Neil Crompton

I'm not going to admit it was a guess, so I'll say that it had to start with a J

John Elliott?

I hope you are not begrudging us Sydneysiders having the opportunity of watching our team play live - instead of watching it from our lounge rooms, as we almost exclusively do? If you Melbournites behave yourselves (covid wise) we may let the team back to play at the G one day.

It is a great intimate atmosphere at Giants Stadium, yet was eerily quiet early. But understandably so. If I’m in my own lounge room watching live, or (I imagine) at the MCG amongst fellow members, I am incredibly vocal. But with a group of strangers, at a foreign location, I, like most, were hesitant to let go initially. But seeing the lions demolish our game plan, was enough to set us all off. And once the noise was up, it just kept cranking. I loved the Kossie, kossie, kossie chant that erupted every time he enchanted the crowd. I loved the great banter between the opposing supporters. l loved the supporter who fell down about 6 steps in aisle 290 but didn’t spill one drop from his 2 cans of beer (amazing performance) But most of all I loved our ability to turn the game on its head, and run out comfortable winners, and I was able to see that with my son. PS, hey Sydneydee, I have a couple of brand new unused ponchos if you are interested.

How good is this! As if seeing my first live game in years, and winning, wasn’t good enough. I’ve woken this morning to find Old Dee telling jokes, and, in the above post, sounding as though he was having a “Lucy in the sky with diamonds” trip. Well old friend, the trip you are on is called the Dee train, and ain’t it grand -so finally, welcome aboard.

How about we split the take every year?

Just about to head to the shops to buy a couple of ponchos. I’ll get a spare one for you.

Thank you WCW. It’s my first live game in years and taking my son. So looking forward to it. Beautiful sunny morning here but bloody rain forecast for the evening. Won’t dampen my spirits though.

Yeah, human

Our mistakes / poor performance during the game put us in the position where umpires' mistakes could have affected the outcome of the game. We should not have been in that position in the first place, and we only have ourselves to blame - that was the point I made. I'm sure the coaches and playing group accept that as fact. They are smart enough to know that we can directly control and (hopefully) fix mistakes our playing group made, so that we are a better side next week. How umpires umpire is not under our control. Like it or not, umpires will make mistakes - although we can demand better of them, no question or argument there.

I know venting is good for the soul, so here's my vent: - I'm so over people calling or inferring that umpires are cheats - umpires need to show more consistency, yes; they make mistakes, yes; but cheating?, a definite no. - we did not lose that game due to umpiring mistakes - we lost because of our own mistakes - end of story.

Thank God something does Old Dee, I’d almost given up hope.

Given the obvious potential of the current team, anybody who is worrying that a respected player at our club - with 18 months to go on his contract - might want to go home, just does not understand how powerful and all encompassing our current “team buy-in commitment” really can be. And this only gets stronger when it’s reinforced by constant winning of games. As such, It wouldn’t surprise me to see Jackson sign a contract extension before the end of this year - right after our premiership.

I luv having the Doc around. I might disagree with 99.9% of what he has to say, but because of his input: - he raises the blood pressure of virtually all who read his posts thus initiating incredibly (demon) passionate chatter on here - he inspires many of Demonstone's famous retorts - of which we are all great fans - and our Demon world would be a such a darker place without those retorts So to me, the Doc makes this a better place for all, and I'm so happy he is here with us. Unless of course one of his comments / predictions prove to be true. Then he can just [censored] right off.

I’m really not sure you can use the Hawkins incident as a comparison for a favourable decision for Fritsch. Hawkins was facing away from May and therefore makes an easier case for accidental. Fritsch on the other hand was looking straight at his tackler, and tried to fend him off, making it so much harder to claim accidental. I think we will need a way better argument to consider an appeal, should the worst happen.

On the last podcast G & G stated they were having a 1 week break. So expect them back this coming week.

Watching the game last night, did anyone else's ears [censored] up when, during one of the quarter breaks, one commentator stated that Harmes was having his first game back following his skateboard injury? Back after the round one game, the MFC stated the following: "JAMES Harmes will miss the next six weeks of footy after injuring his wrist during Melbourne’s Round 1 win against Fremantle. The midfielder sustained a knock just after half time on Saturday afternoon, but managed to play out the game without too much concern. Harmes then had an x-ray, which showed nothing untoward, with only an MRI later confirming a crack in his scaphoid. He will be sidelined until at least Round 7". I wonder which story is correct? EDIT - my bad -just reheard what Ben Dixon said at 3/4 time. He said "scaphoid" injury, not "skateboard" injury. I'm having my ears tested today.

Given we are 6-0, if we change our structure as you suggest, and we keep winning, are we actually any smarter? However, if we change our structure and we lose a game seemingly because of this change, we know that the original structure was better. Therefore maybe stick with what we have until it breaks?

In Brown and Chandler Out Jones (managed) and Melksham. If Rivers out, bring in Jetta Weid and Harmes are going to have to bide their time at Casey - and bang the door down before they get picked. A number of posters are saying that we will be too tall having 3 talls in our forward line. Why would this be an issue? We pl;ay 3 talls in the backline, and we still have great defensive pressure. Why can't that logic and performance apply to the forward line?

Finally, our 'ship coming in

This will only be a danger game if Bombay Airconditioning placed that bet back in early March that North would lose every game this year. If he placed it, we will drop this game for sure. Hopefully he didn't.

A big difference this year is that, so far, we have not conceded goals in the last minute or so of quarters. We have a long history of doing this, and thus going to the break deflated - instead of empowered. Great change - especially for us supporters.

Nev, I called it as I saw it - and to me, live, it was not a good look. I respect your opinion on this. I just have a different one.

The incident I was referring to occurred in the 1st quarter, with 5 min 15 seconds to go before the siren.

ANB's second quarter goal was sensational - and I would have laid money he couldn't kick it. He also ran his butt off all day, as per usual, and did a couple of other nice things against Richmond. However -and perhaps I shouldn't say this (it is an appreciation thread after all) - but I do not rate ANB as a player anywhere near as highly as most of the posters on here do. Before I get lynched, let me state my reasoning: - for someone who gets to the ball as much as he does (and he certainly does), the number of possessions he ends up with I believe is poor. He fumbles, he loses his feet, and he is bumped off the ball far too often, and easily, for someone who wants to retain his place in the side. - when he does get the ball, his disposal - particularly by hand - is usually poor, and often results in turnovers. His disposal by foot has improved over the years, but by god it needed to. - he rarely attempts overhead marks when the opposition is around, even if he is the only Melbourne player there. (And there was an example on Saturday where he deliberately pulled out of a contest - which certainly was not a good look). - he averages about 4 tackles a game over his career, which on the surface looks great, I just wonder how many of these result from his (good) second efforts following another of his fumbles or falling over occurrences, when the opposition was able to get the ball from him. - the fact that he is now in his 7th year in the system he should, by now, have been able to resolve his above listed shortcomings as a player if he was ever going to - therefore I see little upside to his current playing ceiling. As such, while I am not promoting for him to be dropped after Saturday's game, I just feel that a player like Kade Chandler would provide us with more bang for the buck than ANB does. There, I've said my piece - you can hang me now.