Skuit

Somehow, we managed to average around 90 points per game last year. That's about three points less than top spot. We finished clear top 4. Our highest losing margin was by under five goals to Essendon over in Adelaide. Seven out of our eight other losses for the season were by less than two goals. Much of that with a severely depleted forward line. As an MFC fan, the Demons are always incredibly frustrating to watch. Supporters of other clubs are also entitled to their opinions. The dysfunctional forward-line narrative is getting a bit much though.

Hi Herald Sun. I've included some edits in bold above free of charge.

Can't believe how many on here are privileging one well-rested day of their young children's primary school education over attending a Thursday night footy match here and there. What I learnt at primary school over seven years of Fridays: squat, or maybe some maths formulas which I don't use as an adult other than calculating team percentages. What I learnt following the Demons as a child: true life-long lessons on resilience and that the world sucks but if you suck it up maybe you will have something worthwhile to shout at. Go Dees!

Finally, the blame can legitimately fall on jack watts.

Eric?

Adelaide vibes.

We won a flag and have finished top four over the past two years taking the exact opposite approach - getting ahead of the game as to future trading and welcoming the likes of Clarry and Pickett as a result. I once tried to calculate the premium we had paid as to draft points by continually pushing our debt into the future, but there are too many intangibles, the extra year of development being one. I don't think there needs to be a fixed, long-term strategy: see something we like and put our chips in (make the right decisions and it becomes future draft capital, see Jackson), otherwise keep rolling.

Now? 3.6 from our last two finals at the MCG in front of massive crowds, and a fair bit of erratic behaviour.

Going to have to pull you up a little bit here Adam, although will concede Port have been erratic over the journey. By the second year of each of his stints coaching down back and up front, Basset’s division had established itself as a top two AFL performer on points conceded or scored; Port conceding the second lowest total in 2017 (and the third lowest in 2018 despite the club finishing 10th overall), and becoming the heaviest scoring team in 2020. While we know that personnel, injuries and the defensive/offensive balance of the head coach’s game-plan can impact such figures, the Power in the respective years prior to Basset taking on each of those challenges sat as the 10th worst defensive team in 2015 and the league’s 12th lowest-scoring team in 2018. So he has effectively twice during his career achieved jumps of eight to twelve ranking spots within two years of taking over, at both ends of the ground. Why those form-lines later dipped is anyone’s guess (although on the defensive side it could have had something to do with the departure of Darren Burgess), but the stats alone suggest Basset does have some innovative nous. I also have no idea about their personal relationship, but Goodwin and Basset have pretty compelling connections (and Goody apparently helped lure Nathan to Essendon under Neil Craig). He also seems like a straight-up good guy.

I'm [censored] pumped. Let's rock this!

That's fitting. I got off the train (worried about internet connectivity: Leipzig can wait) and arriving back in Kreuzberg now!

Which one are we?

On the train to Leipzig. Hope to have the entire carriage converted to the Dees by the end of the journey but have to somehow convince the anti-establishment Berliners that Melbourne are the flea-bitten rebels with no teeth and Collingwood are the authoritarian old regime. Hopefully they don't have Google machines here.

You're one of the few on here with expert insight. Will value your opinion.

Are you saying it's a fear of snakes?

I love Kysaiah to absolute bits. This is not a knock. He’s probably already one of my all-time favourite Demons alongside Clarry, Jurrah and Jakovich. But the question is, is there an issue here that can we address it if so, through mental prep, game planning or something else? I understand goals aren’t the only metric, and know forward-pocket is one of the hardest positions to play (I defended Garlett to the end). Some of the statistics are actually quite damning though. An admittedly small sample size (and my stats may be dodgy here and there), but: Pickett has kicked three goals or more 16 times in his 81-game AFL career. Only four of those bags occurred at the MCG, two of them back-to-back in a hot streak in 2022. Pickett has kicked four or more goals four times in his career: three of those occasions being in Alice, the ACT and Tasmania. Pickett’s average, including his first season, is somewhere around the 1.5 goals per/game mark. Meanwhile, against the three biggest clubs in the country who we have key match-ups with – Collingwood, Richmond and Essendon – Pickett has kicked a grand total of nine goals from 13 games. I don't think he has ever kicked more than two when the crowd reached the 70,000-mark First question is, is there an issue, or just a statistical anomaly based on a small sample? Second question: if there is an issue, what can we do to fix it? And third: is there something about the MCG which delimits Kozzie’s input perhaps?

I've always preferred a traditional two-pronged KPF set-up, with maybe two mediums and a fleet of smalls. With Petty down, I now think we need to give up on that idea and ride our luck with an unusual approach. In the parlance of footy-fans, Brown and Tomald are cooked and Schache isn't up to it. Love them all. Milk has come out of nowhere, Fritsch always contributes, and Smith is a growing threat (love his tackle pressure). Three athletic/dynamic mediums plus a KPF in JVR is unusual, but would stretch defences and confuse planning. I think Fritta in for Laurie (last-in first-out) is the way to go, and lock it in for the finals. Tommo stays back. May and Lever seem to have more trust in Tomlinson that Smith, whatever the former's limitations. I would put in on JVR: "We know you're only 20, but we think we can win the flag if you attack every ball'. I also think that calls for Hibberd over Bowey have merit. Would have never thunk the Essendon duo for 2023.

I think you may have got this one a bit jumbled rufus. The correct phrase is queue in Iraq.

I still need someone to explain this to me, because I'm clearly missing something. A lot of talk about Grundy now being an almost certainty to request a trade to another club. Previously, there was much discussion about our liability for his massive contract. Please help me with my understanding. (Not exact figures, but the gist remains): Brodie is contracted on $1 million per year for the next four years, with CFC paying a portion. On the open market, he would likely fetch something closer to $650,000 per year. So if he requests a trade, why would we still have to stump up? Wouldn't it void his contract? And if that's the case, it could cost Grundy in excess of $1.2 million in career earnings if he left, right?

Yes. Every bottom team has tanked over the past 20 years and we must immediately address the issue lest our equalisation measures are compromised once again. A lottery system should help West Coast get better.

Outside of that I enjoy swimming in the various local lakes and indulging in European [censored].

I live in Europe again now so almost exclusively drink champagne - for like $4.99 per bottle - and I reckon only six or seven out of ten people here have ever heard of Nic Naitanui. They also don't know what a hot-dog is, so my diet mostly consists of eating affordable horse O'derves,

I've consistently reiterated how wrong I always am as to drafting, including in regards to Luke Jackson, whose MFC scouting vids only came out once we had drafted him at #3. Nothing from the above Curtin footage screams top ten to me, let alone being the next Pavlich (I played alongside the original one for a bit when I was younger and thought he might become the future 'Pavlich'). Are your big-ups based on something observable in the footage, or via an off-screen assessment?

Took a massive grab right in front of me once to win a pre-season game in Perth. My hotdog was even worse than possibly imaginable. But I got free transport tickets to the ground, and beers only cost $27 per cup.

Binman's personal assistant floated 'Rhythm is a Dancer' earlier, alongside some La Bouche classics. However, I fear such openness may cost him his current job, and he may have to go back to making films and coaching kids' football, which sounds suspect when written together alongside the promotion of Cher's vocally-distorted abominations. (Please note, I love Adam and this is only a friendly jape). x