Swooper1987

And well done to Gawn, who was clearly the top vote getter amongst the ruckmen. His first half of the season was outstanding, until his injury. Thoroughly deserved his AA. Interesting the umpires only gave Naitanui 5 votes for his season. 11 marks across the year tells you what the umpires notice and what they don't.

The Bluey has thrown up all sorts of bizarre results over the years. Flower one it once only and is our best player since the halcyon days. RDB won it only a couple of times. Danny Hughes beat Gerard Healy in 1985; Laurie Fowler was a multiple winner during Flower's best years; Brian Wilson and Peter Moore both won Brownlow's in the 80's and neither won the B&F in the year they won it. It's a bit of pot luck. Oliver may be unhappy with his 5th placing, but he got very lucky the previous year when he tied with Gawn.

If Neale doesn't win it'll be daylight robbery. He's had an outstanding season and would be the worthiest of winners. Tracc has no history of polling well and it usually takes a year or so for the umps to catch up.

He is a champion player of not only this club but also the competition. You only need to listen to supporters of other clubs to understand how highly regarded he is across the whole football community. Well done Max!

15 Demons received coaches votes in 2020. Petracca polled in 11 games and received 78 votes.(4.6) Oliver 6 games 34 votes (2) Viney 7 games 30 votes (1.8) Gawn 6 games 30 votes (2.1) May 6 games 28 votes (1.6) Brayshaw 3 games 19 votes Langdon 5 games 17 votes Fritsch 1 game 8 votes Weidemann 3 games 4 votes Lever 1 game 4 votes Hibberd 1 game 4 votes Salem 2 games 3 votes Hunt 1 game 2 votes Spargo 1 game 2 votes Brown 1 game 1 vote Number in brackets represents average votes per game played. May didn't poll until Round 7 and Langdon didn't score his first votes until Round 11. After Round 10 Viney only polled once, a 1 vote performance in our loss to the Dockers. Max polled in three of our last 4 games (Sydney, GWS and Essendon). Petracca only polled twice when we lost this season. Oliver did not poll a vote in our final 6 games. Fritsch, Hunt and Brown all polled their only votes in the final game of the season. Based on our club B&F results May was rated more highly internally, and it appears Gawn a bit lower, although missing three games needs to be factored into that as well.

Lot's of examples of players with diabetes having good careers. Dale Weightman, Jamie Cripps, Sam Reid (GWS) are three off the top of my head. I doubt that would deter anyone from picking him up. His fitness issues are not diabetes related. I doubt he was professional enough in his training standards early on and then he got terribly unlucky with his head knocks. I do think a club will take a chance on him as a rookie. I doubt it will be us.

I'm still unsure why John isn't a life member of the club. He coached 7 seasons but coached more games than Brian Wilson played for the Demons in 9 seasons yet Willo is in (quite rightly) and John isn't. His accomplishments as a coach at Melbourne are quite outstanding even if he couldn't land the elusive flag. 5 successive finals series, each time making at least the second week; one GF and a prelim. All up he coached us to 13 finals for 8 wins; 2 Night flags and a record against Hawthorn the envy of any club of that period. In fact we stopped their run of consecutive grand final appearances in 1990. There'd be few more deserving, and he clearly still loves the club.

Further investigation on the Demonwiki site reveals that Max is actually the 5th Melbourne player to finish 6th in the Bluey and make AA in the same season. In addition to those above, Jim Stynes was 6th in 1993 and was selected as AA Ruck, and in 2000, after a 76 goal season, Jeff Farmer also finished 6th and was named in the Forward Pocket of the AA side. That must be some sort of a record! Even more interestingly, in 1993, Garry Lyon also made the AA side and he finished 5th in the Bluey.

Max is the third Melbourne player to make the AA team after finishing 6th in the club B&F after Adem Yze in 2002 and Michael Hibberd in 2017. Just goes to show how different people see it. Consistently different by the look of it.

Well done Max and Tracc. Given NicNat only plays about 65% game time, makes sense to play the second ruck!

LT, Gawn didn't play that game. it was the third game he missed. I feel we may have seen a somewhat different outcome in the stoppages had he taken the field. That was all on Preuss and our rather pathetic midfield performance that day.

I'd ask the question for sure. You don't lose your ability overnight, just your confidence. Shaw is a terrible coach and many North players are shadows of what they were under Scott. Anyone averaging better than 2 goals a game over a reasonable length of time can certainly play the game. If he could give us 40 goals a season he'd be twice as good as anything we currently have.

Maximum points per game is 40 (4 coaches give each player a score out of 10), so a 20 average would be the "pass" mark. Only Tracc and May bettered an average of 20. Probably fair enough. The right players finished in the top 6. I could quibble marginally about the order - I felt Oliver was better than Viney and Langdon and Gawny was down a bit on the last two seasons, and missed 3 games as well but I think those 6 players were significantly better than anyone else. Brayshaw probably the biggest surprise for me.

