Rodney (Balls) Grinter

Another Guy wearing 43.

I'm not too sure where to pitch my own predictions right now, but these are the sort of predictions I can be comfortable with as opposed to some of the ridiculous media hype going around about how great the MFC are at the moment. I honestly don't know how some of these media types still have a job, because their credibility is rubbish. We make a preliminary final with a strong young list and all of a sudden we are practically premiership favorites next year (after many of them wrote us off of even making finals this year after half a dozen rounds). Don't get me wrong I think we have a strong list, are building something and I hope like hell that there is at least one premiership there sometime in the next 5 years, but there is just soo much that has to happen between now and that becoming a reality that it's not funny. I posted a few weeks about my late onset MFCSS and this is essentially it - so many teams over the past decade or so were anointed by the media with greatness and then subsequently bombed out miserably and my worry is that at this point that could still be us. The prime examples of this that stick in my head are: 1. Port Adelaide 2014 - following their 3 point preliminary final loss to Hawthorn in 2014 were touted as a star studded young team on the rise and premierships in the making, with a new bread of master coach in Ken Hinkley, playing a hard, agressive and exciting attacking brand of football (sounds a lot like the MFC of 2018); 2. Western Bulldogs post premiership - most media had them as top 4 material the following year and continuing to go from strength to strength over the next 2 - 3 years based on the strength of their young talent filled list after their suprise before their time flag in 2016; 3. GWS - So much tallent it was a concern they were going to compltely dominate the competition; 4. Adelaide 2018 - goes from Grand finalist to flop in an instant - the competition is just so tight. To be fair I never really rated them that high in 2017 to start with; 5. Collingwood post Malthouse to an extent. I guess all of the above is a bit of an antithesis of a prediction, so if I am going to make a general prediction in the afirmative it is that at some point in the season we will loose one or several games which will have some posters on Demonland sighting huge list and coaching deficiencies that mean we do not actually have a potential premiership team and never will, which won't actually be the case, but it will be portrayed as such.

I have a similar recollection. As much as we love to loath them, I don't know why anyone would find it hard to think Collingwood have a good midfeild. Pendelbry, Treloar, Sidebottom, Maynard (does he play mid?) and probably a few others. Scary thing is they have just added a rejuvenated Beams back into that mix. Still I also recall the huge freak-out about us comming up against Geelong's 'star studded' midfeild in Rd one last year. My hopes and expectations are that our guys will just keep getting stronger, more match hardened and experience in the next few years, whilst some of the elite players from other teams that represent the old gaurd will start to drop off. If players like Selwood and Pendles output drops, the others around them could also start looking more second rate as well.

If it works, why not.

Welcome to a winning team Demons supporters. Soak it in and I hope the club milks it for everything it is worth as these sort of things are what will help keep us finacial against the mega clubs (until we can become one). I won't be anything like satisfied until we have won that ever elusive flag, but I think we need all need to get use to being one of the good teams again.

She was awsome in The Professional, though I must admit that it was that movie which solidified my man-crush on Jean Reno.

Would be like getting some bonus new recruits if we can get them back in form and would add some serious firepower to our team. Don't understand what it would take to get Jeffy right, but whatever it is, we should do it. Clearly he as the capability as he has previously kicked 40 goals in multiple seasons both for us and Carlscum. If Hunt can get some form back, get back that confidence to take on the game and break lines again, the only thing left for him would be to learn to dispose of the ball more purposely and hit up targets rather than bomb away when he kicks it. I think that's all very doable, when you look at some of the beautiful laces out passes which Frosty nailed into the forwardline at times late in season 2018.

As well as the mustache Has this guy got a backup career in porn movies or what? Nice.

What do you call Pruess? As a bit of an asides, I'm not quite sure that Pedo was a Ruck/Fwd as opposed to a Fwd/Ruck, though I acknowledge that he did do a pretty good job on a stand in main ruckman in 2017. The only thing I'd say is that Pedo may have been somewhat more of a proven commodity than perhaps Pruess is at the moment. But counter to that is that as much as I loved what he brought as a player on his day, it's also fair to say that Pedo was also a bit on fringe side for most of his career and he is now in his 30s, so was never going to be much of an option going forward. From what I understand, Preuss has certainly shown the ability to play up to a similar standard as Pedo and being 5 or so years younger has the potential to be around for much longer. If that's not replacing Pedo, I don't know what is. When you look at how big men develop, from an overall recruiting perspective were much better off trading for a more proven commodity in Preuss with almost all of his development behind him, such that he is ready made to step up and play on the big stage than we were punting on one or more 18 yo key talls/ruckman in the draft (only have to look at King & Fliper to realise that). We also have Bradke comming up the rear as a development/project ruckman in years to come. That's not to say that we should never recruit another key position forward/ruck through the draft in the future, but my take is that we are going to sit back a bit, pick and choose ones we think have the most potential, rather than pick one or two every draft just for the sake of it.

