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I spoke to my personal horoscope consultant this morning and he told me "The sun shines out of Uranus". He then went on to say that the moon is in the Seventh House and Jupiter is about to align with Mars. The next bit was a bit hard to catch, but I think this is what he said.

Weid really putting pressure on Van Rooyen to hold his spot.

whats the collective noun for a demon a dynasty of course

Honestly, I thought we were done with all this tripe. It feels like before the gf, half the posts on this forum were complaining about or having a whack at Goody. Probably one coach in ten or one in twenty coaches a team to a grand final victory. Simon Goodwin is the one. Fifty seven years we waited for this, whatever contract terms he wants, if they don’t cripple the club, he should get. We just built an outstanding premiership team, they absolutely demolished everyone they faced in the finals and we could well be looking at a dynasty 🤞. You can’t build that over night or by snapping your fingers. You have to put it together piece by piece and develop those kids. You are going to lose games, your are going to backslide sometimes and have to relearn what you should have already learned. You have to build relationships and trust and a coaching panel that covers all the right areas. On top of that we were coming from an incredibly low base. To nitpick and complain about those development years, seeing what they built for us, is just the absolute height of ingaratitude. You could just delete this whole post and replace it with 2 words… thank you

Disrespectful? Come on mate, you’re seriously not that precious are you? Sorry, but the logic that the coach is somehow responsible for most/all of the bad things occurring at the club and is barely a fraction of the good things is - and always will be - a silly view. Of course the coach is just a fraction of the workings of a club but you have to apply that to both the good and the bad, not just one. Otherwise it doesn’t make sense.

My two cents on the Weidemann debate; During my little covid escape from society I embarked on a day of Kayo repeats (as one does) with a focus on specific players and where our improvements and depth lie. Was rather satisfying validating time affected opinions on the likes of Tomlinson, Hunt, Jordan and Chandler to name a few. This lead to some opinions I might bring up in a fresh topic later on. But on to the Weed. I submit this potential sliding doors moment. For anyone with the time on their hands I suggest a rewatch of the first half of the Carlton game, Sams first game back from injury. He had come in more to replace Jackson than as a key forward and battled manfully in the ruck but in actuality played and unrewarded blinder in the front half. Tackled, crashed packs, lead to the right spaces without blocking his fellow forwards of which there were many (at times all 5 of Sam, Ben, Tom, Max and Bayley were present) and should have had 2 goals in that half to match his laser pass inside 50 to BB for an inportant goal in the context of the game. Spargo snuck in front of him and stole his mark in the pocket and Chandler, over eager to impress, flew at the wrong time and knocked the ball out of his hands when he was clear 20m out directly in front. Now as we all know Sam is very much a confidence player and I hypothesise that with that little boost of confidence from a blinder first hald he could have really cemented himself in and taken a huge step throughout the year. Instead, my brain says he went into half time thinking "Far out, i'm playing good footy here and still can't kick a flipping goal" and started questioning himself yet again. Now, more desperate to get on the board he changes what he was doing so well and starts to get in the other forwards way, fumbles one clearly overthinking it and ends up with 0.1 for the day. Do I think he will eventually click and bang down the door on his way to greatness? Hope is the best I can do. But am I confident if we ended up with injuries to Jackson, Brown or McDonald he would be far more than just token replacement. In other words, I wouldnt expect to lose any games because he was playing instead of one or even two of them. So thats not just depth, thats proper coverage

3 years is a good length contract, imo. If we continue to do well, just continually role it out further. Gives Goody security and reward, but not long enough to get complacent and rest on our laurels (especially not with our current list).

First 40,823 emails: "Something something HOME BASE something...."

I rewatched all the finals and the preceding games since our last defeat and it is obvious to me the inclusion of Bowey and Ben Brown were the last pieces of the puzzle required that made us a premiership side. Bowey’s clean disposal and clever decision making over Hunts spectacular but often error ridden play made our defence “no weakness” and Browns contesting and ever present danger freed up our forwards and midfield to score heavily which we couldn’t do previously.

You seem unhappy with other posters having a go at you... ...but then you want to put words in my mouth re contract length. I haven't mentioned anything in regards to contract length, for what it's worth I think he will get 3 years and that would be about right. I have pointed out that I think you are wrong in your assumptions and even though you never said the words linear progress your post points to that being a major issue with Goodwin. You are always going to get these fluctuations with a young developing team. In 2021 we saw the culmination in a balanced, maturing team. This doesn't happen from nowhere, it takes time to develop.