Short memory Cheesy. In 2018 Gawn won the AFLCA Player of the Year. Tracc has had a great breakout year and deserves to be AA and along with May would be a deserving Bluey winner but he hasn't been better than Gawn two seasons ago.

1. Tracc 2. May 3. Oliver 4. Viney 5. Gawn/Langdon. The three games Max missed will hurt and Langdon had a cracking back half of the season. No question they have been our best 6 this season and by quite some way.

A very interesting selection of stats. I'm sure you don't need me to point you to the footy wire stats comparison but anyway - Gawn has had a significantly better season statistically than Grundy. Gawn clearly leads on average kicks, marks,contested marks, total disposals, metres gained(more than double), contested possessions, 1%'s, rebound 50's, inside 50's, clearances (just) and hit out averages are 32.7 to 32.8 (to Grundy). There's an array of other areas where he has Grundy beaten anyway. So my point stands. You can compare Gawn with any other ruck in the league and in its entirety he is statistically better than all of them. Anyway, I'm pleased he plays for us and I'd have him over and above any other ruckman in the comp.

May - proves you don't have to be dead to be stiff. I find the comments on Gawn's season interesting. Mid season he was the universal pick for AA ruck. He missed three games, scored coaches votes in the game against the Swans, one of only 2 Demons to poll, and wasn't beaten by any opponent in the run home. Was regarded by most of the media as best on in the last game. Goldstein faded badly as did Witts, and Grundy barely got going. Naitanui is great in Perth but has done little elsewhere. 11 marks for the season is a damning stat for a ruckman. I think Gawn is terribly underrated here and if he makes it, it will be well deserved. It wasn't as good a season as 2016 and 18 for him, but not terribly dissimilar to 2019. If he isn't in the best 22 players in the comp the I haven't been watching the game for the last 40 odd years. Tracc - rightfully a lock. Oliver - a good comeback after the Richmond disaster. Well done to him.

Great work again, Joeboy! You display a consistency of performance sadly lacking in the guys you review each game!

The man responsible for my greatest footy highlight - the late 1987 run that culminated in the magic day at the Western Oval when Robbie got his chance to finally play in a final!! I was in Year 12, about a month away from turning 18 and should have been focusing on my exams. Alas, the next few weeks were an awesome ride until we ran into Buckenara. 33 years later and still waiting for the ultimate success. Swooper Northey, the best Melbourne coach in my lifetime!

Just looking at the Age Player of the Year award in todays paper. With only the one game (Collingwood/PA) still to play, here is the leaderboard. Lachie Neale 101 Luke Parker 76 Jack Steele 73 Nic Naitanui 72 Christian Petracca 68 Jake Lloyd 64 Jack Macrae 62 Max Gawn 61 Dustin Martin 61 Sam Menegola 59 On 54 votes currently in 15th place sits Travis Boak who could move into the top 10 tonight and in 17th place is Clayton Oliver on 52. So three players in the top 17 and that doesn't include May who probably makes the AA side this year. A great effort by Gawn in particular who missed three games. The argument could be too much left to too few, but as David King said last night on First Crack, the talent on the Melbourne list far exceeds the Bulldogs yet they are playing finals and Melbourne isn't.

Except for the big contested mark against Daniher in the centre of the ground late in the game which directly resulted in the Fritsch goal from the square (mark>Brown>to the square where Fritsch snapped a goal). And then the intercept spoil from Hibberd's miskick which resulted in Hunt's goal in the last. 10 hitouts to advantage, 7 score involvements. Quantity and quality is a constant argument with ruckmen and you'll note Essendon are not a big stoppage team, hence the lower than usual number of hitouts.

Yes for this with an honourable mention to Brown. How anyone has left Gawn out of the votes today defies any reasonable assessment of the game.

161. Christian Petracca 133. Steven May 128. Clayton Oliver 111. Jack Viney 110. Max Gawn 87. Ed Langdon That would be pretty close to the top 6 in the Bluey I reckon. I think May might be ahead of Trac. Strange things happen when coaching panels award votes (at least strange to us outsiders), but I'd be staggered if anyone from outside that group threatened.

6. May 5. Gawn 4. Langdon 3. Petracca 2. Oliver 1. Rivers

6. Gawn - again comprehensively beat his opponents, some big marks on a terrible night for marking. 5. Viney - an excellent effort, with some effectiveness. 4. Rivers - a steady and sometimes brilliant game. A big future for this lad. 3. Fritsch - wish he went a bit harder but he is a genuine talent. 2. May - although not up to his recent high standards he did his job and kept the Freo key forwards quiet. 1. Petracca - toiled hard and kept himself in the game. I have re watched the game and Gawn made a couple of bad blues but he is held up to such a high standard. If any other ruck in the league played that game in those conditions they'd be lauded. Against a couple of decent opponents too. Very impressed with Rivers. I think he beats out Jackson and Pickett as our best first year player.