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In hindsight, Im not sure I could have handled a game that went to the wire. Its strange that if someone told me that Tmac, Max , Jackson and Kozzie hadnt goaled by three qrt time, I would have assumed a big loss. Gee Fritta must have been close to the medal. Almost bagged six. Still love his fourth goal for skill and momentum. Watching the replay, the 19 point deficit wasnt really an accurate depiction of our efforts. So many points just missed from set shots whereas dogs quick snaps went straight through the middle. Is it just me or did the dogs seem very flat coming out in the last. Its like they had already surrendered. Could that last minute of the third have taken away their hope? I know we were playing some inspired footy but it did seem they had dropped as well.

Cyril kicked 40 goals twice in his career, That's it, in 11 seasons. Kozzie has done it once. Its a great achievement and he has the potential to be better than Cyril. Particularly if we can pinch a couple more flags. People forget that Kozzie was an elite junior talent but has had to learn how to play a defensive team orientated game. That he has done it in his second year is a massive credit to him and the club. Many talents like that often pfaff around for a few years getting by on outrageous talent but Kozzie has put in an amazing amount of hard work to get to this level. He lost his mother and spent some 6-7 weeks back in South Australia over the summer where plenty here worried about him coming back looking like Austin Wonaemirri after a few sessions on the turtles. But Kozzie was working hard every day, training his bum off with Norwood. That he came back in outstanding form is an amazing effort and shows a lot of mental strength. We have a beauty here. he may not have touched the ball a lot in the GF but if you look at his pressure and work rate it was off the charts.

Heart and Soul of the Club. Can't believe people were calling him out for a couple of years there.

I’m waiting until round 5 to renew. Sick of the false hope.

The second-year goal tallies for some of the best small forwards in recent years: Stephen Milne: 50 Kysaiah Pickett: 40 Tom Papley: 30 Liam Ryan (mature recruit): 30 Cyril Rioli: 21 Eddie Betts: 20 Toby Greene: 4 What a special talent we have. Can't wait to see what this man can produce over a decade-long career in the red+blue.

One last one for the road, here's Big Benny Brown! And that's a wrap! Thanks for tuning in!

Why not ban all testing? Just rank the draftees by their commitment to climate change and equality action and draft accordingly.....

I went to a function the other night and was lucky to be sitting next to Jack Viney and I asked him who , apart from Melbourne, were the best teams and he said Footscray were and they were about on a par with Geelong. He said the two best teams played off in the GF. He didn't rate Port and said they were there because of a soft draw and felt we had the Lions measure, I didn't ask them of the other teams but I got the impression that apart from ourselves, the Bullies and the Cats, the rest were just making up the numbers.

Richo Richo man, I wanna be a Richo man...

He did bag 6

The look on Bonts face after Olivers goal says it all. He looks at the scoreboard replay, shakes his head, curses and almost cries. The other players in a state of shock.They gave up then. Not even a a semblance of a challenge in the last. Beveridge confirms this when he says in the blink of an eye the game was gone for them.

That is usually the case

100% correct. And there is no doubt we can improve our accuracy from set shots. That said Fritter, after a shaky start to the season i the first 2-3 rounds, was incredibly accurate for the rest of the year. And as Growll notes a full season from Ben Brown will help the cause and Tmac is pretty reliable kick at goal too. So key will be players like Nibbler, Spargo, Kozzie (who def improved his accuracy after he dropped his prancing horse routine), Jackson, Langers and the mids improving their set shot percentages. Even an incremental improvement from those players will help over the course of a full season. As evidenced by the dogs missing out on top 4 by half a percent, or some such, even a statistically tiny improvement might be the difference between say finishing second and a home QF, or finishing 3rd and having to play interstate. As Fanatique Demon notes there will be a range of other things the club will look to improve. And no doubt Goody, without going crazy (because consistency and predictability is now a fundamental element of our model) will trial some new strategies and perhaps positional experiments. What we might look to improve is an interesting question actually. Goal kicking is one. Improving how we defending small and medium forwards might be another. And of course individual players, withy the support of the coaches, will always be looking to improve aspects of their game. On the latter point, we saw the benefit of players improving their game this year. So many examples of this. Nibbler is an obvious one, as is Tmac and Hunt. A less obvious one is Viney. Viney really improved his decision making and this improvement helped the team. He hit more targets, dumped kick into our forward line less often (the one in the 2nd q of the GF was an outlier) and stopped trying to take the tackler on all the time. If say, players like Sparrow, Jordon, Spargo all improve their game a bit (as is likely given natural improvement), as do fringe players like Laurie, Smith, Chandler etc etc then we will improve as team (assuming others don't go backwards). And then you have Kozzie, Rivers and Jacko who scarily for opposition teams still have several levels of improvement in them. And of course add our pick 17, Laurie and Rosman and Tomlinson to come back into contention for selection and things are looking pretty good on the improvement front.

