Skuit

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.

I agree with most of this Saty. But it's okay to express your disappointment with seasons' past. Just try it. I did a top five.

Hey Saty. I ordinarily let your odd ego-driven self-designated club-mascot baiting slide. But what about this topic do you think is set up as an additional reason to whinge and whine about the present? It's a forum to express our personal disappointment as MFC supporters over the years. Legitimate feelings. Tell us yours. It may be liberating. Have you ever felt sad or disappointed about our football team the Dees?

Ahahaha - Collingwood. Watch ye all he gloat is probably not in the bible. There's stuff about goats though. We've already shown ourselves as hypocrites on here. String up McKenna. Forget Kossie. Odds on we will have another one. Don't get too excited.

Ablett 348 Selwood 298 Dangerfield 251 Jack Steven 184 Viney 121 Petracca 87 Oliver 84 Brayshaw 82

Demonland logic entry #344: There are no crowds currently allowed in Victoria. There may be crowds allowed in Victoria later in the season. We play a chunk of away games now and are likely to have more home games later in the season. Ergo . . . ridiculous disgrace we have to forever play away AFL hates us St Kilda something lovechild Gil!!!!

And maybe the limitations on contact training may help turn our attention somewhat to improving our skills.

There is so much to play out in terms of fixturing this season that there's no need to go early with the outrage. Who even knows what the schedule will look like in a fortnight from now? In a way the AFL have backed themselves in a corner by going early on a 17-game season, with the expectation that every club would play each other once. It will create quite the puzzle over time. But they also made it clear they are happy to go deep into the year. I think we can expect a number of byes and staggered rounds. There's a very good chance we won't end up paying a mid-week match. Chances are that establishing further interstate hubs will require a two-week quarantine. That's time when we can play catch-up - meaning probably both us and a lucky Essendon will remain in Melbourne.

I thought of something else unfair to get annoyed about. Were the fresh training restrictions due to McKenna's positive test or the spike in Victoria in general? Because the impact of those guidelines is likely to vary depending on playing style - such that harder contested teams like us are put out more than precision or fast running teams like . . .

We geared toward and then missed our premature window last year. Now we have to wait another two-three years.

Interesting to hear both yourself and Andy quite disgruntled on the matter. Where's @Nasher?

While our best players are stacked in the middle, I would prefer to see this line go down rather than our starting forwards or backs. I know it's a list juggle, but our KPP stocks are dismal.

I personally don't think there's a huge risk of contagion (my personal assumptive feelings don't count) but run a simple risk-reward-consequence analysis and it's a no-brainer the Dons should be stood down. Whether they forfeit or are accommodated to some degree, whatever. The former would be my decision in an already wildly compromised season. But right now I feel Gil is setting up a giant sword for him to fall on in his eagerness to push on. I haven't been paying a great deal of attention but the political reprisals of the Ruby Princess provides a pretty good example. Should Covid spread through Essendon, Carlton and Collingwood the season will be over and Gil will have a future date with the Senate.

We were meant to play Fremantle on the weekend. And GWS last week. I think the sensible thing would be to hand us the points and move on, but then every other team has a gripe that we had a free win through the luck of the draw. And what happens if we miss out on the 8 by percentage? Season is compromised. It will become more compromised. But the notion that we've been put out to the point of exception because we happened to draw Essendon in a rejigged fixture doesn't play out across the board. We might get lucky that we played WC in round 1 and escape a WA bubble. Teams will be lucky or unlucky. I actually feel for West Coast but they'll probably get the benefits back two-fold. The season is meaningless. I'm going to take Max's lead. Frustrating, but you move on and front up to the next challenge. More games are better than less. And if we go anywhere it will be even more satisfying that we overcame the disadvantages. Go Dees.

Sounds like the AFL will apply its MRP impact over act methodology in handing out a penalty, just because McKenna actually caught corona. It's worth keeping in mind for all those sounding off on here that two of our boys went to a house party - arguably far worse than what Conor did. And it's almost certain plenty of other players have breached the rules without being caught.