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2 hours ago, DeeSpencer said:

Gawn’s the biggest hypocrite though. His podcast is/was so full of put downs to team mates.

The Burgo episode last year he literally asked Burgo who’s the worst runner out of May, Hibbo and some Port blokes.

He and Gus rubbished Declase last year and we drafted him again a few days later.

Max has to own his own behaviour and the role it’s played in this.

 

This is accurate. As a weekly listener to Gus & Gawny I have always found the "no put downs" story hypocritical. Him and Gus have cheap shots at players weekly :- sometimes subtle, sometimes direct. 

1 hour ago, Redlagged said:

The whole thing is just pathetic and reflects terribly on the club. Senior players drunk and fighting amongst themselves  in the street? Mid season? FFS. May in particular is a fool, and has done a lot of damage. Any repetition and he is done.

Sorry pal, May = Full back of the century and he isn't going anywhere.

8 minutes ago, tiers said:

Maxie is the most impressive captain and leader in the AFL by a wide margin. It is simply amazing that he could grow in stature by so much this year.

No other captain in recent times has shown his level of sophistication and intelligence as a leader, both when we won the flag and now when the club is under some pressure.

I would follow him anywhere. Lead on Maxie.

Must send such a great message to the playing group as well. “This is war fellas, lets get on the front foot and address our challenges head on” 

can’t recall Cotchin, or co responding in an equivalent manner 

1 minute ago, Engorged Onion said:

Baker

he looked ok in the vfl last week. Kicking looked to have improved

8 minutes ago, Tom Dyson said:

Geez Max is as good a leader as I have ever seen, dealt with those questions artfully and mixed in his classic Max humour when necessary. 

No one i would rather want leading the boys out every week, we are very lucky. 

loved his half sarcastic compliment to the journo who picked up the technicality that May & Melksham family only indirectly impacted. 

55 minutes ago, The Rebuild said:

Not sure how going to every home game makes me a pretend supporter but I'll admit my post does come across as quite entitled. I do however think it's more than reasonable to be both overjoyed at the success we're currently having but also unsatisfied with the quality of our games so far this season. We've all seen the best this team has to offer but we haven't seen that much of it yet in 2022. Hopefully we kick into top gear when it matters most!

Fair call, I probably took your post out of context then. 

Nice job getting to all home games

25 minutes ago, Nelo said:

So disappointed in May. He has form, can't control the drink and hasn't learnt from his lessons. I would be on board for Melbourne making a big statement and delisting him. 

Nelo the tanking phase is over:-  we actually want to win these days.

17 minutes ago, frankie_d said:

May is reported to have said to Melksham: "If you played in the GF, we would have lost".

In the "Momentum" video (a beauty - I'm sure all DLanders have seen it...) Gawn talks about a meeting before the 2021 season where Aaron vandenBerg said to the group "we have to stop slagging off at each other" . Someone would say "Jake Lever had 11 intercept marks", but then someone else would make a smart comment like "well, he doesn't play on anyone"... Not true, and also brings Lever down.

So they decided to stop doing that, respect each other, cut out the [censored] banter. And won a flag.

And May has brought that back.  "It's just a bit of banter"...

THAT's a serious problem.

Bring back Vanders for another session at Stafford’s farm? 

3 minutes ago, Webber said:

Well put, and in significant part why the club will never venture into ‘reasons’ territory, because the red corner (I know you chose red because it denotes anger, thus hinting you might be in the blue corner 😉) will habitually re-position them as excuses. Essentially the ‘reds’ (see what you’ve made me do?) want 100% diligence converted into 100% performance and outcomes 100% of the time, and find it near impossible to accept that this is an irrational expectation. Hard to imagine why they follow sport, let alone the MFC, as gloriously short of 100% as almost any club in the AFL (nods to lifelong St. Kilda supporters, admittedly the true hero supporters of the AFL). 

The other key reason the club will never admit it, is the intel it provides to the opposition when planning for games against us. 

12 minutes ago, FlashInThePan said:

I really love this thread because, to me it typifies Demonland and brings the different approaches we all bring to supporting our club (and probably life) into stark clarity.

In the blue corner we have (in this case) those who believe in training loads. Putting all the science aside and making no statement about whether loading is happening or not, the blue corner are the optimists. Believing that the club has essentially got things under control and if it hasn't us getting angsty about it is not going to help anyway. The blue corner doesn't think that anything we say on a fan forum is going to effect next weeks result one way or the other. Since that is the case and us feeling [censored] about things or good about things really only effects our own mental well being (not the dees performance), why not look for reasons and data that make us feel good.

