titan_uranus

11 minutes ago, VNightCityLegend said:

Don’t like to admit it, but St Kilda are a pretty good side. The way we beat them and then to win in similar fashion against Gold Coast makes losing to Essendon by essentially 8 goals is just utter garbage.

I’m still in shock how we lost yesterday.

Jury's very much still out on St Kilda for mine.

Port are not very good this year, having already lost to North and West Coast and with wins against Essendon and Richmond only.

Need to see more from St Kilda before considering them a good side.

Just now, BoBo said:

Sorry I’m just trying to understand your post, so we’re the first team outside of those teams beating/losing to each other, to lose to them?

Yes.

Break the competition up into those 6 clubs and the other 12 clubs.

Those 6 clubs are 1-13 against the other 12 clubs.

6 hours ago, Bring-Back-Powell said:

JVR has to go. He had a player rating yesterday of -3 which is essentially playing one man down.

The AFL hate gut punches or even light taps to the guts which is what did Disco did yesterday. So I wouldn’t be surprised if he gets pinged a week by the MRO.

Turner didn't get cited, but Lever did (a fine), for striking Edwards. Is that who you were thinking of?

5 hours ago, bing181 said:

You did not expect inconsistency at all.

Apart from the hyperbole ("likely wooden spooner" ...), inconsistency means EXACTLY what you saw yesterday. Wild swings in performance, across and within games. An inconsistent team is one that might look dominant one match or quarter and underwhelming the next, might beat a ladder-leader one week but then lose to a cellar-dweller.

What you expected was in fact the reverse, consistency, where we'd more or less perform to a similar level every time we ran out onto the park.

If you hate losing fine, but don't kid yourself about "expecting inconsistency".

You are so unbelievably sanctimonious, but you're also hypocritical.

So we're all supposed to expect losses, however bad, to however bad of an opponent, and we're all supposed to expect inconsistency, no matter how wildly good or bad it is.

And yet your first post on this postgame thread was:

On 11/04/2026 at 16:15, bing181 said:

The kind of performance most pundits predicted for us at the start of the season.

Hopefully an aberration, but doesn't augur well. And hate to say it but Essendon's young players looked a lot better than our young players.

"Doesn't augur well"? I thought we were supposed to expect inconsistency?

And then saying you "hate to say it" but Essendon's kids looked better than ours? The same kids who looked awful when they were 0-4, whilst ours helped us beat Gold Coast (plus St Kilda and Carlton)?

You're so quick to insult anyone who is disappointed by the result and yet after one bad game from our kids, and one good game from some of Essendon's, you're now arguing that their kids are better than ours?

If you assume that Richmond, Essendon, West Coast, Carlton, Port Adelaide and North Melbourne are all going to be bottom 6-ish sides, then through the first 5 weeks, we are the only club. to have lost a game to those 6 clubs, other than those 6 clubs themselves.

So Rivers was fit enough to play this game?

What the [censored] is going on with him? Dropped, but apparently injured, but not on the injury list, but spoken of as injured, but then played a VFL scratch match.

1 minute ago, GawnOfTheDead said:

Fully Agree. I wish you could find those stats on the AFL app. I haven’t seen them before.

Would be interested to know what the pressure was at throughout the various quarters and compare it to last week.

The pressure stats are published by @WheeloRatings in the Stats File thread every week.

Just now, praha said:

Only paying $2.93 against Brisbane. Very short.

Well we are 3-0 in Sunday 3.15pm games at the MCG this year...

PS: @Adam The God see what I meant earlier this week when I said losing today would undo our efforts vs Gold Coast?

On the field we took a massive step backwards.

Off the field, how many do you think we'll get to the Brisbane game next week off the back of that?

Heath or Kentfield for TMac.

Rivers or AMW for Salem.

If Melksham is injured, I expect Laurie to get that spot back, although personally I'd go with pretty much anyone else (shame Cross is injured). Jeffo another option but I think we're already too tall, so I'd only be considering him if we decide to drop JVR.

If Rivers is fit, we could bring AMW in for Salem and then Rivers in for, say, Culley, Windsor, Langford or Lindsay, if we feel we need to get one of them to find some form at VFL level for a bit.

I knew going into this season that we were going to have bad games. I accept that we are going to have bad games, and we'll have more before the season's done.

But I can't accept losing by 45 points to the worst side in the competition on a 17-game losing streak. A side who had only won 4 out of 16 quarters before today. Not when just six days ago we played finals-quality football against a flag-contending side.

So whilst I can stomach losing, and 3-2 after Round 5 exceeds most Demonlanders' pre-season expectations of where we'd be at this stage, today has to be seen for what it really was - a stinking failure, not just a standard bump in the road.

We won't compete with probably any of the 17 other sides if we can't/don't run. King mentioned in the presser that we were "lethargic", and that we have to learn to be "unconditionally ruthless, selfless and connected" (his buzzwords). I'm guessing he's seen a bunch of our players who just didn't work hard enough. I'd be surprised if we don't drop a few.

The other thing was him acknowledging the "hunter v hunted" mindset issue. No doubt in my mind he thinks we struggled dealing with the pressure of expectation. Not exactly surprising, as this group of leaders has been struggling with expectation for years. But I appreciate that he raised it.

27 minutes ago, Red But Mostly Blue said:

Yeah agree. Still perplexes me how 22' was so low (even taking into account interstate teams).

