Rodney (Balls) Grinter

I lost my MFC scarf somewhere at Perf airport on the way through last Sunday night. Never mind, I'm sure there will be pleanty of Eagles supporters looking for a different team to follow soon, who might as whell get on board the Demon train!!

Personally, I like the traditional of the father/son rule, but I think the academies should be abolished in as far as they currently exist. Somewhat annoys me that we miss out on getting our cream, when others like the Bulldogs and Sydney have had their lick of the ice cream (and Sydney is still at the Ice cream shop lining up for more). However, if it's not regulated and moderated, I could easily see this going back to be like the old 80s zone system, where those with the most productive zones consistently get the best players, or a higher proportion of them. For the benifit of the game overall, I think it would be much better if the league/clubs put more money into developing elitle talents at TAC clubs etc and through providing more development and administration support at local grass roots weekend footy (excluding the private school boy stuff that is already generally funded and resourced to the hilt). Could employ a bunch more of the ex/retired AFL level footballers and assist them to transition to life after football and still utilise and leverage their elite skills and professional sporting background to teach these same skills and ethos to the lower levels and next gen of up and commers.

...and repeats and repeats and repeats. It took me a little to warm to Goody's pressers, but he still won me over fairly early. You can see why the players love him and respond to him. So much consistency and simplicity in his messages.

Agreed. And he's regularly getting amoung the goals too. Hearing Max and Goody talk post premership, it's pretty clear that the regards with which Jack was held within the team differed substantially from those of us supporters on the outer and that his personal leadership and relentless drive for competitiveness and setting high standards was super important to our sucess. Now that has been widely acknowledged and with the proof in the pudding of the premership, he can just go about being himself and not be criticized externally for it.

Should pickup the scoring at will from where we left off in the 3rd and 4th quarters. I want to serverly embarrass WC and put Will Schofield back in his place. We should try to beat them by so much and stick it so far up their behinds that they never want to come back to Perth.

When you play in a side that has Clarry, Trac, Gawn, Lever, May, Salem, Langdon, getting picked 5th or 6th is a pretty decient effort!

Only seen the stats sheet that James Harmes kicked two goals today and was listed amoung the best players again. Continues his trend of solid, consistent good form this season. Really glad this bloke has been able to lift himself back to playing his best footy again and cement himself a position in the team at the moment, when he looked to be a bit on the margins a few years ago. Melbourne supporter who has had to battle work really hard to get where he is. Well done Harmsy, champion Demon through and through.

First game I haven't been able to watch live in any form for a while today. Last couple of times that happened was Vs the Dog and GWS second time around last year, so very happy with the result today.

Nice - so what of that will you indulge us with today Ethan?

Thanks JTR, I'd seen it before as well, but certainly enjoyed seeing it again. How bloody cool would it be for Trac just to rock on down to training and join in like that! Great to see.

Thanks Colin. It's all a bit of a blur at times these days and so many things from that era we'd all rather forget if we could.

Agree. If Steve May did this to anyone himself he'd be out for half a season. Hawkins seems to get such a cruisey ride from the umps and AFL these days.

Hmmm, not sure about that one, but it wouldn't take many as he's from pretty good sporting lineage obviously: Brother Alwyn played 100 games for Essendon; Cousin of Gavin Wanganeen and NBA star Patrick Mills Sister Bronwyn played AFLW for the mighty Demons in the first exibition game against the Dogs From what I can gather Aaron has 5 kids, 3 boys, 2 girls, so pleanty of superstars for both our sides respectively - so maybe in a few seasons, there'll be little red and blue Flashes out on the G again!!

If you lookup Uban Dictionary for the phrase "white line fever" , there are two separate pictures of Gold Coast Sun's players illustrating the alternate definitions. One is of Steve May and the other of Karmichael Hunt. ...how glad must Steve be that he left the Sun's and came to us!

Similarly, listening to Matty Wheelan and Flash Davey and it's clear how genuinely this initiative is appreciated by our indigenous brethren. In particular I loved hearing Davey speak in the video put up by the club. I had thought Davey was amoung those like Jnr, Green etc that felt abandoned and offended by the club at the end of their careers when they were asked/told to ignominiously retire, however hearing him speak about Narrm Football Club the other day it was great to hear the passion and great affection that Flash still has for the club. While I suspect it's not the only reason, the commitment, respect and embrace that we have extended towards to the indigenous culture at the club in recent times must help guys like Flash, May, Kossie, Toby and the other indigenous players we have on our list feel like they truely belong at the club, when they come from such a different cultural background and could otherwise easily feel somewhat like outsiders. Also loved it when Jeffy Garlett was at the club and the whole team wore boots painted by him with indigenous art a few years back.

