Mazer Rackham

Bert has made a very sudden change to the way we play. Remember the stodgy wins on the way to qualifying, and embarrassing draws & losses? Now we look really quite dangerous. It's just our lack of finishing letting us down. When we compare the one touch, BANG! finishing of the best nations ... the ones who will go deep in this tournament ... to our touch, stop, look around, ah sh*t ... pass backwards efforts ... nearly always our men around the box take that one step too many and give the defenders the time they need to clog it up. In terms of what Aussie fans will accept, I think most understand we'll always struggle to compete with Brazil, Germany, Spain, etc. I think most want us to simply punch above our weight and claim a few prize scalps. Give us something to be proud of, where we can pack the bars all night long. But that means going deep into the tournament and not limping into the 32 and then going home after 3 plucky but unfulfilling matches. Put another way, we don't expect to win the cup, but nor do we expect to simply make up the numbers. Verily, there are none so blind as those who will not see. Has he stopped to consider who owns the club? (Hint: Gulf businessmen.) Also that there are 8 British players in the squad of 27? Compare with cellar dwellers West Brom, owned by Chinese, 12/20 locals. Down to the next level ... EFL Championship (second division in the old money) ... Aston Villa: Chinese, 12/24 ... Wolverhampton: Chinese, 14/35. Down again to EFL League Two ("3rd division") ... mid-table Doncaster Rovers: British, 23/29. Basically you aren't going anywhere without the money to buy foreign players. (There are a small handful of British-only owners in the EPL but it doesn't need saying that they are fabulously wealthy.) By the way! My statistic about our last 5 goals being from Jedinak was wrong. I trusted another web site that should know better rather than look it up. Turns out he scored our last 2 (up to 4 now in this cup), before that it was Timmy with 2 and before that, shared between Kruse, Leckie, etc.

Well, bummer. Now our fate is out of our own hands. Even if we manage to beat Peru who will not be any pushover. Turns out our last 5 goals in international comp (not counting friendlies) are all by Jedinak from penalties. Our fire power around the box is very limited. In AFL terms we generate plenty of inside 50s but do not convert any of them. We are in heaps here and need to throw it around a bit. Start Arzani for some X factor. Play Timmy for as many minutes as he can handle. Have to get on the scoreboard and pile on the pressure. And then hope ...

Correct. The council's imagined paradise of a car-free CBD would involve people parking "near" the city and them tramming it or bussing it or walking. A car park there might seem attractive, in that anything to do with cars can seem in any way attractive to them. The car-free CBD (which we are told will gain financially from all these pedestrians, but somehow not suffer from lack of vehicles bringing in punters) is all well and good except for the inconvenience of King St being the only north-south artery in cooee. A 30 kph limit would not impact much given that it's rarely possible to do more than that anyway. And car-free completely? Only someone detached from reality could even consider it. King, Exhibition, Lonsdale, LaTrobe, even Flinders are all ways of people getting from A to B who would otherwise have no intention of going in the CBD. (Swanston too once upon a time, until they made a mall out of the wrong street. Elizabeth St is the natural mall and cul de sac, not the windswept wasteland of Swanston.)

It's okay. If any mobsters about town are MFC supporters, he will soon come to understand the benefits.

You'll never guess what happened when we used to train on the Junction Oval. Spoiler: it ended in tears. One reason why we left there to find a home for us, a special place, a place where we could belong.

Someone's taking a hell of a screamer

Yes, the drive through service is terrible. I've found it a lot easier to get out of the car and walk in.

History buffs! The East Melbourne cricket ground was closer to the CBD than this proposed site. It was at the SW corner of Wellington Parade South and Brunton Ave. Now housing. Another way to work out where it was, is if you can imagine in a straightish line, roughly equal distances apart, Punt Rd oval, MCG, East Melb cricket ground. Here be photo of an actual game. The houses in the background are on Brunton Ave (Jolimont Rd). The crowd there would nowadays be standing on the north bound lanes of Brunton Ave. The double storey houses are still there to this very day. Behind them (in the distance, not visible) is the MCG. Pic itself was taken in 1896. The last match played in the VFA before 8 clubs broke away to form the VFL.

