Leaderboard

Crikey what a thriller. It’s always good for the soul to beat one of the old enemies. Almost as bad as Collingwood, that Carlton mob. Won a lot of premierships early in the game and reckoned they were better than everyone else even back in the Thirties when they hardly won anything. I’ve dusted off the old Underwood since I am very unhappy with what I read on Demonland last night. I would have written earlier but I had a couple of Abott’s Lager bottles to finish off. A few of the Melbourne boys worked at the brewery and I always like to support them by drinking their product. What is it with the negative nellies complaining about beating Carlton. From what I see only some chap calls himself Wiseblood, and another fella Nasher seem to get it. This was what we in the newspaper trade used to call a “meritorious victory”. Good word that, meritorious. Look it up if you don’t know it. That’s what dictionaries are for. The way I saw it the Melbourne boys were set for a 50-point win until fate took a hand. Even without young Hore, who has just about inked in his name on the team sheet this season, the backline was standing up. Once the lad Petty went down you could see the backline becoming disorganised. Well why not? Hore has proven himself a very able substitute small defender, good in the air and on the ground. Petty has not been there long but made good spoils and was taking strong contested marks until he was hurt. Now coaches in the old days, like Ivor and Checker, liked to keep their backline settled. One of my old coaches from up Golden Point way, I forget which, used to say the back six had to play like a unit, a “yoonit” it sounded like, like six men become one they know each others’ games so well. That can’t happen on days like yesterday, which is why, when the game opened up in the third quarter, Carlton could almost keep pace with us, because the backline was struggling to work like a “yoonit”. Seven goals we kicked in that third quarter. The way the game is played now that’s smart work. Seven goals one behind after kicking 7.11 in the entire first half. Now that 7.11 should have been 11.7 but the way we have struggled this year in front of the big sticks that third quarter was a ripper. And it was only with the back line losing key players that enabled Carlton to keep within five goals, like I said. Now the last quarter, that was tough. Three blokes down now, like playing with 17 men in the old days, that is hard yakka. I see the boy Brayshaw said he’s never been so tired on a footy field as he was at the end. It’s rare that one team dominates all day. Carlton was always going to have a purple patch, and that fella Murphy did ‘em proud, but Murphy really did his best work once the Demon boys were tiring from the lack of interchanges. I saw at the last change it was something like 19 fewer interchanges even then. Give us a fit group and we would have rolled right over them. People have also been moaning about the fact that Carlton was missing a couple of key players and that’s fair enough, but I don’t think that fellow Casboult would have had the same impact if the younger Curnow was there. Or Silvagni? Would he have had the same opportunities? Maybe, maybe not, but you can only beat what they put out there on the day. I was so surprised by the negativity on demonland that I took at look at talkingblues instead. There was the usual bad stuff but even a few Carlton supporters realised that without our injuries they’d have been out of the hunt. Make no mistake: this is one to enjoy. This was a win that took spirit and character and our boys were equal to the task. Carna Red Legs.

This might not be popular opinion but... We've all been waiting for Christian Petracca to announce him self on the big stage...waiting for the big break out game. I think he's actually done it through the back door. No break out game but just some really good footy over the last period. Little by little. He's trusting himself more to take the shots, to break the packs, take on the game and he's hitting the scoreboard. He might not become elite or the player some had hoped for but he's heading towards "A' grade very quickly. He's a very good and important player to the team. Now...if he could fix up his set shots the sky would be the limit.

They can play in the same team.

I think whether a victory feels hollow or enjoyable depends entirely on where you calibrate your expectations. I get accused of being a happy clapper on here, but at the commencement of the last quarter I went severely pessimistic and set my expectations very low. I watched on TV, and the first thing they showed us on return from the break was TMac sitting in the dugout with Hore and Petty with ice strapped on the knee. It may not have been as obvious from the ground that he was out. With one on the bench and our goal kicker out, despite the margin I was fully expecting us to get overrun. It would take an immense effort to win, I was thinking. The fact that it’s rubbish old Carlton is irrelevant, the margin in AFL is too small to not be impacted by this type of handicap. Even when we managed to lurch forward, it looked slow and listless. Skills went out the window. These are all things that are 100% predictable when you’re so down on legs, to expect anything more is just unreasonable and unrealistic. So you might understand that when I had emotionally prepared myself for the worst, my happiness went through the roof when it didn’t happen. They showed the effort that I thought it would take. I was pleased that they did. It was always going to be hard, but they did it. Yay! There were a few players who put in Herculean efforts. Sorry for being easily pleased. I’d say I’d prefer to feel bitter and twisted about a W in the column as some are, but that would be a total lie. Like everyone else, I’m totally shat at how this season has gone. It’s been a total and utter waste. From a totality point of view, the season has been a train wreck. I’m not going to allow that to deprive myself of individual moments of joy though. Nice things can happen in a crap situation. I’m going to enjoy them when they do.

