Skin Deeamond

23 hours ago, Ethan Tremblay said:

Re Kent, it may have been a case that given his and AVB’s history of injuries we couldn’t afford to carry both. Perhaps we were willing to let AVB go to the Swans up until Kent took the offer from the Saints, who knows. As previously posted, the offer was three years versus ours of one. Kent has a young family so can’t blame the guy. 

AVB is a ripper when fit, I hope he gets back on the park next season. 

He won’t.

I cannot believe how that game was destroyed by bad umpiring which appeared to be so heavily biased to Essendon. Marks not paid to GWS, clear frees not paid to GWS, whereas completely ridiculous frees were plucked out of nowhere to Essendon, turning the momentum of the game. A disgraceful performance by the AFL.

Just now, Ethan Tremblay said:

Corrupt umpires or are they just completely incompetent? 

The game was fixed.

I’ve never seen such bad cheating by umpires. Absolutely fixed.

14 hours ago, Deeman said:

Quite right - and we needed the 4 points at the time too!

Smith, Garlett and Vandenberg all seriously injured during the preseason games. (Vandenberg last year.) Those games are a disaster for us.

SPEEDY St Kilda forward Dean Kent looks in doubt for Sunday afternoon's crunch clash with Richmond after hurting himself at training.

During match simulation at RSEA Park, Kent kicked the football after a mark and then went down to the ground in pain.

The nature of the injury is not yet known, but his prognosis will be confirmed after scans on Thursday afternoon.

It marks yet another blow for the club, which has endured a wretched run with injuries this year.

Lucky he left...

On 6/21/2019 at 8:29 PM, doc roet said:

Ok so he missed 2 weeks which makes 3 weeks of healing of a broken bone.Obviously it wasn't enough because he's injured it again.

Now they are going to try to fix it and reckon he will be back next week.

I say what's the point. Let it heal and come back next year fully fit and strong.

Or at least take 3-4 off!!

9 minutes ago, Hell Bent said:

Hmmm Kay. 

Is he injured??......... 

 

He had a foot injury that kept him out for a season and MFC dumped him. He coulda been...

Remember John Meesen?

In October 2007 Meesen was traded to the Melbourne Football Club for the 37th selection in the 2007 AFL Draft. He made his debut for Melbourne in Round 3, 2009.

Meesen was delisted at the end of the 2009 season along with Michael Newton; both were re-drafted as mature age rookies.^[1] After failing to play a senior match in 2010 due to injury, Meesen was delisted at season's end.^[2]Melbourne subsequently appointed Meesen to the role of part-time development coach.

Recently, Meesen returned to his home grown club, Modewarre, where he took the opportunity to co-coach a young and talented team alongside veteran, Josh Finch. Meesen immediately attained the respect from his teammates and committee and begun a very successful 2018 season in Geelong's Bellarine Football League (BFL). Modewarre begun the season with just one win through the first four matches, however, turned the season around winning 9 of the next 11 games to ultimately gain a spot in the BFL Grand Final against the red hot favourites, Barwon Heads. Meesen was a dominant force in the ruck which reflected in his teams performances and brought Modewarre's first Premiership to the club since entering the BFL competition. Meesen was awarded best on ground for his grand final performance to complete his successful season. Meesen also finished runner up in the BFL League Les Ash Medal vote count.

I doubt Lever will be ready. Likewise Hibberd.

Wagner should be dropped. Preuss should be given a chance. 

On 6/20/2019 at 9:35 PM, McQueen said:

One day I hope the site admin makes the decision to ban posters for rubbishing our young players as spuds. 

The kid has a couple of games under his belt and is developing pretty well in my eyes. 

Btw, I love the ignore function on this site. 

So you think Cale Morton, Jimmy Toumpas and Jordan Gysberts were fabulous stars, well hand-picked by our master recruiting staff? Ignore you.

12 minutes ago, McQueen said:

Played an AFL game have ya mate?

Totally irrelevant. This is a commentary blog for anyone to comment. It is also anonymous. Who has achieved and in what sport or other field is not revealed. By the way how many games did you play before you died of mesothelioma Steve?

Cale Morton for captain!

18 minutes ago, monoccular said:

Is Garlett’s latest problem really recurrent shoulder dislocation?

FFS we just cannot take a trick.   Won’t see him again in RnB I reckon.

