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Awesome turn out at the game tonight. Considering the Melbourne based supporters couldn’t fly up I thought I’d be lucky to be there with 500 other mad Dees. How wrong I was. Can’t tell you how weird but wonderful it was to be there cheering the “Mel-bourne” chant with my kids with thousands of other Demon fans in Sydney. Not to mention giving them a team we can finally trust and be proud of! They are only young and just expect Melbourne to always win which I think is pretty funny given my 30 years of following them. The highlight of the game live had to be the chains of handballs that resulted in the TMac goal which was as loud as the G. How many times in years gone by would we have bottled it right at the end even though we had the outnumber forward? Not any more! Mays pack mark was awesome on the wing when Brisbane were giving their final push too. Well done Dees and their outer state supporters. Was a cracking night. No voice left but I’m sure I’m not alone. Thoughts with all of you in Melbourne stuck at home but hopefully you’ll be let out soon and tonight has helped brighten your mood!!

MFCSS is still alive and well. Based on the evidence on the first half of the season I don't think we should be losing faith in the boys. Here are some handpicked selection of the worst. "Can we do "changes next week" already?" "We're not winning this. Brisbane is leagues ahead of the rest of the league atm." "Sportsbet paying 3.50 on lions 40+" "We just have too many ordinary footballers. No way we are winning a flag this year. Typical Melbourne, pump up your tyres, then deflate you when the crunch comes. So disappointing." "Time to give pickett a rest , keeps going to ground softly and it’s starting to become costly " "And sorry to say but a decades long Achilles heel has been brought to the fore tonight. We lack the mongrel to deal with a pack of dirty bastards like the Lions. " "We can't win this" "The challenge is to keep it as a "close loss"" "Fu***** disgrace Melbourne. You should be ashamed of yourselves. [censored] weak all round" While I agree Weideman did not have a great game I feel these comments are over the top: "(Weideman) Should never play another game for MFC again. Find another club son" "Absolute disgrace. I'm off Weideman. He's [censored] useless" Finally, a few snippets of the positivity coming through: "Wrist slashing time from all the posters above. god help us. What will you all say if we get up ?" "QB moved. I hate this state right now. I'll apologise for saying that later "

Great win! I’ll really enjoy the office banter on Monday! my best mate (kiwi - rugby mad) has been watching games with me of late, at half time he asked if we were a decent chance, I said yes we finish games strong and we cannot play any worse. He loaded up on the Dee’s under 2 conditions from me 1) he buys 1 x memberships 2) buys a jersey (would be 4xl) if we win. We shook on it, ladies and gentlemen we have our newest member haha!

Excellent work. I reckon I can name the owners of some of those ‘nuggets’... And can I just add that what a disgrace some of you were about the faithful up north - they rocked up and brought a noise that was worth 5 times their numbers. Well done to the Northern states fans - you were great.

Shout out to Harry Petty. A few had questions on him, but this kid is going to be a star intercept defender. Another Jason Taylor special.

Yeah play him in defence, sick of seeing Lever, May and Petty clunk marks. I need dropped marks in defence back in my life.

Trent Rivers has the composure and footy iq of a 200 game player. he was superb again tonight!

Please don't use the word cluster in a forum full of Victorians. Very insensitive.

Thanks to all demonlanders for your well wishes today. The boys definitely did it for my mom tonight and I am very grateful. Well done boys. What a win and great noise from the small crowd. GI DEES.

Got to hand it to Nick Riewoldt on Fox Footy last night. I thought we were gone at half time but Roo thought differently:

How bloody good is Rivers? That one handed intercept mark halfway through the last was all class. Looks like he's already played 200 games.

It would be nice if we could wait a day before we start bagging the usual suspects. They were part of a great win, give them a break just for the night. Please.

Listen up Dees fans. There will be ups and downs, but don’t EVER write this team off. We are a very good football team. Nobody wants us to win. Commentators and journalists want to maintain the narrative about our football club - soft, shaky, lazy. But we aren’t any of those things. We are hard and fast. Stick fat, stick together, and never ever doubt this current group. Go Dees.

Walking into work Monday morning these days be like .....

IMG_0738.mov

Get that up ya..

And this time stats are the truth......58% game time, 19 disposals, 4 marks, 5 tackles, 1 very crunch goal. That’s a lot better than ‘fairly quiet’.

