titan_uranus

So are we taking Sharp if he’s the one Essendon pass on?

As others have said, it's pointless analysing difficulty based on double ups by 2025 ladder position. Someone next year will be this year's Adelaide/GC, or Port Adelaide/Sydney. There are other metrics I'm far more interested in.

The timeslots are to be expected, but at least Sunday 3.15pm games are on FTA which helps.

We lose the Geelong game but it's "traded" for another interstate game, effectively Hawthorn in Tasmania. Our Melbourne games remain 15 (12 at the G, 3 at Marvel). Our travel feels spaced out much better this year - no 6 road trips in 10 weeks this time. On the flipside, the longest span we go without travel is 3 weeks (Rounds 9-11, albeit two of those are Marvel, and Rounds 18-20, another one of which is Marvel). We never play more than two straight games at the MCG.

On a related note, St Kilda doesn't travel after Round 13 on 7 June. One game in Geelong and every other game in Melbourne from Rounds 14-24. Double-ups are never going to be equal. Travel also can't be equal with 8 non-Victorian sides. But this is completely within the AFL's control. It's beyond a joke that any side gets the best part of three months in their own beds. Don't worry about how we, or any other Victorian club feels, how would any non-Victorian club feel travelling every second week in winter whilst St Kilda go absolutely nowhere?

Texans, Packers, Ravens

Meanwhile Sam Edmund reporting that Carlton have 7 Thursday or Friday night games in the first 16 weeks.

So for some, poor performance equals a poor fixture. But clearly not for others. Hell, this is more than Collingwood are getting!

https://www.sen.com.au/news/2025/11/12/afl-fixture-hawthorn-prime-time-games/

A bad draw commercially is to be expected.

Playing Hawthorn in Launceston is not, though.

Our number of MCG games next year might be a record low.

2 hours ago, Rab D Nesbitt said:

I know it's Essendon again but as we're the 'away' team and 95% of us won't be travelling for the game anyway does it really matter who we play?

We have now been on a pretty long run of almost always playing them only once a year and almost always 'away'. It reminds me of when we had a long run of playing Fitzroy in their home game at VFL Park instead of the Junction Oval. I only remember playing them once down there in my early years following the Dees.

Haven’t played Essendon twice in a season since 2004, which AFAIK is the longest active such streak in the competition.

10 hours ago, John Demonic said:

The inequities in the fixturing was the core reason that corbin middlemas was promulgating the idea mid season. I've come around to it like a few others.

Why should double up games decide ladder positioning? Why should Collingwoodg sneak into 8th ahead of us because we had to play Geelong at gmhba and they didn't? At least opening up 2 extra spots will give two extra teams the chance of proving themselves against lucked out clubs above them

More the reward for finishing 5 and 6 in this new system too. We'll see how the bye inequity impacts week 2, but I think the AFL could improve things with some kind of round 18-20 bye rounds to mitigate that.

This doesn’t solve the problem you’re raising here.

Double up games may still decide 6th vs 7th, and now the same argument will apply to 10th vs 11th.

4 hours ago, Rab D Nesbitt said:

Weird that they'd rather send their supporters to Tasmania instead of Docklands for a 'home' game. It's not as if they need the money, assuming there's any on offer. If there isn't then it's extremely weird.

Yeah but when their fans hate Marvel, they may as well cash in while they're [censored] and get the money.

When they get good again, they'll wipe this deal and push for 11 MCG home games, and if they get a Marvel home game they'll pull 20,000 extra than they will in the next two years of being bottom 4.

On 10/11/2025 at 15:44, Bring-Back-Powell said:

Exactly my 2 cents worth as well.

Although I seem to be in the minority and am actually excited to have a couple of high stakes games on the last weekend of August, as opposed to nothing. I guess I like watching football…

Of all the arguments that get put in favour of it, this is probably the worst one.

Got a problem with the pre-finals bye?

GET RID OF IT!

It shouldn't be there anyway, it should be the week before the GF, but if the problem is that we don't want a week off between the H&A season and finals, the AFL has the power to just get rid of it.

Absolutely moronic reasoning here.

4 hours ago, William said:

The AFL, apart from continuing to chase $s at the expense of quality, is I guess assuming that 9th and 10th will be close to 7th and 8th in final points and percentage. But what if 9th and 10th are, for argument’s sake, 3 games (12 points) shy of 8th and/or a significant percentage gap sits between them.

Then an elimination between these teams is unfair to say the least.

A bit like this year? When Sydney finished 10th on 12-11 and 97% but would have made finals and got to have a crack at Gold Coast, who were 15-8 and 124.9%?

If GC had not choked and beaten Port in Round 24, 7th would have been Fremantle, who were 16-7 and would have been percentage out of the top 4 and one win off 2nd. But Sydney, who barely broke even on the year, would have been gifted a chance to knock them out.

[censored] me.

Not only has the AFL made a terrible decision, they've also managed to mangle its implementation.

The majority public outrage tells you that this is not what fans want. Sure, some people like @Bring-Back-Powell can't get through a week without watching football, but for the rest of us, we want finals to mean something. Now you can finish 10th, in the bottom half of the competition, and make finals.

They had the chance to say these wild card games weren't finals, to make the top 6 seem like a feat, but they haven't done that. 10th is a finalist. 10th having a rubbish year but playing a blinder against 7th credits them with a finals win.

It is of course clear that the decision is purely monetary. You hear it when people like Greg Swann talk about it - they mention that it's good for revenue, good for broadcasters, etc. It's no wonder Kane Cornes and Gerard Whateley are so in favour of it - it means they make more money!

