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Last known sighting.

His job is backroom stuff and to state the obvious it is off-season. Anyway, not sure what could be said at this stage. Wait 12 months. If he takes a leaf from Jackson's songbook he will keep a low profile and let the football do the talking. So we probably won't here much at all about him or from him. Assume: no-news-is good-news.

The big one for me on that list is Weideman. While we are not privy to how he is feeling, I think the club has done a terrific job at developing him and getting him back to full fitness after the injuries he suffered as a junior. Hopefully he sees this and is keen to sign a long term contract with the club, as we are now putting plenty of faith in him with the loss of Hogan. You would be pretty confident in some of the other main players, like Melksham and Salem, that they will re-sign sometime during 2019, but Weideman is the key one for me.

Only a short session today. The full squad is back next week. Enjoy. https://www.smugmug.com/frame/slideshow?key=SJK3N4&autoStart=1&captions=0&navigation=1&playButton=1&randomize=0&speed=2&transition=fade&transitionSpeed=2&clickable=1 Mobile==> https://www.smugmug.com/gallery/n-cgfmZz?mobile=true

Really hope they do. Has good news story written all over it: * Queensland boy; * Hard luck story who never quite cracked it in his previous attempt; I personally think this could work for Gold Coast. Liked Spencer. Big tough guy that alway gave 100% effort within the somewhat average ability he had. Was just starting to find a bit of a place within the MFC team when Max went down at the start of 2017, only to then get injured himself. I'm not sure that Spencer offers quite the same impact as Mumford, but I think he could have a similar influence by being that big bodied mature player that clears a path and looks after a young group of team mates comming through.

Melbourne premiers 2019

One of the biggest actresses in the world wore the red and blue and came to Melbourne training. It’s a good thing. You would be he same flake that would bemoan Eddie being able to finagle the same for his team... It cost us the price of a jumper and we got Natalie effing Portman in it! You can nickname the stunt. There you go, that will make you feel better. Jeez.

When doing research for some photos to super-impose Preuss into a Demon's guernsey I found this gem from when he was drafted.

Rohan Connolly reckons Kangas are top 4 in 2019. Tyson Hall Polec and Pitterd plus youngster Tarryn Thomas reckon to boost team into premiership contention. Connolly suffers from “Premature escalation”!!

Taking a sample of your blood should cure all of our collective MFCSS.

There is something about an ex Fitzroy/filth full back that worries me. Can't put my finger on it though.

He will be his own man, and won't be trying to fill PJ's shoes because he can't. No CEO can be hands off and just let everything run, regardless of who he follows. His job is not to maintain things but to develop, grow and increase influence across every part of club life to the point of a Premiership. rjay got it right above - Pert's main job particular to his appointment is to get our new footy/admin home base done.

I am more excited about the Dees than ever. I’ve been a Demonland member for over 10 years but I’m finding that I am less and less inclined to read it. This thread is typically off-putting. I love it when people go to the trouble of reporting on training in the off-season but finding myself scrolling through threads to find factual info or considered opinions. Please leave your egos at the door

No, no, no...whilst I think they both go way over the top on the 'Saty' bash apart from that they are both very good posters. ...and yes they do have a dip at others from time to time but just don't take it personally. Both 'Wise' & 'dazz' provide excellent information & food for thought. They've just got a bit of a blind spot, that's all. 'Sats' not totally innocent here either, he will play it a bit. I expect he will play the 'take my bat & ball home' card at some stage. That always gets traction. On the whole, I just find the nitpicking thing boring & skip over the posts that don't have much relevance to me.

An actress? One of the world’s best. You must have heard about publicity. At work today just about everyone knew she was at training. At Melbourne training. In the off-season. You can’t buy exposure like this.

Six spots left: Who'll get the last AFL lifelines for 2019? The AFL website mentions we have 1 spot left on our list and "industry sources" suggest no teams will enter the season one player short

Big man looks physically intimidating. Might prove more than just a backup. Gawn will need relief in hopefully a very long year to the end of September.

All good DZ found it on The World Game site. You couldn’t make that up, ridiculous!

Bummers - record - need a needle to play i don't get the dogs one, and why all blue?

The cyclist was totally unreasonable . Fair bump.

Very little mobility or skill but had the strength and endurance. Every time he was starting to look a little better he got injured. Paul Roos always rated him and said earlier this year he should still be on an AFL list. I guess there's only 50 or so rucks in the country that have the right size, strength and endurance and whilst Spencil might be the worst of those 50 he's still one of them. There's been rumours of Roos consulting with the Suns as he has a relationship with Dew as well as George Stone and like we did the Suns are also trying to build from defensive work and around the contest. Having ruck depth so you can do that at AFL and NEAFL level is important.

