FlashInThePan

Woohoo, I am tooled up and finals bound... GO DEES!!!!!!

What I saw today was not just a load problem. That site had about 3 different bugs going on. The load problem manifested in the massively long wait times to just get into the site. Besides that. Firstly, the wait page kept crashing and having to be reloaded. Secondly, once you were in and got to the purchase selection I couldn't actually buy anything. No matter what category or area I kept getting the message that not enough tickets were available even though it accepted my member barcode I could not select even one ticket. Thirdly, people who actually were able to select tickets were reporting being unable to check or send pay. They were bound back to the start with no tickets. Ticketek are the biggest bunch of IT amateurs I have ever seen. The only area they appear competent on is lying and ass covering. Their product is nothing but a slightly specialized shopping site. A child could code it and scaling it should be simple for virtually any number of buyers. This should not be happening even once much less year after year.

Scalable on demand web servers is a solved problem. This is just the rankest incompetence from Ticketek. It isn't even like thousands of people all wanting to buy tickets at once is an outlier for them, this is core business. The level of incompetence to not be able to manage this is really quite frightening. These people probably have problems doing up their shoe laces

Don't worry Mazer, this is exactly what I experienced. Apparently after the initial meltdown everything started to screw up. Tickets will go back up on sale again when they have sorted out the sh$^ They assure us they aren't sold out and they won't open to the public until we have had a chance to purchase. There is no way an elimination final is going to sellout without getting to publicly available tickets.

Ticketek just responded to me via twitter, nothing new though: Today's Competing Club Member on-sale is now on-hold, more information to come shortly. Thank you for your patience

Club members sale no longer available. I have been trying to get on the Ticketek site since 9am. Once I finally got through it was impossible to select any number of tickets in any area or category. You just couldn't purchase. Ticketek are a joke, this has been a very frustrating morning!

Jesus! Barracking for these Dockers is almost as a heartbreaking as barracking for the dees!

I don’t think I have ever barracked for the dockers before, I feel a bit dirty

That was just a piece of soft media. I seem to recall that Judd was a Demon supporter as a kid (not sure where I heard that). He seems to really rate us and has backed us all year. The 'Celebrating too hard' was just trying to find a new media angle. I'm guessing they worked quite a while to find an angle that was different from other shows.

I have never been more certain than I was of this signing. Still super happy to see it get done. Great work dees! I think this kid is something special and a totally different kind of player to Trac and Viney. Go Dees!

There is no way this will happen. None.

I'm sorry but stretch looks like a deer caught in the headlights when he gets the ball. Time and again he looks good at VFL and then fails miserably at AFL. I can't see the point in sinking more time into him.

Gaff is a power runner. Like ANB but with more experience and class. These kinds of players are increasingly valuable as powerful 2 way running is what allows us to cover structural gaps when there is a turnover. It also allows us to run in waves when we cause a turnover. I get pretty excited when I think of a team containing Tmac, Hogan, ANB and Gaff. I wouldn't sell the farm to recruit him as I think we're are growing something pretty special and we're need to look at the salary balance but i would have a red hot go

The trades required to get this done don't bare thinking about. Particularly given we don't have a 1st round pick this year. It is pure fantasy. Gaff on the other hand Is just possible since he is a free agent. I also think he adds more for us than another in and under player.

I'm interested to hear that some posters have information that there were some heart to hearts. I have no inside knowledge but something happened after the Richmond game. Before that there was a real lack of confidence in each other. Particularly in the back line, everyone was contesting marks together and not leaving anyone on the ground to mop up. From the bombers game on we started trusting each other and believing. That meant we had more players at the spill ready to clear. Same in the midfield. players started positioning for the clearance, believing that we would get the loose or contested ball. There must have been some hard conversations had. We never lacked the skill but we weren't trusting each other enough. Also i think we have underestimated how important 2 way running is to our game. TMac brought that in spades when he came back in. Hogan and ANB were already bringing it. I am certain that was why ANB didn't get dropped in the first 4-5 weeks when he was in such poor touch. Our forwards weren't sucking back up the ground fast enough when the ball exited our forward 50 and it the resultant lack of pressure on the ball carrier was really exposing our defensive press.

