Rodney (Balls) Grinter

It's not like it's just the pies we need to be worried about though. I haven't read most of it, but this thread is kinda stating the obvious though I think there would be 17 other clubs that would be into Trac. I'm not sure he'd be up for leaving us just on the basis of team performance though, I suspect it would be a bit more nuanced than that. Despite his exuberant persona, Trac seems like a fairly level headed, mature and I think he's also getting to an age where he would expect of himself to be contributing and thus owning some of the leadership and direction of the club. So if the team wasn't performing, I expect he might actually feel some degree of ownership for that and accept the challenge and responsibility to turn things around. I'd hope he'd only be seriously looking elsewhere if we were heading towards being an absolute basket case.

It would be a bit of a tall ask (pardon the pun) given his short tenure at the ckub, but I think Big Ben Brown would be someone worth considering. We could then have leaders at all major parts of the ground: May back Brown forward Max & Viney on ball Asides from Brown, the forward line is a bit devoid of experienced leadership. There is possibly Melksham, but he hasn't necessarily impressed on me as a leader from my observations in the stands. Jones is also the other obvious leader who could spend a lot of time forward, but he might not play all games and I think somewhat by virtue of the position, the full forward should carry the mantle that end of the ground.

I hear you brother. My 2020 started ok, but got progressively worse as the year went on. Living in Brisbane, working in a professional role and for a company moderately impacted, COVID wasn't a big thing for me. Missing finals was a 'very ordinary' way to end our, season, but was a pleasant experience compared to some of the personal hell I've been through over the past few months. Mate of mine suggested that instead of new years eve parties, everyone should have a f#@$ off 2020 party on Jan 1 and that sounds like a dam good idea to me.

MFC predictions Ladder position at the end of the H&A season: 2 Position at the end of the season (e.g. stage of finals): 1 B&F top 5 (1 point for correct inclusion, 1 point for correct place): 1. Trac 2. Gawn 3. Tomlinson 4. Harmes 5. Oliver Leading goalkicker: Bailey of the Fritsch variety Most marks: Hore Best first year player: Rosman Most improved player: Adam Tomlinson All Australian 40-man squad selections (1 point each): Trac, Gawn, Tomlinson, Harmes, Oliver, Langdon, Viney, May, Brown, Fritsch, Hore All Australian final 22 selections (1 point each): Trac, Gawn, Harmes, May, Fritsch, Tomlinson, Oliver Big Ben Brown will kick his biggest goal tally against: Hawthorn (who having no key defender of league standard available try an undersized James Sicily as their first option. However after Brown has 6 goals to his name by half time, make the switch to tall fellow Ben McEvoy, but who lacks the mobility and pace to stay with Brown on the lead. Just before 3/4 time, with Brown on 12 goals, a frustrated McEvoy gets nasty and attempts an Al Clackson special, drawing in Steven May who parked at CHF for the loose kick out promptly closes in and puts McEvoy on his [censored] with a powerful shove (like swatting a fly) and stands over McEvoy in a menacing manner. After 3/4 time with Fred Fanning's record looking under threat, Clarkson concedes the ruck and switches Ceglar onto Brown, but to no avail as the Melbourne team, having wiped out 186 and absent Ceglar in the ruck put on a Harlem Globetrotters like performance and now turn their intent to helping Brown surpass Fanning's record, with him ultimately finishing on 21 goals for the game, (which also incidently exceeds the total number of goals kicked by Hawthorn in the season to that point). Biggest winning margin (exact guess is 5 points, within 1 point margin is 4 points etc): 204 points Vs Hawthorn Biggest MFC story of the year (5 points): Asides from rewriting the record books Vs Hawthorn, the return to longer quarters and reduced interchange has the footy world in awe of the depth, endurance and toughness of the MFC midfeild, which has many drawing comparisons to the great Brisbane Lions teams of the early 2000s. Other MFC predictions (1 point each): James Harmes's partner to have a baby boy and name it Jon. AFL predictions Premier: Melbourne Runner-up: Bulldogs Wooden spoon: Hawthorn Biggest improver: Melbourne Biggest slider: Brisbane Brownlow medal: Patracca Coleman medal: Cameron Rising star: Hollands

