book of AFL", I was instructed to turn to the section about the MFC, in which I found return flights from Sydney to Melbourne for the round 2 game which is our first home game against Carlton. I already have flights booked for the QB weekend. This means a minimum of 3 trips from the bunker to the G this year as we will be playing finals. Cant bloody wait.

If my hopes for the future of Petracca and Oliver in particular are well founded, I don't think we will need to chase "saviours". Keeping the talent together is more important, ala Geelong and Hawthorn in their premiership years. One player however talented, is insufficient, as Carlton (Judd) and Collingwood (Buckley) found out. They eat up salary cap and get surrounded by low priced and low capability players.,

Well said, vale Troy Broadbridge just starting out in life,just married,starting to establish himself in the team and i think he would have had a good career, just taken far to young but also his family and everyone close to him who would miss him our hearts go out to you all . To everyone who lost someone on that day i hope that you all have as good a day as you can.

The 2016 trade and draft period saw some familiar surnames the club's history, stretching all the way back to our first season in the VFL. Dion Johnstone from Scotch College and Oakleigh Chargers via Warrnambool shares his surname with George Johnstone who played eight games for Melbourne in 1897-98. Then there was also ten year player Travis Johnstone who played 160 games (111 goals) from 1998 before moving to the Brisbane Lions in 2008. Trapper was an AFL Rising Star nominee in 1998 and won the club's best and fairest, the Keith 'Bluey' Truscott Medal in 2005. I don't believe that any of the Johnstones are related. Mitch Hannan comes to the club after spending a season with the Footscray Bulldogs in the VFL but way back in 1927 a little known player named Peter Hannan from Yarraville played 2 games with Melbourne. He ended his career with 6 games at Footscray in 1933. Former North Melbourne champion Johnny Lewis gave Melbourne three good years in the twilight of his career in the 30s and the club will be hoping for the same from Jordan Lewis after he crossed from Hawthorn in the trade period. There is no record of a Hibberd, McKenna (a bit of a surprise actually), Filipovic or a Keilty at the club before Lachlan and Declan were drafted in the recent rookie draft but the Smith name is legend at the club and Tim Smith now joins Joel, son of Shaun, in illustrious company. Norm Smith played in four premierships in a playing career that spanned 1935 to 1948 and coached the club to six flags between 1952 and 1967. His brother Len also played with the club and played and coached at Fitzroy and later for a short period at Richmond during which his innovative approach laid the foundation for the Tigers' golden era of the late 60s through to 1980. Norm's son Peter also played with the club for a short period in the 60s. Current MCC President and former captain Steven Smith was one of the Demons' best players in the 70s and 80s and captained the club. At least a dozen Smiths have represented the club. Included are Ray Smith, a defender from Essendon in the mid 70s, Shaun Smith (father of Joel) who took the mark of the century in a game in the 90s at Carrara and tall forward Nick Smith who was listed on the injured list as being out for "four to six" weeks so often that he earned the monicker "426". On balance, having a Smith at the club must be good because a Smith has been associated with the club for ten of its 12 premierships - 11 if you count dual Brownlow Medallist Ivor Warne-Smith who played in the 1926 team. Having two Smiths at the club will therefore be even better!

And he helped us how?

i don't think most people care, jnr. they just enjoy the shock and outrage. by the time the truth is discovered it will be yesterday's news and no-one will care

I'm a long way into the 'team game' side of the debate. Important to have as many 'excellent' players as possible to give inspiration and some unpredictability, but the 'superstars' just don't become available at their real value. I'm a broken record on it, I know, so I wont try to bring out any grand detail. It's a debate with so many intangibles it'll maybe never be answered. I'll concede one thing for sure - it is definitely nice to draft and develop a star who then humbly commits to the club at reasonable cost.

And this one's a bit of an oldie but still good for a laugh.

Festivus...for the rest of us

Merry Christmas to all at Demonland. I hope that 2017 is a great year for the Demons.

Given the chance of a lifetime to play AFL at the top level, continues to screw up with two assault charges pending, [censored] on the club and all of the players accusing them all of being on drugs and, if I read it right, wants Fyfe to 'die a slow painful death'. The icing on the cake is the complete lack of punctuation. I find it hard to have any sympathy.

Small edit re young Dion; I believe he was captain of the Cardinal, Gold and Blue of Scotch College. If he is half as good as your Cyril we have a goodun!

Go you Big Red Fire Engine.

I've heard from sources more credible than Yarran's FB account that Fyfe is definitely not well liked amongst the playing group. He thinks he's God gift to the club and isn't humble at all about being a Brownlow winner. Quite the opposite of his speech of that night. I doubt the MFC would be interested in such a personality given the recent hard work around behavioural standards.

i wouldn't stop at alcohol, paul

And another one, following Rick Parfitt yesterday. RIP George and condolences to family, friends and fans.