That was the win we have been working toward for a while. We have definitely announced ourselves to the football world. We may finally get a mention from the media, that would be weird! I am so looking forward to next week and measuring ourselves against a top 4 side. Viney will be better for having blown out the cobwebs and will hopefully be back to his bollocking best. Lever! Really starting to click now and our defence is starting to look really solid. I just didn't know what to do with myself at the ground, my body wanted to be nervous and stressed but there was nothing to get stressed about, it was the strangest feeling. I want more! Go Dees!

I agree PD, we are improving nicely and perhaps we needed the slightly lesser skilled teams to give us the room to get our game style to click. It is really starting to do that now and we never looked like losing the either the Saints or the GC games. People can gripe about the quality of the opposition but this is head and shoulders above our wins even last year. Also sometimes you just beat a team well and make them look worse than they are, North have looked pretty sharp since we spanked them. You can sense the media hovering at the moment, like so many Dees supporters they don't know whether to jump on board or not. We have all been hopeful before only to be let down by our inconsistent form. I'm going to put it out there and say I think this is the real thing. I don't know what the limit is, but this side looks like the real deal to me. Adding TMac and Weed has really straightened us up and bringing back Viney on the wave of confidence we should now be riding should really improve our already dominant clearance rate and hopefully allow us to get some cleaner forward 50 entries. I don't think Carlton is going to change anyone's minds but if we can take out Adelaide, I think we will start to get some media attention and hype, perhaps even some of the pirennially sceptical here could start enjoying the game again. Lastly, how about Gussy & Fritsch? Gus is really starting to show what many of us saw developing in his first season. Adding him to our midfield roster has really given us some extra toughness and class. I anticipated him being a game winner but this is coming faster than I imagined. Fritsch looks set to give us the class we need on the wing/ high half forward role, he is so clean above his head and below his knees for a first year player. I am excited to see what he might be once he puts some meat on those bones. I for one am super excited about the rest of the year. Go Dees!

This is the kind of post that really makes me want to avoid fan forums. Why do people need to rain on other's enjoyment? Is there really anything wrong with just enjoying a few wins after the past 10 years we have had? 'People need to get a grip', yes.People like you. We are not the FD we are just fans, our enjoyment will not cause the team to lose or become overconfident, it will just cause us to enjoy the experience of being Demons fans. Maybe our enjoyment could be infectious, it might even encourage others to join us and enjoy the ride. How terrible would that be?! Maybe just try sitting on your negativity a bit and enjoy it when we win. I don't think that would be such a bad thing. I promise it won't have a negative effect on the teams performance next week.

This place has hardly skipped a beat with Watts moving on and OMac smashing it in defence. Weed, Harmes and ANB have smoothly slotted in to their spots.

Contact with the umpire. Will almost certainly get a week based on the Hawkins verdict

Super happy with that win and the improvement that I have seen over the year. Viney back next week and another big step forward for this group. Hopefully even demonlanders can be happy with where this is headed and enjoy the ride. Both of this site's favourite whipping boys produced pretty good performances (Harmes was virtually BOG), not sure who is going to have to make way for Viney now.

Yes. There are some extremely malicious ads being served up here. Browsing the site on your mobile can be impossible. Adblock plus on my desktop is pretty much the only way i can view anything

That was some shocking umpiring. Brown gets a free kick for elbowing Lever in the head... What The? I am prepared to admit that Wagner is not a total waste of space and try to be mentally fairer on him in future. I have struggled to understand why he was in the team since some of the hideous butchery of the ball he produced last year. He seems to be fairly reasonable at the moment. Kent seems to be back in form, wow, pressure on selection is going to get fairly fierce! Go Dees! Great win, we needed that!

I don't rate Wagner based on what i saw last year. Absolutely shocking turnovers on many occasions and failure to halve contests. That being said the club clearly sees something in him. I guess we'll get a chance to see if they are right. There must be some underlying fitness concerns here though. I can't see this being their selection if all four were fit.

You can find a fun fact or statistic to support any argument you like. Preseason footy news is so full of this kind of thing. I put this right up there beside Champion data's 'Collingwood has the number one midfield' statistical analysis piece. Gotta sell news somehow...