titan_uranus

2 minutes ago, Macca said:

He missed 12 games in 2023 with that phantom hamstring injury? A bit odd how we left him on the ground when he supposedly hurt his hammy?

And if you don't play, you're no value

3 years of tripe football, you won't get that from Walsh. Walsh is a dedicated footballer

Oliver is now playing for the opposition and we're paying him to do so

That's what you call a contract that went completely pear-shaped

Isn’t the bolded bit one of the main problems with the Walsh contract?

3 hours ago, Bring-Back-Powell said:

Sam Walsh beat us in the 2023 semi final with 34 touches and 2 goals on his way to a Gary Ayres medal for player of the finals series.

I'd look at others if you're going with the overrated, mediocre, or half as good as Kozzy tags.

It wouldn’t be a Demonland thread without a classic @Bring-Back-Powell single stat/match reference to make a point.

That game was 2.5 years ago. Clubs of course don’t make decisions based on one game. They also don’t make decisions based on form from 2.5 years ago. If they did, we’d still have Trac and Oliver on our list.

Alternatively, perhaps someone should offer Joel Amartey the next biggest contract in the AFL, given in Round 14 2024 he kicked 9 goals in a game.

5 hours ago, AshMac said:

The sooking over the location of Casey has been one of the most telling things about the culture of this footy club than anything that's happened over the last however long.

It's so precious and short sighted. Dingley is not exactly in the heart of Melbourne. If you're leaving at 7:30am getting to Hawthorn's new facility from Brighton it'll take you half an hour; from Hawthorn will take over 35 minutes; and if you're a little hipster player living in Fitzroy it'll be a 50-odd minute drive to get there.

If you're an Essendon player training at the Hangar and living in Fitzroy it'll take you over half an hour at 7:30am; 35+ minutes from Hawthorn, over 45 from Brighton.

Moggs Creek is about an hour from GMHBA and I've never once heard Patrick Dangerfield complain, nor anyone suggest that Geelong's location is anything other than a huge asset and benefit.

Casey should've been bought into years ago, developed into a world class facility (likely with the backing of the state and federal governments), and become the envy of the league.

NFL and EPL clubs don't train anywhere near their home stadiums, Brisbane's new facility in Springfield is miles from the inner city suburbs like New Farm that players would be living. That we allow this absurd narrative of players not liking driving to training is one of the most embarrassing things about this club.

You seriously underestimate the additional distance that has to be travelled to get to Casey as compared to those other places.

With no traffic, right now at 10pm, it is a 40 minute drive from Hawthorn or Glen Iris to Casey. That’s an additional 15-17 minutes more than it would take to get to Dingley. Again, that’s with no traffic. Dingley’s one suburb over from Moorabbin. It’s not central, sure, but it’s not in the same ballpark as Casey. Casey’s roughly double the distance from the city as Dingley is.

At the end of the day if Casey is all we’ve got, then so be it, and yes there will simply have to be adjustments for our staff and players, but it’ll be the least attractive option of the 9 Melbourne-based clubs.

Fantastic piece.

Some of the “problems” seem blown out of proportion in the article.

So is this some sort of MRC leak to scupper the plan?

Are we cooked?

2 hours ago, DubDee said:

In Fairness North were missing:

Corr, Wardlaw, McKercher, McDonald, Spargo, Urquhart, Fisher, Dawson, Goad, Thredgold, Curtis, Mikuda, Goater, George, Jackson, Whitlock, Stevens, Banch, Trembath

They will be a much tougher proposition in the season proper

It’s been addressed already but that’s 3, maybe 4, good players missing.

2 hours ago, DeeSpencer said:

They were short 4 of their best, we had 3 of ours in Gawn, Viney, and Mihocek missing >3/4’s and maybe Culley out.

They’ll improve for the real stuff but the big question is how much we can get better too.

Bowey too.

But anyway these are not hugely important comparisons for a practice match on 20 February in 30 degree heat. The result is not very instructive

The way we tried (and succeeded) to move the ball, the roles of Steele, Heath, Kentfield, Latrelle and Howes, and the hopeful confidence of a win, is what we can take from today.

I’m so keen to see what we do with JVR, Jeffo, Kentfield and Heath (plus Gawn and Mihocek).

2 minutes ago, dazzledavey36 said:

Oh my.. we're going to be fun to watch this year..

2018 aside, when was the last time we said this?

Positive vibes in a game day thread.

Tell me it’s pre-season without telling me it’s pre-season…

But I love to see it.

3 hours ago, old dee said:

So beating us by 10 goals suggests we are nothing flash.

@DubDee got in first.

By your logic we’re a force to be reckoned with.

4 hours ago, Bring-Back-Powell said:

So in summary it sounds like the only way we’ll get a new player on the list is if May retires just before opening round??

