Stu

Thanks @Action Jackson I have joined the league. Now to resist the temptation to load up on Dees players!

I’m keen to join

Me too! I don’t think I’ve ever been this excited for a pre-season game, and your training reports are a big reason why 😃

Looking at his reaction time, lateral movement, and acceleration, I think Kozzy could play at the elite level in any international sport. He's making top end AFL athletes look slow and cumbersome!

It is low effort content, but there's a very simple part of my brain that releases dopamine's when I listen to or read MFC related news, regardless of quality! 🤪

Yeah one of the media releases mentioned that the entire list will be rotated to play some game time (if fit). I’ll be going as I can’t wait another 5 weeks to watch a game 😂

I genuinely think that Hunter will be seen as our best recruit (if not the whole league). Not to say that Grundy won't be great, I just think having two genuine wingers operating on their preferred side, both who are very fit will be such a challenge for opposition teams to counter. Last year teams would tag Langdon (Hawthorn early in the season) and it would definitely make our run and carry more stifled. Now we can just push that traffic down Hunters wing and negate that strategy. I get the feeling that at least one of them will get 25+ possessions every game. He also helps in one area we lack in - accurate kicking inside 50.

I echo @Rodney (Balls) Grinter sentiment about really beating Collingwood and Sydney, two teams that seem to have to always beat us regardless of what form or talent they have. I can almost sense that expectation and privilege from their fans... it sickens me. Let's "slaughter" them!

It's great to see he's received about $7k in donations already 😊

I’ve watched this a few times now and I’m still speechless at the acceleration in each subsequent step.

I really hope we beat the Pies this year - I'm very much sick of losing to them! Watch the first half against them in the Round 21 game - that's how you beat them. The challenge is to keep that up for four quarters. If we can go back to the sort of forward pressure we saw in 2021, combined with our solid defensive structure, that's the game plan that will beat the kamikaze style. Pressure on the ball carrier forces them to release the ball quickly, allowing our defenders to intercept. By us sitting off teams more in 2022, it allowed them to hit those short kicks that short circuits our defensive structure behind the ball.

I imagine for a lot of teams that use their wingers as just another body around every contest, it doesn't matter what foot any given winger kicks with. But because Goodwin wants our wingers to keep their width, it becomes more important. With soccer, the importance of aligning player positions with their strong side gets more important the higher the quality of the league the team plays in. A right footed left back can compensate with other strengths in a weaker comp but is likely to be targeted and found out at a higher level. Sometimes teams will compensate by having their left back attack more and provide wide overlapping run for a right-footed left winger. This will give the winger room to cut in on his right side and generate attacks more centrally. You can see this in our games last year. When we kicked to the right of screen and where Ed had the overlap run from other midfielders or half-backs, he was able to feed off a handball and get it back in space giving him the time to open up his body and hit a forward target in a central position. When fatigue struck later in the year and the overlap run dried up in the second half, Ed would often try to circle back as opponents would corral him against the boundary. When that happened, we were susceptible to a quick counterattack if players weren't presenting as an outlet for him. In those scenarios but kicking to the left, he would be able to at least use a long kick into F50 to relieve pressure. Getting to your point, I don't think the talent pool is deep enough to allow teams to pick side-specific players to fill specialty roles - as great as that would be. If Hunter wasn't available and we had our choice out of an elite right footed winger or an average left footed one, I'm sure the FD would have gone with the better player.

Normally wingers that stay on a fixed wing get to spend two quarters close to the interchange bench. But due to Langdon's elite fitness he would always be furthest from the bench. That meant he got to play two quarters on the side that allowed him to kick more naturally into the corridor (when we were kicking to the left of screen) and he seemed to hit more targets and make better decisions. I noticed when we were kicking to the right of screen, when Ed couldn't cut in to use his right foot more expansively, he would use either a banana/check-side, or a dinky chip with the outside of his foot. I haven't gone back and studied the tapes, but anecdotally it seems like he was caught holding the ball or turned it over more frequently when we kicked to the right. Anyway, I remember an article or video that mentioned Langdon would get to play on the right side now, as Hunter as great endurance too and given he is a left footer there wouldn't be an issue for him being on the far side when we kick to the right of screen.

Please don’t apologise - it was great to get the info, and a little entertaining in retrospect to see how I and others overreacted! Thanks for going to the effort for the rest of us!

Perhaps a policy of no-live takes from training is best. Demonland user heart related issues may drop as a result 😄

And lucky too... everyone almost overreacted :-D

All this talk of overloaded and underloaded has me whelmed.

It will likely be the case that the benefit of having both Gawn and Grundy will be greater than their combined stats, similar to how our wingers keeping their width forces teams to make tough decisions. Gawn and Grundy's utilisation around the ground may open up opportunities that we can exploit that don't include either in the possession chain that leads to scoring opportunities.