Yep, risk/reward didn't pay off. Still, there's still a fair bit to play out and the key is to remain within striking distance before the 3 points is on offer for week 17. And there's always the post-season tipping comp as a consolation prize ... might spruce that comp up a bit with a few more chances at gaining points. But I'll leave that till later on at a more relevant time.

Unfortunately no addition to the strike rate from yesterday Wadda but at this time of the year finding winners is a difficult task. And from what I've heard Maastricht will never be the same after your exploits. More like Mayhem in Maastricht! I often go to exacta's in the racing off-season and managed to snag the collect in the Winterbottom. Didn't include Malaguerra so would have missed the trifecta if I went down that path. And Voodoo Lad was a last minute inclusion due to our support of the horse here on this thread. Anyway, all the talk here is of the inaugural running of the 'Jericho Cup' later today ... here's the form for the race The race has been named in honour of our diggers and the horses they were associated with during WW1 in the Middle East ... they raced a 3 mile event during that time so this inaugural race marks the 100th anniversary. There is a lot more to the story though ... read more here Australian Group & Listed Races Best Bet Strike Rate 64: 22 - 8 - 9

Dayum. All those tipsters tipping late get the help this week of not picking the Saints.

Did Santa Claus bring you all the toys you asked for as a kid Werridee? ?

I loved her in Ghost.

As far as the football side of things goes, the Alan Joyce/Chris Scott model would be best...don't mess with what's already working. The training/admin/club home base is what he will be marked on. That's what he's here for...

A few smart clubs saw how WCE performed during the finals. We were one of them and zeroed in on Preuss. The media (and some clubs) didn't get it at first. It finally dawned on them that the game is changing. Some have been scrambling to find a second ruckman so a few have been thrown lifelines: Mumford, Roughead, Clarke and perhaps Spencer. A few clubs will be found wanting with just one recognised ruckman or two average ruckman. Ironically, they seem to be the clubs that ended the year at the bottom of the ladder.

Here's one - Jordan Lewis to retire at the end of the season receiving accolades from all corners of the footy globe. Jordan announces that despite the lack of a fifth premiership medallion, that the three years he has spent with the Melbourne Footy Club have been the most satisfying of his career and upon confirming that he will remain with the club as an assistant, states that he is now "a Demon for life".

An assessment of Melbourne’s 2018 draft picks from AFL Draft Central AFL Draft review: Melbourne

I'll preface this by saying I hate having to moderate this forum but if you post just to abuse or troll you can have a holiday. People enjoy training reports particularly in the offseason and many know how to filter out the noise. May I suggest you use the ignore if you can't help yourself rather than derail a thread and ruin it for the rest of us.

Haha. Maybe you and other Luddites can package that up and sell it to the footy department. Who knows, maybe they are predicting improvements in players based on age and games played. I wouldn’t know. Big data and machine learning is being applied everywhere whether you think it works or not. Champion data can never predict injuries, but big European and US teams are measuring every training session and game and have been applying big data and machine learning to non contact injury prevention for several years. They don’t publish much for obvious reasons, but BarcelonaFC recently published 2014 data that showed they can predict 60% of non contact injuries and thus can prevent them. I’m sure that has improved in the last 4 years. They have huge budgets and are way ahead of the AFL. Maybe this is also happening in the AFL. Point that started all of this is despite your opinion and comments on the CD list rating they have no user bias in the analysis of the data at all. It is just data and unbiased processing of it, with all of its limitations ie garbage in garbage out. I personally think it is pretty good in, pretty good out. It’s not perfect. Time to move on.

I'm not too sure where to pitch my own predictions right now, but these are the sort of predictions I can be comfortable with as opposed to some of the ridiculous media hype going around about how great the MFC are at the moment. I honestly don't know how some of these media types still have a job, because their credibility is rubbish. We make a preliminary final with a strong young list and all of a sudden we are practically premiership favorites next year (after many of them wrote us off of even making finals this year after half a dozen rounds). Don't get me wrong I think we have a strong list, are building something and I hope like hell that there is at least one premiership there sometime in the next 5 years, but there is just soo much that has to happen between now and that becoming a reality that it's not funny. I posted a few weeks about my late onset MFCSS and this is essentially it - so many teams over the past decade or so were anointed by the media with greatness and then subsequently bombed out miserably and my worry is that at this point that could still be us. The prime examples of this that stick in my head are: 1. Port Adelaide 2014 - following their 3 point preliminary final loss to Hawthorn in 2014 were touted as a star studded young team on the rise and premierships in the making, with a new bread of master coach in Ken Hinkley, playing a hard, agressive and exciting attacking brand of football (sounds a lot like the MFC of 2018); 2. Western Bulldogs post premiership - most media had them as top 4 material the following year and continuing to go from strength to strength over the next 2 - 3 years based on the strength of their young talent filled list after their suprise before their time flag in 2016; 3. GWS - So much tallent it was a concern they were going to compltely dominate the competition; 4. Adelaide 2018 - goes from Grand finalist to flop in an instant - the competition is just so tight. To be fair I never really rated them that high in 2017 to start with; 5. Collingwood post Malthouse to an extent. I guess all of the above is a bit of an antithesis of a prediction, so if I am going to make a general prediction in the afirmative it is that at some point in the season we will loose one or several games which will have some posters on Demonland sighting huge list and coaching deficiencies that mean we do not actually have a potential premiership team and never will, which won't actually be the case, but it will be portrayed as such.