Given Spargo is just about our best backup ruck option after Pruess I think it would take a top 5 pick to get me interested in a trade.

To all the haters and advocates of “the worst game ever”, you obviously didn’t follow the Dees in the 70’s. I went back and watched the last 15 minutes of today’s game a couple of times - what guts and poise and character was shown by those fit enough to still be on the ground. I note all the whinging this year about lack of “character” and “leadership” - well go back and look that last 15 minutes. I do not care how bad the opposition were or how far we “should” have been ahead, a win is a win. And a win in extreme adversity makes it even sweeter. A diabolical year no doubt, but give give me this winning feeling any day. Go Dees.

Thought it was good to see Preuss play a good game. It’s easy to take for granted how spoilt we are with Gawn’s elite fitness; Preuss was dead on his feet in the last quarter, obviously not helped by a lack of rotations. He’s got a long way to go to reach that level, but he’s got the best role model in the business, so hopefully Max takes him on that journey. I thought Goodwin’s comments post-match were interesting. I’m paraphrasing, but it seemed they’ve kept him in the VFL so his ruck craft development isn’t hindered or delayed by playing second fiddle to Gawn in the seniors. He also said “he hasn’t played much footy” or words to that effect, meaning they’re treating him like a developing young player rather than through the mature player lense we have been. Goodwin said the long term vision is still to have both players in the side. I reckon the Preuss fans on Demonland can take a lot of heart from these comments - the coach is still a fan despite the low number of games this year.

This is the sort of OTT pessimistic stuff that infects this site. You've just chucked the "with limited rotations" bit in there without thinking about what it means. For the first three quarters we built a 6 goal lead. Then the bloke who had kicked 6 goals in three quarters went off, we had one rotation for a quarter, and you're upset that our lead got eroded? We'll never know what would have happened without the injuries but when the numbers were even we were 6 goals better. As to their "top 3 players", they won interstate last week with the same players missing so it's not like they've fallen apart without Cripps. Curnow and Mackay have each played maybe 3-4 good games this year. And it's not like we were at full strength. But it's the sarcastic comment about being thrilled to be 16th that gets me most. If you want to be gloomy, fine. But the fact that some people have enjoyed today's win in the context of the season doesn't mean we're happy that in 2019, after the progress of 2014-2018, we're happy to be third bottom.

OMG. We have no one else and he was probably our second best player on sunday and you say he must go. Wow.

If we traded Pruess we would then be the ruck poor club... As we may have noticed yesterday, a back up for Max is pretty important I would have thought.

Has clearly been passed by Preuss. That, or I forgot.

I guess we all see it differently. A fortnight ago some claimed we were lucky to beat Freo due to them being two rotations down in the last quarter. Yesterday we had 3 men down for the last quarter and we showed guts and a will to win when they were coming strong. Blues running game has gone to a new level since the caretaker has come in and I thought we were cooked. Reality is we wake up today still in 16th and with a lot of improvement needed but footy makes you escape reality for a short time. This household like others and our supporters at the G were riding every kick, bounce, tackle in the dying minutes and willing the team to find a way. The boys did and it makes the weekend that little bit better.

I'm surprised we didn't send him back out to be honest.

David Parkin on radio. He likes Weed a lot and says our supporters are overly critical of him. I agree, he is a classy player and developing slowly and steadily. The least of our worries. Anyone who has played CHF knows it is an extremely difficult position to play.

Some of his defensive work & tackling were A grade today. He saved us on a number of occasions with a hand in or by sticking a big tackle. Wasn't a big possession game but he played his part...

Preuss will do well if he can just find the spot in our forward line where most number of the opposition backs are standing and run there, because that is where we appear to kick it 90% of the time.

