Hellfire Dub

Okay I have two hypothetical questions that relate to this Trac situation: Can an AFL player retire to end a contract then take a year off and be signed by another team? What happens if a marquee player on big dollars decides to take the P1,55 for a year and sit on their backside and barely try in the AFL or VFL side? Are there performance clauses that can reduce their entitlements etc?

14th Home and Away. Even the usual apologists are very quiet or starting to agree that we're failing to be acceptable, let alone exemplary. Negative "puke football" that fans don't want to watch and good players want to play. And it doesn't even win us home and away games anymore. Not to mention that we didn't even get to bomb out of finals without firing shots. At least 3 of our best footballers going or wanting to leave (that we know if so far). No discernible progress on a home base. Disastrous communications. The issues we can't talk about. Culture or questionably Sub-par Culture? Memberships and sponsors will start deserting. I wish there were some positives bar a few promising young kids. If we don't need a full review and changes already based on the above, then how bad does it need to get?

As if the uncontested marks and free possessions we gave them, or the many missed tackles weren't bad enough, we kept kicking it straight to them in the centre of the ground. They kept running up and scoring from our turnovers.

Great post, thanks for sharing it. Anyone who loves the club should be willing to examine it honestly and appraise them as highly paid professionals. The club obviously won't fire him, but we're trending downwards so he'll damage his goodwill, legacy and career prospects if this continues. He should consider bowing out with his head held high and the gratitude of demon's fans before it gets really bad. That's the part of your post I disagree with. He has had enough time to learn and has had enough years and chances for someone who is so well paid in such a privileged position. He's a decent bloke who led us to a flag, but we need new leadership and vision to improve. He was the man.

Haha I love this! You wish him all the best for the future except for another flag! Exactly how I feel about him. He was a selfish Dogga without loyalty. He was and still is overrated. He can be good sometimes, but never consistently. It's clear in some games he can't be bothered his @rse. Nothing but an oppo player to me now too especially after his smarminess in the whippings they handed us this year. I wish him all the best for a career of mediocrity and underachieving because he's lazy and doesn't feel like it. Sorta like after a bad breakup in youthful days with somebody who's ditched you. I don't want anything terrible happen to him, just for him to totally go to seed and get bald and fat and not be really successful and happy. Then whenever you bump into him you can see that he's full of regrets about ditching the best team and fans and missing the good times and his prime that have now past him by. Delicious Schadenfreude, hopefully he meets us wearing a premiers beanie, 2025 or 2026 or thereabouts in the near future. Sooner than Slagmantle anyway.

Well said Dazzle. Nibbler should be kicking more goals too. All our forwards and midfields should in reality be scoring more goals. But unfortunately that simple premise of football had never really been the highest priority from the coaching staff. Instead we're obsessed with keeping other teams to the minimum and grinding out games. I know people say we don't have a lot of choice, but what forward would enjoy playing our painful BRAND that burns the eyes and sears the skin? It's not attractive to watch and it would be horrible to play. No good forward would want to sign up for it. We never really played the ball into BBB properly. We bombed it in high and long on top of three forwards leaping into each other and every tall defender in a pack. Or else we play it safe and long out wide and lock it there amidst congestion, contest and repeat stoppages. I'm being facetious, but in a perverse way maybe Goody likes having no option but to shove natural defenders up forward so we can be even more defensive. Except for Fritsch. That's why we get players with strict roles that prioritise chasing like Spargo and Chandler and Nibbler. Defence is fine and it wins flags and it's good to contest and to keep other teams to really low scores. As long as we always score at least one more point than the other team. Or six more

Thanks for the report and the uplifting news items WCW. On Buck's point, what are people's thoughts about BBB working with the forward lines next year?

There wouldn't have been a big queue of teams looking to sign Petty this year unfortunately. I hope he'll get back to his best in defence

It makes for difficult reading and then at the end he drops in the snow cliche. Ugh

This is good. I've read many well composed counter arguments in this thread. It helps to revive the memory and give a little bit of context to some of the challenges of other years. Overall though I would still welcome a change although I accept it is unlikely. The points about the records of other coaches are interesting. I'm delighted if all other teams have coaches with terrible records of mediocrity and near misses. They're welcome to them and to perpetuating their tenure. This is professional sport where coaches and players are paid for their skill and expertise in football. As professionals our club should aim for perfection and then whatever the result they (and we) can be satisfied that they've done their best. Looking at the record I don't think it's the best possible outcome and it seems to be deteriorating. Lots of you are happy to persist owing to the flag. That's just resting on laurels and not acceptable for professional sportspeople. The rest of the league has clearly moved on from 2021. The optimism, blind faith and loyalty are all good qualities of many of you fellow Demons, as is the quality of respectful debate we have here. Nevertheless recent months have not been enjoyable and we can all admit that whatever the causes the statistics are damning. I'll say the following with that in mind:f If I was the respected, popular and well regarded (loved by many) Simon Goodwin I'd wonder if it was better to leave on his own terms with a flag and a record he can be proud of whilst the team still has reasonable prospects. Or should he stay on for two more years and try to learn a style of football and tactics that aren't natural to him. The gamble for him is in balancing his livelihood with his legacy. We can mostly agree that we're starting to witness a decline, so if we drop to the lowest rungs of the ladder in two years then he will be held responsible for the parlous state of the club and he'll suffer an ignominious exit.

