Rodney (Balls) Grinter

Agreed. When Frosty gets the footy it normally ends up at least 50m+ further from our opponents goal through either his run or a booming kick and most of the time we have time to get back and defend a possible turn over. Much better than handballing 5m and putting a team mate under pressure 30m from goal as many others seem to do as well.

Cool cool. I like the fact that you can debate and disagree in a polite and respectful manner - something some fellow Demonlanders would do well to learn from.

If it's the one Vs the Hawks in the final last year that I'm thinking of which resulted in us going coast to coast and goaling via T Mac - that was one of the highlights of the year for me. I'd also add to that list you had that Frosty is one of the few players that Lance Franklin dares not to take on. @Engorged Onion, I think this is also what I was referring to with Frosty, I think the goals from turnovers also needs to be balanced with the line breaking, that he brings. It would be interesting to look at the score involvement stats for Frosty as I think they could be fairly high for a key backman. On his day, Frosty can be a game breaking X factor that not all players have - we just need to work on him breaking more games in our favor than agaist, but I think when the whole team is up and firing I think it will be more of the former.

To just look at scores from turnovers is a simplistic one sided analysis. At times this year Frost intercept marking has been huge, he regularly spoils and saves goals that others simply wouldn't.

Agreed. In a similar light, I think last weekends finals games (and potentially next weekends) by other teams can also put some perspective on where the MFC was/is at: 1. Last weekend, Essendon were smashed by WC in Perth by about the same margin as we were against WC in last year's preliminary final; 2. The Bulldogs were pretty underwhelming and got blown out of the water by GWS; 3. After setting themselves up in a good ladder position and a home game at the Gabba, Brisbane were pretty woeful against Richmond. Obviously Brisbane have the double chance and still have the opportunity to redeem themselves. Whilst this season has undoubtedly been a total train wreck for the MFC, what can be said is that in 2018 our team stood up in finals and that much of that same list is still the core that will take us into 2020 and beyond, so I'm comfortable in the knowledge that they do have the mental fortitude to win big games/finals if the team can regain that kind of fitness, system and confidence back.

LOL. #Gold #loveyourworkETthetradebreaker #gottolaughatsomething2019demons

Beating the Swans at the SCG was a good highlight for me. Pretty much the last of our hoodoos gone (just that one day in September left) and came at a time in our season when we thought at the time that there might still have been some life left in it. I particularly like the clutch goal which Weid kicked from around 50m in the last quarter to steady us. Preuss's marking and goal kicking provided some good highlights earlier in the game. Fritta's move back to the forward line, Hunt's forward line form and T Mac's couple of weeks purple patch were good. Joel Smith and AVB provided some nice individual highlights early in the preseason until respectively writing off their season's through injury. Big Max provided almost weekly highlights with his strong pack marking throughout the season and his three goals and dominance against North in Rd 23 was a nice way to finish off the season from an individual player perspective.

With all the talk of trading and delisting players at the moment and the near endless negative dissection of our season, coaches and playing list, I'd be interested in others thoughts on those out of contract on the fringe and worthy of keeping and why and/or players you would consider untradable. A couple few from me to kick things off: 1. Corey Wagner - I'm not sure that Corey would ever be an automatic best 22 selection, but to me he showed enough at various stages this year that he could be useful small forward depth. To me he showed all of good pace, tenacious chasing/forward pressure, good crumbing and goal sense. To me he is close enough to the standard and has attributes where when the fortunes of the side as a whole improve around him, I think he could envisage him elevating his game and be a useful contributor. Most premiership sides have role players of average ability and I think Corey could potentially be one of those. 2. Tim Smith - was a bit luke warm on Smith prior to this season, but when he was fit, he certainly showed me that he is capable of having that strong presence in the forwardline. Only questionmark for me is can his body hold up.

Wearing a MFC jumper, so that means he will automatically get the upper end of the penalty by default.

Was really hoping that Declan was going to make it, but that's the way it goes I guess. The club ended up being a pretty tough gig to get a game as a key backman. It must be frustrating getting so close to making it at the top level, but it's still a pretty decent effort to be as competitive as he was playing senior VFL.

Other notables not in that list for me would be Melksham and to some extent Sparrow. Melksham must have missed a significant chunk of games and with Sparrow, it is essentially most of his whole first year of development missed. That VandenBerg was written off for the season was a huge blow for us in my view, particularly given his preseason format when he was tearing teams apart in the midfield. The absence of outside run has been often stated, by I also think our midfield has lacked grunt and power this season.

I think that problem is somewhat overstated by the emotional bias that some punters on this forum have against Jack. Paul Roos got some decent output from Jack as both a defender and forward during his time as coach, it was only until Goodwin took the reins that Jack's game seemed to fall apart on the field. Not only was Jacks ability to find team mates by foot pretty elite, he was/is one of the most accurate shots for goal in the league, which is an area that we fell over in massively at times this year. I'm surprised this topic didn't come up earlier for us this season.

I seem to recall Alan Richardson always being a very well respected player at Collingwood, due to the way he went about things. Leigh Mathews was full of praise for him in his autobiography, which I would have thought is a pretty good sign of the quality of the guy from a football perspective. I'd also love to prise Voss out of Port as I agree with someone here who thought that he'd be great for our group of young mids in particular. St Kilda were usually a very good tackling team under Richo and I hope he can help get our team back up there in this respect. I noticed in the Swans game in particular, that we allow our opposition to break tackles far too easily on the whole at the moment.

In all seriousness though, if I have to boil it down, I'm optermisitic that we can bounce back and go places, because the core of our list is young and good enough to still have plenty of potential development ahead, but mature and experienced enough to stand up and start playing like men, not like boys, whilst other rivals have peaked and/or are stacked with players well into or past their prime.

