Skuit

Self-quote. From the SBS: "Welcome to the Tiwi Islands, two small islands about 80km north of Darwin, where AFL isn't just a passion but a way of life . . . The Tiwis have the highest participation rate in AFL of any other community in Australia: about 900 of the Islands' 2600 population play, a staggering 35 per cent."

To be honest, I just saw some fish and other non-periscope stuff.

Was in fact down there today, and didn't see a single unaccountable periscope.

I bought a Kindle today. Like a number of fellow Demonland denizens I got on board roughly around the time of the 88' grand final. Memories of that time are pretty fuzzy - and I missed the ****house but Robbie Flower era. For reasons I won't bother explaining, I also had almost no access to football between 2004 and 2008. Question is MFC-related book recommendations? For a better love of my club.

The bolded bit. We have smaller defensive forwards now to shut down the run off half-back, but why not a defensive KPP in the forward-line? At most, it creates a clear one-on-one instead of probably a dozen freebies per match.

On another note - how good would it be to see an AFL game for premiership points played on Tiwi ! Send Essendon and Hawthorn there and the place would explode.

I know which one I would choose between NT and Tas in July but your point is still valid Nasher. Why do you think the AFL is reluctant to follow that path, or do you think they've tried and been told they're not welcome? Definitely the NT was vocal about being open to it a couple months back. Are crowds allowed in in Tas? How well do you think the matches would be attended there? Complete speculation, but I think they would get at least 6000 paid into each and every match here, and then as I said can fill it up with targeted freebies. Would need promotion, but if the AFL and NT government embraced it - say like a carnival-style cricket world cup - then I think it would go gangbusters.

I consider myself a moderate rather than complete idiot - but there's something I don't get. So often in the AFL (not just Melbourne) we see long bombs into the forward line which land directly in the arms of a defender, even with even numbers. The forwards are off somewhere leading in different directions and the defender is left to read and play space. Why not coach a forward to play that same role? Like get Lever to fully pretend he's playing intercept defense in our forward line? It's a serious question.

I seriously don't get the AFL's aversion to Darwin/NT. It's not a stretch to imagine Covid will continue its march up the Eastern seaboard and catch up with the league in Queensland soon enough. Meanwhile, the Territory ticks every box. I've been stuck here since the international borders closed. Basically not a single case of community transmission the entire time. Low density tropical living with little pollution - three aspects that have been suggested as delimiting spread. Life goes on almost as if normal, compared to what I hear from friends interstate. Conditions for footy are currently perfect. It's not sticky at present. TIO is in good shape, and would probably attract more spectators than in QLD. Job losses here have been comparatively light and there's still disposable income. It's neutral territory with a good spread of fans. Plenty of accommodation, and the players can just get on with it. I would go to three games a week - and if they can't get a full paid audience in, it could still be a marketing/development bonanza. Free entry to anyone under 18. Get the indigenous kids in. Broadcast the matches and our culture around the world. I'm assuming the NT government would be inviting and willing to chip in for promotional benefits. For mine, if they set up here now with a commitment to play out the season, it would create a true carnival atmosphere and grant some actual legitimacy to the season, rather than all this week-to-week scrambling and revised fixtures.

If our fixture as has eventuated originally came out scheduled as such we're probably sitting right where expected, at 2-3, almost down to the margins. Loss to West Coast away, closer margin-call losses to Geelong and Richmond, and possibly narrow wins over the Blues and Gold Coast. I would have penciled in a win against Hawthorn whenever we were due to play them, but as litmus test.

My attempt at an unemotional dot-point response to tonight’s game: Was a surprisingly good game. Omac lol – was our defensive structural pin. I love when I don’t notice Omac. Points to collective Demonland. Lever and May enabled to play to their strengths. Shame about TMac at the opposite end. I liked him pushing up again. Weid still flakey but enough to persist with as a second-fiddle. Prefer Hannan and AVB cameos to Melksham’s. The latter has to go. Petracca fluffed his kicking lines but his extraction and handballing was supreme. Trac out-olivered Oliver but Oliver still goes alright in his determination to win contests. Bennell – collect the ball and compose. He stands out among the rest. Also Pickett. Uber-Spargo. A smart hungry footballer with natural skills. What a perfect ending – Pickett precise pass to Bennell for an after-siren goal. Liked watching Rankine. Liked also that he missed two crucial shots at the death. Viney was strong. Langdon gave a lot. Gawn took some marks. Some of the umpiring felt ‘uneven’ at times. My internet data held onto the narrow end.

I feel that it's reasonable to resort to cliches while trying to amp myself up for a game I've been pretending all week not to care about.

I'll preface this by saying yes, I know, all that stuff since 1964 and over the past 18 months. But even before the media pile-on I detected something different in the players as they walked from the field after our last match, heads hanging lower than usual, and then also in the post-match presser with Goody. They are frustrated with themselves. Relocating operations interstate is undoubtedly difficult, but I think this week is a character test. Line in the sand stuff. If they don't come out firing then I'm not sure what hope we have.

I absolutely certainly think is this is the case to some extent. As mentioned above I also think Goodwin inherited this mind-set from Roos. Devise a game-plan that you think can beat the competition, drill it into the players so that once it clicks they will be way ahead of the game, and don't look back. Equals stubborn. Where does an opposition strategist fit within this schema?

I dunno. They made a point that Bennell picked up 35 possessions in the last scratch. I was always excited by the notion of Bennell and Pickett in opposing pockets - but it seems like they're grooming Bennell for an on-ball running role. We need that. It could be our missing link. But it's a big ask.