Musing over 2022 during the off-season has been an interesting process. I’m sure all of this has been discussed six ways to Sunday but it’s January and I’ll do anything to spur more MFC discussion to temper the withdrawals. For me, one of the big challenges during 2022 was the number of physically challenging games. Teams were well aware of our strength around the contest, and often tried to get lots of numbers to stoppages and make the game a bruising encounter to have a chance of winning. Ignoring the games against the top 8 (as you expect these to be challenging), there was a few of these against the bottom 10. Round 2 against Gold Coast was warm and humid and the Suns really competed hard. Round 10 against the Kangaroos was similar, with the first half full of fake aggression from them (Langdon had his ribs broken in this game). In Round 16 against Adelaide, they pushed heaps of numbers around every contest to make it ugly and the game was tough. A lot of Dees players looked sore after the game. Round 18 against Port in Alice Springs was an exhausting game on a warm day on that large ground. The game was very end to end so the players looked pretty exhausted afterwards. In the Round 22 game against the Blues, they played man on man the entire game making every contest and stoppage a battle. When the Dees have looked their best during 2021 and 2022 it was when more of our players were getting to the next contest / spill of the ball. But due to small injuries and decreased fitness we were unable to sustain this during the second half of the year. That made more games more physically taxing – either by turnover (forcing more defensive running) or by more fiercely contested stoppages. It's a bit of vicious cycle – due to injuries and decreased fitness, the players were unable to move from contest to contest and win more post clearance possession, which in turn created more physical burden on their bodies leading to new or aggravated injuries and fatigue. This is highlighted in the Round 22 game vs Carlton – that game was a slog because the players didn’t have the fitness to push forward and back to get any sort of outnumber or overlap. Because our few elite level kicks were out of form (Salem, Bowey), having to constantly kick or handball to a contested situation meant our disposal efficiency was down, and turnovers were up. A lot of our goals come from outnumbering teams as we transition from defence to attack, rather than from elite disposal that cuts through a tightly packed defence. My question is – will the coaching team develop a strategy to combat overly physical games to help protect players from fatigue and injury, or will they continue to see contested ball as something we always have to win on the day. There is merit in having a tactic that can be engaged at times during quarters to try slow the game down and/or reduce stoppages. This will give opposition teams something else to consider. I remember two games - Sydney (vs Freo in Perth) and Carlton (first game vs Pies) - where they adopted slow deliberate ball movement to get themselves back into the game and swing momentum their way. If the team is fit enough to play the field position, surge style game play, they’re also fit enough to lead into space to hold possession through short kicks. I know there is a limit to how long you can do this before a long kick to a contest is needed, but given we have very good marking defenders it’s something we can probably repeat several times in a row once we win back possession. The longer off season (compared to 2021) and no longer being reigning premiers will (on its own) increase our chances of not having as many bruising encounters. Teams won’t be quite as ‘up’ for games against us as they were in 2022. But I hope lessons have been learnt, and the coaches have some strategies for trying to protect the players so they are fresher at the pointy end of the season. If we start strong again this year, teams will start to focus a lot of attention of us and I hope we have strategies for dealing with it better than we did in 2022.

He does have a pretty good sense of humour and doesn't take himself very seriously. A refreshing change from a lot of the ex-footy player turned journalists who write as though they are THE authority on the game.

I wonder if perhaps having Gawn a kick ahead of play (rather than behind) will offer us the easy option when teams are playing man on man? Our lack of quality by foot became an issue when teams went man on man, and our fitness started to drop (because normally the better fitness allows us to get better post contest possession / clearance). Having an outlet like Gawn sitting 30-40 metres off the throw-in / bounce might be an option. With Grundy taking the ruck contest, Gawn's opponent is likely to be undersized, or Grundy will ruck against their second-choice ruck which may enable a clean clearance.

During the season, the $6 a month fee for their full articles is really worth it. One of the few footy news sources with content they've created and aren't just padding out fluff stories.

In the brief glimpses he certainly seems to have good, fast decision making.

Did you used to post on the Melbourne Victory board under the same @Nasher? It seems very familiar from around the time I would frequent that board.

The level of fitness required at the AFL level is where the talent issue is coming from. Only at the AFL level can players train full time, so if you don't make the cut at 17 years old the gap is only going to get wider the more time that passes. I believe that the AFL needs to create a second national competition that it funds like a 19th AFL team (e.g. same amount of distributed funds as 1 club). Keep it to 12 teams, ask state league clubs to apply and pick those with the best facilities, balance sheet, and future plans. Could potentially accept bids from consolidated teams like Canberra or Darwin where no AFL team exists. Keep AFL reserve teams out of it. Set a salary cap of $3 million with no salary floor, but teams can only pay what they can afford. No draft - teams simply compete for the next best talent not contracted to another club. Keep list sizes to 30, with an additional 5 loan spots available per club for AFL players, like first year and development players to cut their teeth in a more competitive competition. The windows for loaning and recalling players is pre-season and during the mid-year draft period. When an AFL team wants to recruit a contracted 2nd division player, they have to pay a fee equal to the players annual salary multiplied by the length of the contract they're offered. This can be done in mid-season draft order if the AFL wants to ensure there is equalisation. The fee going to the smaller club allows them to invest in their facilities and own player development which will only improve the talent pool. If clubs can no longer afford to compete at a national level, they're simply replaced with another state league team that can. With no Saturday AFL games for the next 9 years, this league can potentially generated revenue from TV rights for staggered Saturday games. Once this league is well established, I'd look at structuring Victoria's metro and country leagues to ensure there was a pathway for talent to move from a local bush league, to a regional league, to the state level. It's ridiculous that talented players are getting $50k a year to play for Yinnar or Seymour where they win every game by 90 points. That money is being stripped from junior development to buy country league flags when there should be a way that talent can play at their level and get paid commensurate to that level.