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“Dad, will you watch the Boomers with me tonight?” ”Sorry son, dad needs to go to the footy by himself or he’ll get guilt-tripped on his internet fan forum.”

Severe mental illness and not earning enough money will do it. Happy you’re able to go but some of us struggle every day just to survive.

Clarry faded in the last, but with a full pre season, that's when his gut running sees him dominate and go above 30+ touches. If Clarry was fully fit this year, I reckon we're top 2. Provided he has a full pre season, he'll be back to one of the best mids in the game in 2025. And that's with Trac only playing half a season. We have a lot of upside next year and I expect the media to write us off. Just as they did at the end of 2020.

In the Bombers game Kozzie got a 50 for stepping over the mark, when the mark wasn even set and the umpire hadn’t yet called stand resulting in a Bombers gift goal. Have seen that 20 times since in suffer without penalty. Last night Kozzie gets grabbed in goal square without ball and play on and then Toby Greene blatantly ducks and gets charity goal. We lose by 2 points. Against Lions, Rivers loses a goal for running too far, actually 13 steps and we lose by 5 points. Have not seen a goal reversed for that in a few years. It is hard to take when controversial goals lose you the game and we have had it several times this year, with Carlton 1 point loss another, after Kozzie goal reversed incorrectly for a dangerous tackle, that was actually Kemp staging after he stopped the ball. Not once this year has it given us a win, which is the only consistency.

I'm not. A good list management over the off season can really change all of that. We've seen it happen recently to Collingwood and Richmond did it back in the end of 2016. We have solid core group of young players in JVR, McVee, Tholstrup, Windsor, AMW, Turner, K Brown, Jefferson and Woewodin as a good starting point. Get another pre season into these guys and watch as they step up again next year. If we can add an elite top 10 midfield talent through the draft and then maybe a solid free agent or two then I think we'll be fine. I expect us to play finals next year if we can really nail our list management decisions we'll over thr off season.

Can't speak for others, but I was just avoiding you.

This is such a garbage post, I'd like to think you're better than that PF but maybe you're not. Dragged himself out of hospital to be there tonight and stood in the freezing cold on the boundary before going back into hospital tomorrow morning. Has built a strong culture around the playing group who clearly love him as evidenced by most players signing long term deals. Our only living premiership coach and the man who was able to break the drought after 57 years. Whatever you think of him he is etched in Demon folklore til they stop writing about the game. I think he needs some new voices in the coaches box but he is a damn good coach. Great at strategy, maybe not so great tactically but none are perfect. Clearly had us ready to play as we came out of the blocks red hot - reminded me of the Semi Final last year actually. How exactly was he outcoached? Giants are a flag contender, we will be lucky to make finals with our best player side lined and a raft of kids being blooded.

Only a loser club would stop trying to make finals while still in mathematical contention to make it. Don’t see Pies or Hawks giving up for goodness sake. It sets an awful standard and achieves nothing. We still have plenty to play for.

I saw enough tonight to suggest this guy can be his best again with a full pre season. Tonight we saw those weaves and evading traffic moves, also the way he would U-turn out of a contest (Something I always thought he and Nathan Jones did so well). Ran out of legs late but on a cold and dewy night there was enough there.

This is the reasons EVERY team loses. I know you know this :) And for those that are unclear - and use this as THE reason to make sense of it to blame the FD or the athletes - this has happened to every single team, every single season. What's with some supporters disconnect with understanding how fine the margins are to winning and losing, within each club within the competition that is designed to be equal (forgetting the draw,) and then the outrage towards players the the FD - that occurs when we lose, it's seriously [censored]. Aside from being Freo's bunnies - > we're a team that has had a lot of adversity this year, a lot - and had to patch things up on the fly...and have been quite valiant and shown lot of resilience considering the context of injuries and other missing athletes. It's as if this knowledge evaporates to some people when focusing on single game outcomes, and is such a shallow binary analysis. Still, from a club perspective - I'd rather be us than Essendon at least... 😎

My excuse is a declining passion for AFL.