The AFL makes a lot of bad decisions, but I can't recall the last time they treated the fan base so poorly. Knowing the (vast) majority don't want this, but shoving it down our throats anyway, and then gaslighting us by telling us we don't know how good it's going to be.

Bills, Lions, Eagles

Chargers, Colts, Jaguars

49 minutes ago, DubDee said:

3 months off seems like a lot

Would have been good to get a good 6 week block of training in before christmas. The season starts earlier every year so only 2 months and a bit post xmas to get a preseason in

Not our call though, these dates will all be locked in under the CBA.

IMO 2026 goes one of two ways.

We either find that we had midfield cover all along (plus Steele) and a new coach and game plan reinvigorate us to such an extent that we challenge for finals.

Or the transition hits hard and we finish bottom 4.

12 minutes ago, buck_nekkid said:

Currently i would have a blank team sheet. Every spot must be earned.

Yeah, after everything that’s happened, Gawn should have to earn his spot.

/s

Bills, 49ers, Bucs

3 hours ago, The Taciturn Demon said:

I like Max a lot and think he's excellent in the media.

But I notice here that he's gone the "grow up", "be mature" line. I hear it a lot when it comes to player movement. I've heard it for 20 or so years, to be honest.

I get where people who run with this line are coming from: nothing is forever, and certainly not in the top level of a very popular sport, where competition is ruthless. Also, there are always circumstances like the one we faced with Alex Neal-Bullen. Yes, the grown up thing in that case was to say "Yes, we love this player and want him to stay with us, but we know there's more to life than football". But...

... couldn't you mount an argument that the height of maturity or grown up thinking would have been to nip the problems we had in the bud as they became obvious.

What I mean is, yes, beloved players are always going to leave clubs and sadden fans. And there will always be excellent B-graders who are crucial to premiership success and get squeezed out when the cap space inevitably tightens. But great teams keep great players at their best for as long as possible. Great clubs naturally nurture one-club champions (or in Hawthorn's case 250-game champions who play two or three tepid seasons somewhere else).

It might be grown up for supporters to now concede that it's best to cut out losses with those two players and start afresh. It also might be grown up to say that Petracca and Oliver need to accept their fair share of responsibility for our precipitous drop. I think it's also important to be grown up about the huge mistakes of the past. Ignoring them or shrugging them away as spilt milk is not mature. To my mind, anyway.

I took this a completely different way.

To me, it was an indication that perhaps the penny has finally dropped.

We have spent 2022-25 trying to keep as much of the premiership winning 23 together as possible, not just on the list but on the field. We continued to try to get a supposed "best 23" to gel together with an argument that we needed to get the best 23 playing together as much as possible for results to come. So we kept playing the same guys over and over, and as a result didn't play other guys who were fit and at times in strong VFL form.

That extended to wanting to keep Trac and Clarry, despite what had happened to both of them in the last few years. The club's overall view was to keep everyone together where possible.

Now, whether it's because Goodwin's no longer there, or for other reasons, this is no longer our priority. So we let Trac and Clarry go, and we "grow up" and accept that our next flag isn't going to come about just by continuing to plonk members of the 21 flag winning side on the park.

36 minutes ago, rjay said:

Lets wait and see...

I hope he is good but I have reservations.

After all the talk from last preseason I would rather us be a little (lot) more low key.

Yes, we have had a big trade period and some things needed to be addressed & spoken about.

My personal opinion is that we are overplaying it.

...talk is cheap.

We have a new regime and we just turfed two MFC hall of famers, with members having deserted us all year

It would be incredulous if the new leaders didn’t get out there and talk about what we’re doing.

5 hours ago, rjay said:

We're certainly getting a lot of words.

I don't know if that translates to transparency.

I will wait and see the actions...and the results of those actions.

Didn’t take long to get the classic “talk is cheap” trope.

What do you want the club to do in [censored] October?

Yes, judge the club on how we play. But we can’t play until March. It’s brainless to suggest the club should say nothing until March, so just accept that in October (and November-February), the only thing the club can give us is words.

2 hours ago, Fat Tony said:

We would have got similar value for Petracca had he been uncontracted.

Petracca and Oliver were special cases because of selfishness and immaturity.

Thankfully he was under contract then!

Long term contracts aren’t always a bad thing.

As @Lucifers Hero says, Clarry netted us such an awful return for other reasons (off field stuff, and our mishandling which led to us having no negotiating leverage).

Steelers, Patriots, Falcons

7 hours ago, dazzledavey36 said:

No he shouldn't have.

Its been well communicated already right from the very start from Steven King to Tim Lamb. Every supporter on here knew the plan all along and why they were being traded.

Guerra said nothing that we already didnt know.

I don’t agree with any of this.

You only had to look on here to see how many didn’t understand why we traded Oliver, or are upset about him/Trac, or still think it should have been “no Humphrey, no Trac”.

And regardless, it’s absolutely the right thing to do for the club to acknowledge that we’ve just traded two future MFC hall of famers.

The point of the letter wasn’t to tell us something we didn’t already know. It was to acknowledge something meaningful happened, and to put a full stop behind it.

26 minutes ago, Demonology said:

Would love to see Langford in the 5

Anything except this.

Anything that doesn’t involve players moving jumpers.

5 was Trac. That’s a past era now. Let Langford become HL19. Make 19 the new 5.

1 hour ago, layzie said:

We don't need to grandstand every little success we have in the form of a letter. The Petracca trade was good for all parties, not unheard of in the trade world.

I appreciate the way Guerra communicates so this isn't against him but after a year of having letters to members to highlight things like great 3rd quarters in terrible performances I'm kind of over it.

Nah we just traded out two of the best players we’ve ever had, he 100% should have said something.

1 minute ago, dazzledavey36 said:

That’s a nice bonus.