3 hours ago, dazzledavey36 said:

Correct.

Technically, they would need to have a decision made before March the 2nd as thats when the SPP list lodgement closes.

Yep - or of course the other possibility is Viney is declared out for the season and placed on the inactive list (or, worse, someone else goes down with a season-ender).

If it happens after 2 March, unless the AFL grants an exemption like they did to us last year, we’d have to wait until the MSD to fill the spot.

1 hour ago, bing181 said:

Every club is looking at doing what we are, hardly going to surprise anyone. Here's Dean Cox recently:

"We want to play with a bit more speed on the ball and I think we've trained really hard this off-season with really high intensity running."

Jesus @bing181 is it actually impossible for you to see someone say something optimistic about the upcoming season and just leave it alone?

14 hours ago, Bang Na Demon said:

Interesting Kozzie's comment about the difference in vibe around the club between Goody and Kingy

Let’s not beat around the bush here. Koz’s words were: “He’s a lot more relaxed, and I feel like…we can be ourselves around him. The vibe is a lot different, it just feels a lot happier, a lot fun…yeah it just feels real good”.

That’s unintentionally hugely insightful into what the club was like last year. It’s a key reason why I’m leaning on the optimistic side in terms of what we can achieve this year - the intangible aspect of moving from that environment to this one.

3 hours ago, At the break of Gawn said:

The Saints already having one game under their belt will make them a tricky opponent. The one thing we have is that they have a terrible MCG record against us.

This killed us last year when it looked to me like GWS ran all over us in the fourth quarter, having blown the cobwebs out the week prior.

I don't get much mail, but my understanding is that Viney is out for the year.

Won't be much to recognise at centre bounces in 2026!

11 minutes ago, Macca said:

The teams 7th to 10 haven't been added to give those teams a chance to win the flag (in my view)

How many teams that have finished 7th or 8th have advanced to the Preliminary finals? Is it the Bulldogs only?

Off the top of my head, Hawthorn last year were 8th but made the prelim, and GWS in 2023 finished 7th but made the prelim.

18 hours ago, bing181 said:

Valid point of course. But in 2023 the issue for Hawthorn wasn't so much what they were capable of, but consistency. Alongside some bad losses, they beat both grand finalists (Lions and Pies), as well as a couple of teams in/around the top 8. They also managed to find a bit more consistency across the last 8 games where they were in most games and had some decent wins.

That's not a pattern we've seen with us over the last couple of years, which is one of the reasons for the change of coach and personnel I imagine. Not so much that we were mediocre, but there were no real signs that things were turning.

For me, if we can match Hawthorn's 2023 it would be a decent season and auger well for 2027.

Well, we did beat the premier last year, plus another finalist (Fremantle). We ended with 7 wins and a percentage of 93.3%; Hawthorn in 2023 had 7 wins and a percentage of 80%.

That aside, I think you're probably over-rating Hawthorn in 2023/24 a little, if not a lot. The top two results from a Google search for 2024 season previews had the ABC forecasting Hawthorn would finish bottom 3 with 7-8 wins, and Fox citing King, Montagna and Hudson who all thought they'd finish bottom 4 in 2024.

38 minutes ago, bing181 said:

I have no idea where this perception comes from. "Very quickly"? In the five long years from 2019 - 2023 Hawthorn were in the wilderness. If they're the yardstick then we can expect to see the start of a turnaround in ... 2029.

24 minutes ago, bing181 said:

Admire the optimism of some here, but every supporter of every club would be saying the same kinds of things - some with good reason.

Would love to be proved wrong, but the real world tends to behave in more or less predictable ways and it's hard to see us doing much better than we have over the last couple of seasons.

Your second post explains the first.

Hawthorn may have spent 5 years down the bottom before 2024, but they didn't experience any sort of gradual improvement. They went from tripe in 2023 (and for the first 5 weeks of 2024) into a top 4 and prelim final contender.

If you had applied your "the real world tends to behave in more or less predictable ways" to Hawthorn at this time in 2024, you would have said "it's hard to see them doing much better than they have over the last couple of seasons".

And, again, as you'll no doubt make it sound like I need to say this - I am not saying that this is the likely outcome for us in 2026. I'm merely saying it's possible.

3 hours ago, Bring-Back-Powell said:

I don't disagree with any of that.

SEN interviewed a Fox Sports journo (Ben Cotton) last night and he mentioned that Gold Coast have essentially one person in the rehab group and that's Charlie Ballard who's recovering from an ACL. Meanwhile we've had half a suburb frequent the rehab group this summer.

We certainly haven't given ourselves the best chance of success if a collectively good pre season is the key indicator to a good season ahead. 2019 anyone!