None of your business

16k at a Saturday Prime Time Home game. I was there. If you weren’t whats your excuse? Want other clubs to respect us and stop saying we don’t turn up? Get off your [censored] and stick fat!

He made the most pathetic defensive chase I've ever seen in the last quarter. game on the line. he just jogged a couple of steps. let the giants player waltz away. Totally unacceptable. He's a great forward for us but i can't abide such a lack of effort. A message needs to be sent.

Firstly, I’m a paid up member living in Sydney who is financially bereft and therefore can’t afford the fare to Melbourne and necessary accommodation. Secondly, as a result of six months worth of chemotherapy, I have rather severe peripheral neuropathy that has somewhat affected my mobility. It would have been nice to see more punters there, as I believe that’s the kind of thing that can get us over the line in those close games, but like me, I’m sure there are many who have their valid reasons for not attending; particularly given the predicted weather conditions, the lack of parking, and, I’m led to believe, the interrupted train services.

I live 2 hours south of Perth. My private jet is in for a service and I absolutely refuse to fly with the commoners. I'm sorry but I have standards.

Bailey Laurie has to stay in the side for the rest of the year. He played midfield and I thought he was actually decent. His clean hands in the wet stood out and there's something there to work with from a midfield perspective. 19 disposals, 3 tackles 10 contested possessions, only the 2 turnovers for the game and 24 pressure acts.

I didn’t go tonight. My mate who i go to most games with couldn’t go so I decided to stay home with the family and watch it on tv rather than go solo. Day games on my own are good but i don’t like night games so much. Does this make me a less hardcore supporter? sure. But i don’t give a [censored]. sport is meant to be fun not an obligation. I have enough [censored] going on in my life (as everyone does) without footy being one of them Anyone feeling bad about the media BS just know that Pies Tigers etc have triple at least the fan base. i’m not talking just members. we should be proud to be demons supporters given our low fan base

Look there are plenty of people with valid reasons for not attending. And there are equally as many people who just sook it up and don’t turn up when it all gets a little too hard. It took me 1.5 hours to get to the game because of the lack of trains again. I can’t feel my toes. But I made it my mission to get to the game because it’s important to support your team even when it’s not the most comfortable experience. We have an overall impressive supporter base who have stuck it out thru absolute hell. But there is no doubt that when the going gets tough a lot of our supporters don’t get off the couch. It is embarrassing and hard to defend when you get this crowd on a Saturday night for a must win game.

My dog ate my ticket

People who think they will be giving up on the season are delusional. We are half a game out FFS! Beat the Dogs and we are back in the running

I'm in Northern Wollongong. The cost of flying or petrol to drive is just too much these days. I actually enquired about a sleeper on a train but this was over 400 bucks. A train fgs. In Europe 400 bucks for train travel would give you seven laps of the whole continent. I get the economy of scale and what have you but travel between Sydney and Melbourne is not a small market. 5 million in both cities. Would it really be that hard to have a relatively fast rail service between the two at a rate that doesn't require refinancing your house again Australia is becoming not so lucky anymore . Governments pay way too much to oseas consortiums to build infrastructure that is always above budgets. And pollies spend way too much $ on travel oseas on so called fact finding missions about the environment when they could do it all by zoom and help out the planet by not burning so much bloody jet fuel. Flying is the real environment killer. That and over population. But I digress. Where were we? Footy. Um yes just too costly for istate supporters.

We drove in tonight but no parking at G not even for permits, long walk grand kids were stoic, six of us made it in but to be honest it was freezing cold and we had a brilliant first quarter but kicked ourselves out of it when we couldn’t score at more than 50% accuracy rate, Giants scored at 65% and they beat us out of the middle. By the time we got back to the car we were icier than when we got there but very poor crowd.😪

6 - Clayton Oliver I also thought it was Clarry’s best game for the year. 5 - Trent Rivers works so hard and never gives in, great 1st half 4 - Jake Lever much better game tonight, ran hard to spoil and link up 3 - Ed Langdon excellent work rate, saved us numerous times, couple of dodgy out of bounds but he back to his best 2 - Judd McVee cool and calm under pressure great kick breaks up their attack 1 - Jack Viney great contested work, wish he had McVee disposal -10 for Umpires, made my blood boil even when I was starting to freeze, Jeezuz how cold was it at the G tonight. We could have won it but in the end it was Hogan, bad luck, our inability to man up and our poor disposal that cost us the game.