I just love the way Steve May holds himself out on the footy feild too. Struts about with his big chest out, half psycho stare and his whole body language says "don't [censored] with us". Must give a huge amount of confidence to those playing around him. They say Lever is the general with the way he commands orders to his team mates and makes sure our defense is well positioned, but I reckon the backline walks taller with May down there.

Agree with all of this. I think the MFC experience over the past 30 odd years has taught me that there's a huge difference between that can be almost compeditive every second week and/or scrape into finals, than one that can finish top 4 and genuinely challenge for a flag. My take is before Clarkson was shown the door by Kennett, that he was coaching to develop players rather than win games. Not quite tanking, but it would have been pretty handy for the Hawks to pick up a top 4 or 5 pick rather than 7 which they ended up with. Kennett pisses him off and now he's coaching more to win and show off what he can do to get results with a very average list. Like you both, I'm more than happy for the Hawks to be faux compeditive and spend decades being mediocre.

These are Hawthorn supporters we're talking about here you know. There's a subtle, but important difference between self respecting and making love to yourself.

Not since Collingwood on Queens birthday 2021. Although I watch pretty much every game, for some weird reasons, I didn't watch the games against GWS and the Dogs in the second half of 2021. It's kind of unbelievable that I haven't watched us actually loose in nearly a year!! 😯😯. I mentally actually thought we'd lost against Geelong at 3/4 time of the last home and away last year, but so guess that just wasn't to be 😥😥🤣🤣🤣. Not like I'm going to complain about that though.

You know, it's interesting that when a side is decient, as an opposition supporter, you generally know or make a point of knowing the paying numbers of their best players or can otherwise generally identify them from the outer. I had almost completely no idea who a single Hawthorn player was on Saturday night, except for their veteran Brooooost who the Hawthorn supporters kept telling me who he was whenever he got the ball.

I've got to say that from attending the game in M10 on Saturday night, everything in this thread is true ...and then some: * Plenty of their supporters were reduced to the near fact that they were an ordinary side and were going to loose the game convincingly; * "Oh, what are you doing kicking it to him?" - was a cry heard often as Steve May and Max Gawn picked off intercept marks at will; * I was imeediately surrounded by a number of Hawthorn supporters that were actually decient human beings. I didn't think it was possible, but there you go; * Right at the back (closest the bar), the loudest of the real Hawthorn supporters revealed their true colours. What an obnoxious bunch of Fl#$gs. Forget how many times I heard how they'd never seen so many Melbourne supporters, or how crap Melbourne were, bla, bla, bla. A common thread with all of them though was how scorned they were by the umpires decisions. Never heard a bigger bunch of sooky la la's in my life. You'd think when old mate Hawks defender had a fist full of BBBs jumper, you'd just sush up and resist telling your own defender what a useless player they were for gifting the most obvious fee kick in front of goal possible wouldn't you? But apparently, this was an absolute travesty of justice. Quite happy where we sit with respects to them right now. Us cruising with a quality footy side that should make finals and compete well, with the Hawks a middle of of the road also ran that may push for finals, but probably won't be any kind of threat for a number of years, hopefully decades.

I'd be almost certain there would be clubs with an interest in him and probably for more money than MFC is willing to offer in the interests of keeping our top players at the club. However, listening to him tall on the Gus and Gawn podcast the other week, he seems a really genuine sort of character, so unless there was a huge falling out with the MFC, I can't personally see him being anything but a Demon next season.

With respects to the question posed by the title of this thread, I think Gawn has already been acknowledged as the best player in the league. Lord Trav somewhat beat me to the punch. Back in 2018, when he had arguably his best individual season, he took out pretty much every players award bar the Brownlow and I think AFL Coaches and AFLPA awards are a much better measure than the umpires award. Of course last year, he became the first MFC premership captain in over 50 years, so that probably also makes 2021 an even more valuable contribution than 2018. While Jackson is presently rated so highly, I think there is an aspect of that which is prospectively based on what he is deliving realitive to it being so early in his career and future potential. It's actually really Gawn that is still the lynch pin, anchoring the ship, providing the lions share of output and delivering what is required every match.

I also thought Hunt's game yesterday was excellent. His contests and spoils are a real highlight. I think he is probably a real form and confidence player when it comes to his foot passing. Back end of 2021, before he got injured he had become quite reliable at choosing and hitting targets. First few round of this season he was a bit of a clanger king by foot, but in recent weeks he's really tidied that up and yesterday I really noticed him putting some really precise and well weighted passes to the advantage of our players running back towards half forward.

Yeah, but I'll spew more if Bowey's does!! ...and what's with all this spewing stuff about? I thought COVID was more a case of needing to buy more TP.