Why do you say it like this (the bolded bit)?

Like we didn’t choose to have the injuries.

Saying “we haven’t given ourselves the best chance of success” makes it sound like we’ve had players out late drinking or something stupid like that. When from all reports, the group have been flogging themselves at training.

If anything, we’ve given ourselves the best chance of success despite the injuries.

And FWIW, I suspect Gold Coast having 1 guy in rehab will be an outlier. We may be at the other end of the spectrum but if your yardstick for success is a pre-season with 1 in rehab, you’re going to be let down 99% of the time.

They look ugly.

It’s our reality though. It’s been covered on here already. We’re not an attractive proposition for sponsorship right now. So we take what we can get.

On 22/01/2026 at 13:31, Dannyz said:

The club are having a hard time finding a co-principle partner to replace Hertz.

None of the companies we've spoken with can get near what Hertz were paying for the slot, and this was in the bottom 5-6 in the AFL For $ value.

48 minutes ago, Diamond_Jim said:

Was always madness to have this occur. Should have been alternate years.

You could do it by phasing the change over across say three years and sharing gate receipts in accordance with a pre-agreed formula.

Time to re-visit the Alice game. Either it's promoted by the AFL and Channel 7 as a special event or it's over. Years ago Ch 7 put a lot of effort into promoting the game. It was looking great and now it's buried in a dead time slot on Fox

14 minutes ago, Gorgoroth said:

its more like get a massive supporter base and no matter wins/loses sponsorship will come.

As these posts all say, there are a number of reasons why we’re a disaster when it comes to sponsorship.

We’ve been boring to watch. We’ve been involved in games with low goal counts. We’ve struggled to attract crowds and therefore play in what appears to be an empty MCG. This year we are away in the two major marquee games we get. Our membership count is shrinking when 17 other clubs are growing. Our social media presence has been woeful. We had our name attached (fairly or not) to a bunch of “scandals”. And now our most marketable player (maybe 2nd to Gawn) walked out on us.

We can’t control most of this. And the easiest fix probably is to get back to being not just competitive on the field, but fun to watch.

But, at the grave risk of re-starting a debate many on here detest (and fair enough too), if you can afford a membership but have refused to buy one as a form of protest, you aren’t helping. And if you could attend games but chose not to as a form if protest, you aren’t helping.

Buy a membership. Get to games when you can. Make us appear bigger and more worthy of someone’s financial investment. Yes, still demand the club carry out its end of the bargain, but this is something we can do a little bit to help with.

How does this compare to other clubs? I know there have been a bunch of injuries reported this week. Not sure how our list stacks up, but it looks terrible to me.

On 06/01/2026 at 08:11, Redleg said:

I don’t see a Government contribution of say $30m being removed, as scuttling the project.

First, it would be unlikely to not get anything, if that was the figure that was originally promised, even if there was a reduction and secondly, say 30000 adult members of the MFC, if there was no other way to get the missing contribution, would only need to up their membership by $100.00 a year for 10 years to cover that whole amount.

That member contribution of course relates to the whole $30m and without any other efforts to find that amount.

I don’t see us losing a Government contribution, given the contribution made to other clubs.

Also with Tassie coming in, the TV rights will increase and the AFL may have more to provide if there was a shortfall.

Then of course there will be the extra money we will get for winning the next few flags.

Maths might be slightly out here @Redleg . 30,000 members would have to pay an additional $1,000 to get $30 million. $100 a pop would only generate $3m.

17 hours ago, Bring-Back-Powell said:

This is where I sit as well. 8 or 9 wins would be nice while stopping the repeated nonsense of losing games despite more scoring shots.

Hopefully King brings some offensive efficiency to the club.

Given we’re 8-21 (27%) from our last 29 games, I can’t entertain the idea of a top 10 finals birth this year like some others have.

At the very best, we have a 2020 like season (with a slightly worse W/L) where we potentially start the season slowly after a terrible end to 2019, but build nicely in the second half and carry that momentum into the following year.

Hawthorn was 8-19 in their 27 games leading into 2024, in which they started 0-5, before making finals.

Brisbane won 17 games in four complete seasons (2015-18) before making top 4 in 2019 (and not missing finals since).

Sydney was 13-26 in their 39 games leading into 2021, in which they made finals.

It can turn quickly.

We won 7 games in 2025 with Trac and Oliver.

We lose Trac. We “cover” Oliver to an extent with Steele. We gain in some other areas (Mihocek and CJ, another (full) pre-season for Langford and Lindsay). We also get to see what the rest of the list does when freed from whatever the previous administration had hanging over them.

With all that said, I don’t see us making finals but I’d be more surprised at us winning 6 games or fewer as I would at us winning 10+ games.

Cowboys, Ravens, Chargers