Not only that, it will be 2020. So does that make it like 1964 Mk II. Perhaps it means that we can subsequently also me that we can have the pre 1964 success in the decades post 2020, like working our way backwards from 1964. Could well handle a couple of three peats. After holding out all this time the thought of multiple premierships - now that gives me some optimism!

Yeah, just like all the premierships that Clarkson bloke had been involved with before he got the gig as a senior coach. I think even Leigh Mathews admitted that there is an element of luck in winning a premiership or just getting close. Based on that, we should be making our recruitment decisions based on how much luck they can bring to the club with them.

I fully welcome the message from Jordan for the players to take ownership of the outcome of this season and create their own destiny from here on. It's almost refreshing to open the Demonland thread and something other than "is Goodwin the right guy?" thread to be dominating the forum. However, whilst understand MFC supporters urge to vent after the season which we have had, so much of content in this thread is loaded with pessimism and blame mentality with a very narrow focus on part of the whole message delivered by Jordan. On reflection, I agree that the message delivered by Jordan is actually quite powerful, honest, but also well measured statement with equal parts positively, that throws down the gauntlet to our club to stand up and be counted in the future. My dissection of the message is this: 1. Players and coaches got ahead of themselves a bit and took the foot off the gas; 2. But we know we have the capacity to perform at the required level because of 2018 etc; 3. Puts some faith in the playing group that they will respond over the next off season and year ahead. I prefer to put the emphasis on 2 & 3, because 1 is in the past and we can't influence that anymore. Honestly, I also think the calls for mass culling to create cultural change are over blown as well. If you believe the hype on this forum, we have already done this time and time over again with the likes of Silvia, Watts, Hogan, Bugg etc and I think that can get to a point where it not only creates scape goats out of them, but also excuses the majority of the playing group from taking responsibility to embed the values and reform each other.

Thanks Nev. I actually think that we are on the same page with regards to the concern for some of our key players that are getting on in years. Of those you list, the only one I see that we have close to an equivalent replacement ready to step up is Hore for Hibbard. Really does show how much we need players like Weid, Petty(/Oscar?), Preuss(/Bradke?) to stand up over the next few years. Don't know we have anyone who could step up and play the role that Melksham does (perhaps Trac? or possibly Langdon), but probably some of the answer there is that we need multiple players who can deliver well into the forward line and not just one. Would be nice if we could land a few free agents to top up with some mature top end talent in their prime without costing us wanted players or draft picks the way some of these scabby clubs like Hawthorn, Collingwood and Richmond have in recent years. The only other subtle point I'd make is that you quoted ages next season, where as the list I put together is current age, so the aging lists of some of our opposition is slightly greater than at first glance.

Joel Selwood 31 Patrick Dangerfield 29 Tom Hawkins 31 Zach Tuohy 29 Harry Taylor 30+ Garry Abblett 30++ Lachie Henderson 29 Mitch Duncan 28 Steele Sidebottom 28 Scott Pendlebury 31 Travis Varcoe 31 Jeremy Howe 29 Levi Greenwood 30 Chris Mayne 30 Ben Reid 30 Jordan Roughead 28 + Wells, Dunn and Goldsack Shannon Hurn 31 Luke Shuey 29 Nic Naitanui 29 Lewis Jetta 30 Josh Kennedy 30 Will Schofield 30 Chris Masten 30 Nev, I take your points, but I think some of the other top teams currently up the top have both more of their lists stacked with veterans and some of their most significant players structurally that will likely retire or become less effective a few years ahead of when our veterans will. Not all the players listed above are currently stars, but they have a level of maturity and know how to get the job done that will be a challenge for those teams to replace overnight. I think Hawthorn and the Swans are the key case in point of the future that awaits what I hope will happen to some of our rivals over the coming years. I'm really hoping that the young core of Clarry, Brayshaw, Harmes and Co will start to power up unto their prime as the likes of Pendlebury and Dangerfield start fade out for their respective clubs.

I signed up again in something like 2011 after a shot hiatus due moving interstate. The game that made me fork out was an 80 point or something thrashing by West Coast. My rationale was that my club needed my support then more than ever, so I will definitely be signing again next season AND holding onto my GF guarantee. I'm as depressed as anyone about our lack of performance on Friday and though some may consider it delusional, I'm not putting it down to a lack of caring. I actually think there is some extent if rank hypocrisy in those that are not renewing yet expect our players to dig deep and bring us out of this.

That's my philosophy with Hawthorn and right at the moment they are bang on target.

Who ever would have thought that O Mac being dropped would bring with it calls that we are tanking? On Demonland of all places!!

I agree and I think this is a big part of it. Oliver's dinky little handballs seem to have become less effective than more effective. Where as last season they would get to a player on the move and create a chain of good connections further up the ground, it seems more the case at the moment that these end up selling our players into trouble and the ball moves nowhere. Alternatively our opposition often seem to move the ball out effortlessly out of the congested area just through good positioning around the stoppage. I do also think the rule change with the 6-6-6 hurt us badly in the center clearance scenarios as we seemed to have mastered a tactic that worked a treat there and are now just around the mark. I must say, I don't have any strong statistical evidence to back up my assertions on clearances, which is mostly based on the impression I get of clean movement out of pack situations watching the game, but I do think that the time in forward half assertion I have made would be backed up statistically based on what I recall being flashed up for individual games.

That is true. We only just overtook them with our massive one hunnder or so point victory against them last year, so there must only be around half a dozen or so games in it. Still I'll hold onto it for as long as we can in the present circumstances.

Carlton are the least successful club this century, so at least we can console ourselves with that.