Tough on Joel Smith. I honestly believe he is going to be a very good player. Looked like he was about to tear the game apart before injury in the pre season.

Fact: Had we lost to Carlton and fallen to 17th the heat would rightly be on regardless of the injury problem late. Fact: Holding on to win against any fast finishing side with momentum when you have only 1 player left for rotations is difficult Fact: We comfortably held Carlton at arms length through the first 3 qtrs, as we should. It's not a "special" or "defining" win but it's a good win, job done. A negative year means we look at this result pretty pessimisticly but the most important thing for the club was to grind out a result and they did. Still a chance to get 3 or 4 more wins this year.

I think Weiderman's development has been stunted by our inept ball movement in 2019. Last year he looked good because we were hitting targets. This year if he leads up the kick goes over his head and if he says deep the ball is kicked to his defenders advantage. But overall I still like him. He's still light on but his body work has improved this year but will still struggle against the bigger key backs but training against May and Frost will help his 1-1 development. Aside from his 1 howler he's just about our most reliable set shot. His leaping ability will allow him to take Tom Lynch-like pack marks as he continues to get stronger. His contested marking is already pretty good despite being undersized. Fun fact time here's a list of a few pretty good players averaging fewer contested marks than Sam in 2019: Hipwood, Himmelberg, Finlayson, B Brown, Jenkins. And he's on par with the likes of Hawkins, J Cameron, and J Kennedy (WC). These guys have better numbers than Sam but never underestimate how much delivery makes forwards look better. Most of what he does he does well. If we were competing for finals I'd be worried. But we're well out of that race so just let the kid play. With Tom's injury he'll have a big test the next few weeks.

I never said I wasn’t happy we won. But I said from the first minute of the game, before we had limited rotations, that it was a horrible game to watch. Our skills are deplorable. Below AFL level. Our game plan is outdated. We make mistake after mistake with the ball in hand. It is the same every week, except we are lucky that we came up against an equally poor team. Do you think we would be 6 goals up playing like that against Collingwood? Or Geelong? I have never once told anyone here to stop celebrating a win. But have been told to stop thinking about all the negatives. Why can’t I have my views of this game in the context of the season, but you can? I am not exactly calling for mass sackings and declaring I’m going to microwave my membership. And you forgot to mention that Carlton was also down on rotations. Or that we have barely won a last quarter all year. Forgive me if this win has not somehow made me more optimistic about our ladder position or the same fatal flaws we have displayed all season. We beat the same team by 109 points a year ago, and they are arguably worse this season. We get the 4 points which is great. It still doesn’t get us within a realistic shot of finals. We still haven’t improved our skills or decision making. To be honest I was happier with our loss to Richmond, than this win. Because I don’t care about meaningless wins in a season that is dead in the water. I care to see us match it with good teams. The reality is we barely beat Carlton or Gold Coast and we are deeply embedded in the bottom 4. Go and enjoy the win. Nobody is stopping you. I certainly am not. But this is a discussion forum and I want to discuss the reality of this season, not this win. Is that ok with you? Gees the only thing worse than this season is all the bloody supporters on their high horse who suddenly can’t handle anyone mentioning negatives about the position of the club. We had one good year in ten. That is not a free pass in my eyes.

Errr...three goal assists.

It was interesting to hear Goodwin talking after the match yesterday about how the club has had a specific development plan in place for Preuss, focusing on developing his ruck craft and marking ability with maximum minutes at Casey. He also seemed quite pleased (I swear there was a glint in his eye) when discussing the prospect of Preuss and Gawn playing together during the remainder of the season. It would seem that with McDonald now out for the rest of the season, circumstances have forced the club's hand and we'll be getting a taste of the two-tower effort from here on. Given Preuss seemed to do pretty well on sunday, and while he isn't fast or brilliant he does seem to at least have the priceless quality of initiative, I'd be very keen to see him settle into the seniors. Then again, I do have the imaginary bygone notion of having the 'spare' ruck parked in the goalsquare and barely being expected to run around, just sitting there making the opposition anxious. Done well it would allow very high time-on-ground for both of them while (in my opinion) forcing the opposition tactics to respond.

I preferred it when SEN had Finey and Stephen J Peake. It was babble, sure, but at least it was occasionally funny babble. I'm pretty sure North Korea played half an hour of Kane Cornes to Alex Sigley. All it took.