First game I've missed all season due to a close mates 40th. I'll always support the dees through thick and thin, but there's more to life than footy.

He has been our saving grace this year, against Hogan in his best year ever, and you want him to retire off 1 bad game?

If there is one thing that this thread proves it's the fact that people shouldn't be made to feel guilty about not attending. Mental health, terminal illness, cost of living, financial stress.. There's more to life then attending a game of footy. I saw the crowd number last night and I honestly couldn't have given it two thoughts even though I have previously been critical of crowd attendance. The only thing I wanted for the whole night was the win, everything else didn't matter to me. Kudos to the people who braved the cold last night. I live nearly 4 hours away and play local footy on a Saturdays so that automatically rules me out. I can't wait for retirement from footy because it means I can certainly commit more to getting down for a night or two to watch a few games. Last lived in Melbourne back in 2018 and went to a fair few games. That year was by far one of the more enjoyable years of attending live footy. I remember attending the last game against the giants at the MCG and you could feel the excitement and buzz around the area because we'd pretty much just consolidated our spot in the finals for the first time in 12 years and the pubs after the game was buzzing with Melbourne supporters! The finals experience that year was absolutely next level. Even the 2022 and 2023 finals series just didn't have that type of atmosphere that we had back in 2018.

I'd have been there but was in Lorne watching with a bottle of Pinot and a cheese board. Don't tell me I'm not hard core.😃

I thought so too, and to an extent he us a victom of the high bar he had set himself, but he has def lost a bit of his confidence. Made some average decisions last night and his kicking, which is one wood when on, was off and has been for a while. All that said I think it is often under rated how difficult it is coming back from serious contact injuries. Bowey was terrific in the preseason games and prior to injuring his shoulder in that sickening collision when he put his body on the line. Like langers after coming back from his broken ribs, bowey hasn't looked the same player since coming back from his shoulder.

I was angry last night but have calmed down now and accept that the performance is just where we are at and we just need to look at small wins. I do hope the FD are realists and if we have players that will need surgery in the off-season get them in now so we are ready to go day 1 of preseason. We aren’t winning a flag this year, but no reason we can’t do it next year with a fit list.

Do you think he played well yesterday? If he played like that every week he would be a regular. We actually improve with hungry footballers, instead of too many very comfortable ones.

I am not a fan of Bill, but agree with your post. He was ok yesterday and deserves a run at it to build confidence and a sense of belonging. He could be another mid that we so desperately need more of. He is already our player so let’s see what he has.

I was there Dazz and Jeffo was fantastic in the wet with 17 disposals. Could, should have kicked more goals, but his wet weather contested marking was magnificent and his ground ball gets, tackling and intelligent, intuitive handballs/ tap ons, were brilliant! He simply must play for the rest of the season IMV! Anyone else who was there want to back this observation up??

Proud of our comeback. To go from 27 points down with 10 mins left, to game on in the last minute shows some good character. The effort and pressure was overall good tonight and I hope we play the role of spoiler for the rest of the year, starting with the Dogs on Friday night, who themselves have a 5 day break.

Losing by 2 points to a contender is a fine example of what? Ffs what a joke some of our supporters are.

It rained alllll day, stopped at about 5:30. And it was freezing. I’m using my attendance as part of my insanity defence.

The worst thing for us to do is to waste 2x first rounders on Dan Houston. Please don't go down this road MFC. 🙏

That kind of excuse really sh!ts me.