HEY FELLAS! Post-queens birthday special offer. If you drive and Demonland and smash your car, but still get the post out, we'll pay your panel beaters fees! Up to fifty bucks! Terms and conditions apply and Demonland responsibly.

Demonland responsibly!

Guy doesn't have perspectives. Or policy positions. Or even a philosophy. He is a policy vacuum who fills the space with whatever seems like a good vote grabber.

I don't recall mentioning my personal opinion of the merits or otherwise of bicycles vs cars. I am hammering on councils' over zealous condemnation of cars.

"Two wheels good, four wheels bad" That's all you need to know to understand most decisions made. In fact you are now you are qualified to be a local councillor.

"Dear local councillors, If you put this facility in place, no one will EVER AGAIN be able to park on the land used for it. In fact, the bigger the facility, the more cars & more drivers you will punish! Yours, MFC"

Wouldn't trouble me at all to see Trengove tear it up against us. (Provided we win, of course.)

That second goal to France was a kick in the guts. I'd just told myself we were a chance to pinch a win. But on reflection we still don't have much sting around the box. Only when Timmy's playing and he'll only come on in the utmost emergency as he won't be fit enough to play too many minutes. The VAR certainly needs some fine tuning. That was very peculiar seeing time wound back to the penalty incident. It was a penalty unfortunately. Gee France will find it hard to field a squad in their next match seeing as how many of them received crippling injuries in this one. Some of them multiple times! What a laugh having just watched the fearful punishment the rugby players cop in the state of origin. That's an ongoing problem that soccer has in this country that it doesn't have in other countries. Ole Bert has us playing much better than I thought. Before the match I'd reckoned on 2-0 or 3-1. 2-1 is not too bad for us provided France get in gear and demolish Peru and Denmark. Iceland. If there there was an "everyone's second team"! Poor bloody Messi will be a nervous wreck and in 20 years time will be found begging in rags in Buenos Ares main square while raving about Ronaldo and the world cup. Saw on another site, "In the airport on Madeira, the Ronaldo bust has developed an extra inch of leer."

Yes, evil.

The review was like a parliamentary enquiry. The outcome was pre-ordained. (As in, the president would come out of it squeaky clean.) As you say, there was no way the bloke commissioning the report was going to have it say that he should be replaced. I don't know why Pert left but I can easily believe that he was [censored] off, as a lot of CFC members were (and are), at the autocratic ways of their president. Example (one of many): the Gubby Allen fiasco. Whether he'll be good or bad for us, only time will tell, but the way he left CFC is to be taken with several handfuls of salt.

Malthouse is the biggest [insert 4-letter word of your choice, one never to be uttered in polite company] in football. Next week Malthouse will saying, straight faced, that he has never criticised Gary Pert in his entire life.

I think Murphy is a guy who was making waves about the lack of independence of the CFC board (all Eddie appointees) and Eddie hushed him up by having him do the review. Easy to see that that could have rubbed Pert the wrong way. That was all Eddie.

For those concerned by his record at CFC ... was he ever really allowed to run his own race there? Eddie is president, CEO, footy manager, list manager, marketing manager and even second-guesses how the boots are studded. I'm inclined to think Pert did well there in spite of the handicap placed on him. One thing: he knows what a big powerful club looks like and how it behaves.

Matthews was an exceptional footballer but had the worst case of white line fever in history. Some amazing feats on the ground but at what cost? By his own admission he was a pretty strange cat and didn't really have normal relationships off the field either. Football first, daylight second, then family and friends somewhere lower down in the top ten.

No PhD required, it's simple. Watts was our Robbie Flower mk II. In those dark days of the late 70s/early 80s, when there was nothing to live for, Robbie could always be relied on to bring some magic and breathtaking football ability. The ray of hope, the footballing genius. Something to be proud of. However Watts was forever "just about to" deliver the magic. That he could is why he was loved. That he didn't is why he's not.

I think you're jumping to conclusions, ET: his mum might not have a basement.

The thought seems to bring you some kind of pleasure. Strange, that kind of gloating is not what one would expect to hear from a MFC supporter. Something's not adding up. I wonder which part?