titan_uranus

Lions, Rams, Vikings

It's largely available in an unlocked article on The Age: AFL 2024: Melbourne Demons would not have returned Christian Petracca to field after King’s Birthday Clash "Richardson said there were lessons for the competition when asked about the club’s response to the incident at the Demons’ annual general meeting on Tuesday night. “The athlete has a fair bit of say in what happens there. I reckon that will be something that probably will get looked at, not just from our footy club but in the AFL going forward … they are just competitive beasts who want to get out and play and that carries a lot of weight. How much weight should that carry?” Richardson said. “My understanding is that incident will continue to get investigated … we will want to get better as an industry, not just from our football club... “It was a really difficult situation for our medical team. It has basically never happened before. He then went to the next hospital and they didn’t diagnose it properly. So that gives you an understanding of how difficult it was... “The doctors, with the evidence they had at the time, did the right thing. In hindsight, would we do something different if we knew the extent of the injury? Of course, he would not have gone back out on the ground,” Richardson said. “We will always put player safety first from a coaching perspective … we just get out of the way. That’s the doctor’s call.” And then Goodwin: Coach Simon Goodwin said he had been “blown away” by how Petracca had returned to the club. “He is really connected with his teammates and is driving really high-quality training sessions,” he said.

Agree - Peter Ryan has developed what I think is now a habit of being condescending towards us (Andrew Wu is another Age journalist who seems to be going down that route). The reference to "a couple of Gawny darts", the Jordan Lewis "joke", even the last line which invites us to "Pop the question" as if Hawthorn are sitting there waiting for poor old us to go over and ask them to the dance or something. All completely unnecessary but seem to be par for the course with certain journos now.

Chiefs, Bengals, Ravens

Saints, Bills, Bengals

Seahawks, Texans, Bucs

Wasn't sure where else to put this, but did anyone notice Greg Baum's cricket piece in today's paper? Australia v India Test: Marnus Labuschagne endures an embarrassing day with ball and bat That second-last paragraph looks awfully like a completely unnecessary November drive-by targeted at us.

I hope anyone who wishes to pass judgment on this financial result went to as many games as they could.

Out of random interest, does anyone know what the answer to question 7 was?

So am I right in thinking that the only players yet to join training so far are May, Gawn, Billings, Langdon, Melksham and McAdam? And that they are all due back on Monday? Edit: I missed Pickett

I [censored] love this thread. I’m fully aware it’s November, and the other 17 clubs probably have the precise same vibe from their trackwatchers right now. I don’t care. Give me Clarry and Trac smiling and hugging. Give me Turner’s determination, and Kolt’s intensity. Give me draftees tackling our premiership players 12-36 hours after not even being on our list. And even give me little nuggets like Petty to defence or Bowey up on a wing. Hook it all into my veins. Thanks to all who go and report back.

Some of the criticism of this pick is a bit much IMO. He might be a bust and never play a game? No [censored]. It’s pick 68. That’s an inherent issue with any pick at this point of the draft. We could have picked a runner, a flanker, anyone, and they could easily have never played. We don’t need to prioritise Casey with our list management? I hope, if you’ve said this, you weren’t someone who was bemoaning Casey’s lack of competitiveness in 2024. Mongrel/competitiveness not enough to constitute a pick? Possibly. But Schache and Fullarton copped it this year for lacking this trait. I don’t have high hopes for Johnson, but I don’t really care at all that the club’s given this a go with pick 68.

My least favourite thread of the year. I long for a year in which everyone just keeps their numbers and the only numbers to be "given out" are to new players. But, sadly, that won't be this year, with Tholstrup apparently taking 12.

Vikings, Lions, Chiefs

I'd be surprised if Twomey is wrong about his top 5. He'll have been doing little else other than ringing people for the last few weeks to suss it out. It therefore seems like Lalor, O'Sullivan and Smith are the first three, and the only issue up for debate is whether Adelaide decide to go with Langford over Draper. I'm personally surprised to read that if Adelaide take Langford, we're apparently going to take Tauru over Draper. However, I suspect in the end we get Langford and 5 and then one of Allan, Lindsay or perhaps even Tauru at 9. Also, this will have been debated before, but why the [censored] are Richmond, North, Carlton and Adelaide leaving it to us to bid on Ashcroft?

It's always folly trying to predict difficulty based on the 6 double-up matches. Someone in 2025 is going to be like 2024's Hawthorn, or Collingwood/Melbourne. It's more important to look at travel and spacing/breaks between games, and on those fronts it looks like we've done alright. So we lose two MCG games, one of which is taken off us as a home game and forced over to Marvel, but our travel is much better in 2025 - 7 games total, down from 8, but only 5 genuine away games with our NT game and a neutral Gather Round game. In 2024 we had 8 genuine interstate away games, so that's three fewer in 2025. I can't recall the last time, if ever, we only played 5 genuine away interstate games. Notably there are no Saturday night home games in our fixture - wholly unsurprising after the crowd-size debacle of our mid-winter Saturday night MCG home games. 1.20pm on a Saturday is going to suit plenty but also be inconvenient for plenty others. IMO, it's not perfect but it's better than Saturday night games. 3.20pm Sunday games are similar but they are at least on FTA which helps our exposure. The lack of Thursday and Friday night games is unsurprising given they need to cram as much "Hok ball" down the public's throats whilst still satisfying Collingwood, Carlton and Essendon. But if we're doing OK mid-year we have four big games that can net us prime time fixturing in the remainder of the fixture: Carlton, the Dogs, Hawthorn and Collingwood all at the G. Only 1 game outside of Victoria in the first 7, no genuine interstate away game until Round 8, plus no travel in the last 7 weeks, gives us a great chance to both start the year strong and finish strong. But the intensity of the 10-week block from Round 8 to 18, featuring 6 road trips, including three in four weeks around our bye, will put us under immense pressure. Let's hope the loading programme is spot on through that period...

If we don’t show up to our MCG home games none of this will matter. Carlton and Essendon are going to keep pressing for more MCG home games and someone is going to have to make way.

I just saw this: https://www.afl.com.au/news/1255357 Sunday night games in 9 of the first 15 weeks, not all of which will be before public holidays. These are almost as hard to attend for fans as Thursday night games.

Is this confirmed? For us to be on the same tier as Richmond, the wooden spooner, and behind St Kilda, is pretty poor. I get we played poor quality football for decent chunks of this season but it’s a stark drop off.

We finished a draw behind Essendon (with better percentage) but they've been given 4 Thursday night games to our 1. As you say, 1 is the same number of Thursdays that North's been given so far. However, I'm happy with that. I hate it when we play Thursday night footy. There remains Friday night footy available for prime time exposure and I much prefer that.

Packers, Vikings, Rams

Nooo.....

Bills, Vikings, Lions

The club's just published it on the website with the summary of the review findings: Letter from Brad Green | Football and Board Updates

Saints, Lions, Commanders