Rodney (Balls) Grinter

Agreed. I generally don't think he has dominated for us like he has in the past for a while. No doubt other teams have cottoned onto how damaging he is for us and are putting alot of work into him as well.

One of the comentators that was doing the general play absolutely gave me the irrits.

One of the few positive I saw out of last night was BBB looked like he was starting to find a bit of form. An issue for me is that it looks like he's getting too many of his marks of long leads too far up the ground to kick goals from. I get the sense that he's playing to our game plan in this respect. Surely when you don't have the most functional forward line in the comp and you have a guy who has been the most prolific goal kicker over a 3 - 4 year period, you structure your forward line setup around him and the way he wants to play than vice versa?

You know, I wasn't going to be a sore looser and bring up the abysmal umpiring last night, but unless he's being somewhat misquoted in the media, wow Clarkson is one. Not happy with finishing with 22 to 15 free kicks in Hawthorn's favour (it was 21 to 12 mid way though the last quarter) and multiple give me goals from soft free kicks, Clarko is out in the media spruking how they should have got more holding the ball free kicks. I must say, I kind of agree with Clarko to a point, in so far as there weren't many holding the ball free kicks paid, when perhaps there could have been, but there was also some pretty atrocious umpiring all around last night and I didn't here much mention of that from him. Gee, I can't remember who was paid a free kick for holding onto Dixson for a mili second too long, handing him a free in front of goal last week, but how was that one for us in the first quarter when I think it was Viney was held onto without the ball for an eternity and no free kick played. I'm sure he will go down as one of the best coaches of the era, but Clarkson will also go down as just about the biggest sook and umpire windger of the era in my mind as well. Puss off Clarko, you're a [censored] (insert banned adjective of choice here).

I couldn't believe how fumbly and unclean our skills were for most of the night last night. Yes Hawthorn laid alot of tackles and applied pressure which would have contributed to that, but I feel as if so much of it was self inflicted as well. Not a big knock on the guy, because he has generally been awsome for us over the past two seasons, but I also thought Ed Langdon probably played one of (if not the) worst game he's ever played for us last night.

Personally I'm not one for booing Frosty. Always respected that he had a fair dinkum crack at it, when he played for us. I hardly think he went chasing the big bucks, just a guy trying to give himself a reasonable chance of consistently playing at the top level, when he could see the writing on the wall with the stocks of defensive thoroughbreds we now have with May, Lever and Co.

AVB is the right man at the right time to step things up a notch for us with his hard as nails defensive intent and attacking attitude. Tear the Hawks a new one Vanders.

The Champion and the $700k tagger

Seriously that there is a regular thread tittled "If we lose to [insert random team here], I will..." really speaks to the insipid, entrenched nature of MFCSS. I really do long for the day when threads like this are an aberration here on Demonland. Agree that day is not quite yet, but it's getting closer. Personally, I think our ability to 'take out the trash' so to speak has dramatically improved over a 3 - 4 year period. If you look back on the first half of the season, our ability to beat teams like Hawthorn, Fremantle, Carlton, North and to some extent St Kilda, Geelong & GWS is reasonable demonstration that we don't take any team lightly and when we do find our selves in a spot of bother against them, we usually a) arn't blown out of the water by them and then b) find a way to get the game back on our terms and eke out a win. As much as I loath Hawthorn, I do respect the sucess they were able to achieve and how they did it. One of the trademarks of the Hawthorn teams of their 3 peat era particularly was that even when the team wasn't playing it's best football and looked at risk of becoming the victim of an upset, they found a way to fight back, pip their opponents at the post (often through beleif and more mature game sense) and bank the wins to achieve a better ladder position to mount a genuine finals campaign. I see alot of the same traits in our team right at present and it can only be a good thing.

Be greatful we won't be playing the Hawks in the finals. Just looking at our respective ladder positions actually gives me a bit of a warm fuzzy feeling inside, like the football God's are starting to reset the football world order for good.

He's a Hawthorn supporter. That's a whole category of animal spices of it's own isn't it?

Would be great to hear the cry of Oooooooze go up around the MCG again.

I like the sentiment, but barely anything I've seen from us this season suggests to me we are really up for getting anywhere near 186. I guess the one and only time we have handed out anything like a belting this season, it was against the Hawks and most of the scoring for our ~50 win against them came in just one quarter, but I'm just not sure I can see it happening. Would love to be proven wrong though.

Loving the addition of the vomit reaction. Well overdue and would quickly become one of the most popular if extended to other forms of social media.

Let the tanking talk begin.