I have been an avid reader of Demonland.com since its inception (I think). We should always praise contributors to the site, providing their contributions are legible and not bullying. I enjoy reading all contributions and always had a giggle at Yzemagic's wonderful sense of mischief and imagination. He/she did get a few readers quite excited. We should all be great full for everyone who contributes to the site whether it is on the mark or not. We are humans, that have passions, emotions and varying forms of skill. Some not so good and some that are masterful. personally I dislike reading a training report ( of which this is the topic) and noting "Trump" like responses which are divisive and ruin what should be an optimistic conversation. I praise the wonderful contributors as we all should by being respectful to how they contribute to this forum. If you are not sure what this means, "Play the ball not the contributor'.

Are we talking about me here or someone else? I'm totally confused Anyway, i could be wrong on bradkte. If someone told me that tom mcdonald who torched the ball in the backline for 7 years would become one of the best and most accurate key forwards in the game today then i wouldnt have believed them so anything can happen.

I appreciate Saty's reports of training. I don't always agree with what he says but he fronts up and gives us his thoughts and descriptions of training. He (correctly) called out a poor comment from Dr D (whose report I also appreciated) that Bradtke won't make it .... based on a November training, which is an immensely premature call to make on the least developed player on our list. That's fine and both posters are entitled to their opinions. Both acted very respectfully. But the posters coming in afterwards are a waste of space. Posters complaining that their posts will be deleted .... they bloody well should. Small minded bullies. Posters ganging up to bully Saty are just pathetic.

Please do post it, I am sure that this one picture will be more than enough to change DrDee’s mind, surely your pic will provide him with more evidence than what he would get from watching live training for over an hour.

Send all complaints to the Herald Sun.

Started as a child actor in Luc Besson’s “Leon - The Professional”... still one of my favourite films.

Refers to Aaron Nietschke – Tall Utility at 183 cms. Interesting, I would have said mid sized.

“With his run and endurance Sparrow will be of great value to the Demons who already have a star midfield with Clayton Oliver, Christian Petracca and Nathan Jones in the middle” Unrelated but these kinds of statements intrigue me. In naming our top three midfielders they’ve managed to leave out two of the top three in Brayshaw and Viney.

Excuses are coming out of the woodwork, just as it was for Watts. A little bit,,, just a little bit less love and affection & gushing over him, and a lot more 'incognito', will aid petracca's development. He should have to fight to get his attention/affection. He gets it hand delivered, just as Sylv did as well. And it''s not helping him, this way.

Didnt average anywhere near 24 disposals,

Haha imagine if she visited the one day Jakovich made an appearance. Nobody would care about her.

She was catching up with her former lover, Guywalker

Apparently norf have already offered her 5 years at $1.2 mil a year

Yes need to get new deals for Melksham, Salem, Weideman and Neal-Bullen. 3 year deals for each of the blokes imo. Lewis Final year in 2019. Let’s get the premiership and send him out in style As they only have 1-year deals, Maynard, Garlett, Wagner-J and Jkh all need to show improvement to stay on board. Garlett just needs to find his desire once again and he’s best 22.

The Roar has produced player list analysis: Team Profiles The Average isn't the best measure; I prefer The Mean Median. Nonetheless, the Roar tables are a good indicator of each team. I was a bit surprised to see Collingwood so high in the age profiles. The likes of Lewis and Jones are raising our age profile somewhat. For us to finish 4th in 2018 when on average age we were 9th and average experience we were 12th shows what a mighty effort it was by the club. An interesting comment from the article: "Overall the numbers hint at a few possible conclusions, one being that putting heavy 2019 expectations on the likes of Melbourne, Fremantle and Essendon because of their notable trade period recruits might be a little premature. Of these three sides, only one – Essendon – is in the top eight for age, and they are eighth. None is in the top eight for experience. That’s not to say that these lists aren’t capable of achieving great things in 2019, but instead that they are still some distance from hitting their high-water mark in terms of talent maturity". Nonetheless, the expectations on us will indeed be 'heavy' and we will rise to the occasion! Edit: change 'Mean' to 'Median'