(copy and paste below) MFC predictions Ladder position at the end of the H&A season: Position at the end of the season (e.g. stage of finals): B&F top 5 (1 point for correct inclusion, 1 point for correct place): 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. Leading goalkicker: Most marks: Best first year player: Most improved player: All Australian 40-man squad selections (1 point each): All Australian final 22 selections (1 point each): Big Ben Brown will kick his biggest goal tally against: Biggest winning margin (exact guess is 5 points, within 1 point margin is 4 points etc): Biggest MFC story of the year (5 points): Other MFC predictions (1 point each): AFL predictions Premier: Runner-up: Wooden spoon: Biggest improver: Biggest slider: Brownlow medal: Coleman medal: Rising star: Edited December 19 by P-man

Took me a little bit of head scratching before working out that it's Sam Mitchell being referred to in the above rather than Tom, whom (within being tottaly disrespectful) I can't see be held in the same category as most of the other guys on that list, even though he has a Brownlow medal to his name - that's saying something. Playing in premiership teams elevates a players status more than any individual award could.

Had we not lost Scott Thompson back to the Crows, it might have been a different story. He had a pretty short peak with us, but I loved watch Bernie Vince in his first few years with us. If his career was not beset by back problems, who knows the player to that Guy Rigoni might have been.

Get him on the roids, so he can put on 10-15kg and get some angry in him if we want him to play like Jono Brown. In all seriousness though, hopefully he can pass on some good advice to the young Weid. It does beg a few questions for me though: 1. Is there a risk of Weid being advised and getting close to a key football personality who's not on our payroll? Questions about where Brown's allegiances are for mine. 2. How is it that it's gone this far in the Weid's career with us and he seems to feel like he has been lacking this kind of key forward mentoring that he needs to seek out his own mentor outside the club? Anyways, hoping for a good year and hopefully the Weid works well in tandem and gets some real connection going between him and Big Ben Browwwn and they boot a ton of goals between themselves and our other forwards.

I think this game also has the potential to turn into a blood bath for the Pies. With the young talent that GC has and assuming Matt Rowell is back, then I'd love to see an upset win and deprive WCE of a home win, which they rely on.

Not counting any chickens by any means, but this is a must win game for the MFC. So sick of the excuses rolled out by sucessive MFC coaches in recent years (including Roos) that Rd 1 is just another game. Getting on the front foot and off to a winning streak of 4 or 5 games first up would setup our season entirely differently to the usual MFC act of loosing 4 or 5 of our first six games and playing catch-up for the remainder of the season to make finals.

Does Williams have indigenous heritage himself and/or has he got a good track record of understanding and getting the most out of players with an indigenous background? I'm genuinely interested.

Who knows where any potential rookie listing or not might lead young Kobe with the MFC and I'm sure there are those whom might take a clinical view of the world and suggest that if he wasn't taken in the draft that perhaps there is some good reasons for that and why would we now rookie list him. However if Kobe is anywhere near just good enough and ticks all the right character tests etc for us to use a rookie spot on and develop, I really do like us having some father sons around the place. Think it adds some depth of character and meaning to pulling on the MFC jumper if we can maintain and build a good sense of club loyalty and history, which elevates the retention/attraction of playing for the MFC in general.

Yeah, so AFL complaining about travel costs, yet scheduling preseason games completely obvious to this agenda = typical. Against MFC = easy target = typical. What have we come to expect. What our Demons need to become accustomed to is that we are favoured by no-one, loathed by and feared by everyone.

I'm a believer in such a thing as a premiership window, it's just I think interpreting that into the probability of a flag win is fraught with danger. No one would say that any of Sydney, Hawthorn, North and Adelaide are anywhere near it. You'd have to think with the number of top ten players in their early to mid 30s that teams like Geelong, West Coast and Collingwood are about to go off a cliff in the next few years unless they can pull off some massive trade heists in the same period. Loosing all of Hawkins, Selwood, Dangerfield, Touhy, Taylor, Abblett to either retirement or loss of output over the next few years is going to hurt Geelong big time. Kennedy is on his last legs at WC, will be a huge loss for them and I see no credible replacement, similarly Sidebottom and Pendlebury will rip the guts out of Collingwoods strength and DeGoey hardly seems like the type of character you'd build good team culture around. I'd take the rating of the Saints above us with the same huge grain of salt that I did, when after 2018 all the so called experts had us as seriously challenging for the flag in 2019. I'd agree with Pert and others here that our team still has some maturing to do, in order to make playing consistently and winning a habit, as opposed to playing in bursts. However once that clicks for us, surely we are well in the mix with the talented mids and solid backline we have. Where as, how to fit Harmes and Brayshaw into the midfeild in 2020 presented some challenges, I actually think the depth of our mids will play out far better with longer quarters and could seriously exposure a lot of teams in 2021. When it all comes down to it, I think that Leigh Matthews had it right with his assertion that even with the best recruiting, strategy and training standards in place, the difference between a good season and winning a premiership still involves an element of luck ...and surely we are due a bit of that sometime this century.

