Chook

If we finish bottom this year, I'll boycott all Demons finals in 2014. That's how serious I am.

On what basis is this thread on the main forum? It doesn't even pretend to be about football (unlike most other threads, which start out with good intentions only to very rapidly devolve into the 21st century equivalent of the silly shite-slinging that must be hardwired into our simple simian brains).

So rather than not winning $550, you can not win $700 instead.

To paraphrase the late great Tywin Lannister, "The demon does not concern itself with the opinions of hawks."

If by "smash" you mean "Go the Daniel Merrett route", then I agree. The AFL has all but condoned it with their ridiculous decision not to suspend that F L O G.

Chis Dawes should be joined at the hip with Dean Kent, and everyone else should be told to kick it on his head 30 times a game. We'd do a lot better with that than with whatever sorry excuse for an attacking gameplan we have now.

The MRP has given us our answer as to how to beat Hawthorn: spoil every ball by cracking their heads open. Sure we'll concede a few frees, but before long there will only be 18 players on the field.

The head doesn't seem to be sacrosanct when it comes to spoiling things though.

To me that should just be the difference between "intentional" and "reckless", not the difference between "he did it" and "he didn't do it."

Colin Garland is a weird one for me. His 2012 was atrocious if you ask me, and so were his first three games of 2013 (culminating the the soul-destroying loss to Essendon in Round 3). After that, he played some of the best football I've seen from a Melbourne player in a very long time. After his injury and return this year, he has reverted to his 2012 form. Hopefully it's just a fitness thing though, because he truly was a terrible player in 2012.

So for you, percentage is the most important thing? Paul Roos seems to agree, and so do I. Winning quarters is meaningless if the ones you lose are lost decisively and the ones you win are won by the skin of your teeth.

Watts will continue to be nothing until he has a team capable of giving him the ball. Trengove will continue to be nothing until he gets his pace back. Toumpas should be in the team (barring his illness). What he'll become is anyone's guess.

And the longer you hang on, the sooner that miracle breakthrough will come when everyone lives to be 150. So we have many more years of watching Melbourne not win Premierships yet.

We need his disposal like a drowning man needs a life raft. Unfortunately you need good disposal to hit up players with good disposal. It's like a catch-22, and since Jack is incapable of winning his own ball (or seemingly even keeping his feet in a contest), he's pretty difficult to bring into the game with any regularity.

Well more fool them. I'm not suggesting Merrett deserves anything worse than a reprimand or a 1 week ban, but to clear him is to condone such an intensely reckless spoiling technique. In a day and age where we're so worried about concussion and head injury, it seems a little short-sighted.

There doesn't need to be malice or intent. That's why there are reckless and negligent gradings. Aren't you a lawyer? God help us all.

He was just about our best on the weekend. He was also the only player to stick up for Cam Pedersen when Daniel Merrett knocked his block off.

We should do what he did at every marking contest then. We'd give away a few free kicks, but before long they wouldn't have any players left.

I suppose Roosy would counter that by saying the only reason we can't kick goals is because we can't create chains of good disposal. When you're incapable of hanpassing it 5 metres to a teammate, how are you supposed to kick a winning score?

Maybe this is as good as it gets.

More like shuffling doomed ships on an ocean full of icebergs. The whole lot of 'em are buggered.

But he's not a psychologist. How could he know for sure? Better give our guys another couple of years to prove themselves.

Well the "group" can get stuffed. I'm on Pedersen's side. One of the very few blokes at this club who has actually taken the opportunity presented by our new coach to turn his career around.

Evidence?