Northern Summer

How is that even possible? The teams in the top 4 that lose in the first week of the finals get a home final the following week. If your logic is that they'll move the semi finals to Perth regardless, they'll do it for the entire finals series, and we won't be going to Geelong.

Looks like it now, although I reckon Sydney might well drop a game over the next two weeks. They've won a number in succession and been up for so long. It'd be incredible if they didn't slip up.

The old Dockers away guernsey that they wore today was their best ever! They should bring it back, at least for away games!

If GWS can beat Port Adelaide, it's highly unlikely we will miss top 4 if we win one of our remaining games. Let's face it, we will beat Adelaide at the MCG - they've thrown the towel in! Port would be 6 points behind us with 3 games to go, including an away game against the Bulldogs. Even if Sydney wins its last 3, we'd still finish 4th. In saying that, let's go Giants and Mr Hogan!

According to McGuire on Footy Classified... ADMIN UPDATE: I have spoken with the club and have been assured that the Round 22 Adelaide match will be played in Melbourne at the MCG.

Replace 'helped them' with 'won them'...

100% and 100%. Won them the 2016 GF and has won them games this year. I said before the game that to win, we would need to beat the umpires by getting within a 10 free kick differential between the weekly umpire darlings. Shame we couldn't do quite do that!

The most sea-saw game i've ever seen. From memory - 8 goals down in the 1st quarter, 2 goals down at 1/2 time, 3 goals up at 3/4 time, then we lose by 2 goals... I remember being there thinking it was a 50 point win coming up at 3/4 time, that we'd beat the Pies (who really weren't much that year to be honest despite making the GF) and giving the Lions a crack (as we beat them at the Gabba mid-season)...

It was both! We lost to Carlton in the 2nd last match of the year at Princes Park, and quite easily too. I know too well because I was there and expected it to be a walk in the park after losses the previous two weeks. I remember someone telling me that morning we would lose and choke and not finish top 4. Well he was right! Earlier that season we beat Carlton by over 100 points at the 'G. In 2006 we lost to Carlton twice when they finished bottom. If we only won one of that games, we would have finished top 4. Nonetheless we played Adelaide in the last round of the season at Football Park when they were missing 1/4 of their best side (all got injured), Adelaide went in underdogs with the bookies for the first time in years, yet they still slaughtered us. A win, top 4! Resulted in a 7th finish rather than a double chance, meaning we wouldn't have had to play a semi in Perth. 2006 was a very open year as well!

From memory the training load changed late in the season to prime ourselves for finals. They just didn't anticipate they would lose each of the last four games. That being said, we should have beaten Essendon in the qualifying final. Few dodgy things went against us from memory including a reversal of a certain goal to us that led to a goal to them. Not that you can go far from fifth anyway!

if there's any silver lining, it's probably not going to matter to our overall ladder position because Geelong and Footscray will finish with higher percentages than us anyway, so it's somewhat like a win when you think about it that way. Performance, however... putrid

There's no way they would risk having it in WA when their Premier announces no crowds at AFL games literally an hour before a game is about to start because of 1 case in the entire State. Madness

https://am.ticketmaster.com/melbournefc/mcc-premium#/ On the right hand side of this page, it has 'grand final guarantee' in red capitals. Below that it says 'Not available'.

It specifically said on that page (on the right hand side) that no GF guarantee tickets were available.

The MCC is not going to offer supporters of the GF competing clubs first dibs at Grand Final tickets. They probably don't even have a record of who everyone actually barracks for. I'm not sure other clubs have an arrangement like our MCC-MFC membership anyway, so they won't discriminate. I guarantee that the MCC will not release GF tickets (or ballot tickets) until the week of the GF, as they won't actually know the capacity until that week. Good news: the benefit of this is that most neutral supporters that generally enter the ballot anyway and attend if they get lucky (you know, the ones that never go at all during the season, couldn't care about the teams playing and would never line up in the morning of the GF for a walk-up seat) probably wouldn't bother to do it if the tickets/ballot was open for a very restricted people and they knew their team was 100% not going to play. The MCC should just release GF tickets in the same way they are now with their weekly ticket releases for MCG H&A games. It works quickly, rewards people that log on early and are desperate for seats.

Impossible! There's a week off before the finals :-)

Today's game was a disgrace. Sydney did extremely well to win with the umpires against them all game. It's a continual trend with Bulldogs games - they always get the rub of the green! Some would say it got them a recent flag.

See my earlier post. Those upgrades are no longer available unfortunately. I just checked the MFC website and it also says they are now unavailable.

I had my crystal ball out in April and could see this being the case - that the MCC would be fully-balleted for the Grand Final and Melbourne a reasonable chance of making the Grand Final. I upgraded by MCC-MFC membership from executive to premium, paying for the guaranteed GF ticket. I know someone else that tried doing the same thing a week or so after. The MFC told them those memberships were sold out. I'm fairly sure we will have no problem getting a GF ticket with an MCC-MFC premium membership with guaranteed access to purchase a grand final ticket if the ballot does not work...

Definitely not, because of the week off before the finals. Don't want to have three weeks between games. If anything, perhaps think of resting players for the Darwin game...

edit: Brisbane has had a charmed run with injuries for the past 3 seasons

Unless we have a complete melt down or cop a bad run injury-wise, we should finish somewhere between 1st to 3rd. Given that'll likely include the Bulldogs and Geelong also, it frankly doesn't really matter where finish from 1st to 3rd. I doubt the AFL will play a Bulldogs home final at Marvel unless it's against an interstate side, a bit like not playing a home final in Geelong unless against an interstate side. It's all about managing our list and peaking when it matters now.

I wouldn't limit it to worst commentator either :-)

Rex called them the Tobin Brothers for a reason :-)

People only see what happens out on the field, not what happens behind close doors, etc. I used to be a Victorian-based trainer for one of the interstate sides about 10-15 years ago, only working in the Victorian-based games (yep, all whilst still being a Demons supporter - geez it was hard when they played Melbourne!) To be honest, most of the players were great, but on the field they're focused on the game, not necessarily focusing on good manners. There were a few players that weren't overly friendly and you felt somewhat used by them, or a slave to them (i.e. it was a voluntary role and long hours on match days), but they were the absolute minority.