Chook

If we're tired after being up for a month, you have to wonder how the coaches didn't see it through the week. If we thought we'd just turn up then the players need to get their heads checked. This is last year's grand finalists we're playing.

Backline can hold their heads up high. Everyone else needs to reset after taking a good long look.

Absolutely punishing our lazy mids tonight. He is running off Windsor at will.

Worst quarter since round 1Q4. Tholstrup has been ok. Gawn has tapped everything to Lions players hitting the ball at pace. Viney, Oliver and Sparrow need to lift in a big way or we'll get flogged with the amount of ball going into Brisbane's forward line.

It's not just a lack of possessions for Oliver, it's his positioning too - we're practically 17 men out there with where he is placing himself.

Midfield losing every stoppage then kicking to leading forwards. Impossible for the defence to stop - need the midfield to step up and win some stoppages or we'll get flogged.

Brisbane happy to play a stoppage game and beat us from stoppage with Oliver providing nothing.

Clayton Oliver is practically a liability at stoppages so far tonight. Isn't winning the ball and isn't providing much defensively.

Plenty of passengers so far tonight. We're looking off the pace running both ways.

So much easier to slot young players into a high-performing side rather than throw them to the wolves all at once together out of necessity. May we never have to do that again.

A great Youtube channel (aptly named "The Mighty Demons") posted the highlights of Tommy McDonald's debut today, so I thought I'd dig up his debut thread and add the video to that. It was a great debut and displayed all the hallmarks of his game - excellent spoiling, deceptive closing speed and good game awareness to come off his man and support in the backline. His characteristic stiff but effective straight-line gait was on show as well. All that was missing from the player we'd come to enjoy in later years are the goals. I think he has been an underrated addition to our backline this year and really feel it's his best spot, as good as he was as a forward for us in the 2018-2023 period. Hoping for a good end to an underrated dee's career. One of my favourite players over the journey, and someone who could still be a huge benefit to us in the backline again in the twilight of his career.

He plays a lot shorter than Flower though. Flowers’s marking prowess looks to have been underrated based on what I’ve seen (too young to have seen him live).

I wonder how many more times we’ll all have to hear David King say the word “punish” in a Dees context before opposition fans cotton on to the narrative?

Just make it up and use the most obscure nicknames you can come up with so it becomes utterly impossible to understand who trained well or if anyone was even there.

I said it at the time and history is bearing it out: the introduction of video technology for umpiring decisions is antithetical to the human nature of sport and does nothing but open a can of worms that need not have been opened. We’d never use technology to replace a kick for goal, so why would we do it to replace a decision on the accuracy of the goal?

Personally I'm sick of podcasts where the host is constantly saying "we've got to move on" as soon as the conversation starts to get interesting. Podcasting is the perfect format for long-form conversation.

Ooh - what was his first call-in episode. I want to dig back into the archives to see if he was always so economical with his words.

This young man is proof that MFCSS is not in fact carried in the blood or through some evil voodoo curse from beyond the grave. It is instead developed as a Pavlovian response to repeated negative stimuli. If it can be contracted, it can be cured - and we must find the cure and ease the suffering of those unfortunates afflicted with it. It may seem cruel but I think the answer involves frontal lobe lobotomy; however as this treatment is deemed "unethical" by the general public, I propose winning more flags as an alternative solution; evidence is promising in this area, as a recent study conducted in 2021 concluded that premierships seem to provide short term partial reduction in the severity of the condition. Further study required.

Mabior Chol has had like 10 opportunities to go the knee in the marking contest like he's done the past couple of weeks and is being a good citizen all of a sudden.

Hawks within a goal with 4 mins left. Please let it happen.

Hawthorn look cooked. They've had plenty of the ball but are way to tired to do anything with it.

God I hate Brayden Maynard.

St. Kilda, currently leading by 8 points. Luke Darcy: "A goal either way might be the game you sense." Hmmm….nearly there Darce.

Literally never in doubt.

This has been the strangle-est of stranglewank games. At no point tonight has it looked like the Dogs have any chance of winning yet they're still within striking distance theoretically.