Different situations though. 2018 was our first finals campaign in 12 years and our opponents were Geelong and Hawthorn. The excitement for us fans that year is probably incapable of being replicated, even this year.

2022 was the year after we’d won the flag, still some tentative COVID restriction hangovers, and interstate opponents.

2 hours ago, Bring-Back-Powell said:

I’m seat 1A on the Wildcard bandwagon but hate the idea that both games could be sold to a city.

Really hope the AFL listen to the fans on this one. Most people will accept the top 10, but no way will they tolerate finals being sold.

If the AFL listened to fans we wouldn’t have a wildcard round.

41 minutes ago, BDA said:

i'm all for the idea of a wildcard round as long as we finish 9 or 10.

if we finish in any other position i'm against the idea

I wonder how the Demonland wildcard supporters will feel if we somehow finish 7th or 8th this year (which, FWIW, I strongly doubt will occur).

If this is true…[censored] me and [censored] the AFL.

We’re so commercialised that we’re not only going to deprive 7 and 8 of being in the finals, and we’re not only going to make them play an extra game just to make more money and because some people can’t go one week without the “content” of AFL matches, but we’re then going to deprive those sides of home ground advantage, again to make more money.

10th will have more losses than wins in the H&A season but if their home state pays the most money, they could be given a home final against 7th.

What a [censored] joke.

In Fritsch

Out Laurie (omitted)

7 hours ago, DubDee said:

Umps gave us 3 50’s in the third Q

They were sorta there but often not given

Sometimes you gotta admit you got the run of the green

Nah all three of those were clear cut and get paid every week. Two were GC forwards not coming back to “the 9” when we had the ball on the line in the back pocket, and one was a GC player coming off the mark after standing on it and getting called to stand by the umpire.

Hardwick would have been furious with them, surely.

7 hours ago, Garbo said:

Get the feeling if fritsch is fit it will be Culley that makes way, Laurie would stay in as he plays a different role. Fwd line looks a little unbalanced if it’s JVR, Mihocek, Melksham, Fritsch and Culley all playing as marking fwds. The only ground level fwds left would be Latrelle and Chandler. Not that Laurie spent much time down there but it still doesn’t make sense.

Culley’s not playing forward, he’s playing wing. Whilst I’d like him to get more of the ball, his two-way running is on display and he ends up floating forward when he can to stretch opposition defences.

4 minutes ago, At the break of Gawn said:

Got the 10 coaches votes. Nice to see that Hardwick and King both gave the same votes. They see the game as good as anyone.

Gives Gawn the lead overall. 29 votes from a possible 40 is supreme. Bont is second on 28, then Butters on 25 and Daicos 24 (from 3 games though).

11 minutes ago, Adam The God said:

Well, we were favourite in the betting market.

I’ll take your word for it, it just surprises me.

12 hours ago, Adam The God said:

We were favourites in the Carlton game too.

I also disagree with thia sentiment going around that if we lose this week it will undo all of our work.

We will have slip ups this year and it would put us at 3-2. I think most fans would have taken that going into this year. I certainly would have.

That is not to say we should lose to Essendon...

Were we favourites v Carlton? They were coming off the (uninspiring) win against Richmond and we’d just been belted by Fremantle?

As for the whole “undoing the GC win”, my view is that early season positivity, and wins, is critical to driving long term success on and off field - we need our players to believe and we also need our fans and supporters to get on board. We’re building that now. Losing to a side on a 17-game losing streak and who have won just 4 out of 16 quarters for the season is going to put a dent in those things (like it or not, but you know as much as I do what Demonland is going to look like if we lose).

I’m very much accepting of slip ups, bad games and beltings coming our way this year. I fully expected Sunday to have been such a game, and next week v Brisbane is obviously another one to watch. But the opening month of the season changes things a bit, and IMO there is a lot to lose, overall, if we lose this weekend.

3 minutes ago, biggestred said:

Yeah the ages are listed under each team. All good. We might have the 2nd oldest list though?

Ages don’t show on mobile I don’t think.

We have an interesting age profile. 8 players from Sunday are over 30. But then there was not one player aged 27-29. Just two players are 26 (Petty and Chandler), and just one 25 (Sparrow). The other 12 players are 24 and under. So it’s just over half under 24, a third aged over 30, and a tiny amount in the “prime” ages of 25-29.

A really different challenge this week. First game for the season where we’ll be favourites. How will we deal with the pressure of expectation? Being the hunted, not hunters?

It’s a big test IMO. All the gains of yesterday will be undone if we lose to Essendon.

1 hour ago, ElDiablo14 said:

I am already feeling angry we couldn't come back against Flogmantle.

We did though. We were actually pretty good after the disastrous first quarter. Just can’t give Fremantle a 40-point headstart at home

IMO we’ve only played two “bad” quarters so far - first vs Freo and first vs Carlton.

Here's one.

We have won 11 out of 16 quarters so far. No matter what happens tomorrow, that will put us 2nd in the competition overall, behind Sydney on 12.

4 of the 5 quarters we've lost have been first quarters - have lost every single one of them. But that of course means that from quarter time onwards, we have won 11/12 quarters, with the only loss being the third vs Fremantle where we weren't even that bad, we just got trampled by a flag contender at the top of their game.