Rodney (Balls) Grinter

I see not so much the crowds, but the grass roots amature and jnr leagues in the area as the reason it's so important to have the Suns there. Local and women's Aussie Rules footy in SEQ is on the rise. https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theage.com.au/sport/afl/battleground-brisbane-the-afl-insurgency-and-league-s-brutal-response-20230323-p5cuoi.html "Early into this season, the code boasts 38,000 registered participants (58,000 at its 2022 peak) at the grassroots level from northern NSW through Queensland, according to figures provided by the AFL. It has added 34 teams – half of them for girls – to its Youth Community Football program and lists 170 community Aussie rules clubs in 11 leagues. Swann said a common complaint from the suburbs was the lack of grounds to accommodate record numbers of juniors. The NRL was less forthcoming with its data, but said it had 54,550 Queensland participants, up more than 20 per cent. It would not say when the figure was captured."

So maybe it's not realistic, but it would be nice if we did! 😉 I actually think our 2021 season was pretty close. Bar a few games like the unfortunate loss to Collingwood and perhaps one or two others, I thought we we convincingly in control of most games. Even though we only won alot of them with a winning margin of 20 - 30 points, we're generally so in control of those games that we always looked like we'd win and were close to unbeatable.

Yeah, Jeff and his cheap and nasty Brown and Gold (wees and poos) sports jacket - case in point!

Ooooooo tin cape, I haven't seen one of those before!

Honestly, I have a soft spot for the Sun's and hope they do well, because I think the Gold Coast and South East Queensland in particular is much more receptive and fertile ground for Australian Rules than Sydney will probably ever be, but trying to encourage support through rubbish biased commentary is just pathetic. Imagine had it have been Hawthorn in their prime that piped GC in yesterday's game. It would have been never ending praise for this great Hawthorn team that 'just do what good teams do and find a way to win, even when they're not playing their best football'. Maybe Dunstal is just sour, because he was a part of the Clarkson / Mitchel replacement strategy and recient Hawthorn recruiting strategy and he can see his beloved Hawks are in for a decade or more of pain and uncompetitiveness and it's at least partly his fault?

Not wanting to be all doom and gloom, because I'm glad we got the 4 points, I'll take that any day of the week and generally I think we are playing ok and in a decient position win/loss wise. BUT I think there are some aspects of our defensive game that are rubbish at the moment. My recollection of the last two goals that the GC kicked, were the result of some sloppy defending on our behalf close to the goal line that wouldn't have previously got through our once elite backline. We can talk about bias against us with respects to umpiring decisions and JVR's suspension all we like, but I really hope the coaches and players throughly review that final 5mins of play carefully and we learn some lessons from that. Goody publicly stated how well we played in the last quarter and generally I'd agree, but in our near capitulation, I think we actually lost our heads a bit and if it wasn't for their rubbish shot on goal in the last minute, we would have had an unfortunate loss. Against any decient top 8 side and we loose that game.

That free for holding the ball they gave to Ellis I think it was made me puke. He had hold of him for all of a millisecond and the ball was handpassed clear. If it was Dusty who was tackled, no free holding the ball and the naritive would have been about how strong Dusty is and they they just can't contain him in a tackle, because of his brute strenght to break out of it. In actual fact, the Ellis tackle on this occasion really wasn't even all that good and our player (I forget who) basically just slipped it and got a handball clear. The free kick should never have been played anywhere on the ground, let alone right in front of goal in a close game. I was quite ok receiving the Gawn free as an evener upper for that one. Fact was in the final quarter we out played them for the most part, kicked poorly, which kept them in the game when they shouldn't have been, they then got a bunch of goals through part fluke and part bad defending on our behalf and had a chance to steal the game when the shouldn't have been in it.

Except Razor Ray. He's every Ch 7 comentators favorite celebrity umpire. I've even seen kids running around in bright yellow T-shirts with Razor's number on the back. Love you Ray - now F off.

Yeah I thought exactly the same thing. How he can do that and still be considered negligent of his duty of care to the other player is beyond me.

Roo got shafted Christian hates Demons Appeal this injustice

That incident should have got 5 weeks. Clumsy accident my backside. Hawkins was flailing about all over the place hoping something would connect. This notion that players do stuff like that by accident is garbage, it was far less of a football action than either of Kossies or JVR's incidents, because he had the ball and wasn't contesting it. He was aggressively fending off May.

Mind blown 🤯

Since when do Melbourne ever appeal this stuff?

I think it's all in context really. A shocker game from Clarry is anything that he's not up amoung the top coaches votes. I'd say Brownlow, but the umpires clearly don't have a clue about rating players games, so that's not a valid metric. In other words, a shocker game for Clarry is the best game of the year for 95% of standard AFL players.

I'm seeing the next 3 or 4 games as a really important block to get out team humming to take on Collingwood on Kings Birthday, which I expect to be a near finals like test of atmosphere, intensity and consequence. Who knows what we will get from Hawthorn (a big part of me hopes they are puss that we can slaughter with ease and total dominance), but Port and Freo should be competitive enough to get our heads in the right place for playing genuinely contending teams.

Not sure if others have commented much on this already, but I was really pleased with Bowey's game last night. His form has been a bit up and down this season and over the past 12 months we've found that he is actually human, but I get the impression that he's returning to his best 2021 premiership finals era type tenacious, unflappable, unbeatable and undropable form.

