titan_uranus

“Kysaiah Pickett has been texting his mates who play for Fremantle telling them he will be in Dockers colours next year. That is a fact as he prepares to head west for the frenzy that will be created by his Indigenous All-Stars appearance next week. To suggest anything more is pure conjecture as multiple clubs try to get to the bottom of the enigma that is the 23-year-old Demons’ matchwinning premiership player. Fresh from a fourth placing in Melbourne’s best-and-fairest last year, Pickett has been in Darwin in recent days – a city he would ideally call home, if only the city had an AFL team. Instead, Pickett lives in Melbourne after spending his childhood across two states – an early stint in Western Australia before living with relative Byron Pickett in Adelaide, before being drafted to Victoria. Once again this summer, Pickett has been at the forefront of headlines over a move to the Dockers, fanning the flames after liking a social media post about a potential move. Melbourne is used to this predicament – Pickett spends time with rival AFL players outside Victoria during the off-season; they whisper sweet nothings about him playing alongside them. Last year it was Port Adelaide that came hard, given the links to good mate Quinton Narkle, after the Cats’ midfielder was signed by the Power in the 2023 mid-season draft. Only time will tell whether 2025 is Groundhog Day or something much more substantial. Narkle has since moved to play with Fremantle. Pickett is also friends with new Dockers recruit Shai Bolton and Michael Walters as well as his Demons’ premiership teammate Luke Jackson. Narkle’s partner, Taylah Cubillo, is the sister of Pickett’s partner Ardu Cubillo. Both couples have been blessed with children since August 2023, which has only strengthened the bond. But there is no guarantee Narkle will be at the Dockers in 2026, with both couples keen to end up back in Darwin post-football no matter where the players finish their playing careers. Fremantle and West Coast have made clear their interest in Pickett across the years – and recently – as the Demons rebuffed any trade prospects when the small forward told coach Simon Goodwin he was, at times, homesick in their exit meeting last year. So Melbourne will wrap its arms around him with support again and hope when his three-week AFL suspension expires, he again falls back in love with the city and the club. If the season turns pear-shaped, there is some chance he could officially ask for a trade, but the Demons could just as easily rebuff it. There are no guarantees. He shares a strong friendship with Goodwin, but the senior coach is not certain to be at the club past this season. He is hugely motivated for the Indigenous game in WA, but that three-week ban is problematic because it is hard to get up for a season in which his first game for Melbourne is on April 4. The very best-case scenario is Pickett helps lead this team towards a deep finals run that allows the Demons to hold firm on a contract through to 2027. But Melbourne has perhaps its three most talented players in Christian Petracca, Clayton Oliver and Pickett all under a degree of doubt about their futures past this season. Oliver and Petracca seem motivated to prove their critics wrong and Melbourne would reason that Pickett has always performed despite uncertainty about his future. So that flurry of texts to his Dockers mates could mean everything or nothing, depending on how the Demons’ season of reckoning pans out across the next eight months.“

Not sure what we can take out of a Youtube video of highlights of a January match sim, but surely I’m not the only one who watched that and thought I saw a totally different Clarry to the one I saw in 2024?

I don’t really understand why this is being reported now. However, it’s not entirely surprising, although every time it comes up there is a report about how much he loves living in Melbourne. I suppose the best we can do is have a great year (off-field more than on-field tbh) so that he feels like he wants to stay.

Damn it, entered holiday mode last week and forgot to do my tips, after finally a year in which I did OK! Bengals, Chargers, Vikings for this week.

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