He certainly hasn't built quite the same body of work as Tony, but Tommy's accuracy is certainly up there with big Tony's at this point, with 68.8% for 2018 74.2% for 2017. Given he kicked alot more goals in 2018, than 17 his overall career average is probably sitting much closer to 70% than 74%, but it's still a pretty good indication of the quality of the asset we have in big Tommy Mac.

At 6' 2 and 90kgs, Vanders is another mid/fwd that could provide a decent target inside 50 if called upon. Jessy was a solid forward option, no two ways about that, but assuming Weid continues to stand up, I don't see how the situation has really changed that much in terms of KPF depth terms. The way I see it, we replaced Jessy's role as a KPF with Weid, Pedo's role as Fwd/Ruck with Pruess as a Ruck/Fwd and Weids role as backup KPF with May as KPB/KPF. We are not short (pardon the pun) of big guys that can take a grab or as more generally the case in the modern game, create a contest and bring the ball to ground for our runners. It would take both T Mac, Weid and probably a few others going down before we became too exposed IMHO. You mention Mc Govern and Talia, but there are probably only a few teams in the comp with monster key backs like that and with May, we are probably now one of them!

Orr yeah. Melb 2299 Vs Rich 2143. My recollection was that we might have finished second for scoring to Richmond, but that was just for percentage, due to their lower scores against, which hopefully we have fixed up in the second half of the season and only strengthened further with May and possibly Kolodjashnij.

And we were pretty much the highest scoring team in the comp too yeah?

Always a good thing to disappoint supporters of the filth. Would almost be enough reason to draft him for that purpose alone.

What about the bloke from Casey - Lockhart? Did he get picked up by anyone do you know?

Still needs to open his goal kicking account as an AFL player.

If we were in a real bind, I recon you would look at Steve May down there. Our backline functioned ok against most sides this year with either May or Lever down back. IF we were struggling for options up forward, it could be a case of where the greater need is for May in the context of the realitive strengths/weaknesses of our oppositions forward/backlines and who is dominating the ball out of the middle on the day.

Hey, I said he was looking a bit old, not that I thought he was about to drop dead anytime soon (although sadly too many of our MFC heros have passed well before their time).

Don't get me wrong, as I do not mean what I'm about to state in a derogatory way at all, but just looking a the photos of JT today, he is starting to look pretty old (no doubts working in that kind of position for the MFC would do that to you). I'm wondering if we are managing a sucession plan for the recruiting team or 'list managing the list managers' so to speak. Really do hope that JT is mentoring a good apprentice loyal to the MFC as it would be more than handy to have someone of his ilk recruiting the next several generations of mighty Demons for the decades to come, not only the next period.

I played local footy with a block nicknamed Filthy, he didn’t get it for quite the same analogy though.

Yes, first job for the fitness and conditioning team is to run him through the sheep dip to disinfect him. But as he has only been at their VFL side, the filth is probably not completely engrained just yet.

Agree. We have relied on Jones for a long time and whilst our reliance on him has diminished, I feel that he has still got in amongst it and made a fair contribution in that area last season. Hopefully these guys could step up and start playing a role in the guts past Jones and who knows when one of Clarry, Harmes, Brayshaw or even Viney might spend a season out with an ACL or something (touch wood).

It will take some getting use to being in that position again.

I remember when I was a kid, the only way to find out the results of the draft for most meer mortals was the paper the next day. Use to love going through it in The Age at grandma's place when I went around on the weekend. Then few years back when they first started televising the draft it was a day time production and I recalled making sure I was home from work early so I could watch it all live on TV (those also being the days when the MFC had numerous picks in the first round). Soon realized that the more old school way of finding out who we picked was much more entertaining.

Meer details. Who watches the cricket anyway, we're crap. Tell them to go play at the Junction Oval.