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TRAINING Tuesday 9 July Mood was subdued. Out in three squads, VFL , AFL and the rehab. Braydon Preuss unseen, Jake Melksham running laps, Max Gawn getting time tested (running freely), Jack Viney on light duties, Tim Smith and Billy Stretch running laps. The younger players in the VFL squad are all matched with experienced players, Brendan McCartney directing traffic. Toby Bedford and James Jordan looking good as was Corey Wagner. Jake Lever vocal, Oscar Baker moving well as was Oscar Mcdonald. The AFL squad drill with a soccer game, then move to some serious goal kicking of 35 meters out then some bananas. Kyle Dunkley looks ready to go again. Kade Kolodjashnij working with the AFL squad or it could have been Michael Hibberd wearing his number. The run lasted less than an hour, on a beautiful Melbourne morning.

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.

Also, on the topic of over-celebrating, just have a think about how the players would have felt in that moment when the siren went. They were spent. They had been working as hard as they could, with almost no rest, to try to hold on and prevent a loss which would have opened up so much criticism (given how much they're copping despite winning, imagine what they would have been thinking about the ramifications of a loss). So the siren goes and their natural reaction is to be happy. FFS. In the heat of the moment, sometimes humans exhibit emotions. In this instance it was 100% justifiable.

We are the worst team for ground balls inside 50, Petracca is top of the comp for winning ground balls inside 50. You don't trade out players that are helping in our weakest areas.

Weids is a typical young KPP. Can't seem to read the play. Is nowhere near strong enough to win a body on body contest. Is not fit enough to play the Nick Reiwoldt game. Goes missing far too often. But when he attacks a contest with "that look" in his eyes, i can't help but think he will one day explode onto the scene as a real focal point. Still young. Give him another pre season or 2. I think he has the goods.

This is stupid. Now we are just looking for reason to sink the boots into Misso. Watts broke his leg in an accidental tackle? Whats that got to do with this stupid 'The Mission effect'.

The change with the most likely short-term impact was Rawlings as forward coach. Three rounds since the bye and I would say it has been really successful: In 12 games Pre bye we kicked more than 10 goals only 3 times with terrible kicking efficiency (118 goals and 130 behinds) and our forward line was a mess. We won 3 of those 12 games. In 3 games Post bye: we have kicked more than 10 goals in all 3 with greater efficiency: 39 goals and 30 points. we have won 2 of the 3 games. Tom Mc has hit great form Petracca is much improved Better forward 'connection' when midfielders aren't blindly flicking the ball over their heads Better positioning by forwards and mids area kicking it to their advantage. Our forward line is more open A real shame Tom Mc is out. Would have enjoyed seeing the fwd line at work with him, Sam, Petracca when Melksham returns. Alas, we need to wait till next year. Good move to make Jade forward coach and great work by him. Hope he stays with us.

there's no way i'd want to lose petracca, personally one of few players who has got better in this horrid year

Not true. Adelaide lost draft picks for breaching the salary cap in the Tippett affair. Essendon lost draft picks for the Melbourne were fined for doing the exact same thing Carlton, Collingwood, Hawthorn, West Coast and probably others had done when the priority pick scheme was active. The fact the AFL's punishment was so light was reflective of how it was such a token effort. We then didn't get a priority pick when we were clearly far worse than any of the recent bad sides. We turned Frawley in to pick 3 which was overs but the Suns got the same for Tom Lynch and there's been a heap of teams receive similar overpays. Tyrone Vickery netting the Tigers a 2nd round pick one of the greatest swindles ever. Carlton stunningly managed to match Melbourne's 2013 2 win season and the Blues and Suns got state league access which we didn't. The Suns are already clear of the 2 win mark. It's impossible to say they are worse than Melbourne or Carlton's low mark.

To those that talk about he would have to spend 40%+ of the time at FF, and doesn't have the speed for the position. Given the Melbourne method is to bomb long and high inside 50, usually to about 20 - 30m out, wouldn't this be exactly the type of person we want sitting at FF? There were times the big fella man handled Kruezer in the ruck and in marking contests. He lost out a couple, but for the most part he competed or brought it to ground. I also recall his intro in the NAB was 2 marks on a strong lead, and careening into a big pack... again, exactly what we would ask for? While again not quick, I saw a tall bloke that was unafraid to throw his body-weight around to win a ground ball in the centre. Something that Melbourne have been criticised for inside 50. Surely they can play in the same team, while he might not get any quicker, the endurance can only improve, and I've been encouraged by the way he plays.

How many budding fitness experts from Demonland have applied I wonder

I heard Harley Bennell had a coffee with Misson 5 years ago too the man's effect cannot be underestimated!

From the grassy knoll.

On the couch suggesting Gold Coast should get a PP before first round this year. Also mention that St Kilda and Carlton who havn’t made finals since 2011 should also be in the conversation. If our Pick 3 gets pushed due to perennial losers I will lose my [censored]

Any drills to practice dampening down their celebrations?

