Rodney (Balls) Grinter

Has been one of our best players since he's been back. Congratulations Christian. Well earnt and so glad he was a part of the 2021 premiership. Seems like such an all round good guy and a great servant of the MFC.

Though I'm not sure it would show up statistically, I thought he was really good at husseling and getting the ball going our way through whatever means up the ground in wet conditions against Geelong a few weeks back.

Agreed. Add to that, that in his first week back against Geelong, I felt Petty had minimal impact and I think he would have actually benefited from a week at Casey to build some confidence. Although he was better against GWS, personally, I don't think Petty is playing at his best 2021 / 2022 level, where his contested and intercept marking in defense was a real feature.

On a similar note, watch from 3:32 onwards:

I think he was just showing off with that shot for goal. Could have comfortably got another 5m closer to the man on the mark and kicked from around 55m as the man on the mark seemed to be not much further out than 45m. Not many players these days can reliability make the distance from 55m, but Bennett consistently kicked them from 60m.

So says the person with the avitar of David Schwartz who's was nearly financially destroyed by a gambling addiction. https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.nine.com.au/article/12174638-63f5-455f-85b2-b589dd9ddaa6

That's just taken the MFC gone to the snow in the Range Rover stereotype to a whole new level 58er! 😂 Perhaps it's the overwhelming WA support for our Demons in 2021 and winning a flag ourselves that has tempered my outright hatred of WC into something less bitter. They were a bloody good side under Malthouse through the 90s, so disiplined with their ball use, game plan and had a winning habit that I was quite envious. They probably should have won a few more flags during that era. Still the PF losses we had to them in the West in 94 and 18 cut pretty deep and I was particularly [censored] in 94 when we had such a gun side that had been very competitive for a good 7 seasons, but couldn't crack a flag. Their arrogance in the aftermath of the 2018 prelim was also pretty hard to stomach. Travelling over the West for a prelim is always going to be a hard ask, still in retrospect on both occations they pretty much earnt the right through being consistent through the season and finishing the home and away in a ladder position that set them up for finals sucess - something I'm hoping our Demons of this era can emulate.

Somewhat prophetic. When you look at their performances in 2023 on aggregate as shown up in % I'd say they are in the same sort of hole that we were in around 2011. Of course, we'd already off loaded all the veterans by then and were already attempting to invest in youth. West Coast have been one of the most successful teams of the AFL era, so I'm not particularly empathetic to their current predicament.

I keep waiting for Hawkins to drop off and leave a huge hole in their side, but he seems almost phyically immortal at this point. Surely there's a big hamstring tear and or a bunch of soft tissue injuries sometime in the next couple of years that at his age his recovery will be slow and impactful on his performance? I don't think I wish ill on the guy personally, as I actually admire how well he's been able to play for so long, but in the interests of fairness to the competition with respect to him propping up Geelong's performance and keeping them compeditive, I do hope the end on his career is near. Boomer Harvey was similar. Maybe the AFL should bring in a mandatory retirement age.

Rebrand complete. No where's our $1M consulting fee for this service.

They may or may not have. Not sure any of them were great trainers and may not even have made it onto an AFL list just based on their respective body shapes and if they did make it they may have been cut quickly due to attitude issues. It's a pretty hypothetical question and there is obviously The counter argument that they may have risen to the professional environment around them and thrived. Guys like Alan Jackovic who has openly spoken about his lack of preseason training early on (which he attributed his being injury prone to) might actually have benefited from the more professional environment and that would have been great to have seen him perform at his peak for longer (for us).

That they were not, but they could certainly play football. Add to that guys like Abblet senior, Dunstall, Alan Jackovic and others that may not have made it in the ultra professional, money and image driven AFL era. These guys all put on a show and I think the game had more character back then, due to the diversity of players backgrounds and physical attributes. Also miss the local suburban grounds like Princess Park, the Western Oval and Windy Hill etc. Oddly enough, I even miss Waverly - again character and the game was accessible to the everyday supporter.

I knòw this isn't the 'AFL look a likes' thread, but: Looks scarier than when he was leading towards Peter Craven, elbow aimed.

And lure him back from rugby league - no thanks. I'm happy with him right where he is. Seriously - how does a bloke that made a career out of ducking to get tackled around the neck get employed by a sport that the aim is to takle the opposition in the place where a neck should be, but has is absent in it's players due to an evolutionary process of genetic selection?

The 'hugely popular Gather Round TM" is like the '100% all beef TM' burger at McDonald's just a bunch of marketing BS. I can't stand this concept. The Melbourne Vs Essendon game was hardly attended this year, because all the locals were mostly intered in the Crows game later in the day.

Actually...

Collingwood - what, you expected better?

Arn't AI cars dogs? ...what kind of dog would a Range Rover be?

With recruiting veterans, there is always going to be some element of risk in terms of performance towards the end. At Melbourne, we got great value out of Leiws for most of his contract. Eventually he became pretty marginal as a player, but I'm sure the value he bought to our culture from finals sucess etc was invaluable. Even if he makes no further contribution, I think BBB was an important ingredient to our 2021 premiership. Similarly Brisbane got pretty good value out of Hodge and who knows what mentoring Gunstan might provide off the feild that might help the further development of Brisbane's forwards.

I'm just glad we didn't recruit Gunstan close to the end.

Agree with all that too Jnr. The other that frustrates the heck out of me is players doing cheap push in the back etc of their opponent towards the fence once the ball had crossed the boundary line. I can't think of any particular culprit players or teams who are better or worse than any other and I'm sure we have many that do it repeatedly. Maybe the AFL will just wait for a player to become concussed hitting the fence or the hard astroturf section near the fence and then any player that breaths on a player near the boundary line will get a 2 week suspension. It's really dum if you ask me.

100% this Lucifer. Was watching a game from the 80s a while back and it struck me how much less time/oppertunity players had before it was considered holding the ball. But it didn't result in the game being dominated by umpiring, or players not going in for the ball because players adjust. Don't take on the tackler so readily, not as many rolling mauls, more kick / leading type behaviour players spread over a bigger area of the ground and everyone had more space, because the ball could be moved faster by foot than players able to flood back. I'm not sure if it was a 'no prior' interpretation or if the threshold for holding the ball was just lower, but definitely wouldn't have had players being bought to ground with the ball and it not a free kick, so players a) generally avoided letting that happen as the ball winner and b) knew they didn't need to pile drive players to be awarded the free kick.

I'd go along with that. I seem to recall Salem doing something like this before.

Add Bowey back to that at some stage and our backline including Hibberd, Lever, May, Rivers looks pretty elite at the moment. Tomlinson did a great job there on Monday, I really prefer Petty there and Brayshaw can also be fantastic down there on his day. It's a bit of an embarrassment of riches down back at the moment and would be making life super tuff for the selectors.

Love Judd. He does some great work at half back, but I feel his pin point passing and good option selection is almost wasted there. Wounder if he'll graduate to a wing one day and/or be given a bit more licence to run off his man to get more ball across half forward and deliver the ball inside 50 or take a few shots at goal every now and then as time goes by. Went to a function with Max Gawn the other week and he was a huge rap on Judd. Also pointed out that nearly every week Judd is being assigned one of the opposition's most damaging forwards, such is the coaches faith in him and makes his performances even more impressive. Just as impressive is that he rarely gets beaten one on one.