old55

It's a disgrace that the gallery doesn't load properly on the MFC Android app, it's 2024!

Wow, Sandringham playing home games at Linton Street and not TBO?

The sub legitimately exists so that teams are not severely disadvantaged by an early in-game injury to a player, it makes sense, and as LDVC says - going to 5 on the IC will negate that purpose.

77-56 - I'll take 137.5% every week thanks. Gulden could not have possibly played better and Fritsch can do better - kicked 6 in the GF.

Maybe he's thinking about Callum Mills' Mad Monday shoulder injury, Buddy Franklin and Paddy McCartin retiring and the fact that we belted them with a depleted forward line up there in the last round last year.

You mean the side that we belted up there in the last round last year with a makeshift forward line? Grundy won't make that much difference and their captain Mills is out. There's reasons to be positive.

It's 4 weeks to the opening game. I'm definitely not writing off McAdam recovering over that period. JVR, Fritsch and McAdam can form a competitive set along with ANB, Spargo, Chandler, Laurie and Billings. Tholstrup may even get a debut. And there's Schache too.

Burgo would have told McAdam to run it out

Vee do not panic about pre-season injuries at Kaos, Shtarker!

That X tweet that @Demonland linked to from AFL House clearly refers to the Community Series and says it's free for club members. The Community Series is when we are playing Carlton at Princes Park, not those other matches you refer to. It's not the club being misleading, it's the AFL. https://www.afl.com.au/news/1071843/afl-confirms-fixture-for-2024-community-series-matches It's not "free" because it cost me $8.80 to secure a ticket and I guarantee it will sell-out with the small capacity at that ground and you won't be able to walk up and get in "free".

$5 to reserve a ticket at Princes Park plus $3.80 handling fee -$8.80 is some new definition of free ...

Critics of our leadership have a much better case in the QF loss to Collingwood. We lost that in the first quarter because we didn't come out "switched on". Collingwood were and we weren't. The tone was clearly set at the opening bounce when Cox jumped early, put his knees in Max's head, knocked Max over and then palmed the ball to De Goey when he came back down to the ground. It was patently obvious Cox would attack Max as he has done repeatedly in the past - we should have been ready for this and it would have been ideal if Max had aggressively attacked Cox at the opening bounce to set the tone, even if he gave away a free kick - tunneling him would have been far better than falling over. I love Max and think he's the best captain we've had in my lifetime but that was a major failure. And so it went on right up to Maynard's "statement" attack on Brayshaw. Only our magnificent and resolute defence prevented us from being 5 or 6 goals down at quarter time. We owned that match from then on but couldn't bridge the gap. Our failure to realise the importance of the moment at the start of the match was a major failure of leadership from the coaching panel and the leadership group and IMHO cost us the 2023 flag.

The reason we lost the SF to Carlton was because we kicked 5 behinds in a row when we owned the game in the last quarter, not because we didn't replace TMac with Schache or play Grundy. 9.17 in a tight competition will generally kill you.

It's the contested marks that is the difference - 2.3/match, more than 50% better than all comers.

JV came off limping earlier in the week and was back in that match sim clip dominating. Probably best to just wait see what happens ...

Thanks for the report PF, but you must have missed the Demonland community memo - apparently we have zero depth and 2024 is already a write-off.

Here's a different take for the off-season ... We've got a bit of an age hole in our list with no-one born in 1998 on it. There's an 18 month gap between Schache currently at 26y4m and Fullarton at 24y10m. There happens to be 21 players Schache and older and 23 players Fullarton and younger so I've gone for two line-ups of the "mature" and the "youthful". It does give a bit of insight into positional depth. Mature B: Tomlinson May Hore HB: Salem Lever Brayshaw R: Gawn Oliver Viney C: Hunter Petracca Langdon HF: ANB McDonald McAdam F: Fritsch B.Brown Melksham I: Billings Schache Smith Youthful B: McVee Adams Rivers HB: Howes Turner Bowey R: Fullarton Sparrow Laurie C: Spargo Woewodin Windsor HF: Chandler Petty AMW F: Pickett JVR Jefferson I: Verrall Sestan Tholstrup K.Brown KFW You can quibble over the position selection - the only one I selected who really hasn't played there, doesn't played there currently at MFC or Casey, or isn't earmarked to play there is Spargo on the wing. Howes could slot in there but who plays back then? I think that young backline needs a bit of his height.

I.54 hectares is not very big. A rectangle big enough to accommodate the MCG playing surface is 2.5 hectares

No, a troll is specific. And it's totally ridiculous to call Clint a "Troll of the highest order". I tried to give you the history for accuracy, which I thought, given your posting history about the importance of words, you'd appreciate.

FWIW the etymology of "trolling" in the on-line world dates back to the early 1990s and originated in the Usenet message groups (a kind of pre-cursor to Reddit). There's still at least one poster who posts here that posted in the Usenet group rec.sport.football.australian - "it's only other Vets that understand" Trolling in this context is based on the fishing practice of trolling. Trolls deliberately post controversial bait in the hope of snaring other posters on the line to their undoing. It's got nothing to do with the mythical creatures who live under bridges despite modern misconceptions. To that end there are very few "trolls" on Demonland, but quite a lot on Big Footy - I've even done a bit on occasion myself there for amusement. They are most likely to be opposition supporters trying to get a rise out of you. That's not what's happening here - mostly genuine supporters are posting their mostly genuine views and there's genuine disagreement. In particular, the artist @Straight Sets Simon, formerly known as Clint Bizkit is in no way a troll and is not even a perennially negative poster, heaven knows we have a few of them - who I am just resisting calling out right here. Clint has posted here constructively for a long time. Yes, they've got a bee in their bonnet about Schache as the sub in the SF (probably the 20th most important factor in us not winning the flag IMO) and have run too far with it IMO with the screen name changes, but it happens - we're all pretty disappointed in the outcome of last season. PS. For @Demonstone amusement that is etymology of trolling, some knowledge of entomology can help with the bait.

I think @Bring-Back-Powell has a very valid point about our poor start I the QF and I believe it cost us the match at least equally with the loss of Gus and our lack of conversion. Macrae had Collingwood ready to rumble - including and evidenced by Maynard's "statement". Goodwin didn't have us in the same state of readiness and it's part of his job to know how to come up with a solution, not @Bring-Back-Powell who sufficiently described the problem.

As @beelzebub says, the viability of the location has nothing to do with supporter ease of access and everything to do with player and staff ease of acccess - so we can attract and retain the best available talent in both areas. Caulfield fits the bill.

In 2022 Collingwood lost finals by 6pts and 1pt, with a tidy win vs Freo at the MCG sandwiched in between. I don't think they threw the baby out with the bathwater in 2023 as a result. They did double down on practising close game scenarios though. In 2023 they won 3 finals by a total of 12pts.

Thanks. Our options would appear to be Geelong, the Dogs, North, Collingwood, Richmond or Hawthorn - maybe not the Dogs since we have them in R1. Knowing our luck, probably Geelong down there or North in Tassie since we avoided them in the regular season for once.

How did Weid look?