Tom McDonald remembered at halftime that 18&21 Tom has a lot more fun than 19&20 Tom. He is just bloody immense. I didn’t see this resurgence of his coming.

This is the best I’ve ever seen us. This is the first time in my lifetime that we are the premiership favourites. Sure we’ve had other great season like in 2000, but that was a year when Essendon was always going to be premiers. I don’t think there’s any team we can’t beat this year. Definitely our best season since 1964

The council's around Victoria have put in a complaint to the MFC. It seems there are lids all over streets everywhere across the state.

Our Premiership window is NOW. We don't need to keep gifting games to a FF who can't mark the ball or kick goals today.

That Spargo and Nibbler are making the ‘whipping boy’ brigade look like the mugs they’ve always been brings joy to my heart. They are serious, professional footballers dedicated to playing to their potential in a team that understands the value of such an attitude. Never deserved the garbage so many dish up to them, and last night was the perfect vindication of that. Considering his size, the number of times Spargo not only halves contests he shouldn’t, but does the deft tap, the block, the tackle, and creates opportunity for others, not to mention his vision and ball use, is just special. And yet, just watch the knockers come back when he has a quiet one. ANB just goes and goes, always has, and for someone who has no flash and no tricks, to have found an extra skill level 6 years into his career should impress everyone. And yet......

Last weeks win was a high like ive barely known as a 50 + years supporter. This weeks win sent me to a whole new level. 20 points down at half time against a side 3rd on the ladder having just won 7 straight. To then come out and overpower, out run, out tackle and out think them was more hawthorn or richmond like than any melbourne team i’ve ever known. Add to this that if we hadnt kicked 4 goals 8 from set shots ( one of the few negatives) we could have won tonight by more like 8 goals. in reality after half time that was a massive thumping. More than last week, this week tells me , with an ounce of luck, we can win this years flag. it’s the team orientation, the coaching moves, the emergence of so many new stars ( kozzie, rivers, jackson, spargo .. yes spargo) with the old ones ( gawn, oliver, petracca, May, Langdon Lever, Brayshaw) stepping further up. Not to mention fringe players like harmes, petty, anb , sparrow all playing outstanding roles. barely a weak link! how many melbourne teams have i been able to say barely a weak link about? This team is one fr the ages. 11-1 . crazy .

I was like Gaz. I had Ed asleep on my lap in the last quarter. Twelve weeks old, eleven Melbourne wins. Anyway, I couldn't cheer when we kicked goals because I'd wake him, but I welled up and fist pumped instead, just like my old man does when we have a stirring passage and/or victory.

There’s a bloke called Goodwin who deserves a bit of praise

I'm speechless.. To the point of tears..this is what it's like to support a genuine top team of the competition. Simon Goodwin you are the man. The boys run through walls for you and you deserve every ounce of credit coming your way. Went through a family separation and all the talk was he was next on the chopping block. Kudos Mr Goodwin.

We are an interesting supporter base. The moment I realised I loved the club was when Jimmy ran over the mark in the prelim in 1987 - it was horrible, but solidified my passion. I was 9 and sitting about 10 rows back from where it happened at Waverley. The history of the club for 23 year before 1987, and the 30 odd years since then, has been steeped in heartbreak. That year Robbie didn’t get to play in his grand final, Jimmy went on to become a legend of the club, and we lost them both far too early. Troy Broadbridge, Sean Wight, even the tragedy of Liam Jurrah. All of that doesn’t even take into consideration on the field we’ve massively underperformed, and bitterly wasted generations of players and potential. Our supporter culture has been built on disappointment. It’s important for us to change the narrative about our footy team too. We aren’t perennial losers. We are The Melbourne Football Club, with the longest and proudest history of any sporting club in the AFL. This team is the best I’ve seen - because we aren’t riding a wave, we are grinding a winning culture. I’m excited for us all. As Goodwin said ‘expectation is good. We need to learn to win when the pressure is on us’. Let’s not go to water as supporters. Keep the faith, yell louder, open the gates of hell - like only Demons fans can.

Jake Lever leads the way with accepting the umpire’s call. He gave away a free to Hipwood (I think) early in the game and you could him standing on the mark, nodding furiously that he understood, even though he was clearly pissed about it (probably at himself). If I were trying to teach kids the right way to manage frustration, Lever would heavily feature my examples.

