Engorged Onion

No doubt the FD failed to look at the VFL draw on the fridge in the staff kitchen before making the decision?

My point is - he is playing forward now more often - why has this changed? When it seemed so useful in the premiership year.

I may have missed some good conversation on this, and it's not specifically relevant to this game. I do wonder why we see less of Max dropping back in defence anymore. As strong as our defence is, I still think it's his best role. Does him doing that negate the effectiveness of our defence? Does anyone (everyone) who is smarter than me, have some thoughts, on why there appears to be a shift away from this?

Thank you for providing your detailed quantitative analysis @Deelightful Dee. 100% username and content delivery accuracy.

Stu, do you mean that literally, or do you really mean 'a win'?

So many posters on here suggesting they'd die happy after winning a premiership and proving otherwise ...😆😇

Collingwood?... Oh! I see what you did there! 🙌

Lemme get my nerd on...and a book im writing...JUST replacedthe word Parent with Coach and Child with Athlete... 'it's STILL amazingly the same!" The Whole-Brain Athlete 12 Revolutionary Strategies to Nurture Your Athletes’s Developing Mind CHAPTER ONE: Coaching with the Brain in Mind Because experiences are constantly shaping the brain for better or for worse, your interactions have a big impact on athletess brains. Integration is the key concept underlying the 12 strategies described in the book – connecting the many parts and functions of the brain to achieve well-being. In this chapter the authors introduce the concepts of neurons (or brain cells), the activation (or firing) of these cells, and the many connections these cells make with each other – the wiring. CHAPTER TWO: Two Brains Are Better Than One: Integrating the Left and the Right The two sides of our brains are different. The left side likes lists, sequences, logic, language, details, rules, and order. The right side pays attention to nonverbal signals, emotions, images, personal memories, music, art, creativity, and is more connected to the lower brain area that receives, understands, and processes emotional information. The two sides are connected by a bundle of fibers because we need them to work together, to be integrated. Young athletes, however, are mostly operating from their right brains because they haven’t developed the abilities to use logic, understand time, use words to express feelings, etc. It’s our role to help them use both sides of their brains. Two strategies will help for athletes of any age: Whole brain strategy #1: Connect and Redirect: Surfing Emotional Waves Step 1: Connect with the Right: When athletes are experiencing big emotions, they’re operating from their right brain. Logic, language, telling them it isn’t so bad, trying to distract them – none of these strategies will work because they’re left-brain strategies. Instead, use your right brain to connect, to tune in to their emotions, to resonate with your athletes – acknowledge their feelings. Then and only then - Step 2: Redirect with the Left: Use simple logic and language to suggest solutions to their problems. The authors caution that this does not mean permissiveness, that it takes practice to get good at this strategy, and that you have to maintain your own calm. Whole brain strategy #2: Name It to Tame It: Telling Stories to Calm Big Emotions Too often we “dismiss and deny” the emotional importance of life’s difficult experiences: we try to talk athletes out of their feelings, or we avoid painful issues. Instead, pick a time when you and your athletes are feeling calm, and have a story-telling conversation about the difficult event. This strategy is integrating both sides of the brain – the left tells the story of the right brain’s strong emotion: taming by naming. CHAPTER THREE: Building the Staircase of the Mind: Integrating the Upstairs and Downstairs Brain Imagine the brain as a two-story house. The downstairs brain develops early and is responsible for bodily functions like breathing, as well as for strong emotional reactions like fight (anger), flight (fear), and freeze (fear). There’s a small structure in the downstairs brain that the authors call the “baby gate” of the mind – it causes us to react emotionally without thinking. Sometimes this is good, especially when we feel passionate about someone or thing; often it gets us into trouble (when we react instead of respond to experiences that aren’t life-threatening). The upstairs brain (the top part of your cortex, especially the area behind your forehead) develops later in childhood and on into adulthood; it’s the place where mental processes happen – good decisions, self understanding, emotional and bodily control, empathy, a sense of right and wrong, etc. All the actions we hope athletes will take require the upstairs brain, which isn’t fully on-line yet, but we can still appeal to it using the following strategies: Whole brain strategy #3: Engage, Don’t Enrage: Appealing to the Upstairs Brain First make sure you have applied step 1 of Strategy 1 and connect. Then, once calm, help them find solutions to their challenges. Engage their upstairs brain in problem-solving. Whole brain strategy #4: Use It or Lose It: Exercising the Upstairs Brain “A strong upstairs brain balances out the downstairs brain, and is essential for social- emotional intelligence.” So throughout the day look for opportunities to help your athletes practice upstairs brain skills: Making decisions: For toddlers, give choices about what to wear, what to drink, etc. For older athletes, let them, with support and guidance, make more difficult choices about conflicting schedules or desires. Don’t rescue them, even if you can foresee that their choice might lead to their regret. However, help them predict possible outcomes. Regulating emotions and the body: Be sure and model this yourself in all your interactions with your athletes. Teach them calming techniques like taking a deep breath (“Swallow a bubble,” “Take a belly breath.”). Older athletes can learn to count to ten, or take a mental time-out. Self-understanding: Ask athletes questions that help them think about and reflect on their feelings, help them predict what they might feel in a new situation & how they might handle it. Also, model this for them by using self-talk out loud, “Hmmm. I seem to feel extra nervous. I wonder why? Maybe