Demons1858

Not necessarily , there is hope ... "The other cultural issue Goyder wants to wrestle with is AFL clubs, particularly in Victoria, being increasingly reliant on income from poker machines. He has been quoted saying that he “hates” the pokies and at Wesfarmers tried without success to introduce a $1 bet limit on the poker machines the group owns through its Coles liquor business.? http://www.afr.com/brand/boss/goyder-steps-in-to-promote-values-in-australias-most-powerful-sport-20170821-gy128s

It unusual that the whole game wasn't covered but betting industry is irrelevant. i don't mind a bet but the last thing i want is for the AFL industry and broadcasters to make decisions with that in mind. Hate the fact my club relies on pokies for revenue. The sooner all clubs drop them the better our kids will be,

SWYL, agree that they have issues dealing with expectations and application but its rarely just one thing that causes things to go wrong in life and in sport. In some ways you have reaffirmed my point. We had no injuries but still didn't run the season out. They aren't being prepared smartly enough to get through a full year of footy let alone finals on top of that.

Nice observation Skuit. Typically the high performance fitness dudes make recommendations about boxes to tick before being available. You wonder whether Goodwin has been too aggressive with players returning from injury or impacted via some new training / game day routes. What we know for sure is that we would have been better off this year if some did extra fitness work or came back via the 2's. Not helping Misson and his team is the fact that we have faded badly the last 3 years due to our 'youth'. I'm over hearing that excuse that gets rolled out each year when we cave in. Accepted it the first year and the second but not this year. Misson's job is to get the team through the season and he has failed repeatedly. I don't need to understand science to judge their performance I just need to look at the outcomes and decide if they meet AFL standards

You can add Salem to that list. I have said this on a few occasions. I'm sick of hearing each year that we are tired towards the end of the season due to our youth. Sorry not accepting it for the 3rd straight year. They [censored] up the return of our injured players this year big time and it played a strong part in us missing out on a finals place. Our fixture didn't help in the middle but overall it was a good fixture when you look at the start and end so no excuse. Misson In Action for mine. Time to bring in some fresh ideas and modernise that department. Don't want to hear of bricks concussing our players again this preseason!

I think there is an unwritten rule that the MRP go by during finals and in particular the grand final. My strong sense is that they tend to downgrade the punishment if it looks like costing a GF or other final. This ensures the punishment fits the crime. I'm happy with that approach and don't want him missing a GF for that knock.

He's been a very good servant to the club in difficult times and deserved the extra year. Not much to dislike other than the fact he has 2 first name

Toby Greene might be a dark horse for the kicking comp ...

Your sample is limited to top5 picks and whether they reach elite standard. Thats not a representative sample. A true refection of our drafting looks at all top 20 picks (1st round) and how many are handy starting 22 types and how many are elite. Paints a very different picture. In 2007, 8, 9, 10 around 50% of top 20 picks are handy types yet we have only Watts after 9 picks and none are elite or close. Our development was shot like alot of our club back then l'm affraid

He's still a bit green. Wouldn't have been moved on for second or third time if he was at the top of his game

Most rated Toumpas highly. Unfortunately he came to a club with poor development programs and coaches. Its mathematically impossible to draft so many top draft picks and fukk them all up without the help of our clubs 'development'

Trenners would be perfect as a development coach who understands what it's like to go through some tough times similar to Matthew Egan who also had his career cruelly cut short by injury. Might also just want to play in the burbs and experience winning again

Nice thought but Pedersen is the back up ruck for the forseeable future and l'm affraid the others haven't shown more than small patches of form within games. Spencer (while l love his heart and appreciate his service to the clu ) was repeatedly let down by his body and not able to fill the back up ruck role.

I'd be happy with that.. I mean ... what's the alternative? Being knocked out of the top 8 by lowly Collingwood by bees dikk and missing out all together. Just sayin'

I can and do "blame the conditioning staff for players who get played before they are fully fit when coming back from injury". I also put some of the blame on the FD (as you suggested) for not holdng players back or playing some of them in the 2's first. Sport science team puts targets in place for they players to achieve before they are up for selection, works with the docs, and provides recommendations to the FD. I heard Viney and Gawn mention repeatedly they have boxes to tick in rehab. Goodwin also declared a number of times that they would not play players if they were not ready during that period. The players that were in the team had done well enough to that point before we started to bring in the underdone 'starting 22' I'm afraid. Also not accepting youth as a excuse any more not for the 3rd year straight.

Agree we had a tough fixture but what it did was expose our average conditioning. The fixture is out of our hands but we can control how the players prepare for the season, rehab and time their returns from injury. Agree the sample is big enough to warrant a review at the least. We have been told the players tired at the end of the season for 3 years now. Not sure why more supports don't see this. Our sports science team and their programs aren't preparing players well enough to get through the season and back from injures. Simple!

Don't give him too much credit. You just need to look at our win loss ratio to work out we struggled to finish the year. Despite that we still had ample opportunity to ice our finals spot with most players back and didn't. I don't need the experts to tell me what l can get from the stats. I would like to hear insightful reasons as to WHY we dropped off. My take: Injuries were managed ok until we started to bring back many of our 'starting 22'. Gawn, Watts, Viney, Salem, Hogan all struggled or were reinjured. In addition others seemed to be weighed down by expectation or were not strong enough to play out the season. IMO they need to do a thorough review of our sports science team and training programs as a priority.

Someone needs to tell the Bulldogs this. They should be really concerned about their non-linear improvement last 2 years. We should just thank the MFC.

I don't think the MFC would have paid overs to keep him and we need a small squad of KPP's that can hold their own at AFL in case some are injured or our of form - even if Lever still joins us.

We forget to include a few of the more spectacular own goals against Collingwood

Some really nice goals to choose from. See running goals and boundary snaps semi regularly these day though. My vote is for Hunts barrel from reasonably close to the boundary. Required pin point execution to achieve the combination of both distance and accuracy and would have the longest odds IMO.

Right now a poke in the eye with a blunt stick looks like the better option ...

Melbourne ... the gift that keeps on giving. http://www.heraldsun.com.au/sport/afl/more-news/cruel-final-blow-for-longsuffering-demons-fans/news-story/7bd33c9cd7600c9d98cba07ad6cf6069

Now l know some the lines in the finals pack are standard copy but they still irritate me like nothing else at the moment. Two of the gems in the pack: 'This is as much your moment as it is our'... No its not its all your doing. Don't drag us into it you [censored] it up all on your own 'I'd like to see that' ... So the [censored] would l Sherlock but its not happening any time soon is it

2 down 1 to go for my favourite teams. Aussies going down to Bangledesh might just be on a par with melbourne's late season capitulation. Please socceroos don't let us down tonight and against the place with beautiful islands but no soccer ability i.e. Thailand. Will never holiday again if we do