Brilliant record... magnificent contribution! Thanks again, Mighty!

After using pick 94 for Jordon, we have 33 senior (+5 A rookie) players ie 4 list spots enough to use our other 4 live picks if we want. Its been reported/guessed that we will take use two or three live picks in the draft which will leave 1 or 2 list spots left for post draft additions.

As sad as it was not being at the G...Im glad we didn't have to battle for the flag last year. Sure it was weird seeing a granny in Perth but truth be told it was better than last years one in Brisbane. it was sold out and certainly had a great atmosphere. Also I dont feel anyone can take anything away from us with covid. There were no shortened quarters. No stop start. No 30 games in 30 days,. Other than a few crowds missing and change of venues it was business a usual. Credit to the Afl for all their work. And a credit to all the western fans and those who travelled.

Felt like we kicked to the pocket less in finals, or am I imagining things?

I had the lovely guy I sold my tickets to send me pics from the game and even days after….

It is with great trepidation that I reply to an acolyte from the Spirit of Norm Smith tree of influence after Mitch O’Neill won South Adelaide’s best first year player award this year, but I will try and help you out. Firstly, there are some incorrect facts in your post. Josh Honey was a second year rookie this year and Cottrell was also a rookie (rendering obsolete your complaint about Carlton’s use of him.) There are some list and TPP mechanics that are relevant but arent referred to in your diatribe. One of the most important is that rookie promotions count towards the AFL’s mandated minimum three national draft picks per club. So by switching players from the relative ‘lists’, it helps clubs satisfy that requirement. In the current AFL world where list sizes are incredibly tight that has a value. Carlton are positioned to have only one National draft pick, perhaps two, this year, so they’ve covered the AFL’s draft requirements with the rookie promotions. We can now move to TPP. To recontract O’Brien they would have to pay the AFL senior list minimum at worst, now they can pay him the rookie list minimum, a saving of at least $30k in actual real dollars. The movement of Kennedy is a counterweight to any TPP benefit most likely but its still a positive financial result for the club. The actual rookie list TPP saving maximum is closer to 100k than the 60k from your post. So the O'Brien for Kennedy switch has at least a real world money saving benefit, plus it has extremely positive list size and national draft implications. In terms of Honey, the National Draft pick factor is relevant, plus Carlton had a huge rookie list last yeat with high retention into this year, so promoting him helps with that, given that the AFL tightened the rookie list screws with its latest list size announcement this year. Him moving to the primary opens the extra slot for one of the delisted players. Im not sure but as a third year supplemental rookie draft player, Cottrell may have reached the ceiling to the amount of time he could stay as a rookie, they may have been forced to either delist or promote. If thats the the case, the former is a more sensible line of attack. The moves are about satisfying AFL rules and dealing with list size issues.

My champion Premiership coach from 21 years ago recalled I was a staunch Demons supporter and went out of his way. Legend.

So I rang the club today to upgrade my son to a reserve seat membership as I already have 1, managed to get 2 seats together but it was a struggle had to change to a dry area, so if anyone is wanting to get a reserve seat sorted for next year best you get onto it lots of membership sections are sold out already and from what the lady said they have been smashed for reserved seats

Agree with all three points. The other big difference to the 70s, 80s and 90s (and even into the 2000s) is back then key forwards rarely left the 50 metre arc. To a lesser extent the same is true for half forwards. Which meant that they rarely had to kicked whilst super fatigued or gassed. Sure the guns had good technique, but fatigue exposes suspect techniques - and even small flaws. Compare the kms brown runs in a game to say Dunstall. Chalk and cheese i suspect. The only real equivalent to the old stay at home forward these days is Hawkins, and perhaps to lesser extent Dixon. It is no coincidence he is so accurate Brown might follow the play all the way to the wing or even our defensive zone and 60 seconds later having a set shot at goal. The same is true for our small forwards. And generally we play a very aerobically taxing game so there is every chance any player kicking for goals will be sucking wind. Another difference to the 70s, 80s and 90s is back then forwards more often had open leading lanes straight up the ground, so their shots were much more likely to be on good angles than today as modern forwards have to contend with zones, blocking, tow on ones, intercept marking and players blocking leading lanes.

