Skuit

Alex Georgiou destroying Buddy in 2014 was definitely a win in my books.

When you win a loose ball and look up and some weird 5ft kid named Charlie Spargo is on your case:

Was just looking at the kid's stats today. It's quite uncanny; Kos has almost perfectly matched his total output from last year (14 games) in a number of prime statistical categories over the seven games to date (while doubling his goals).

Saw him on the bill for an upcoming gig in Katherine as part of the travelling Melbourne Comedy Festival. The answer to the second question is that he's not particularly funny, class battles aside.

Pipe down you gestational parent fertiliser. I know what I meant.

Yes. Sunday is the hardest day of the year for me.

Would be a Shakespearean betrayal of a sworn blood feud. Plus, daughter is a journo like mother - and you know how I feel about those

2015: Tomald on track for AA until destroyed by Cloke. Noted for closing speed and spoiling. 2016: Roos gives Tomald licence as our primary distributor off half-back. Widespread hair-loss. 2017: Half-back clangers climb and climb until Tomald is swung forward and shows some promise. 2018: Premiere season - as a forward. Strong straight-line lead and mark. Can't miss. 50+ goals for the season. 2019/2020 - complete write-offs. Can't get near it, looks like his body is shot beyond repair. 2021: Somewhat restored agility and contested marking, the latter mostly in space up the wing. What now? Tommy has always wanted to be better than what he is. He seeks impact from his possessions, and as such is slow to move it on and frequently turns it over. Agility is still lacking. Can he be a lock-down defender with a do-nothing-else mandate? Man a space/body - spoil/intercept - give the ball to Salem or Hunt? We always talk about players playing within their limits. Restrained Viney this year for me had been a revelation and major component. Is TMac capable of the same?

Big ups to Supermercado. Love that Mike Sheahan has contributed a foreword. Uncanny timing. As I was overseas at the time, Adam sent a Great Deepression to my mother's shoebox in Cairns in maybe late 2016, the misery-tome taking up a third of her available living space. She recently signed up to the Marie Kondo cult and has been putting the hard word on me about the book over the past couple months. Next week, I go to Cairns for the first time since it arrived, and looked forward to a) relieving my poor mother's newly-provoked clutter-stress, and b) catching up on my MFC reading. Now I'm probably an extra 800 pages behind, and will have to get The Last Hurrah sent to my mum's tiny apartment because I'm generally a [censored] nomadic son.

And so an extension is overdue.

Now we just need to re-sign Oliver

A Joeboy rundown: Buddy Franklin goalless. Mid-season draft. Uber Alex Georgiou.

Haven't read the whole thread. I would send Mitch Brown back, and have full faith in his abilities.

The game makes heaps more sense and then becomes a bit funnier if you imagine Brayshaw had a few cones in advance. Also ducked down to the changerooms for top-up in the last quarter. He and Jones managed to [censored] up just about every forward thrust they were involved in by being super-[censored] non-Matrix. Add ANB and Tomald in that. If Kozzie is near the ball, please just [censored] off.

Now you're just feeding the stereotype.

There was a mini-patch of closely fought games in the back half of Roos' first season as coach in 2014. Salem's famous sealer in a 1-point victory over the Dons, and two losses within a kick against the Bulldogs and Port (incidentally our current top-of-the-ladder competition) - from memory due to [censored] efforts from the Bont and Jay Schulz. As cited by the AFL, these games ultimately cost us a priority pick, despite only winning something like four matches against non-expansion clubs over the prior three seasons. Still, thanks to St Kilda, we would walk away from that draft with Christian Petracca, along with as Angus Brayshaw as compensation for James Frawley. (If we did receive a third compo pick, there's a good chance it would have been spent on Jake Lever). Anyways, my original point: in the middle of that patch of close games we also played North Melbourne, in the debut of Ben Brown.

Yes, what an amazing motivator he was. In the fortnight following Barlett's 'blast of beauty' we smashed the 17th and 18th teams (with a combined win-loss record at the time of 3-21) off the park - by almost ten goals apiece! - and then followed it up with victory over a wildly undermanned arch-nemesis Collingwood (injuries be damned, as they don't count when we suffered a spate of them in 2019). Unfortunately, we fell short to the Bulldogs and Sydney and Fremantle over the space of the next four weeks, but that wasn't related to Bartlett at all - as they were all challenging for a spot in the top ten and is Goodwin the right guy thread? And now that girl president is going to undo all that tough-speaking home-truth stuff that Bartlett did over the past eight years to get us to our 6-0 start this season. Folly!

Brisbane are also 5-0 for final quarters. But we do have the highest 4thQ % - 151 - 74 - keeping in mind we've kicked 25 4thQ behinds as well! Need to hold on to Burgess any way we can.

'Twas David King and some dude from Champion Data. Not sure where I stumbled upon it.

Some randoms gleaned from the Pure Footy podcast: Melbourne are only conceding scores from 30.6% of i-50s - the stingiest ever for a team after round 4. Melbourne should be scoring a predictive 101.8 points p/g (currently 89.5). This part was unclear if related to the above or not: we're currently generating the second-hardest shots profile. Adam Tomlinson has lost 1 out of 19 one-on-one contests since shifting to defence in round 10 last year. 21 players have played every game so far this year (obviously set to dip this week).

Did you read what I wrote in my follow-up post? Acknowledged the value of first bolded part, questioned that of the second bolded part. Anyway, no point arguing contrary perceptions. Be well.

When Spargo got a dicey free from Selwood for high contact. And then when Pickett executed a pass so slick that even Clarry missed it. Haha and when Selwood was caught holding the ball by a flexing Pickett.

I would have bet anything that Langdon touched the ball more than the 25 times recorded in the stats. Is it possible that the part-time notchers are getting him mixed up with Hunt?

Took the equal-most marks on the ground in a stat that I think is super-important for us. But it's what he does after those marks - and moreso when he's trying to win the ball in tight situations but mostly just gets in the way - that just seems a poor fit with what the rest of our team is doing right now.