Rodney (Balls) Grinter

Sorry as much as this might make some kind of sense on a clinical purely logical list management perspective, it would absolutely rip the heart and soul out of the MFC culturally if it wasn't a move 100% instigated by Jack and even then I think it would still reek. It's quite different trading a party boy No.1 draft pick types in Jack Watts and Jesse Hogan who gave the impression of only being 60% committed at times, compared to your club captain, favorite father son who runs through brick walls bleeds red and blue for the club.

I'm not sure that I'd really want to recruit a player with Patton's injury history, but knees don't seem to be quite the career ending injury they once were - that seems to be more foot injuries these days, particularly for us.

After a very breif few weeks telling people I supported the wees and poos in around grade 4, for better or worse I became permanently attached to out mighty Demons on that fateful day out at the Western Oval in 87. Since then the team has frustrated the duck out of me with it's innate ability to squander talent and the opportunity for ultimate success to absolutely [censored] luck with injuries and the inability to stand up when the opportunities we were presented were upon us. Still I wouldn't have it any other way with respects to the team I support. Our days will come again and the glory awaits us will be all the sweeter. Never expected we would beat the WC in the prelim last year. They had the benifits of multiple weeks off to freshen up their list, when it's quite clear now that we were totally shagged from backing up in must win games for weeks on end ... and they had the home ground advantage with an automatic 15 free kicks for advantage (which admittedly they hardly needed that day). I never expected that we would win the flag this year, but similarly never expected our win/loss record to be such total poo at this stage of the season either. I don't put as much blame at the feet of Goodwin as many here do, but fully understand and agree that a fair bit of the buck stops with him and he hasn't exactly inspired much of a resurgence within this season which is concerning. That all said, I don't think our performances post the bye have been as putrid as has been made out, but without actually winning more games it's hard to say that we have really made huge progress or provide confidence in what is being rebuilt either. I'm giving this crop the benifit of the doubt and see what they can produce over the off season in terms of turning things around. We still have a realitively youngish list, but at the same time they are also getting to the point in their maturity when that can't be used as an excuse moving forward. As much as anything from Goodwin, I'm looking for the younger core of the group like Harmes, Brayshaw, Oliver, Viney, Trac, Salem, Fritta, Hore, Weid, Lever, Hunt, Spargo, Hannan etc to really take the situation by the scruff of the neck and take responsibility for going to that next level in performance, consistently and in-game maturity over the next season or two. Goodwin might be the man at the helm, but it's the players that are the only ones who can really determine if this becomes a champion team or just another of the also rans that we have been for the best part of half a century. I'm backing them all - GO THE MIGHTY DEMONS!!!

Just reading the 2nd page of comments on this thread, with the exception of @america de cali and perhaps @FireInTheBelly (not exactly sure of his stance), what a bunch of sadsacks we have become on this forum. What would happen if we actually won tonight? CARN THE DEMONS!!!

Yeah, no worries. I noticed someone else made the comment before I did as I was gong back over some of the earlier comments again. Lol

I hardly think these assertions could be further from the truth. Yes his first 2 or 3 games were a bit ordanary, but since then Trac has consistently been one of our better performers. Asides from Max, I can't think of anyone who has been as consistently good for us. Perhaps your perceptions of him are clouded because he hasn't regularly done a heap of flashy things, but rather just burrowed and bulldozed away in a workman like manner. Without Trac this season we would have been even more totally stuffed.

A few of Trac's stats give an indication of his value to the team this season. 3rd leading goal kicker; 1st in score involvements; 2nd in goal assists (interestingly, Melksham still leads this stat, despite missing a big chuck of the season now - shows how good he is in that department and how much we are missing him).

This thread seems to be the same as "The incremental bang theory" thread

The way he is able to use his strength to break free and burst out of trouble the way he does has generated so much drive and forward momentum for us this season at times when the play would otherwise stalled. Usually does it at least two or three times in a game. Great to see him really using his strength to good effect like that.

Did you just agree with someone other than yourself or did you just agree with yourself? ?

In addition to all the talk of us needing that elite outside player, I really do think that we are currenly another quality inside mid short with the aging and fading of Nathan Jones. Depending on what we do with pick 2 - 4 this year, I'm also optimistic that either Sparrow or a player that we could pick up with our 2nd rounder this year (or even trade for) could become that player and if that was to eventuate, I hardly think our list would be particularly unbalanced moving forward. I all think it's more related to the median age of your talent and the ones I'd be most worried about if I were in their shoes are Hawthorn.

I think the key thing Mooney's post above highlights is that the draft is usually more of a lottery than what we have with Lever who at the time of his trade to us was a relatively young player with a career ahead of him, who had already established himself as a realitively elite player for his position. Looks like a pretty good trade for us to me.

For me, attempting to replace Goodwin at this point would be very fraught. I don't see much of a list of candidates that I'd have any confidence in doing any better. If this rubbish continues next year though, then obviously that changes.

If I have any one criticism of Roos it's this. I understood that in our position, we accepted his short term proposition as something better than nothing and probably better than any other option on offer at the time and I also somewhat understand his reluctance to get into a long term coaching gig. Only time will tell how we view the Roos legacy over the long run, but right now his reluctance to commit to finish the job his started kind of grates with me.