What a great Rd of footy. The Eagles, Richmond & GWS all putting in good auditions to become the new Melbourne, by throwing away very winnable games to lowly ranked sides on the cusp of finals, when a just getting the job done would lock them into the top 8 - I love it. Think I'd most like the Eagles to take our mantle in this respects. Although they might return to type and rekindle their 9thmond amorphous, I'm sure it doesn't have quite the same bite when your teams comming off 3 flags in 4 years. Similar could be said for the Eagles I guess, but I think it would hurt their arrogant sense of entitlement and superiority more, so suffer in your jocks Methcoast. Even if the ultimately make finals this year, WC will be just making up the numbers. Like Hawthorn, it would be great to see them welcome in an extended era of rebuilding, but unfortunately it doesn't seem to happen that way with the Eagles and like a stinky old [censored] they'll somehow be bobbing up around the top in another few years.

I doubt it. Last year the GF crowd was a few hundred shy of 30,000 at the Gabba. Getting a crowd somewhere in the order of 50,000 at the MCG would be a big improvement over that and I can't see anyone, not least the AFLPA wanting to delay the big game by anything more than a couple of weeks, unless the whole of Australia was under strict lockdown.

The Gabba. McGowan would be too risk averse to let anyone but WA locals attend and the airfares would be horrendous. As someone living in South East Queensland, there is absolutely no self interest here at all. That all said, I'm really hoping it is played at the mighty MCG, in front of a sizable crowd. Anything else would be somewhat hollow. If by some chance Queensland gets locked out of Victoria, I'd give my GFG tickets to my MFC memeber sister and one of her kids. All predicted on the basis that the mighy Demons keep delivering on feild andactually make it of course.

Deva, the short version of my rant is that while I get where your comming from and admire you unbreakable commitment to the MFC, personally, loyalty is a mutual thing and I wouldn't take getting [censored] over by the club and the AFL and still continue my existing arrangements with them as if nothing had ever happened.

Look if the GF was capped at 20,000 And there were a total of 40,000 members from each team that had purchased the equivalent of a GFG membership, then I'd probably begrudgingly accept a lottery to redeem my entitlement. But in a scenario where the attendance was capped at say 60,000 and 30,000 of those tickets went to the 16 other non competing AFL teams, sponsors, Gillam's neighbors and the Australian PM, then I would be openly hostile towards the club if they didn't fight and somehow obtain enough tickets to honor their end of the bargain. I wouldn't see it as punishing the club, I would just see it as reciprocating the breaking of a contract of loyalty and finance. The clubs administrators and the AFL really do need to step up to the plate and ensure that a scenario like this doesn't play out. I know scenario like this seem to play out every year, but I think it's about time the AFL and clubs prioritise AFL club memebers over the big corporates etc. As it stands currently, I have little faith that these entities actually get it. I'm really not convinced that the AFL are putting enough energy and priority into looking after members right now during the season. My old man pays for MFC reserve seats. Has done for a number of years, including last season, when he got exactly nothing in return for them. This season when quite sizable crowds have generally been permitted at the MCG, the club, the AFL, the MCC and the ticketing companies haven't been able to get their act together a provide an allocation of seating accessible only to those with reserved seating within their ticketing system and he's had to randomly access tickets anywhere in the outer. It's not that the AFL and the clubs couldn't do something, it's that they can and they arn't. It's pretty much as if they've said "thanks for your on going loyalty, now we are going to take that for granted and on-sell your more valuable reserve seating spots for a second time at a premium price, so that we can pay for Gillam's yacht to be moored down at Sandrinham". It's a huge breach of trust and it's about time that these parties realise that if they don't pull their heads out of their dates, there are consequences.

I've been an interstate member for around the last 10 years (suffered through some putrid performances in that time as well). I've purchased a GFG membership with the MFC since early 2018 for myself and added another for my my youngest son around Rd 4 this season. Unless the GF was played in a closed stadium without crowds, if the above was to apply, I wouldn't purchase another membership of any kind from the MFC. Don't care if they refund the value of the GFG package, that's not what I paid up for. Seriously do hope this is all a total hypothetical worst case scenario that doesn't eventuate for anyone as playing a GF in front of a minimal capacity crowd wouldn't be a great outcome all round but right now, I guess anything is possible right.

We are back on top - YEAH BABY!!

I'd fair dinkum take a cricket bat to Gillam's Mercedes if that happened.

Just imagine if they kicked as accurately when going to the right! ?

I did a bit at the time, but given we essentially got Maysy in return and the way Hogans career subsequently went south, I almost couldn't be happier that Jessie went back to WA. The only better scenario that possibly could have eventuated was if we'd have picked up Steve May a season later as a FA and Jessie had pulled himself together a bit more and somehow gotten over his injuries better. But in hindsight those list management changes we made at the end of 2018 will go down as a master class in football department decision making.