Hoping he gets some of Tomlinson's load up the wings delivering inside and is made accountable. Bennel's role is a mystery. The back-line ins and outs sort of explain themselves. Omac and Jetta for Smith and Rivers. The forward line seems a structural reshuffle. Weid at the expense of Hunt, but then does Bennell replace Tomlinson or . . . ?

You want me to give you you the figures for how many of those 26 losses Jennings was at the club for, including the West Coast prelim catastrophe, before being dismissed a year later? Yeah - bordering on 90 percent.

Or the year prior. His big-up of TMac suggests as much to me. Tomald looks completely cooked, along with the majority of our few senior players. I think Goodwin is aware of this, and is unfortunately back to a mini rebuild/refresh for a run in the year after next. TMac may not currently be being used to his best attributes, and doesn't have much support, but he's not going to become a world-beater again if given the right role. 2018, along with Jennings' world-view, is gone.

Going back to our early-season fixture in 2016, the Saints probably created one of the templates which has been replicated since to beat us on numerous occasions, most notably by Collingwood in our pre-bye thrashing in 2018 and more widely referenced by Jennings - sitting players outside and wide of the contest ready to either block or spread. As far as my memory stretches, Jennings came to us in 2017, or was it in 2016? Before that the Bulldogs, right? And then he and McCartney were reportedly hostile with each other while at the Demons. There's a lot going on here. McCartney at one stage in 2018 was reported as seriously out of favour - banished from the box to the bench. Was Jennings weaseling in the workplace and later found out? It's all baseless speculation. But the available evidence suggests that Jennings behaves quite big for his boots and is a troublesome employee. And to your point - if defeating the Saints was so simple, why wasn't he apparently capable of getting that supposedly simple message across?

I don't often comment in the selections thread - what's the point - you mostly end up looking like a goose at the conclusion of game-day. The clamour and applaud for Omac and Weids' inclusion is likely to be next amusing chapter come the next 'changes' thread. The only thing I hold on to though, in terms of Melksham's ongoing selection, is that he's historically been a slow starter after a break, going back to his very first season with us. The stats bare this out - except 2019, but I recall being furious with him in the early rounds. Otherwise, there is simply no justification for his selection. And if he plays again the way he has been playing - completely selfish and lazy with next to no impact - and is selected again the following week, I will be officially off Goodwin and the selection committee.

Effectively criticising a former employer in a public forum and getting close to divulging confidential information. No matter their talents, not many people get away with that in most industries - and the AFL is an especially insular industry with clear pecking orders.

Goody adopted a training-wheels philosophy from Roos - drilling a single game philosophy into the players rather than concentrating on the opposition or being reactive. Go back to the threads during his tenure and everyone would complain that Roos was a poor game-day coach and never made in-game changes. It's a difficult environment for an opposition strategist. The head coach has other priorities. Jennings was lauded for helping to devise our strategy in 2017/18 - but we leaked something chronic and tweaks to the super high-press had to made mid-season before we went on our run. Who knows who instigated what at the time - but judging by the footage of the narrow Crows win Jennings was unhappy he wasn't getting his way and was behaving far from what would be expected from a team player. This interview in my mind is rather unsavory. He was shown the door for likely the above attitude and his first dig is at the team coached by one his replacements. He states that St. Kilda were easy to counter - yet they were next to North the biggest thorn in our side during Jennings time at the club. I still blame our 2018 loss to them as the reason we didn't get a genuine tilt at the flag. Who knows if that was his doing or if he was being ignored. Any boss will receive often conflicting advice from numerous employees, and can't act on it all. It seems telling to me that Jennings didn't land at another club, despite being considered some master strategist in the media. What he said in the SEN interview seems about right - but we'll never know what he was responsible for at the MFC. From an unflattering channel 7 report at the time of his dismissal: "Jennings sought to promote himself, advised by a well-known PR agent. His public self-promotion campaign culminated in a profile piece in Virgin’s in-flight magazine. The club supported his efforts to raise his profile, but this column believes the Demons were uncomfortable with aspects of the extent to which he was generating publicity."

Keep going jnrmac. How would you coach the club to win a flag? How do you feel about Hardwick and Buckley? My point is that we should back in Goodwin to chase his original plan, rather than undermining it and ending up with a nothing middle ground. And repeating. And repeating. And repeating. What would you do? Fix our club.

Fantastic thread. Jack Viney is the heartbeat of my beloved S&MFC. If he goes I would be distraught, a tear in the very fabric of our club. If he doesn't go, then we will probably keep on being mediocre in the meantime. Somehow I still choose the second option.

If I were a member of the board I would be encouraging us to give Simon a one-year contract extension. And I agree right now that the club is rotten. In 2017/18 he instituted a bold and aggressive game-plan - with the courage to go against the Paul Roos/Ross Lyon grain - based on in my reading at the time the footballing trends and getting ahead of the game, to find that fine line of difference in an increasingly tight competition. [censored] 6-6-6 and the AFL. Drill it into a young squad and we would reap the rewards when it was ingrained. We leaked a bit, and aggressively traded to plug those holes. Kudos. No-one could foresee our future forward-line impotence at the time, looking at you Tomald and Jake. I had certain doubts about it but I'm still not sure if that game-plan could ever succeed or not over the long run, because the injury [censored] of 2019 and loss of confidence and now increasing pressure on the club has led to Simon putting his guns back in the holster. He's now juggling declining seniors with fan expectations and our game-style is a compromised nothing mess. We don't have a recognisable brand, in Simon's words. We did in 2017/18. Give him another year. Put it on his shoulders. Do what you want Simon. Ignore the noise and get our boys firing again. Go gung-ho. TL/DR: Lyon isn't the answer. Roos got us nowhere. Simon Goodwin will lead us to a flag if we let him. But I'm afraid you people will [censored] that up, once again.