Totally agree Sue. This issue grates on my immensely. I mean seriously. What you get is a series of disconnected statements about the game from the coaches and spend half your time trying to figure out what their answer relates to. You've got to feel for the coaches too as they've got to be aware of this, that one of their main chances to explain the story to the fans is massively compromised. The AFL are so very dum in alot of respects. This one also falls into the same basket of not having enough dedicated cameras and technology to do propper post goal review. They'll spend nearly a billion dollars on a new stadium that Tasmania 'must have' to make it suitable for AFL standard, but then won't fork out a few thousand dollars to have dedicated cameras setup in the best locations for goal line review, so we'll get a game that gets controversially decided on some blurry vision with the goal umpires butt three quarters blocking the view of the ball as it crosses.

Also pleasing that we are resting our bulls like Clarry and Trac for periods during games where we can afford to and using our midfield depth to wear down oppositions that don't bat as deep in the guts. I suspected we were doing this somewhat, but Goodwin more or less confirmed that again in his presser too. Where maybe last season Clarry and Trac battle it out all game in the guts to win the game from their brute strenght and capasity, they end up with 30+ possessions and we say how great they are and they're the difference between us and GC. But I think we've now arrived at a point where Clarry, Trac and co don't need that affirmation of their greatness every week and we have enough trust in others to go head to head with Rowel and Co, knowing that we may be conceding a little, but still doing enough to control the game, conserving our guns for when th heat is really on and developing the game of the next gen through the middle all at the same time. I think we've learnt from 2022 and what we are watching now is the next step in our evolution to being a great side over a sustained period and hopefully great crack at another flag this year.

Talk about an out if character brain fade from Mr.Reliable kicking out who always goes boundary and to the left. Kicking down the guts with 15 seconds left might have been the right play if we were 5 points down, but 5 points up? I was somewhat dumbfounded. Unless he shanked it off the wrong side of the boot or something but he's too good a kick for that. Don't want to crucify the MFC premiership full back and MFC full back of the century, meerly like to know "what the F were you thinking big fella" and I'm tipping he was asking himself the same question the moment it left his boot and would be very thankful when we got away with it and the 4 points.

Good work. Here on DL we hold ourselfs the highest of editorial and typesetting standards you know.

Add to that being in good form and a fit list hitting first week of finals so we get a repeat of 2021 and not 2022.

Out of all those current top 8 teams, I'd say Port probably have the toughest double ups. Could be bye bye Ken at the end of the season when they miss the 8. Alternatively if they make it, they could be either cooked through fighting so hard just to make it or one of the better sides in the bottom half of the 8.

My 2011 Neeld era scarf was a prized possession for me after we won in 2021 as it was proof I wasn't some cheap band wagon jumper. Think I actually lost it sometime last year and I'm devo. Also annoyed that I got rid of a whole bunch of others from that era as I couldn't justify having a whole draw full and got rid of them when my wife got up me one day about the room being a mess. Absolutely treasure my 2021 members scarfs and probably over the premiers ones, which I never bought. I'm hoping the 2023 one might become treasured in much the same way after September and it's a better more classic design too.

Another disadvantage of playing both Petty and JVR forward right now is that it's the blind leading the blind in terms of forward craft leadership. Say all you want against BBBs unwieldyness when the ball his the ground, but he is crafty and knows where to position himself and move if he misses a mark and often gets involved in scoring chains if he misses a mark. Whether he feeds it on through a handball / knock on or just running to the right spot to receive and kick an opporunistic goal, he's crafty as a forward where Petty frankly isn't on current evidence to date. We need someone like BBB to be mentoring and leading JVR in these aspects of playing forward that being an experienced forward at the MFC brings. If it's not BBB, the T Mac or Melksham would be just as good IMHO. T Mac is a leader and student of the game and has the presence that someone like JVR would respect. I'm not sure exactly what's up with T Mac at the moment as his practice match form looked pretty good to me as he has in patches at AFL level. Although he may not have taken that many contested marks in the season proper, I still think he'd contest and bring the ball to ground just as well as Petty up forward. And Tommy has good goal sense and forward craft in general.

II agree with McQueen. I think we are blooding JVR and Petty forward against some of the weaker teams early in the season. IMHO it's great that JVR is getting some time and exposure at the top level and while I see great potential in how he plays, he's not a mature player or finished product and I don't feel he's ready to take charge and carry the forward line just yet. He does a few good things in patches, but largely goes missing the rest of the game and against the stronger teams in the comp, I think he'd really struggle. My impression is that his contribution further up the ground is substantially less than T Mac or even Brown just at the moment. I do like the way he attacks the ball and is generally a pretty clean one grab mark. He's a tall, well toned and not as weedy as the Weid, but I feel he's not yet reached his physical maturity as a KPF and when he does, I think he'll be the better for it. I've found Petty's impact as a forward a little disappointing (perhaps because I had really high expectations of what he might be able to do). He's as tough and honest as they come and he competes well in the air, but doesn't actually take as many marks or kick enough goals as I think we need from a key forward. Also don't think he provides that link player leading up towards wing/half back as T Mac / BBB. We've clearly tried to be more attacking in our game style this year as well as try a few different players, which is great, but I think our defense has suffered as a result and missing Petty back there is part of that to me. For me Petty is currently a much better defender than forward and I'd like to see him back there sooner rather than later, to start consolidating our defensive game again and become that really miserly team to play against again, because that's what won us a flag and I think could win us another one. Incidentally, I thought it was a bad decision to sub Harmes in for Turner in the last quarter. Getting Harmes into the game was the right thing as he would have helped inject some extra run, but I thought Turner was just starting to find some confidence and a bit more of the ball in the second half, which would have been good to build on.