The second pick if given will come at the end of round 1... the other teams have made it clear they won't allow the multiple dips at the pointy end

Lewis dodged a bullet with the MRO and will play this week.

Looks like this page is being written by grade sixers. We won with 1 fit rotation. Enjoy it in a year of disappointments. For the record I thought it was great to hear Jayden acknowledge what a year from hell it has been. Call yourselves supporters tsk! tsk!

Don't mean to be too critical but Hannan could've sealed the game by instead of having a bomb that just fell short he could've handballed the ball over the top to Brayshaw who was in the clear. Btw I reckon Gus got to it first & was denied the winner. That was def a review that should've been called.

If you watch that one again, he was blocked by a couple of Carlton defenders & wrestled himself into the best position to take it.... I thought he was ok today. You rarely have 2 key forwards going at the same time & today was Tommy's day. Weid took some nice grabs, gave off some good handballs & did his job in the ruck. My only criticism was his kicking for goal, he's o loverly kick technique wise but wasn't on song today... He's going alright despite what some are saying...

Appart from the odd game, Trac's form has been very solid all year. A few of Trac's stats give an indication of that: 3rd leading goal kicker; 1st in score involvements; 2nd in goal assists (interestingly, Melksham still leads this stat, despite missing a bug chuck of the season now - shows how good he is in that department and how much we are missing him). By my assessment, Trac will easily finish top 10 in our B&F, if not top 5 or better.

Staggering response on here as always. We had one on the bench in the last quarter, with the casualty list including TMac who had absolutely slayed them before the injury. It still amazes me that people don’t adjust their expectations despite the glaring evidence in front of them. As soon as I learned TMac was out, I knew it would be game on. But nah, everyone go on expecting greatness from an already struggling team now dead on their feet. I thought it was a really enjoyable gritty win. Glad there’s a few on here who agree.

I'm happy with the win, even if most on here will be negative. 3 down on the bench for the whole last quarter and we fought out a win. Wasn't pretty, but too show that heart says something about the group

Been watching the replay. The centre bounces were terrible. So many should have been called back and just let go. Over-umpired, especially the last quarter where Scummers got a heck of a ride.

If they also played 3 minutes of Andy Maher, Sigley would confess to anything. Maybe we can send Andy Maher to Pyongyang with a camera and he would disappear, never to be seen again.

4. To replace Gawn when he retires.

1. There are no ruck poor clubs. Every club has a starting ruck as good as Preuss with the exceptions probably being Dogs and Freo who have young rucks who are good enough to play and have a far higher ceiling. Preuss might push for game time at some clubs but not to the extent that they are trading a top 40 pick for him. Adel - O'Brien (or Jacobs) Bris - Martin Carl - Kreuzer Coll - Grundy* Ess - Bellchambers Freo - Lobb/Darcy GWS - Mumford Geel - Stanley GC - Witts Haw - big boy North - Goldy Port - Lycett Richmond - Nankervis Sydney - Sinclair* St Kilda - Marshall WBulldogs - English WC - Nic Nat * the only homes I can think about: If Grundy were to leave the Pies which I think is very unlikely or if the Swans had desires on Sinclair as a forward which I also think would be silly. 2. We got Preuss for a reason. To fill a very important role as back up to Max so we have someone to bring in so Max doesn't have to play 22 games a year at 85% game time. Preuss is also a back up for the tall forwards which we're hopefully about to see. 3. Whether he can or can't play alongside Max doesn't really matter, the back up ruck is just as important if you're planning to be in finals contention.

I think Preuss and Max will play really well together and suprise a lot of people. Jimmy and Strawbs worked very well... Both need to practice Goal Kicking. 2-3 a game can be the difference between a W and a L

Trac just needs to fix his set shot goal kicking. Other than that, he's been playing some good footy the past month or two. This season he's averaged 18 disposals and one goal. He's missing most of his set shots though (set shot accuracy of 32%). If he nailed more of those, he'd already be a 18 touch 2-3 goal a game player. That's the difference between good and great for him - set shots. It's all in his head, as when he's playing on instinct he hits the goals nearly every time! I don't think he's ever going to a superstar of the competition like we first hoped, but if can lift his output to average 20 disposals and 2 goals a game for remainder of his career, he'd be deemed a gun half forward and very important part of our team.