it’s because I don’t know what my boss will say when I ask for time off.” Empathy: Ask athletes questions about the feelings of others, about what someone’s actions might suggest about how they feel, about what might make someone feel better, etc. Show compassion and empathy yourself. Morality: This isn’t just knowing what’s right and wrong but understanding how actions impact the greater good. We want our athletes to do the right thing with compassion, kindness, and empathy – not because someone’s watching, but because they know right from wrong. The authors give examples of questions and situations to develop this. Whole brain strategy #5: Move It or Lose It: Moving the Body to Avoid Losing the Mind Movement changes brain chemistry, so when athletes are near a breaking point and aren’t connecting with their upstairs brain, get them moving to integrate their brain. The same is true for adults. CHAPTER FOUR: Kill the Butterflies! Integrating Memory for Growth and Healing Memories are tricky because they’re not just experiences filed away in a file cabinet, exactly as they happened. And they’re not exact photocopies of the experience, either. In this chapter you’ll learn about two different kinds of memory, and how to help your athletes (and yourself) integrate them. If we don’t help our athletes integrate their difficult memories, their emotions will show up in their behavior - which can confuse both them and us. And it’s important to remember that what’s a challenging memory for a athletes might seem pretty harmless to us. The authors use cute cartoon drawings and catchy sayings to illustrate the strategies: Whole brain strategy #6: Use the Remote of the Mind: Replaying Memories Just as telling a “story” or narrative about a strong emotion is naming it to tame it, here we help athletes get in touch with their unhappy and challenging memories to integrate them. The authors suggest we guide athletes to think of their minds as a remote control that can fast-forward, skip, pause, and stop when remembering painful experiences. As adults, we should help them “rewind and remember” instead of “fast-forward and forget.” Whole brain strategy #7: Remembering to Remember: Making Recollection a Part of Your Family’s Daily Life Make daily family conversations a habit so athletes always have a chance to talk about their experiences and memories. Ask open-ended questions that will get them thinking and encourage them to share more than a “yes” or “no.” Instead of the usual, “How was your day?” ask them questions like, “What was your favorite part of the day?” and “Tell me about recess.” Ask them about their not-so- favorite parts of the day, too. Print those digital photos and make books and albums for your athletes so you can talk about shared experiences together. Have a regular family movie night where you watch movies you’ve made of your athletes, family, and experiences. CHAPTER FIVE: The United States of Me: Integrating the Many Parts of the Self In this chapter the authors introduce the idea of “Mindsight,” a term coined by Dan Siegel that mean understanding our own minds, which then we can then use to understand the minds of others. In this chapter you’ll read how to teach athletes about the wheel of awareness, telling the difference between what they feel and who they are, learn to focus their attention, and learn to get back to their hub (center). This will help them develop Mindsight. Most of these concepts are for K-12 athletes, but you yourself will benefit from applying them to your own mind. By modeling this for younger athletes, you’ll be preparing them to use Mindsight as they get older. Whole brain strategy #8: Let the Clouds of Emotion Roll By: Teaching That Feelings Come and Go Teaching athletes to get in touch with and verbalize their feelings is a good strategy. But it’s also important to teach them that feelings are temporary and changeable, like the weather. This helps them put feelings in perspective – they won’t last forever. This will help them regain a calm state more easily and maintain it when painful feelings come along. Whole brain strategy #9: SIFT: Paying Attention to What’s Going On Inside Teach athletes to know what’s on the rim of their wheel of awareness and focus their attention on the following: the Sensations (messages) their body sends them; the Images they have from their experiences and imagination (from the right brain); the Feelings they have (right brain); and the Thoughts they are using to understand their world (left brain). This process is the basis for Mindsight and the chapter has strategies to make it fun. Whole brain strategy #10: Exercise Mindsight: Getting Back to the Hub By teaching athletes that they can choose how to think and feel about what happens to them in life, that they aren’t victims, that they can use their mind to calm their brain, they’ll thrive. The authors present ways to help athletes get in touch with their “hub,” that peaceful, calm center. CHAPTER SIX: The Me-We Connection: Integrating Self and Other We need to help athletes develop the second aspect of Mindsight - to integrate self and other – and develop relationships based on kindness, compassion, and empathy. Using the Mindsight skills they’re learning, with help from you and the developmental process, they can now learn to combine insight with empathy to develop interpersonal integration. It’s up to adults to create positive relationships with athletes; to encourage them to make friends and form relationships by helping them be receptive instead of reactive, and to use Mindsight skills with others. Whole brain strategy #11: Increase the Family Fun Factor: Making a Point to Enjoy Each Other Spend time having fun, playing, and enjoying each other’s company. Every time you have enjoyable experiences with athletes, their brains release a “reward” chemical called dopamine, and they learn that relationships are rewarding. You’ve probably tried some of the suggestions to implement this strategy – and if you haven’t, the time to start is now! Whole brain strategy #12: Connection Through Conflict: Teach Athletes to Argue with a “We” in Mind Conflict is unavoidable in relationships, so teach athletes how to handle it in helpful ways using Mindsight: recognize others’ perspectives and viewpoints (teach them previous strategies); 2. teach them to understand nonverbal cues so they can attune with others; 3. teach them to repair the relationship after conflict.

