John Demonic

Maybe we can rip it up some more and play a game of NRL on thursday night at the ScrumCG

Hawthorn are still one of the oldest teams in the comp, they would have budgeted far more money than us from their future retirements including Roughhead. And that's not even to mention that he'd probably take unders to go there compared to us. No chance, look elsewhere.

Give up the chase, Hawthorn are already linked to him. https://www.afl.com.au/news/2019-04-06/cashedup-hawks-linked-to-recovering-giants-forward-patton

Fair call. The last week has been a tumultuous time as a demon fan and it's awful and emotional seeing issues from last year unaddressed and leading to our demise so far this year, so it's hard to look back right now and ignore those faults and see the progress we did make. The overall block of progress from 2014 onwards has been a brilliant boon for the club however, so we've been on the right track and it's been a bumpy but worthwhile ride. But now it just feels like we may be at a fork in the road where a lot of the good work may become undone with a poor season that leaves us as run-of-the-mill as many other teams with a list full of potential that may never fulfill itself, while other lists do. And now to top it off our prize recruit that was our great promise of holding together our backline came back unfit and overweight, an absolute disgrace! 3 weeks in though, need to calm down.

Maybe he's been smashing burgers all off season with Relton Roberts?

Ironically, the seasons 2nd half might be a more entertaining block of games if we finally click, than last year. When we have our backs against the wall and are in do-die games to make the 8, things could get interesting. With winnable games and then: WCE, Rich, Coll, Syd. We're so far from it, but if we can beat those clubs, it would provide us with some momentum going into 2020, even if we miss the finals. Just like it did for the Bulldogs last year. All is not lost if we get our gameplan in order and show up and prove we can match those clubs. If our [censored] falls out from under us and we don't put in any effort because the finals hope is over, well then god help us for next year.

It sounds like Goodwin just expects everything to click and go our way eventually and we just streamroll teams with one way chaos-ball momentum. It's all a bit one dimensional.

The rose colored glass mob in this forum have been blindsided by this, refusing to see that last years unaddressed deficiencies would be our downfall this year. (Although we all have to this 0-3 extent) The elephant in the room is that we should've missed the finals last year but had some fortunate circumstances go our way with Kennedy missing and GWS already cemented in the 8. We were continually destroyed by fast teams that used the wide expanses of the G all year. ALL YEAR I asked "when are we going to get a big win like in 2017?" Our big wins turned out to be False Dawns. A terrible Adelaide by 100, and WCE over there without their key pillars. The same problems last year with our defence and lacklustre forward entries, have now turned into the key reasons for our demise as other teams have worked us out. All of that papered over because wE MaDe ThE PreLiM. We beat up on the weak teams but continually failed against the better teams. Sadly the weak teams have now improved ten fold and we've been exposed.

? All you can do is laugh/cry.

Have we signed Luke Hodge to replace him?

The way I see this playing out is that We will beat the Bombers irrespective of the changes we make at the table. We're just better than them if our core players are on. The real problem is the false equivalence that a win justifies the teams selection, because we're just going to end up exposed week/s later against a better team when the FD are choosing the same players and leaving the same issues unaddressed.

We had Omac + Frost and Fritsch/Gawn as intercept last year. Why are we going Omac + Frost and May as intercept? Lever will come in and May will be lock down. 1 of Frost/Omac is superfluous to our needs long term, but we should still be going with Fritsch or Gawn dropping back. Having J Wagner as 3rd tall isn't really enough.

J. Wagner in frees up Hunt/Kolo and maybe even Hibberd to play more wing-time I suppose.

Not if we throw Marty Hore on him. Perfect matchup!

Probably the biggest that comes to mind is the 2017 round 23 match v Collingwood with him spitting the dummy at umpires and shouting at team mates. But i do notice his face looking quite furious with the ball delivery. It's no big sin, but i just don't see a player that rallies and inspires players to shift the momentum of a match. Just looks like a blamer to me. It's purely anecdotal though. Maybe others see him as a leader that demands excellence.

Off field he's a picture of equanimity and solid intellect, On-field he's demonstrative to team mates and sooky when it's no delivered on a plate. Hey, it works for Selwood so maybe it's fine. I'm just pointing out one of the issues i've found with him over the past few years.

He sooks too much when things aren't going his way.

This is an interesting one given how he has so far played in the last 2 weeks. He signed for 1 year in October last year. I wonder how much the Pies have budgeted in the cap for him under the presumption that he'll recapture his best form. I would assume they probably haven't budgeted what others would be prepared to pay if he has a big year. I still think he'll probably injure himself at some point this year however, or next year if we actually signed him on a decent contract

I'm curious, who is our intercept defender with no Lever? Last year we needed Fritsch there and then Gawn dropping back.

Just heard it on Sam McLures 'Just Between Us' too. "Eyebrows raised internally" at the asking price of 700k. Who knows what's real or parroted from the original rumour.

Spargo had no standout VFL games pre selection and adapted to AFL standard immediately. Why would we expect any different from an outside mid/wing who's not going to be near the ball enough to command selection with a standout BOG. Throw em in the deep end (if fit) and see how they swim.

Sunday Footy Show had a great segment with about 6 or 7 instances where our players either burnt each other or didn't even look for the handball or switch kick to a teammate with space to run into the 50 and just bombed it long. Followed with a segment on Petracca looking unfit and needing to lose a few kilo's. We all know it, just good to see a public blowtorch on our poor entries and some of the efforts. Hopefully will wake some of the players up.

Trevor Barker has risen from the dead.

.I like the look of Harry Himmelberg. Could be a gun. 1.94cm 23 year old out of contract, behind Cameron and Patton in the pecking order. Gets plenty of the ball, kicked 29 in 3rd year last year, first full season though. Good footy brain and takes a strong mark, a little like young McGovern. Shouldn't be too expensive to trade for.

We hadn't beaten a top 8 team until round 22. How do you explain that? Or is it filed neatly away in the denial drawer?