It's bloody pleasure to hear him speak to the media this year. We have more than a few quality speakers at the club and whilst I can be a bit of a language snob surely clearer communication must make it easier for the leaders of the club to really convey their thoughts to the younger lads and generally fire everyone up and inspire confidence. Rewatched Making their Mark recently and looking at the stunned mullets in the Richmond meetings and inability to really say anything at all apart from the word 'obviously' (which according to 90% of AFL footballers belongs in every single sentence) made me very proud of the likes of ANB, Trac, Lever, Gus and even Gawny despite his self confessed lack of vocabulary. Even our less confident speakers like Oliver seem far more switched on compared to a lot of other players out there. Mind you i'm not completely one eyed, i'm aware the likes of Bont, Sloane, Riewoldt, Hawkins etc etc etc speak extremely well, I just think we have more than our fair share of really switched on footy brains

Absolutely. As far as I know the relationship between all parties is very good and I have no doubt Goody will be re-signed.

No need for soil, sand is the growing medium. That's the standard for things like golf greens. You can seed directly into the sand but it can take a few months to grow. For quicker results lay instant turf, although it's far more expensive.

they"re freemasons

I was born in the year of the Tiger, which means this will be a year of good luck for me. So rest assured the Dees are going back to back and Richmond can get stuffed.

Richmond won 2 of theirs in years of the Pig and the Rat. And to think I never believed in astrological hocus pocus.

Agree. He is targeted* more than any other Demons' player. *assaulted

Vale Fred. I kicked the footy with his daughter back in the day. She was a raking left foot. Freddy was a natural athlete. The rumour was that the Demons wanted him but we were too unprofessional for Fred.

Year of the Tiger? Nah - more like the Decade of the Demon!

Yeah look to be honest it wasn't his best but in his handful of games he really did shows glimpses. He is also trying to do too much at times to impress, his best work in that game was sticking to his task and playing for the team. Then the oppurtunities came and he didn't dissapoint in my opinion. He brings a different element. He doesn't have the endurance and tenacity of ANB, the footskills of Spargo or the explosiveness of Pickett but he is the superior aerialist, second only to Pickett in pure crumbing. So if he sticks to it, improves his fitness base when one of them drops out he is going to be a quality replacement and hopefully get a run long enough to prove he will be hard to replace. In fact if he really pushed it hard enough he could potentially push Harmes out indirectly as ANB is capable of more mid minutes with Chandler being able to do Harmes F50 marking presence role a lot better. But he has to be able to cover much more ground for that to happen. No one ever wants to be able to run all day, it takes a brutal amount of work but its so often the difference

I understand that after all these years wanting a home base for the football club but how many time has Kate Roffey said that things are progressing behind the scenes but cannot comment on it at this time, we will let the members know as soon as we can, that will be the same answer again.

At 3/4 time in the GF, Oliver looked like he was about to collapse. I dispute that he fakes getting hurt. He cops plenty of savage hits but always gets up even if it’s up to an 8 count. He has remarkable toughness. Reminds me of Rod Grinter who copped heaps but always got up.

@binman, @Axis of Bob, @Engorged Onion et al, I would like to revisit the topic of clearances. If you stand still in this competition you are dead so what changes if any are we going to see this season. It seemed pretty clear as last season went on that there was a bit of a change towards working on winning clearances by the end of the season compared to the first half when it seemed the coaches were happy to concede clearances and rely on winning post clearance possessions. Yze said mid season you don't want to lose clearances because you don't want to concede territory to the opposition. That's a bit simplified but it seems to have been the trend. I've put together this table of clearance stat's for all 8 games against our finals competitors as a starting point for discussion on whether we can predict any new trends for this season. It's a shame I couldn't add in Post Clearance stat's as they are so highly rated by coaches. MFC stats are the first ones. First stand out stat for me is that we only lost 1 of the 8 games v Dogs in the wet when we went through our mini slump. Second observation is that on all these stats it appears the Lions are closest to us and the team we'll have to watch out for the most this season. Stats obviously have to be taken with a good measure of interpretation. For instance I'm not sure how much we learn for this season from the Dogs stats. The second game was in the wet during our slump and if we'd kicked straight we probably would have won anyway. Personally I don't believe the size of the GF blow out is a true guide of their competitiveness against us. We improved our Centre clearances against every team as the season progressed except v Cats in the Prelim where inexplicably we lost them 11-16, only won stoppages by 1 and lost total clearances by 4 yet had our biggest win of any of the games. We only lost Centre clearances in 2 games, the Prelim and rd 12 v Lions. We won contested possession in every game except rd 23 with Cats when we were even. Conversely we lost Uncontested possessions in every game except Rd 12 & the Prelim. The Cats were within 3 Hitouts of us in the Prelim and won Centre clearances 16-11. For what it's worth here's my predictions : I expect to see our Centre Clearance wins improve. Our Hitout domination didn't translate very often into an equivalent win in centre clearances. I expect to see Dogger more in the ruck this season so maybe our Hitout wins will decrease overall however our clearances will probably go up as his post hitout input is becoming so significant and Gawny in his book has flagged that Dogger has taught him to improve this aspect of his game. I expect stoppage clearances to continue to improve. I thought there was a significant improvement by the end of the season compared to the beginning and I think this will continue. As a result I expect to see our Uncontested possessions to increase. I expect the connection into the forward line to continue to improve as we have a more settled forward mix and more time to work together.