Pretty sure the OP is joking guys.

I've been trying to build a 22 that could make a move for top 4 in 2020. There’s a little bit of my own flare on it, most notable is Salem into the centre as a new prime mover. We're screaming out for class ball use in the middle and we already have it! I'm also aware there are some who doubt that we can play May, Lever, Hore and Frost all together. I'll bank on Frost's ability to play on speedy smalls as well as talls. As it is I think we have: FB: Jetta May Frost (int) HB: Hore Lever ____ | Hibb ---------------------------- Fl: Gawn Olivr Harmes | Gus C : ____ Salm Frit | Viney ---------------------------- HF: Trac TMac Melk | ____ (fwd/mid) FF: ____ Weid Hann Depth is an interesting mix with some players in more than 1 list capable in multiple roles. Wouldn't want more than 5 or 6 of these in the team before we start having a big drop in output. As evidenced by 2019 Def Depth: Petty, JWag, Omac, Hunt, Jones, KK*, JSmith* Mid Depth: Baker, Jones, Pruess, KK, AVB*, ANB, Dunkley, Sparrow Fwd Depth: Lockhart, Hunt, AVB, ANB, Dunkley, Spargo, TSmith, JSmith, CWag Delist/Retire: Lewis, JKH, Keilty, Maynard, Stretch, Garlett Ongoing Development: Bedford, Chandler, Jordan, Bradtke, Walker, Nietschke *Horribly unreliable fitness records means these potentially quality players were ruled out of my 22. What we are missing: Defender: Preferably with a good 2 way runner to help us spread from the back half quickly. The obvious player that has been discussed is Ed Langdon. He would be a handy inclusion. Wing/Outside Mid: Baker has shown a bit in this role and given the unlikely nature of us being able to trade for anyone it is likely we'll need to hope he steps up. Brad Hill would be my target if he does go for a move home but I have no idea how we could get that deal done. Maybe bundle him up with Langdon and Freos first (8-12) for our first(3-5) and our 2019 first would be a risk but maybe worth taking Small Forward: And I mean a real one! Not a midfielder or a defender who we throw forward and hope will compete. ANB, AVB, Hunt. These guys aren’t a big enough threat to the opposition ball in hand. I have mentioned Petruccelle in the past but it's unlikely WC would deal him. Richmond has a small army of forwards to look at but I'm not sure who is gettable and would suit us perhaps Bolton or Butler but I worry a little that they'd struggle away from Richmond. Fwd/Mid: Someone who is a threat on the scoreboard but can also move right up the ground and help out the mids. Lockhart has been good since coming on board but like Baker is still very inexperienced to be relied upon. When they are the 21st/22nd best players we're ok but this year they have been the 15/16th best players with all our outs and that’s too much to expect. Jack Martin is the one for me, I can’t ever imagining a deal getting done, Suns would want a first round pick which we wouldn’t have left to give. The Elephant in the room: I can’t post this without at least discussing the KPF. In my 22 I have Tom and Sam as our Keys. Many here are insistent that a better KPF should be priority 1. While you'd have to be stupid to not think there better options than these 2 out there, I think that for the most part those options are too expensive for the limited gain we would get. Spending the farm on Cameron or Brown might mean that 1 player kicks more goals, but our list would still be horribly unbalanced. What I would do is look into potential 19-22yo KPF in the lower level and try draft one with our 2nd/3rd pick, but good luck nailing that. The Dream Wish list: Ed Langdon, Brad Hill, Jack Petruccelle, Jack Martin. Of course getting all them is wildly unrealistic and the keen eyed would have noticed that even if those 4 came in we would need at least 1 more to go out of our list before the draft and I haven't really considered the salary cap at all. But I'm interested as to how others would go about filling those holes in our list. Wow this is much, much longer than I anticipated, better add a tl;dr. TL;DR We need a Defender (E. Langdon), a wingman (B. Hill), A small forward (J. Petruccelle) and a fwd/mid (J. Martin). Will never happen but that would be awesome thanks ?

If you compare his numbers to Jordan de Goey this year its a pretty good case to say he is tracking as well. Maybe not as dynamic but not far off the De Goey numbers who people really rate (as do i) What i loved was a little thing he did on Sunday, took the ball, saw it was Jones and took him on.. that is the surest sign of a player finding his place, having confidence and knowing his game. All really good signs.

No. Petracca is a keeper.

'I will become a 6000-pound gorilla on this': Suns to ask for No.1 pick When I saw the '6000 pound' headline the first I thought was they were making fun of Dew.

What a joke. Firstly on Gold Coast - They got picks 2, 3 and 6 last year so need to be patient. (and if any of their picks leave they just need to negotiate a return like GWS do) They've lost 3 games under a goal they easily could have won (Exhibit A vs us) They've made a couple of really poor draft picks (not even referring to the pick 2 for Weller trade but the pick swaps with West Coast and the one with Brisbane this year). Carlton are finally improving (Exhibit B vs us) and as much as it pains me to say are on the up. Saints aren't that bad, (Exhibit C vs is), a classic mid table club at the moment and don't deserve it until they've been bottom 4 for another few years.