So nice! For sure, the circumstances and the efforts everyone (the club, fans east to west and everywhere else) put in to be connected gave the whole thing a very different flavour. I've said a few times that I've never given all that much thought before to Dees fans in WA and what it's like to follow from afar, but I'll always have a special respect for our WA fans now and will do what I can to make sure that connection stays strong, as it always should be. Certainly if I'm ever lucky enough to attend a Grand Final, I'll be thinking about the people unable to attend due to distance/cost/not getting a ticket and how to ease that for others because I so appreciated what WA fans did to help us feel like we were there.

I guess my point was that when we are rated THE BEST EVER for defending D50, there's probably other areas that should be higher priority. Goal kicking is prob no1 for mine - but as others have said, it's part of our setup to kick to less dangerous spots (in case there's a turnover) and when it mattered in finals, goal kicking wasn't much of a problem. Arguably the D50 stats are inflated due to the pressure coming from our midfielders and forwards which ensure less quality entries from the opposition, but they're still the best ever. In addition to what Binman has outlined comprehensively, I think the key to us moving forward is continuing to innovate. We are the definitively the hunted rather than the hunters now - so we can't expect it to just happen. E.g. try Jackson as a ruck rover, throw Petty forward, give Kozzie some more midfield minutes, play Tmac on the wing. Not necessarily all of this and certainly not all at once. But we have genuine weapons who if played in the right spots are almost impossible to stop. Next year everyone will be coming hard at us and trying to break down our system. So while its important to back it in (as it will beat almost anyone if we are "on") we have to be ready to mix it up - to counter teams who have done their homework on us and to provide more options should we sustain some injuries to crucial players.

Frawley is welcome to his bonds with hawthorn. Premiership players are a dime a dozen over there. And Frawley can stay persona non grata at the Dees as far as I am concerned. At Melbourne, our players have created history that can never be erased. They will be remembered forever. Frawley? Pfft

Thanks. So we currently have picks 17, 37, 49, 57 and 94. I would predict that we will use 17, 37 at the draft with 57 being more than enough to match for Taj. That leaves one list spot for a SSP addition. We should be able to leverage something out of pick 49, which should come into the low 40's by the time all the pies and Bulldogs picks get absorbed in their f/s selections. That will be pretty valuable to a few clubs, including those that need more points for NGAs and f/s or maybe just want another selection all together. StKilda, GWS as well as Pies and Dogs are just a few clubs that might be interested in it. I'm not sure it will be enough to seriously upgrade pick 17 but we could perhaps get an upgrade to 37 or perhaps a future pick or two for next year.

One of my favourite players. Was gutted when the Dees offloaded him. We shipped out all our experience around then and suffered big time.

Wasn’t the turf that did it he was driven into the ground. It was a pretty ordinary act by Brent Guerra, who got him late and IMO tried to injure him and did.

Yeah, it was Guerra and the turf at Docklands. He would have got 5 weeks for it now.

Fair call. Perhaps 'project' wasn't the right word. More that he was taken knowing he would take time to develop. Having said that he hasn't developed at the rate most of us would like but the club still has faith. I reckon he might still get there; not the star KPF we would hope for from a pick 9 but a very good contributor to our fwd line. .

If it were today they'd upgrade you to first class GO DEMONS!!!

I think there have been a few instructive instances this year of your improvement in this regard. The best example l can think of offhand is the vital goal Gus Brayshaw kicked in the grannie in the third quarter on a 45 degree angle 45 metres out. He deliberately took his time and nailed it with a perfect kick. Meantime BT was going bananas in the commentary box saying he is not paying enough attention to the game and should hurry up! Apparently Gus has been having special practice goal kicking at every training session at Choco’s skills academy because he has been unhappy with his goal kicking performance. A better example of advantage of specialist skills coaching l could not imagine as that kick more than any other got us up and running at a critical time in the game and we never looked back!

Makes up for that one that looked like a goal that Max kicked in the second QTR I think. I was spewing at the time.