Well to be fair to Oliver, they should keep their fingers to themselves.

The notorious 1976 grand final where Cook locked horns with Allan Harper. Never thought Cook would get up.

I'm still waiting for Bont to be singled out for his head knock on Oliver in the Gf. It's been a while now.

Nibbler speaks SO well! He is a great communicator. He illustrates the mind set of the group really well.

Hopefully I can get another training report in on Friday, but it might be my last for a while😳

Ben Brown is a proven AFL good player over a long period. They tend to pick the tempo up quicker. North wanted to bank his salary for future 'mature player' recruiting while presently recruiting kids and list building. We were just strategically smart picking him up for draft pick peanuts. We will get performance compared way better draft pick value from BB than the Cats will get from Cameron.

In fact, the club will have to do it another six times. NASA had men land on the moon six times and there are still disbelievers out there.

Grand Final? It was the Grandest Final.

I think the dragon (instead of the demon) was used for the Chinese audience.

Anyone who believes this smoke and mirrors stuff also believes things happen for a reason.What utter Tosh! If you win tattslotto or get hit by a bus it is all random. Dont get me started on philosophies of life, death and most importantly winning premierships! Albert Camus was on the money. Existentialism is not neccesarily a bad way to look at things. Chinese calendars? Bah!

The infamous China game/trip, the Kaspersky Cup in 2010. https://www.theage.com.au/sport/afl/chinese-whispers-may-land-demons-sponsor-20111207-1oj6c.html Gawn vomiting on Scully, Scully throwing his toys out of the cot and leaving trip and club.

A hellofalot?

The problem I have with your analysis is that success is never linear...it has its ups and downs. In the drive for the premiership, the ultimate success, we should expect to have a time line similar to this. I wouldn't judge the coach on those results but on how he worked to fix the problems and fix them he (with the FD) did. ...2018 ultimately showed that we weren't there yet and without the drop off in 2019 I doubt we would have been able to build the team that won the prize. It would have been very unlikely that we would have picked up the 3 in the draft...Koz, Jackson and Rivers. 2018 also proved our need for KPD's and that took us 2 years plus to settle with Lever then May, along with Petty. We thought we had a generational forward in Hogan but that proved wrong so it was back to the drawing board there...come finals time we had a potent mix up forward, something Goody had worked on for a few years. You talk assistants, but they're only as good as the senior coach and his ability to let go and let them do their job. According to Burgess Goody is sensational in this area of man management. As for Yze taking the reigns down the track...I hope not. He should be aiming to pick up a senior job in the next 2 years and I doubt the Melbourne position will be open.

Sorry mate, but this stance is heavily compromised. The problem is that the people crediting the assistants as the (somehow) only reason we won the flag are the same dropkicks who continuously potted the coach when we weren’t performing well in ‘19 and ‘20, saying that he was the only reason for the poor performances. This shows a clear confirmation bias, meaning that no what information is put in front of you, you will still find a way to hold the same opinion about Goodwin even if it is blatantly incorrect. So please, if you’re gonna criticise the coach when the team performs poorly, then at least show the decency to give credit to him when we’re performing well. Otherwise people just look so stupid.

Gosch’s Paddock update. I guess the drainage & irrigation piping has been laid since my last inspection, now they have laid down a heap of sand and the surveyors were out this morning checking the levels. Seems like a heap of sand, so what’s next, a layer of soil or do we go straight to laying instant turf? Anyway things are certainly moving toward the May completion target date. Hanging out for training to return home. Casey is too far away for me and with the ground gates closed why would you bother to make the pilgrimage?

I read Fred's book a couple of years ago and he pulls no punches about his amphetamine addiction nor the many other troubles and strife that dogged him after his footy career ended. He actually played for three seasons at Footscray (Bulldogs for the younger reader) mainly as a ruckman and defender before making his name as a goal-kicking sensation for Port Melbourne in the VFA. Rest in peace, Freddy.

I played with Fred in the red'n'blue briefly, certainly a larger than life character, despite his later troubles was a great bloke to be around, certainly cared for all Borough people, supporters and players alike . Vale Fred

amazed he lasted that long......he did burn the candle at both ends....and in-between too

I was born in the Chinese Year of The Rooster and my astrological sign is Taurus. You might think this is a c ock and bull story, but it's true.

A 3 year extension, which is until end of 2024 is perfectly reasonable. Richmond did the same with Hardwick after 2017 (extended to end 2021). Clarko (after his 2nd flag in 2013) got a 2 year extension. Clarkos post 2013 contract extension Ironically, the more confident the coach is in his own ability and the list, the shorter the contract will be.