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

Because Frost was sooooooooo good as a forward last time we tried? Yeah, nah.

My first choice was the White Sox @ -1.5 but they weren't up and listed at Laddies. They duly saluted - ugh! Dodgers was next choice but there was no pitching advantage. And I don't like picking road teams ... thus, the choices were limited. Was on 5 of Zac's winners on Sunday at Sha Tin though so from a personal point of view my weekend on the punt was a beauty! Soccer season is just around the corner but we should get a collect soon enough fellas ?

Yeah, I think Kreuzer initiated the confusion by having his back towards their goal and looking to give it off. Not on a knock on our fella, just thought the sequence was funny, especially the slow mo, it looked like 2 BFGs trying to dance the Nutbush.

As I posted on the post match thread - 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 big 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. I do think Trac will go Bang and become reconised as an elite player when the fortunes of the team swing back to being more compeditive. Whilst his influential performances might have been flying a little under the radar of even our supporters this season, I hardly think his value to our side would have been unnoticed by our opposition's analysts and coaches, who would be targeting him with their best mid sized defender most weeks, particularly with Melksham out of the side. That he has performed consistently well in an underperforming side is a mark of some mental toughness and maturity. I am looking forward to him really busting things up once the side is back in full flight, I think he will ride that wave of confidence and his natural (Italian genetically inherited) exuberance will get right up the noses of our opposition.

We will fly up next season, no doubt about it. This season's smells of Richmond 2016 look what happened in 2017, its a reset sit back and wait, it's similar to Geelong 2006, look what happened in 2007, sit back relax, history has a way of repeating.

Both Carlton and St Kilda have made the finals during the current decade so what are they complaining about. Melbourne also did it once but are now languishing in the bottom four and is a game and %age behind the Saints. Had Jayden Hunt’s shot at goal on Sunday gone the way of most of his team’s set shots, we would have been behind the Blues on the ladder as well. Therefore, we have as much right as those two teams to a priority pick - and it would correct an historical wrong as well. #prioritypicforDees2019 ?

And us as well. That whole second rebuild period we got second go at the talent pool after GWS and GC had their go at it. Not to mention our previous No.1 pick being lured by the big wads of $$$$ being thrown at him by GWS with money and salery cap to burn.

It was Lachine Weller and he is a good player, while you wouldn't think he would be worth pick 2 when you look at the players picked that year, I would take him ahead of every other player from pick 2 onwards in the top 10 bar Jaydn Stephenson. GWS got 4 mini draft picks, which they traded for essentially 4 top 3 picks. This is a substantial advantage. GWS also got lucky with a better group of pre-draft players (Treloar, Shiel, Camereon amongst others). By doing this the draft lost elite talent the years while the Gold Coast was at the bottom.

Did you see Collingwood or Hawthorn on Friday night, Essendon the week before... The standard is probably at it's lowest in the AFL at the moment, it's turn over city out there. Whilst I agree we have a lot of work to do we're no Robinson Crusoe.

I wonder were you at the game or watching on telly? Because to me, viewing from the northern stand, plenty changed. It was obvious from the opening minutes that our play-on-at-all-costs-through-the-corridor approach of earlier this year had been jettisoned for a much slower, controlled possession game. We looked to switch wide at every opportunity and did not seek the corridor until closing on the forward 50, and not always then. Rather than gambling with frantic play-on football we set out to deny the opposition possession by maintaining it ourselves. Statements like this: Watching us enter forward 50 is amateur hour at its finest. We are literally a comedy act. It's as if we try and navigate the most difficult route to goal once inside our forward half are simply meaningless. And considering we had a key forward kick six goals in three quarters and another forward score three goals from 11 disposals your remarks are simply wrong. It seems to me your prejudices prevent you from observing what's really going on.

Look, the same jollies will enjoy the win, talk about how we held on with three down on the bench but won't bat an eyelid at the fact that nothing has changed regarding the way we're playing. The first half? We were deplorable against arguably the worst side in the AFL without Cripps, Curnow and McKay. Let's get real here, the end of the season can't come soon enough. Watching us enter forward 50 is amateur hour at its finest. We are literally a comedy act. It's as if we try and navigate the most difficult route to goal once inside our forward half. The problem with this list has never been effort based. It is entirely skill and decision making. We are the least skilled side and have the worst decision makers in the AFL. List must change over the off-season if we're to get back to finals.

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.

Frost and May, The Odd Couple, worked well in tandem this week and the longer Frostie stays near May, the better he will be as a defender. Don't rush him into the forward line which has been tried and proved fruitless more than once before.

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.

Has definitely been one of the few bright lights this year. Hard to think of other players from 2018 who are playing as well let alone better this year than last... perhaps Salem and Frost

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

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.

Welcome Percy, fantastic post.

And the blokes 5 years younger...

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.

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.

Because they're morons