In the red corner we have (in this case) those who believe we are just making excuses for our club and that training loads are just the latest in a long line of excuses. Again putting all science aside on whether we are loading or not, the red corner are the pessimists. At heart they believe that  winning and success is an anomaly and look for signs that we are regressing back to the mean (the mean for them is the Dees losing and letting us down as we are well used to). At heart the supporter pessimist suspects that when they accept excuses or less than perfect performances it has an effect on the players and the club. They feel that their criticism and lack of acceptance of soft excuses will have an effect on the players and/or those managing them, being soft on the players or the club is actually negatively effecting the club in their minds.

To me this is quintessential Demonland, the blue corner vs the red corner fighting it out along ideological grounds to the death.

I would say it’s an argument between those who have the ability to combine logic, analysis and a healthy dose of speculation (blue corner).

 Vs.  

those who don’t believe anything to be true until it’s printed on the front page of the Herald Sun (Red corner) 
 

13 hours ago, The Rebuild said:

I've been to every game at the G this year and despite winning most of them, I don't think there have been many "enjoyable" games to be perfectly honest. We tend to win by having one really good quarter and three very dour quarters. I often leave feeling that we should have won by much more or that we weren't playing at our best. It sounds so entitled to say when we're sitting 10-2 on top of the ladder but it's true. We've only managed three scores over 100 this year and two were against North and West Coast. When you combine that with the poor weather, horrible ticketing practices, having to always wait half an hour for the train, yeah I get it.

This post genuinely makes me sick, and is a great reflection of the issues we have with our “supporter base” 

really sorry it hasn’t been enjoyable enough for you. The coaches/playing group need to be scolded for the 10-2 start, on the back of a premiership:- due to not focusing enough on optimising your enjoyment levels. 

can we do a mid season draft, and ship off 20-30k of our pretend supporters for die heart Rich/coll/ess supporters?? 
 

4 hours ago, Swooper1987 said:

Hibberd will have to play this week.  He can play medium or tall and if Petty ends up getting injured during the game we'll need the extra tall.  Tomlinson is a must as well.  Probably looking at a back 7 of Hibberd, Lever, Petty, Tomlinson, Salem, Brayshaw, Bowey I reckon.  That's still 6 premiership players out of the 7.

Hibberd might be able to cover Mihocek 

4 minutes ago, Macca said:

I believe Percy Beames kicked 6 goals in the 1941 GF  And he was a rover!

Norm Smith kicked 7 in the 1940 GF

But Fritsch at any other time may well have won the Norm Smith Medal ... did he get 2 votes from every person allocating the votes?

Petracca of course was magnificent and a worthy winner of the medal

From inside 50 entries in last year's GF, Fritsch was targeted 9 times where he won the ball 8 times and kicked 6 goals 2 behinds.  A fabulous strike rate especially in a GF

 

Wow, massive stat re 8 wins from 9. Maybe we should be targeting him more? 

5 minutes ago, Spaghetti said:

What the [censored] happened to this club all of a sudden.

It's not the losses. Something has been off for over a month.

Because the crowds have been so poor at our games, the club assumed everyone was bored with our 10-0 start, and strong culture. 

so the last couple of weeks has been a plan from the marketing/PR departments to see if we can get 80k to the game on Mon 

6 minutes ago, JimmyGadson said:

Nice response cobba, that was well articulated!

Happy to sign and post anything for you although it's weird you're asking. 

Cheers Jimmy. Always wanted something signed by a “high level player” 

2 minutes ago, bing181 said:

It's a post on a fan forum from 2 years ago from an armchair pundit who's thrown in some nice graphics to give it more credibility. OK, confirmation bias, go for it, but ...

It astonishes (but doesn't surprise) me that all the "evidence" that this is occurring is hearsay.

Be worth considering that a number of demonland posters would have links to the club (some more direct than others), and don’t necessarily want to burn sources of any particular insights learned.
 

18 minutes ago, Dwight Schrute said:

This is a terrific post, and i know for a fact we adopted a similar plan and had a drop off in performance at exactly the same stage last season, and it allowed us to absolutely peak when we needed to. 

This is something we've only as recently as the last 2 seasons started doing, we balance our pre season out with a lot more skills and game plan focus and work more carefully with in season training loads to try and absolutely maximize our conditioning advantage. 