I got my premiership flag, the last piece of premiership merchandise I ordered, delivered on friday. I get a lot of people calling out as I drive around town

I've been thinking that there's plenty of upside to Ben Brown. Last season he came in not-so fit, cemented his spot late and played his role extremely well though without all that many goals of his own to show for it. Next year he'll have had another pre-season in the program to build the fitness and synergy with teammates, and with confidence riding high (surely...) plus other dangerous forwards to demand the opposition's attention (including Gawn and Jackson here along with TMac, Fritta and Weid), i have a feeling we are on for a genuinely dominant year. Nutshell: Overconfidence??? Dunno, I reckon the forward line has plenty of room to mature.

Interestingly GWS recently stated they go best available except when they already have a surplus of that type. They have lost young players who cannot get get a regular game through a strict best available rule. When they are well stocked with the best available at their pick they now consider needs.

When I saw the title, I was actaully thinking haircuts... there are some shockers.

I like the idea of another young KPB as the May retirement plan. I still hold hopes for Turner too, but we'll have to see on that one. When you look at our young defensive crop there's Petty, Rivers, Bowey and then Lever at 25. May has at most 4 or 5 years left and given his hammy issues, I doubt anywhere near that long, so we need to be looking at contingencies. I'd much prefer we were strategic about list needs for 5+ years from now this year, rather than in 2-3 years going to the FA pool to keep us going. As we've seen at Geelong and to a lesser extent Hawthorn, it leaves you with a very long rebuild, with middle of the road first rounders to build a core around. So if we can get another Harry Petty and JVR fits that bill it's a no brainer. We can worry about replenishing elite mids down the line and I'd back our list management team to be clever in acquiring the necessary capital to get a look at the elite talent.

I've been going through the whole season and I agree with you goal kicking was a bit of an issue all year however the finals games weren't too bad especially against top quality opposition. Mark Williams has been big on this with the introduction of his balls to our training. Throughout the year you could see massive improvements in certain players kicking (Ie: Bayley Fritsch, Clayton Oliver, Christian Petracca all vastly improved throughout the year) The second half of the Grand final was especially very clean goal kicking wise We kicked 16.5 in the second half compared to our 5.9 halftime score (3 behinds were rushed for the game) (And Gawn's point in the second quarter was def a goal but we cant count it) In the Prelim against Geelong we kicked 19.11 with 4 behinds being rushed So we kicked 19.7 in the Prelim and 21.11 in the Grand Final off our own boot that totals at 30.18 going at a 62.5% accuracy The AFL average from 2015-2021 in goal kicking accuracy is 48.4% The Brisbane QF we scored 13.15 (but had two rushed) so we sit at 50% accuracy for that game I think we are going to see an improved team next year because they now have undoubted belief that they now have the ability to achieve greatness and the skill improvements we saw across the season to build on from here.

There are a number of posts in this thread suggesting that Howe is this complete [censored] who overrated himself, left the club and never did anything. He left us and really developed into a top line player who not only developed his consistency within games but across entire seasons. He has been at the pies for 6 seasons and from memory has finished in the top 10 in their best and fairest 4 times. He has been injured the other 2 and has been a big loss for the pies. He was a very good player in a great back line for the pies (yes they were) and while he wont get the captaincy, his name is one that would come up in conversation as an option. We weren't the only team who were likely to draft him from obscurity. He had a few clubs that were looking at him. He was named in the 40 man squad for the All Australian in 2017 and was maybe a little unlucky not to make the main team. Yeah, he made a joke about Melbourne having low crowds. It was a dumb joke and was very low hanging fruit. He would have got a good laugh from the Collingwood [censored]. I took it as the joke it was (we did have low crowds FYI, as we had been a complete basket-case for [censored] years) but fully respect that others found it very disrespectful.

Best part of any MFC supporters daily routine.

It mentions an interstate tour early next year. I hope it bloody comes to Qld. Hopefully the boys come up to Mooloolaba for early season training and show off the cup then. Fingers crossed.

This is great and so smart by the club, a lot of young kids are going to get chance hold it and become Demons for life.

Bunjli Place is next to Fountain Gate Narre Warren. Part of the City of Casey and probably easier for some down there to get to than Casey Fields.

...and yet TWO places in Geelong! (...mind you, take that, Catters!😆)

Not coming to Casey? WHAT-THUH??!!

Weid will play more games than TMac next year

The driver of that thing must have had a big day. After he ran over howe he drove on further, out toward geelong, and ran over Isaac Smith as well.