xarronn

I didn't read the thread on Petracca's possibly career ending injury, because it the incident and trac's injuries, made me feel extremely sad. I've been following the Demonland posts on Petracca the last few weeks A couple of weeks ago when Petracca turned up to training, WCW posted a pic of him talking to Chandler and she added a snarky aside about 'him'. I was surprised, but not absolutely sure who she was referring to. Jaded, can you (or anyone else), explain what the feelings of the group towards Petracca are and why that is?

Gee Max is good! I'm really proud he's our captain.

Top 5 - Bulldogs were in 5th pos.

what did they say dees189227? That was a real dog act.

I probably should have made it clearer that I was responding to the issue of whether the ground and conditions they played under where necessarily an impediment to them winning premierships. The list can change, but the ground and conditions, not much.

You are probably right Binman, but they had the same ground and conditions in 2001, 2, 3 when they won premierships and last year when they beat us on our home ground in the finals.

Bit weird referring to a young first year kid as "poor old"

Nearly 50 years after Australia went metric, I would be most surprised if umpires in their 20's and 30's were still operating in Imperial measurements. 😕

Sounds like you'll be milking it for all its worth 😄

Not sure at this time what the attendance at the Bombers v Hawks game is tonight, but seems a bit sparse considering the membership bases of these clubs.

What do you mean by this Super?

May is nearly 30, he has played for many years and these were his first finals. He deserved to be on the ground at the end.

Whispering, I believe there was another very important factor which may have been the most significant in our decline and malaise after the 64 flag. The VFL brought in country zones. These were supposed to rotate between clubs. In fact that never happened and my understanding is that Melbourne's zone was relatively unproductive. This was an incredibly unfair for the Dee's and caused the heartbreak for supporters until the late 90's. I have understood this for a long time and in writing this post I looked up on google and Wikipedia seems to confirm it. "The VFL’s response was to zone rural Victoria and the Riverina of New South Wales in a similar manner to metropolitan Melbourne. Because of the sparseness of Australia’s rural population, the country zones related not to the player’s address, but rather to the league in which he played. This difference made zone boundaries effectively impossible to adjust, and was a critical component of the failure of country zoning. The VFL was aware that discrepancies existed in the strength of each zone, and it was originally planned that the zones would be rotated every year so that each club would obtain a chance of receiving the best young country players. However, Carlton and Hawthorn lodged complaints with the VFL, as they had productive zones and were naturally unwilling to give them up for less productive ones,[1] so the zones remained the same from the inception of country zoning until it was abolished in 1986. There was also no provision for demographic changes which occurred in the various country zones, which exacerbated the problems mentioned above". Unsurprisingly, Hawthorn and Carlton were the two most successful clubs from the late 60's until the early 90's. Eight flags to Hawks and 7 to the Blues.

In fact that was the year that West Coast drew with Collingwood which gave us a bye in the week after our semi final against Hawthorn. In addition Essendon rested players for the last round, then had a week off as the top team in the five had, and then had an additional week off because of the draw. It really was a great opportunity for us and the game against West Coast was a gigantic disappointment.

Not sure if this has appeared on Demonland, but this is a very interesting survey regarding AFL club support and memberships. https://www.roymorgan.com/findings/8799-afl-supporter-ladder-june-2021-202109210357 We all would be hoping for increased memberships as a result of success and hopefully future achievements. However based on our supporter base and current membership conversion which is already at a very high level, getting over 65,000 members might be difficult.