Just saw this on the Fox Sports website the call it a farce with the low crowd: https://www.foxsports.com.au/afl/teams/melbourne-demons/afl-news-2021-melbourne-demons-vs-brisbane-lions-crowd-giants-stadium-why-was-game-moved-alice-springs/news-story/a0bca13a993a158ed7881f534de13004 The question mark being why wasn't the game moved to the GABBA where they would get a massive Lions crowd. This just shows how dumb Andy Maher is, why the bloody hell should the Lions get a free home game? They got a MASSIVE leg up last season and still couldn't get the job done, the game was in Sydney so hardly a huge trek for the Brisbane fans, and yet very clearly the Dees fans outnumbered the Lions fans. For once it was the right and fair call to have the game at a neutral venue, if anything it should have been at the SCG where I think there would've been more of a chance of people going. And well done to the Sydney based Dees-faithful, you did a cracking job of creating an atmosphere.

It's interesting to see the different way teams line up against us. Brisbane went for even numbers in the stoppage to prevent our loose defender. That worked well for them in the first half because they were winning the clearances. In the second half we just rolled over them in the middle with Max and the loose man in defence didn't matter anymore. The clearances we won, in general, were of a much higher quality that theirs. There are two ways we can beat teams: a) with a loose man intercepting whilst Max and our mids make the clearance hard, or b) with even numbers across the field allowing the best ruck and powerful midfielders to take the ball out the front of the stoppages. It's the differential of quality of stoppages between those we win and those our opponents win which makes us so hard to beat. With even numbers this is even greater, and outnumbered we are still competitive plus we also dominate behind the ball. It's a great 1-2 punch.

Please don't drop Sparrow again. He along with Jordon just add a different element to our midfield mix. Super tough and courageous.

You could actually hear them. Especially towards the end of the last quarter. The “Mel - bourne!” chant was loud and clear.

Tom McDonald's conduct after receiving that elbow to the jaw from Dane Zorko was exemplary. He pushed back and Zorko staged a fall. Macca then leaned over the prostate Zorko and told him the time of day. Effen AWESOME. After that the umpire awarded Macca the free kick and reported Zorko. MACCA...UNCOMPROMISING...TOUGH...ALL CLASS. Well done Tom McDonald!

Petty was important, he gave McStay a bath.

Charlie Spargo is very good

Who cares. Human nature that’s all. As in life, you avoid the whingers, naysayers and critics. Just enjoy the ride. We have waited a long time and if you can’t enjoy it now, you never will.

I noticed on the replay Trac pointing Spargo out and acknowledging he was responsible for two goals in the 3rd. The one Trac kicked himself and the T Mac roving and running one from about 40 out. Both times Spargo competed in the air and brought it to ground. Charles is having a ripper season.

Interestingly Sparrow had 19 disposals from 58% game time and without doing the maths I’d imagine that was the greatest disposals per game time of anyone. Great effort and needs to be recognised.

Best defence in the league, mate. Don’t need an out of form forward thrown down there just to see if there’s a spot for him. I understand the thinking behind it. But this is not the season for it.

That McDonald goal to put us 13 points ahead is the one that made me tear up. The incredible team handball, supported by hard running, and then McDonald getting the ground ball. I'm going to argue that's our best goal for the season. Elite handball, clutch goal. It basically iced the game.

The goal,in the last quarter where they flipped the ball through traffic from the back pocket, got,it to Jordan in the open, followed by a Tommy goal. I was next door with a mate and we went through the roof. We don’t kick goals like that! Oh yes we furkin do now! Getting wacked watching the replay. Happy days!!

I know a true fan watches 4 quarters of a replay so im gonna skip the first half and just watch the second half twice. GO DEES !!!

Really glad that Harmes is back playing good footy in the guts. Nullifying dangerous opponents, while breaking lines through the centre square and providing some great drive of his own. There were a good number of people who were writing him off as an ordanary player who no longer had a place in the side. Clearly an asset the way he's playing at the moment.

How bloody good is this... two Fridays in a row where we get to kick back for the entire weekend and watch the rabble battle it out. ?

I loved seeing Tmac gleefully giving him a gobful, then offering the arm to help him up. Fierce competitor and true sportsman. Class act.

By God there were a hell of a lot of people wanting him gone. And yet the same people cried out for a smart footballer with a neat kick. Well done Charlie!

20 points down at half time flattered us. 22 points down at full time flattened them