Rodney (Balls) Grinter

As a fellow interstater, I wouldn't have been so disappointed if the game was played at the Gabba. Was the only up side to last season/year that I got to more MFC games than I have in many years. Watching us thrash those filthy Pies at the Gabba was a real highlight.

Just go nuts brother. Screem your lungs out and cheer our Demons on to VICTORY!! GO THE MIGHTY DEMONS!!

Got to say, I'm pretty pussed off with the NT govenment about them shutting up shop and then not paying us the $800k either. That contract can't have been very well written. Part of me is hopeful we could play it there again some other time and still keep the $800k, because I think we would financially need that fairly badly, but another part of me says that a potentially energy sapping trip to Alice is something we could do without and perhaps this is as good a time as any to say goodby to the mob of C U in the NTs.

Officially Giants Stadium: https://www.afl.com.au/news/624485/fixture-update-r12-blockbuster-finally-finds-venue-crows-pies-clash-still-tbc Not the worst result. I'm just happy it's on and not going to derail our fixture for now.

Agree with you here 100% BB Yep Hey and hasn't that gambling industry made a great contribution to the AFL and society in general.

Sorry, I just don't get this narrative of CW the elite footy journalist. Yeah, sure unlike Slobo, she can actually put a few words together which make meaningful sense in the English language, but that's hardly a high benchmark to overcome. I couldn't help opening her most recient article just to see what it was all about, but really it was just like lancing a boil. Full of puss about behind the scenes administration types that no one knows or gives much of a crap about. Her material would be better off in the politics section of the newspaper than sports. I enjoy my footy to get away from all that stuff and she contributes pretty much nothing that I want as a sports journalism consumer. Time that she goes the way of Mike Sheean and retires.

I see in her most recient bile laced offering, that she can't help but take another swipe at Melbourne Re 'the tanking affair'. [censored] off back to wherever it was you were hiding Wilson. How this person is considered a 'Sports Journalist' is beyond me. Would be better off doing tabloid crap for the Telegraph.

The whole reason for this thread is very un#positivelingers BTW

Don't fully get the lack of love for Baker. Yeah he's no #positivelingers (let's face it other than the man, who is?), but I think he showed good intent and attack on the ball when we played him late last year and again against North. If his Casey form is decient enough (mind you that's hard to evaluate with the lack of games) if we are not prepared to play him in scenarios such as this, you wouldn't think that fairs well for keeping him on the list. However I doubt that's the case, since he was promoted for the North game and an advantage of Casey not playing this week is that he'll be pretty fresh as opposed comming off a six day break that Brisbane will be.

The umpires haven't missed paying a bunch of marginal deliberate out of bounds against us this game have they? FFS ?????

Yep. I think that's it.

It's kind of an asides, in the context of tonight's game, but I've been thinking lately that Sparrow really needs to log some more time at AFL level. Jordon has been good, but I'm not sure he's that much better than Sparrow right now and I think we really need to rotate these two in and out of the team for some decient blocks of games for the sake of both their development and ready made depth for the team.

Just seen the news that this game is definitely going ahead and it's made my Friday. Can't wait to get through the rest of the work day and watch us slog it out tonight. Irrespective of what happened last week, my feeling is that our form hasn't been that great (i.e. we're not totally dominating games) so I'm not brimming full of confidence, but our ability to consistently rise to the challenge that's in front of us has me believing we are still in with a red hot chance. Hoping we learn some things from last week and our encounter with the Dogs pre-season. Really want the win tonight - hate these [censored]. Go the Mighty DEMONS!

Agree, great article. Has been a glut of this kind of article about us of late, so I didn't have high hopes of learning anything new, but this is loaded with intimate insights. The author must have had some great inside access and trust within those individuals, which had been repaid by the author with the absence of any real mud slinging, except perhaps with respects to Bartlett which is pretty inconsequential to the current context and I'm not really sure even he would have an issue with what is stated. I've had a good feeling about the sort leadership qualities refered to about Trac for a while now. Contrast this article to the one shown on the same page by Carroline Willson titled "AFL big boys club" (Or something like that). I've got no issues with Wilson not writing about the match day stuff, given it isn't her expertise and no doubt the exclusive male dominated aspects if the AFL is something which should be written about (by someone) but why she has to always be the one to focus on slinging mud 90% of the time as opposed to using her connections and journalistic tallents to write a ballance of interesting and insightful articles like this one is beyond me. I also find some irony in the trajectory of our team this season, compared to that of St Kilda. At the end of last year and start of the season so many 'experts' , both in the media and here on Demonland raved about how much further advanced St Kilda were as a team compared to us. It's quite possible St Kilda arn't as bad as there season is playing out right now either, but I've sensed a growing capability within our team over a number of years and it's amazing how many were prepared to write that long term growth/capability trend off on the basis of a few games against Sydney and Freo in a compressed fixture period. I still recall the wise words of Peter Jackson when he stepped down from his position, that sometimes growth isn't linear and that we should expect a few speed bumps along the way.

Oh yeah.

The new one or the old one?

The other potential worst case scenario issue this raises is how keen (or not) would players and coaches be to go into hubs again?

Really hope they don't move to shorter quarters, I think that would take away a key advantage we have by having a mature, fit, but also realitively young list compared to some of the other potential contenders like Richmond, Geelong and West Coast.

Yeah, and as you can see from the picture, there isn't any snow either. ...not like anyone could head there with the lockdown anyways.

Shoulda, coulda, woulda. Ain't hindsight a beautiful thing! ?

I guess the one thing all us armchair critics had the benifit of, which the players probably didn't, was knowing exactly how much or little time was left on the clock.

Getting 2 premiership points instead of a big fat zero would have been a win. It's about playing for ladder position to set our selves up at the pointy end now. There were 120+ for the team to play for an outright win, but in that last 30 seconds where we had multiple ball ups 10m out from goal, punching it through for a behind was a winning strategy.

Nothing like that diabolical. I actually had a different reflection on the game this morning. Adelaide played like a team with nothing too loose, because they don't have anything to loose. No chance of making finals, weren't expected to win, just hoping for some competitive games and maybe a win or two along the way. They were daring and rolled the dice with their ball movement, because they could afford to be. Could have been a completely different story if they didn't get a few goals go there way via cheap free kicks just before half time when we were starting to kick away. Even for the best sides it's hard to be up every week in what is really a pretty tight competition. To get to 9 - 0 was pretty phenomenal and I didn't think we'd be in anything like that position at that point in the season. The next month of 8 point games will be super important to our season. I'm backing us to at least break even against the Dogs, Lions, Port and the Pies which would be a pretty good outcome and solid ladder position to build the rest of our season off.

100% yes we were off our game and didn't play that well for big periods, but we were also pretty good at times too. Our 3rd quarter was good and we got to a position of being 16 points up with 8mins to go, a goal of which we lost, because of a howler non free kick. Oliver, Lever, Track, Spargo, ANB and others were pretty dam good and played at least as good team first footy as they did that second half.

What was the injury to Salem? I switched on just at the satrt of the ga.e and it wasn't really stated.