I'm [censored] (really annoyed) that May is not playing as one good thing that could come for us in this last half a dozen or so games is for our backline to get some continuity and really gel together. But by the same token, I'm also glad that they are taking a conservative approach to May's hammy as I really don't want us taking so many injured players into preseason and a repeat of this year's injury debacle next season, so I'll cop loosing May on the chin. It's not disastrous for O Mac to be getting another hit out down back at AFL level either. Granted O Mac has been underwhelming this season to be polite, but on his day he can also provide a sufficient solid option, so I think that also bodes well for both our chances tonight and the seasons ahead that we can bring him in as a backup. If you look at it objectively, I think our performance post the bye has been reasonably solid and all the doom and gloom during the week is somewhat overblown and due to us slipping back a place on the ladder due to fixture issues more than anything. I think we will win tonight, without being particularly confident about it. Watching us in some of the games post bye, it's apparent to me that we are playing with more confidence and much cleaner ball movement than we did earlier in the year when we were fairly rabble like. We have been compeditive against several top eight sides in Adelaide and West Coast, without quite being able to crack it. The worm just has to turn for us soon.

It might help, but I'm not sure that would actually necessarily fix the problem. I'm guessing that the crowd noise issue at West Coast games intimidating the umpires is probably the biggest part of the issue and would probably still influence interstate umpires. The AFL does need to find a solution because it really is an integrity issue every bit as big as say tanking. Maybe they could introduce a rule and start paying free kicks against the WC when their crowd boos or makes noise or something, or maybe the umpires could wear ear plugs.

To be honest, I have mixed feelings about a breakdown from individual umpires. On the one hand I think they are paid professionals in a multi million dollar sport and it's fair to subject them to reasonable scrutiny, but on the other I also reconise the environment of pressure, stigma and abuse that umpires endure and indiviualising free kick stats from them for and against teams could make things a whole lot worse from the umpires personal perspective - at least if the stats were made public. I agree entirely with what you are saying about the context and situation in which free kick are given though. Last weeks game against WC was a case in point to some extent. That first quarter was diabolical - the umpires paid something like 9 frees against, 0 for us and I feel was at least partly a contributer to the scoreboard at quarter time. Yes we kicked for goal poorly, but we were on top of them in general play I felt and they kept on being let back into the contest with cheap free kicks and free kicks in front of goal. By the end of the game the free kicks had been evened up, but I think the damage had been done by that substantial quarter time scoreboard deficit that had us playing catch up footy and the Eagles a buffer to work with.

Thanks @Demonland , but in a sense - meh. I think we all knew this stat all along without needing it officially confirmed. I can't recall a time as a MFC supporter over a nearly 30 year period when we would have been in positive territory over the season or any more than a period of 2 games. I don't know if it's an intentional bias, but I'd put good money on the stats backing up my assertion. No surprises for me either that the Bulldogs are an umpires favorite as we frequently seemed to get rolled by them in close games decided by BS/game-changing free kicks for a number of years.

The defensive running this is a bit catch 22. T Mac made the call a few weeks ago that the loosing team often does a lot more defensive running than the winner. I can well understand that and I think part of the problem this season is that we have lost so much confidence and cohesion with our ball movement that it hasn't been enough to make the opposition two way run after us. I saw some of the best ball movement from us through the gut's of the ground that I have in a long time on Sunday afternoon, with Gus and Harmes some of the big contributors, so hopefully we might slowly be starting to turn that corner. But part of me also agrees that perhaps the two way running isn't a strength of our team right now. Perhaps when we are so dominant at winning the clearances, the two way running doesn't get shown up so much, but the times our opposition gets on top of us in that regards is when we get in the most trouble and we need to be able to better mitigate the damage in those situations - 2nd half against the Lions was case in point to me.

I was hoping for much better impact from big Preussy these last two games. Part of the disappointment and the issue I think is that he isn't holding his marks as well as he did in his stints earlier in the season and even in the game against Carlton he took a handful of big strong grabs around the ground that he hasn't done the past two weeks. For me I think it's two fold: 1. He's now being targeted and closer checked by defenders when he presents as a forward option as there isn't a T Mac or Weid to take the best two key backs; 2. As a result of 1. he's lost a bit of confidence in his marking ability and is fumbling his marks around the ground when he has more time space and body size advantage to clunk them. Not a lost cause by any stretch to me and I think the more AFL games we can get into him over the next 5 games to develop, better pick up the pace and elivated intensity compared VFL the better he will be next year.

Disagree with your assessment of Max's early days there Neil. I always thought he looked quite coordinated and footy smart for a guys his size. I think it was more injuries, as well as a lack of endurance (physical and mental) to maintain the required level of intensity over whole games that kept Max from having the impact he is as a player now earlier in his career.

Great fight back. Viney playing a great game. Fritta doing a top job up forward. Jetta getting amongst it as is Harmes. Brilliant move Lewis up forward (who ever would have thought). Have been quite happy with Corey Wagner's game so far as will.

So Freitch being held - play on.

The umpiring isn't a non issue. Alot of very borderline free kicks to them, whilst any for us the same - play on. Complete BS

I think that's a somewhat inaccurate assessment of our performance Vs GWS. They would have been trying pretty hard to win I recon: 1. What team wants to go into an elimination final against a team they just lost to {I think that was one of the scenarios}; 2. Whilst top 4 might have been unlikely/out of the equation, GWS were still playing at least for the guarantee of a home final.