Bring-Back-Powell

Feasible. Only 10 more consecutive wins than our round 20 2021 to round 10 2022.

It's technically nobody's home game. Just an additional game on top of every club's 11 home and 11 away games, which is not part of a club's membership package. (I've also seen us listed as the home team in the Gather Round promo) For example, in 2023 Richmond were the home team against Sydney at Adelaide Oval, Gather Round. Then later in the season Richmond played Sydney again as the home team at the MCG, but in a normal home game. On paper Richmond were the home team twice against Sydney in 2023, but realistically the MCG game was the only genuine home game of the two. If we play Essendon later in the season, Gather Round will have no bearing on who's home game it would be. In theory the concept is a crock, but attending the event is actually pretty fantastic and the city of Adelaide has a tremendous vibe. It's a ton of fun if you love your AFL footy, not just MFC.

2025 Gather Round fixture. Essendon on the Saturday night at Adelaide Oval. Fingers crossed not a repeat of 2023. GATHER ROUND FIXTURE

Despite being adamant we wouldn’t be welcome back to opening round due to our horrid year, it’s not 100% ruled out that we won’t be playing that weekend like I thought it would be. It would either be Sydney, GWS or GC if we were to play that weekend.

A rumour today that we’ve got Essendon at the Adelaide Oval during Gather Round, on the Saturday night.

Does he survive an 11th-13th finish / 10 to 11 wins? I understand there are a lot factors and reasons behind a win/loss record but you’d have to say it would be a very line ball call.

His first half of the season was vintage Fritta. He looked disinterested in some of those late season games at the MCG. He only had 57% playing time against Collingwood in the last game (was he injured?) and looked lost as a high half forward chasing kicks up the ground. Not sure if it was down to form, or whether he became less of a focal point with the JVR/Petty/Turner structure, but he plays his best footy as the number 1 or 2 key target. Take a look at his game against Hawthorn when a lot of the forward entries went through him. Another of a long list of players that are capable of better overall seasons, which is a positive.

You’d imagine the review was critical of our very small 2 man leadership, and the need to unearth some new leaders in an official capacity.

Should be our most used starting sub next year. Can see him having an impact with his forward smarts in tight last quarters.

Clearly a negative year, but he still played at least 5 Clayton Oliver quality games against the likes of the Dogs (MCG), Geelong, Brisbane (GABBA), Essendon and GWS. You'd imagine he'll increase that to at least 12-14 quality games next season if he has a full pre season. Add that to a (hopefully) full season from Trac and that's surely some automatic improvement right there. Was understood to be injured at the time, but he was a complete liability in this last game against Port, to the point where he needed to be subbed off as he was hurting us on the field. Let's hope those days are behind him.

The 2002 Dees/Crows final was certainly a game for the ages, but has never been on Fox Footy’s classic catalogue. Interestingly one of the most boring games of the AFL era between Geelong (33) V North (53) in pouring rain back in 2001 makes the annual “Fox Footy classic games” each year. Not to mention the North V Melbourne game in 1996 that gets shown every year when North flogged us by 18 goals, but yet is still considered a “Fox Classic”

Looking forward to watching the obligatory Melbourne V North classic in 1996. The one where North fell over the line…by 106 points.

The West Coast game at the MCG was the first time we've seen an MFC key forward take control of a game of footy since the Hogan halcyon days of 2016-2018. And McGovern and Barrass were playing that day so it wasn't as if he got hold of a bunch of mugs. Good on him for cracking the 30 goal mark, and blokes like Harry Mckay and Curnow didn't manage 50 goals until their 4th or 5th AFL seasons. Aside from a 3 goal performance against GC, he didn't end the season well taking only 10 marks in the final 5 games.

We were 7-5 before the Kings B'day, and then 4-7 from Kings Bday (when he went off early) onwards. We also lost 3 games to top 6 sides by a kick without him. You'd suspect a typical 30 possession 1 goal game from Trac would've gotten us over the line in one or two of those games - particularly the Port game where a piece of brilliance in the dying minutes would have gotten us over the line in a low scoring scrap, given Port were having trouble scoring. On the flipside he was in the team when we put in our two worst performances of the year against the WA sides which proves that he can't do it all on his own when the rest of the side doesn't come to play. I hope his return automatically makes us a 2 win better side than last year.

And the next 4 to the Dons…

2020 mens vibes about this season for the girls. Recover from a slow start to the season but ultimately fall short after the season’s final home and away game because the destiny fell out of the club’s hands. Carlton did beat Freo away so they’re capable of an upset.

Will be very interesting to see how our forward line functions now with Troy Chaplin.

He actually became consistent in 2023, and had a really good elimination final against Sydney. He got suspended in that Sydney final and missed the Dees/Carlton final and I can recall being excited at the time, as he was becoming a key cog in their forward line as that third target. Geelong will no doubt get him back on the rails and he'll probably end up in the All OZ 40 squad, knowing how Geelong fix footballers.

Is it correct that we had the biggest membership drop off in 2024 of all clubs?

An absolute freebie for Collingwood assuming his publicised mental health issues are under control. I wonder if we pursued him during the year (we've been unofficially linked to him for years) and he turned us down, or if we decided that our forward line is sufficient without him - which it isn't.

Cannot like this GIF enough 👍

Yeah I was being a bit kind. 9.15 is quite frankly a disastrous return for a full time forward with the odd cameo down back. I would like to know how many forwards in the league managed to kick single figure goals from 20 games this year. He had a severely interrupted summer so we cut him some slack, and it's pleasing he signed an extension.

An ok year up forward, however there was a four week patch between the Carlton and Freo games where he had a grand total of 18 possessions, 5 marks and 1 goal. That is so poor that you couldn't even accidently get that kind of output in 4 full games. If he's not kicking goals then he needs to be clunking 9/10 marks a game like he did in the Geelong win when he polled the 3 votes. Given we retained T Mac, I expect he'll train and start the season up forward again. Who knows how the season will evolve though?

Yes please.

Hopefully he can teach the boys how to nail a set shot consistently. He was a good exponent of that craft.