I'd say many here could see how the game would pan out after we were almost double their possession tally (220ish to 120ish I think in the 3rd qtr) and only 22 pts ahead. Not that you could predict the injury tally but hardly surprised that a lowly ranked team we hadn't put away would rally to take the lead in the closing stages. This is what calibrated expectations and why some weren't jumping through hoops over the win. Its all so predictable with this team. If there is a way to snatch defeat from victory they will try to find a way

Listening to both Tom McDonald and Bailey Fritsch on radio this morning was interesting. We were down to 2 rotations from half time, then 1 by 3/4 time, with 9 rotations in the last quarter Taking that info into account I am happy we scrapped a win TMac won’t play again this year, so it may well have been our last win for the year...

I always find the sentiments of supporters fascinating, win lose or draw. I suppose the stance many assume comes from the furphy that a glass 50% filled is somehow only half full ...or half empty. Upon these views somehow dictates where your 'allegiance' lays. It's a crock. A glass 50% filled is just that..50% filled. One might reasonably argue if it was full and now only 50% then it's now half empty as that was the momentum of events. Conversely..an empty glass filling is half full if thats the direction of events. What say of all of this..Simple. It's neither all of one thing nor the other. Being critical of our play ..indeed anything to do with this club does NOT preclude one from being able to enjoy a win. It simply means some are far more encompassing of larger pictures than those that might live vicariously in the moment. Neither is more right than the other. They are opinions, perspectives, call them what you like. It was definitely better to win than to lose but like some others here it all feels very hollow. Again we did our very best collectively to snag a loss from the jaws of victory. How excited anyone becomes from kicking but ONE goal in the final term I don't know. Where would all the sky punching be had we not managed that I wonder ? The tempo was arguably different yesterday. That's good. I wonder too just how much by design and how much by forced circumstances. Either way there were lessons there to be observed. Yesterdays game reminded me of two elevators travelling in opposite directions. They up and we down...somehow we just managed to be on top at the right moment. We almost weren't. Our skills are not as a team AFL standard. We do have a handful of very good players, but they alone dont make a Winter..so to speak. Our game plan...do we really even have one ? is predictable and negatable. You really have to wonder why it's taken so long to get Preuss on the big-park. That we're only now supposedly considering both he and Max is laughable. Yesterday was a bit like playing musical chairs...had there been a couple more notes maybe the tone here would be a little more sombre. Some are easily pleased.

Ha ha, I wouldn't go that far my friend. It's nice to pop back in, and nice to know I've been missed, but a quick scan of this thread is all the evidence I need as to why I didn't log in for a month. I'll be around, though. Hope you, and everyone else, is well. ?

I like Weideman.

I think most opposition teams would be pretty worried about the prospect of a Gawn/Preuss ruck combo - The Prawn. Seriously though, we normally drop our output when Gawn is resting on the bench and if Preuss can effectively maintain that dominant ruck presence for us for the whole game, it will go a long way to us being a much more dangerous side. The impact should be amplified when either Gawn or Preuss inevitably goes up against the oppositions second string/part time ruckman. I've been very frustrated by the lack of AFL games big Preuss has played, but I can also see the sense in it when he would likely get in the order of 80-100 ruck contests in the VFL as opposed to the 20 - 50 he might get at AFL level with Gawn in the side. Really hoping this seperate development strategy for Pruess is close to complete and starts to deliver a combined Prawn beast for us on AFL game day soon.

Man he cops a battering on here but think there is a place for him in this side. Granted he’s out of form and possesses physical attributes that on the surface limits his ability in the modern game, however I saw enough last year to believe he can make it. Pace/size of course is his biggest limitation but I think he has the footy smarts and ingrained competitive nature to help him along. Lets keep in mind he is a 19 year old kid who was playing in a Prelim final side last year compared to a 16th position performing side this year, which hasn’t helped his development.

We are only 3 wins plus % out of the 8!!!!

Because they're morons

Tried that. Lets work with what he's good at

Garbage. We absolutely deserved it because we were the better team and were limped home in the last quarter through grit. Weak assessment.

WHen you consider it we gutsed it out in the last quarter even though I feel we were out on our feet. Sensational effort from Oliver, In just about every contest. Preuss was pretty handy actually

I love footy. I still love all of you. I'll be back another day, but don't be a [censored] - just enjoy a win. No matter how bad it is. I'd rather a W than an L. Cheers.