And does Hibberd really have a screw loose?  Probably done for the year too.  I can understand “rushing back” an important player with clavicular plating IF it was pivotal in a finals bid (didn’t we, unsuccessfully as it turned out, try this with Jesse in 2017?) but really what was the point of risking longer term problems when the goal was not there?

Rapidly losing any residual interest in  footy for 2019. 

Yes he dislocated it again at training. Yes Hibberd went back to the operating theatre. 

1 hour ago, Demon Disciple said:

The Petty selection is one in maximising development. Season’s over, may as well give it to young player’s who show potential, as opposed to bringing in duds and geriatrics.

Except he’s a dud spud.

1 hour ago, Cards13 said:

I tipped Freo at around 4.39pm, well before the injury update. I might put some cash on them now as well. 

Are you a Collingwood player?

Try him at Casey at CHF when Casey Demons are playing at another venue.

Lever: injury prone. Puny. Needs to build up body in the gym with some weights and eat some steaks. Wait for next season (maybe).

Jeffy G: recurrent shoulder dislocation. Needs a Putti-Platt or similar procedure to continue in AFL. Out for the season. May retire.

Vandenberg: foot stuffed. Will retire.

Hibberd: injury prone, sent back to play early after open reduction and internal fixation of clavicular fracture. Surprise, surprise the plate and screws came loose. Now he’ll be out for longer.

Melksham: unlikely to return this season after foot injury.

Jetta: should sit out the season and rest so he can return at full strength next year.

This season is officially over for MFC.

Prepare for next year.

Weidemann has already signed a new 2 year contract with MFC. There’s an article on the website.

1 hour ago, Lord Nev said:

Yep, for sure. It's a multi-faceted problem where all 3 factors in structure, delivery and form (or talent) are all important.

They all intertwine: More open structure allows for better delivery which will help improve the form of our forwards.

I guess I'm focusing on delivery so much as we have a co-captain responsible for so much of that problem currently.

 

Both captains frequently kick long up and under rugby style kicks into the forward fifty. This is a total misuse and waste of a possession and often leads to the opposition rebounding for a goal down the other end. They need a kick up the bum.

15 minutes ago, binman said:

Unfair, really?

My critique of May was pretty balanced and fair i would have thought. A long way from the hyperbole that often masquerades as objective assessment that is more the norm on DL.

I didn't even say May had a bad game, which he didn't. I thought in fact he had an ok game, not great, but ok. His spoiling was mostly really good, the best part of his game actually.

I simply said that i was 'not nearly as impressed with his defensive work as seems to be the consensus on Demonland'.

I noted that JDG kicked 3 goals but also said i doubted all 3 were on May. I said there was a number of occasions where he was beaten, which is true. I noted he cost us a goal flying for a mark when he missed it and got turned inside out by JDG for another - both true. Hardly unfair or examples of stinging, unfounded criticism. 

And i didn't say that the fact that JDG kicked 3 goals on May was 'the reason he wasn't as good as Demonland thinks'. That's a misinterpretation of my comments.

Its actually not true that with Omac i don't look at who kick goals on us. It is a critical metric for a defender - as is the number of spoils (which as i say May was good at against the Pies). I have made the point many times this year that with one or two exceptions Omac has had very few goals kicked on him by direct opponents.The players that have hurt us this year are not the bigs but the small and medium forwards. Like JDG.

Finally i wasn't comparing OMac and May, simply pointing out he would have copped it on DL if he had been turned inside out by JDG the way May was. Unfairly of course because as you say JDG is gun and defenders get beaten.  But much of the criticism Omac cops is unfair so it would be par for the course.

It goes without saying that May is obviously a much better player than Omac and may well end up keeping him out of the team if Frosty continues to perform well. 

But i'm not sure about you, but i have very high expectations of May. He is an AA defender in the prime of his career that we have paid dearly for (picks and salary cap space) and given up our best key forward for him in a season where we can't buy a goal. Glad he got though this game and i expect he will be a gun for us. But i mark him hard and expect better than ok games from here on in. 

 

 

Hogan wanted to leave. He wasn’t going to stay. He was injured for a large part of last year and has not been that great this year, including some disciplinary issues.

20 hours ago, Baghdad Bob said:

This has been a terrible year and I'd agree with much of what you've said other than there are credible alternative explanations which need to be factored into any discussion and in my view make your summation very emotive.