I feel Fyfe will leave for success not $$ as I feel the $ at Freo and the post football money of being a one club player in WA will outweigh the change. I don't think we need a saviour but if we play the right brand of football this year he might just come our way.

Diamond Joe was both a saviour and a very naughty boy.

And the Rams lose twice to the niners... gotta sack the GM who gave up the world for Goff and al the coaches, they are all crap. Clean slate the whole organisation.

Begin the airing of grievances.

Here here , its all said here hope everyone had a great day and hope we all have a great year off the park and a better than great ON the park.

Readers will be aware of WJ's HIGHWAY OF DEMONS series which pops up here from time to time. The series is based on the Melbourne Football Club and WJ's quest to travel back in time to attend the 1964 Grand Final in order to remove the Norm Smith curse and make Melbourne great again. He is doing this with the help of the Time Lord Dr Who. For our Christmas message from Demonland we therefore bring you the 12 Doctors of Christmas sung by Petra Elliott (please keep out of reach of the children) MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ALL AT DEMONLAND AND IF YOU'RE NOT INTO THAT HAPPY CHANUKAH, HAVE A GREET FESTIVUS AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR

I think in the end it was the opinions of the recruiting people at the club that mattered when making the decision to recruit him. It was obvious from the pre draft discussion that we were always going to choose a ruckman late in the main draft or more likely as a rookie. The field wasn't particularly strong and Jason Taylor and his team would have had him in their sights. He was, after all, ruckman for Vic Metro in the Under 18 championships and they won the title.

BeIN have started showing a series of football rivalry documentaries taking in some of the game's great grudge matches. Each hour-long episode focusses on two derbies. So far they've shown Celtic-Rangers + Slavia-Sparta, Ajax-Feyenoord + Flamengo-Fluminense, and Real-Barca + Olympiakos-Panathanaikos. Some are better than others but, for the most part, there's lots of good footage, great goals, riots, historical info and interviews. Fla-Flu once played in front of 194,000 people at the Maracana! Imagine there'll be plenty more in the series and they'll be repeated over the next few weeks with so little football being played.

Merry mythmus/festivus/Xmas to all and one.

Yeah, I'd love to say we'll be able to win it next year, but frankly that's absurd. Naturally, hope you're right though.

Unbelievable... Seattle miss the XP to tie the game 31 all instead of going up by 1 with 1 minute to go. Cards go down at kick a FG as time expires, giving the Falcons the #2 seed for now.. A win at home against New Orleans & we take the #2 seed, do I dare to dream!

Merry Christmas to all deelanders I know what I want and I will let u know next yr if I get it !!

What a [censored]. Guys already got the prison attitude. Dog this, dog that.. all might not be well at freo but why would you put yourself on show like that? sad really

Interestingly, it is the second year in a row, where the AFL has denied us the right to upgrade a Rookie, despite having a spot available to do so. While the Bombers uplifted players to replace suspended ones, we were not allowed to replace Melksham, who was also suspended. If Melksham had remained a Bomber, they would have been able to replace him. As a bonus, they were given the first pick in the draft.

Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people.

It looks like we've exhausted all reasonable matters for discussion about a training session that in the end involved one player from our list. The training threads will continue when the team returns, presumable in the second week of January. To all who contributed to the training threads enjoy the festive season and have a happy and healthy new year.

Maximum list 47 players. So we go into the season minus our 47th best player, or an injured Prince that would not play. Move on. Edit:- If we have no injuries we are unlikely to need an upgraded rookie, if we have injuries we can. Simple.

...Or the financial payout that was negotiated was less than the financial cost of keeping him on the list for another 12 months..

The make-or-break experiment An interesting article going back a few years by Peter Hanlon on St Kilda's failed gamble on 210cm tall basketball convert Blake McGrath who is now at Casey. He's no stranger to the colours he'll be wearing in 2017 because he started his footy career at Pennant Hills who wear the Demons' strip. And, at his height, he'll be able to look eye to eye with Max Gawn (although their paths are unlikely to cross on the football field).

Chelsea have now won 11 games in a row with games vs Bournemouth & vs Stoke coming up ... after that they'll get tested @ Tottenham, @ Leicester then @ Liverpool as part of a run of 4 games. Regardless, they'll be hard to catch if they can maintain their form. They've only conceded 2 goals in that stretch of 11 wins as well. No games until late Monday/early Tuesday morning but the other big leagues are all having 2 weeks off whilst the Bundesliga has a whole month off from Thursday. My Hammers are finally getting some points on the board but we've been largely unimpressive in the process. You'd take any sort of win in this league though.

Further maths IIRC was the easy maths.

Please Maxi don't break down.... Please maxi don't break down

They call him Flipper, Flipper...