Ironically, having two league standard grounds /stadiums in SEQ Qld went a long way to saving season 2020. I'm a solid believer in the future of the Suns and based on the demographic, projected population growth and a strong grass roots Aussie Rules presence in that part of the world. However, I do struggle to justify the huge sums of money spent on subsidies for the Suns in the present, particularly with the general austerity measures the AFL has put in place due to COVID. It's going to be a very long term project you suspect. You would assueme that the AFL probably has set a hard timeline of finacial KPIs to determine if they continue with the Suns or cut their losses, but it's unlikely to be ever made public.

I'm all for a Tassie team, but I think the above is a fairly flawed statement. It could also be said that the NT and to a lesser extent ACT, could also make fairly legitimate claims to requiring a team for it to be a truely Australian competition.

...with him holding the premiership cup aloft. I think I'd almost get an A0 size framed poster for every room.

Pates, went to all the games this year at Carrara/Metricon. Almost always a decent breeze, with very little protection from the minature grand stands and virtually no protection at one end. I do remember Weid missing those set shots and thinking if he had just nailed one, we would have been home. But he wasn't Robinson Crusoe that night, by a long way. Harley Bennell, who was a gerally a beuatful shot on goal also missed an absolute sitter that I thought he would have nailed in a heartbeat 99 time out of 100. Our feild kicking in general against the Dogs at Carrara was abysmal, resulting in numerous abhorrent and costly turnovers that went a long way to loosing us the game - again quite windy conditions. Perhaps this is something for Yze to work on with the team?

To me, I agree absolutely with Lockhardt and Chandler ( also agree Re Jordon/Bedford whom you mentioned). I do think Mitch Brown is reasonable key position depth/insurance based on his quite serviceable performances throughout the year. I guess he is a fairly short term backup too given his age. Probably on pretty modest coin too, so ticks that box for us as well.

Very happy to seal the deal with North and Ben Brown and such a good deal at that. His unruly mop always gave me the [censored] when we played Nth, but that's probably because he was kicking bags of goals against us. Now that he's with us, the mop can stay and give our opposition supporters the [censored] - particularly if he's kicking goals!

He wasn't directly from North, but Shaun Smith was a super star and a great contributor for us.

Watching his highlights, I don't think it will matter if we kick it to him well or not. He seems to track the ball through the air so well, time his launch and clunk the marks from everywhere, so I think that suits us well.

I don't think it's quite like that. Yes the club was prepared to trade him on the basis that it could be mutually beneficial arrangement, rather than potenitally T Mac get shirty and frustrated at the prospect of competing for spots and playing twos week in/week out, but that's a bit different from 'wanting to get rid of him'. MFC footy department these days has more class than Collingwood.

The big Pedo bear put in some pretty decient cameo appearances when we needed them, so if that's how it turns out, I could well live with that. Like Pedo, I get the impression that Tommy is a pretty solid citizen, so I think we could do far worse than to have an influence like that around the club. I also think he's a pretty fierce competitor and that is the exactly the kind of attitude we need to have at the MFC to be putting pressure on Side Show, Wied and Jacko and others. I am really hoping that we have all underestimated T Mac, but time will tell ...who knows, he may even be part of a last minute trade for all we know.

Quite happy for T Mac to remain at our club. If he can shed the kgs, then I think he still has plenty to offer. Personally, I don't get the benifit of us paying several hundred grand a year for someone else to be getting a solid mature player, while we'd still be paying an additional few hundred grand for any sort of backup worth having. T Mac's versatility is a big plus he has going for him IMHO. Can do a respectable job up forward, down back or in the ruck. If Max gets injured, I don't want us to have to be in a position of flogging the guts out of Jackson if his body isn't quite there. Conversely, I'd be quite comfortable with rotating Brown, Jackson and T Mac through as ruck/forwards. Actually thought T Mac was starting to find form as a forward and clunk some good big strong marks before he got his eye poked out of its socket earlier this season. If Steve May goes down, we still need a player capable of taking on the gorilla forwards. Not so worried about his previous weaknesses woth disposal comming out of defense. It's true that he was pretty hit and miss by foot at that time, but we were a side under siege in those days without the same quality of players around him. Beyond all, I do like the sentiment of T Mac finishing in Red and Blue. He's been with us, copped pleanty through some pretty lean times and think he deserves some respect and an oppertunity to share in any success that we might have in the next two or three years.