Here are some of my observations/beliefs:

1.  We very nearly, and should have, beaten WCE and Adelaide.  The reality is we completely outplayed each of these teams other than on the scoreboard.  And we did it with significantly compromised teams.  WCE and Adelaide are good, if you can compete with them you're not far away.

2.  We have a significant disconnect between our mids and our forwards which is hurting us.  But the reality is that Jones, Oliver, Petracca, Harmes, Brayshaw and Viney all had significantly interrupted preseasons and therefore had no time to refine and develop this "connect".

3.  For all that I'm sick to death of saying it (to myself), we are young.  Almost all of our talent is young.  Our over 25 year old players are Lewis, Jones, Garlett, Hibberd, Jetta, Melksham, Gawn, May, TMac, Frost, AVB and Viney.  Compare that with Collingwood: Pendles, Varcoe, Mayne, Greenwood, Beams, Howe, Sidebottom, Thomas, Elliott, Treloar, Hosking Elliott, Adams, Crips, Grundy and Langdon.  It's chalk and cheese. Fancy a mature team beating a team of kids.

If you want a comparison of a team in a similar position look at Richmond.  They did very well early with a few injuries but they reached a critical level and then they just fell apart.  Big losses to North and a terrible thumping by Geelong. They just couldn't cope with the number of injuries and now look uncompetitive.  There situation now is similar to what we've faced for much of the year.

Collingwood are second on the ladder and we pushed them into the last quarter.  I'm not saying we were ever going to win but we were very competitive and I think we were the better team over the last three quarters.  They kicked 9 goals straight in the last half, we kicked 4.10.  I acknowledge that much of that is where the goals are kicked from but the general view that we are uncompetitive and need a total overhaul is based on emotion and not rational analysis. Frankly, it's just not correct.

We are a much better list than last year.  Baker and Hore alone make us so and Lockhart has shown signs.  Fritsch, after a slow start, has played very well the last few weeks and then you have May and Lever.

Many have criticised the FD for bringing players back too quickly.  It's being done because players benefit from playing with each other.  That's where the "connection" comes from.  Goody is putting a team on the field that will be a lot of our best 22 next year because he knows the more we play together the better we'll connect and the better we'll do. That's why Lever played on the weekend.  It's not that hard to figure out.

I'm not suggesting that we don't need to change some things.  Some new voices in the assistant coaching department would be a good idea, a tweak to the game plan as every team will do, but this concept that we are a rabble is just plain wrong in my view.  We need to see this year as it really is.  We had a horribly compromised preseason, we had a terrible run of injuries early in the season and we played horribly compromised teams for much of that period.  People will hate this but we've done okay given the hand we've been dealt; we've missed some good opportunities but we've put in some excellent performances. 

Hear is a list of our notable under 24's:  Preuss, Salem, Kilodjashnij, Harmes, Petracca, Brayshaw, Lever, Hore, Fritsch, Weideman, Oliver, Baker and JSmith.  When you look at that lot and think about it you'd be silly not to hold a fair degree of optimism for the not too distant future.

We’ve been called “the young Demons” team for the past 45 years.

18 hours ago, spirit of norm smith said:

Ffs. Our EFFICIENCY WAS POOR. Kicking the ball continues to be RIDICULOUSLY BAD. 

Its a basic skill. Some kicks were not even under pressure.  

Players are also goal shy.  It’s a shambles. 

Agree

15 hours ago, Queanbeyan Demon said:

How Pruess doesn't get a game . . . . regardless of what some say about his alleged lack of fitness . . . . is a complete mystery to me. In a side that can't kick a goal, he's averaging two per game for us . . . (admittedly a small sample [2 games]). He competes well, relieves Max in the ruck (even if it's just in the forward 50 arc), brings others into the game and takes the pressure off Tommy and Sam. There's something badly amiss . . . 

Why would Preuss be “unfit”. He did a preseason, he goes to training like the other guys.

2 hours ago, Kent said:

Gee  that's incredible! It makes you wonder what the other 4 guys on ball  are doing in the meantime.

Just another example of poor coaching at stoppages and  use of our available talent. I watched Max from the wing all afternoon. It was one of the best individual performances I have witnessed. On a few occasions he was beaten or our on ball brigade fluffed it he went again and again with multiple efforts.

Just was one great performances to witness.

He’s the unofficial captain. Leadership by example!