I personally think it's a little hilarious vignette of the job for the lads. Sure, he's won 3 premierships, but to be parachuted into a job, which would have been orchestrated by the AFL, when there is no guarantee of success, just seems naive. It's not the coach, it's the structure. I still feel for Guy McKenna.

Huh, we dodged a bullet? Reading this forum, the jury is STILL out on Goodwin 🤷‍♂️

We beat up on them by 10 goals at the Gabbitoir* in August and then we got done at the G when 1/3 of a team was significantly crocked in September. The beat us with our ruckman going down for what was feared an ACL in the first 10 mins of the match last time. Which one is the more accurate represenation of the teams? Don't buy into your anxiety @beelzebub We match up well... and without Fritsch and Oliver, we may lose it - and it's still not a 'true' reflection of our system vs theirs. *I back our capacity to beat them at the Gabba, Port in Adelaide, and clearly the Magpies at the 'G' in the finals.

Why would that be different to last time he played (and lost there) whether he 'sets up' or not, he externally has said, it's everyone else's concern and not internally within the club. Further, should he chose to, he can communicate as much as he wants to the players how important it is to win on the 'g' for a range of valid reasons, they've still got to beat our system, by using their system. If you're using external motivation (eg: it's Johnno's 200th, or 'we need to win at the 'g' to prove to ourselves that we can win at the 'g') to try to win, then it's problematic longterm psychologically, as it moves the focus (behaviours away) from your own system/method/philosophy. It's the same retrospective superficial analysis that says, a team wasn't 'up for it' or ' weren't switched on' - that fails to give credit to the other team.

Biggest Predictor of Premiership success is people on the park (key ones in particular) We could easily have won 2/3 more matches due to a few kicks (sure and lost to the Suns and Tigers). Over the next month, we get Salem, BBB and Gawn into better form, and perhaps Clayton and then finally Fritsch, and that is a premiership winning team, that has been spluttering due to injuries.

I always liked Kane 🤷‍♂️😍

How do you make sense if of the Lions getting smashed by 10 goals on their home deck by us and then bundling us out of finals a month later in 2022?

Something to ponder (hold on to??) I meandered up to the Gold Coast and visited the Gabba in August 2022 whereby we smashed Brisbane by 10 goals or so.. and thought 'we're on for the Granny here... A sobering reality check about a month later with Brisbane beating a 'crocked' Melbourne and tumbling out of the finals in straight sets. Whatever happens this Friday night, has no bearing about what happens in the finals.

Was pleased to see Bowie take 1 (or a couple?) of marks in traffic, he' s better overhead than I have given credit for.

See, still inflexible and stubborn tho'.

19 scoring shots - and a nice little regression back to the mean. 63.15% and 3(?) posters

I have nothing to add, as to why it would be the case, but it felt pretty pronounced early in the last when Max took a contested mark, I thought I have barely seen him hold one all year... and I then thought, we'd be on for the win.

He must have got lucky right? 👌

It is perhaps worth considering that AFL is an entertainment product, not a football code. And if you take that as a truth, then you can see why there are many many narratives, particularly towards those that have high memberships (higher clicks, greater purchasing power) Sure, once in a while the 'feel good fairytale' will occur (Western Bulldogs, Melbourne) and, those don't provide a profit, particularly when trying to claw back missed revenue during Covid.

Would you take it if Joe Daniher kicked 19?

Wtf does that even mean? 😆🤷‍♂️