Look after yourself mate. Feel free to flick me a message anytime for a chat. (I didn’t go because I had severe diarrhoea)

Oh get off your soapbox. Some people have valid reasons why they can’t attend. If you put in an appearance hope you enjoyed yourself.

I went, but don’t begrudge those that didn’t. It was bitterly cold and wet all day in Melbourne. It’s a night game. Night games have no appeal for our supporter base, which is mostly older supporters. It was against GWS. No mutual fans interested. Train lines were down. About time the AFL looked at its scheduling. Saturday nights are for TV. It’s Rugby League territory. Saturday nights in the dead middle of winter between an interstate side is just yuck. Also, hard to get kids to these night games. It’s too late. Saturday nights in the middle of winter are simply not family friendly.

Petty had a poor start I thought but worked himself into the game and did what we want from him. Laid a couple of jarring tackles, kicked a (couple?) of goals and made himself a target across half forward. The last shot he had should have been a 50m penalty. As he's walking in to kick the umpire the umpire clearly says "Toby, Toby, back 2 metres" - I assume he is talking about Greene or Bedford because we had no Toby's playing tonight. How is that not a 50m penalty??? Compared to the one paid against Kozzie when we played the Bombers which was white hot this one was 25 seconds into a players set shot and he was encroaching on the protected area, hence the call to go "back 2 metres" - how is that not a 50m penalty?? Cost us a certain goal but you won't hear any of the sycophants talking about it, just like they won't mention May's push on the back or Greene's duck which both resulted in goals. I'm also fed up with Viney and Oliver being manhandled at every bloody stoppage, there were at least 2 or 3 blatant holding frees tonight they didn't get. They tried to make sure the umpire saw it but the maggots just turn a blind eye. It is infuriating, happens every week.

It literally isn’t. The longer the season goes the more tired and sore you get. When you’re coming off a 0 base it gets harder. You don’t gain fitness during the season unless you do a mini pre season which involves not playing for a while (see Ben Brown in 2021, and McAdams this year). No player in the history of the AFL has had a limited pre season and then magically went on to get fitter by playing as an inside mid every week. When you have little or no pre season, your entire season is impacted. That’s fact.

Jeepers there are some hot takes in here. Having a crack at Oliver when he was far and away our best player for the first three quarters and played his best football in months (all year?) is ridiculous - yes, his fourth quarter was no good, but he looked spent after carrying our midfield for the first three quarters. Having a crack at the coaches for having TMac on Hogan is easy but Hogan had kicked 1 goal for 2.5 quarters before getting on the end of their midfield going berserk for 15 minutes. TMac's problems tonight were his own fault, not the coaches. Having a crack at Lever for dropping an intercept mark late is harsh (that he was even able to get his hands to it speaks to his ability) particularly given he had kept us afloat in the middle two quarters. We lost this game due to our usual inability to execute fundamentals under pressure, coupled with carrying a number of unfit and either out of form or not good enough players. Some vital 50/50 umpiring decisions going against us sealed the deal.

I just want to say, how good is Windsor? Just about everything he does is gold, rarely makes mistakes and often beats 2 or 3 players 1 out. Absolute star. As is McVee. Who was not embarrassed tonight against TG.

Hope you're well mate, always here for a chat whenever mate, you know where my inbox is.

I really don't understand comments like this. It was always obvious that losing Brayshaw and Petracca was going to cost us the season, add to that an unfit Oliver who can hardly even get through games yet alone have an impact. Yet people are surprised and calling for heads to roll? It is what it is. Why can't people put on their big boy/girl pants and deal with it?

Wife 9 months pregnant. I’ll buy another membership when the baby is born to make up for it.

JVR infringed 10 times without a single free. May pushed in the back on their last goal, everyone but 4 umpires saw and knew it. We have not had the rub of the green with frees, injuries and other sides kicking straighter.

Chin up young Caleb, there'll be plenty more opportunities to generate a match winner off the back of a burst down the mcg wing. He was genuinely gutted and it's great to see so much passion. Future is bright. We'll be back