Spot on, and something that you can only push to the extreme, when you have a very strong start to the year:- as we have had the past 2 seasons. 
 

2 hours ago, JimmyGadson said:

Acknowledged by insiders you say?

Cool, maybe you can provide me some solid evidence and we can discuss further?

Never once have I heard from the club that they did any sort of loading at this time of the season to get an edge in finals. And if we had, surely it would have come out by the club/players post season? Why would that be confidential info? 

What I have read and heard (as we all have), from those at the club is that under Burgess, our intensity and loads through pre-season were enormous and that he put a premium on training even when you don't feel 100%. Which is more around giving players a psychological edge. 

Thanks for the congrats. Never once did it this early in the year in any sort of significant sense. After a longer break between games, obviously you have the ability to train for longer and with greater intensity during the week... If you are misunderstanding that to be 'loading' then the joke is fair and squarely on you and others. Lols.

 

 

Good on you Jimmy. You are clearly correct, and why would I bother getting in the way of your opinion. 

Do you still do signed memorabilia as a “high level player”?
 

23 minutes ago, JimmyGadson said:

Yeh, I can see how it would work. 

But pre the first bye in AFL season, it's hard for me to believe any side's form would be influenced by any form of loading/periodisation. 

The nature of the sport doesn't allow for it given the amount of recovery time needed between a standard 7-8 day break. Which is why you only see one main training session where players are going hard. 

Around byes and through longer breaks I can understand it somewhat and then especially between season and finals. 

But to suggest that our form is being affected by training loads at this point in the season simply doesn't make sense. I have played high level footy and I'd suggest that the chances of individuals dealing with niggles that we're not aware of would be part of the reason as well as others that posters have already outlined.

Sorry buddy, but this is off the mark. 

Post season last year, it was acknowledged by many insiders that mid season loading contributed to some poor performances, but was also a key reason why we were so fit in Sept. 

To think that we wouldn’t be capitalising on the 10-0 start, by doing the same thing this year (and it somehow wouldn’t be affecting performance) is madness. 

Congratulations on playing high level footy though. 

 

4 minutes ago, DeeSpencer said:

Very disappointing actions from former captain Jake Melksham. He should receive a lifetime ban 

Can we give Melksham 3 weeks, and May a warning? 

41 minutes ago, Bring-Back-Powell said:

Maybe we're just not good enough at the moment.

2/2 tests failed at the home of footy.

If we lose to the Pies can we stop blaming loading and just declare that the 2022 Demons are not as good as the 2021 version? 

 

Nup, if we lose to Pies, would actually add more weight of evidence towards loading being a key factor of recent losses. 
 

44 minutes ago, Kick_It_To_Pickett said:

The way that Petracca grab has been pieced together, it’s hard to tell the context. Was he just potting Melbourne fans, or all AFL fans? Pretty poor form to eat your own supporters. Is he blaming his own poor form on supporters not showing up? 

No it’s not. He did his part, got 39 possessions  won a norm and a flag, and our pathetic supporter base is too worried about covid, or any number of other excuses.

more chance of catching covid or the flu at the snow as well! 

46 minutes ago, binman said:

That's a somewhat disingenuous use of quotes (ie the bit you highlighted in your post i have quoted above)

The full context was:

'A coach or player coming out and saying they are loading? Well that's not going to happen.'

But, in any case i've tapped out of the discussion. Happy for you to reject my theory.

(but if i was going to point you to a footballer who says loading happens, i'd recommended you chase up the clip of Jack Riewoldt on AFL 360 from i think 2019 or 2020, who is directly asked about loading and all but confirms they always loaded mid season. Which explains why they had a mid season slump in form in each of their three premiership years. Well it does for me - others might think it is just a weird coincidence) 

You are spot on Binman. Beyond belief the amount of people on this site, who are surprised that we would copy a winning formula that won us a flag.

10000% we are loading. Don’t know how to make it any clearer. 
 

1 hour ago, Vipercrunch said:

I facepalmed that too, although an eye-roll would have been more suited to such an childish offering.

Hero, what is childish, is people on here who were 2 weeks ago saying we are the greatest team ever, suddenly thinking the sky has fallen in. 

If you grasped the bigger picture driver of what is going on you would have far less focus, on individual players who are below their best, out of form etc. 

Just now, Vipercrunch said:

I facepalmed that too, although an eye-roll would have been more suited to such an childish offering.

Good on you hero.