Most people are assuming Petracca will be back and Oliver magically sorts out whatever it is he has going on (I've heard lots of rumours but am genuinely unsure) and gets back to his best. If those two assumptions are false and the club chickens out of coaching changes, then it could be a harder season than this one was without the strong wins at the start.

Even before this year's woes, our star midfielders have long been guilty of lofting their hard won ball high and aimlessly into our forward line. Smash it on the boot and get it forward, anywhere will do. Perfect for intercepting defenders to run it back at us. And Repeat. For years we've over used the unnecessary (and often hospital) handpass to a team mate about to get smashed or pinged for HTB. There's also been an obsession with territorial gain of holding it in our forward 50, and long kicks to the pocket without scoreboard gain. All of these things are laborious and taxing and they're all coaching directions or else they've been tolerated by the coaching staff. The contest and tackling emphasis must be really gruelling on guys like Viney and lots of the team are really showing wear and tear this season so that 21 style can't be sustained forever. Nor should it be as the running waves just break through it. It's not all bad though as this season lots of the youngsters (plus Tmac sometimes and returned Melk) seem to be lowering the eyes and looking sideways or shorter for better options. Mcvee has shown silky skills and bowser gets caught sometimes but he dinks some nice passes as does Kozzy.

SG has obviously tried this season to change to a faster running and kicking style. Then due to injuries/outs and lack of skills has reverted to some sort of horrible mishmash that is not a style at all. On the bad days it's a putrid form of football that's slow, laborious, predictable, easy to defend and easier to overrun. He obviously wants to change up, but I don't think he knows how and the really poor effort suggests lots of players have lost faith in "the brand" and the coach. The players don't know what they're doing any more. It's not great contest and we're not even getting that frustrating territorial dominance any more. I'm sure lots of you were sickened listening to BT saying that we hadn't had a forward 50 entry in the first quarter. So we're left in limbo with the worst of all worlds. Like another poster said, I'd hate to be drafted into such a rigorous negative, restrictive defensive minded system. Freedom and creativity is discouraged and that was fine when midfield and defensive lines were strong enough to limit teams to 60 points per game. When waves of half backs blast through our midfield our defence is now regularly under siege. So we're now seeing desperate panicked clearances, mistakes and hack kicks and hospital hand passes. If Ugle Hagan could kick last week I think I counted seven or eight goals he could have kicked by himself. That would have been really ugly. People who say he's unlikely to go anywhere are probably right, but I was really annoyed when his tenure was extended in the first place so I'll be more unhappy if that plan is stubbornly adhered to and we keep sliding. So how much of these type of uncompetitive losses should we tolerate? They're not the Melbourne brand that he talks about. How many chances should someone get to learn and improve and how often should we reward mediocrity and failure? I don't care about top four except for home finals and the double chance. Finals and flags are what counts. This year is another failure and few of us are really confident about 2025. I also don't care that he's mates with them and they like him. That's fine if we're winning and competitive, but it's harder for someone in that position to make tough calls required to lead. That closeness might be why we see the same minimal weekly changes and bizarre favouring of certain players and banishment of others. Maybe a close mate is not what's needed to fire up players before the first bounce and maybe it's harder to take advice and guidance from a friend? A change will come eventually so why wait? Does it require the embarassment of wooden spoons across our backsides for people to change their minds? That would be more damaging for the club and fanbase than a change of coaches. Last week was horrible as was West Coast, Freo x 2, Collingwood and I hate seeing us so uncompetitive and directionless.

I was fine with JJ leaving. He's going alright in a good system, that's all

Colm, is this just the result of going for broke in trying to trade up for Reid and then being left in an awkward spot? Who else were were going for around that pick because they travelled over to meet him so the club were serious about bringing him in. I think it's much too early to write him off and I like his aggression

Who would you suggest?

Binman and Melbourne, fair play to you both you made me laugh out loud after dinner here and I had to look up reductive reasoning. If that's what I was doing it wasn't intentional and you're right it's really bad form to carry on like that. It's disrespectful and discourteous to everyone else on the forum. It's amazing how misinterpreted we can be trying to discuss these things as posts in a forum versus the lively and enjoyable discussion we'd have if we were debating it in person over a beer. I think I was doing the same as you and reacting to being accused of something I thought wasn't fair. In my case I was told I was being vitriolic and laughable and embarrassing etc. It's hard to summarise an entire thread in a post so I've inadvertently been reductionist which is a hitherto unknown talent for me! I've listened to you enough Binman to know you do criticise SG and being fair you didn't say he was above criticism. Some contributors have posted to that effect and I genuinely disagree with it. This season has clearly been affected by retirements and devastating injuries as have some others of his tenure like 2019 and 2023. Nevertheless I think SG has only one year left and I'll be happy to have a new coach and see how we go. I've said before that I would have been happy with Yze getting a shot instead of going to the tigers. Apart from the glory of 21 I'll be honest and say I've always doubted SG and questioned some of his decision making. I've also always wondered if we'd have been better off with a different coach in charge. I know that's unpopular because he led us to victory in 2021, but you can't live two lives, nor should you live one life full of regrets. Whenever SG does finish up coaching the Dees I'll be grateful for that flag but I'll always believe that we could have achieved at least another, or at the very least more finals and finals victories. In the meantime I want him and the team to be as successful as possible. Right now we're not achieving that. We're duty bound to some players with injuries and issues and I'm fine with doing the right thing by them. Unfortunately it seems we're also contractually bound to some inadequate players on our list and a coach that I don't have faith in. I think him and his management colleagues have made some bad list decisions and strategic errors. I don't think they're achieving their best with what they have available. There are a reasonable number of other Fans who are also sick of hearing the same old 5h1t3 excuses and meaningless corporate platitude speak too so he won't be universally lauded or lamented when he's finished. The problem is that I don't know of a better alternative coach who's available or willing to take the job right now. Even if a saviour was waiting in the wings it would take a few years to sort out the list and forgive the digression, but in the longer term our club still needs a proper home. I think that would really improve our recruiting prospects and help some of the cultural issues and encourage more fan participation with the club. It would help in getting the league to take us more seriously as a club.

Deestar, I'm honestly comfortable enough in myself not to care what people think or say about me. I don't think there was anything vitriolic, laughable or embarrassing in my post, but if you reckon there was then fair enough. In the context of this thread it was offered as a counterpoint to opinions that SG is an eternal legend and we must never question his wisdom or coaching. I think it's also fair to say that I like and admire HP as a person and how he plays as a defender. Unfortunately I think he's lost confidence as a forward and isn't good enough to play in the ruck. Again I'm sensible and independently minded enough not to accept the herd mentality, so it doesn't really matter but I'm not alone in either of those opinions. I can trust my own eyes and footy experience and knowledge and make a judgement that I'm happy with. I agree there's plenty of crazy stuff posted on here. In my life I try to stay measured and be fair to everyone. If you and your mates are happy with what you're witnessing at all the games you've been to this year then good for you. I've found some of the games to be frustrating and disappointing. I'm not calling for anyone to be pilloried or whipped or shot. I'd just like to see our professional athletes and coaches actually learning from their mistakes and not repeating them. I'm also an optimist and am hoping for the best for our team that they can realise their potential. I'm not willing to accept mediocrity and I'm not embarrassed by these opinions. Just because Melbourne have had many years in the doldrums doesn't mean we should accept half efforts or inadequate leadership. Again if you think everything is rosy and I'm just an [censored] spouting unrealistically rubbish expectations then that's fine with me.

Hi BBP, since a lot of this discussion is based on stats (which is not my forte) it's probably fitting to post their records as taken from Wikipedia. The first screenshot is Longmuir's record and the second is Goodwin's. Goody has had longer as senior coach and a better percentage and made more finals than Longmuir. This follows on from the too predictable thread. My point was that I don't think he's (JL) a great coach (and statistically he's not as good as Goodwin), but nevertheless he has worked out not just how to beat us, but how to whip us. I know we have obvious major injuries and retirements, but coaches like Brad Scott haven't copped on yet to the method, but it won't be pretty or enjoyable for us. I love that Goodwin led us to the flag and he does lots of stuff right and has lots of decent qualities, but he can't be above criticism. I think we set up badly against Freo (HP as ruck and the high press) and he didn't alter it early enough or arguably at all. Last week's first quarter against Bombers HP got smashed in the ruck and things only turned when Roo took over the majority. Why on Earth would we set up with last week's failed experiment and doggedly persist with it for so long when it was really hurting us? Come on this is not a personal criticism of Goodwin or Binman, I just don't understand why you'd repeat your failures when all you talk about it "learnings". I'd like us to learn less and celebrate more.

Longmuir is not a good coach and he has us worked out. Same things all game. Win the tap, quick handpass, another quick handpass to a man out wide or off the shoulder. Bang it in long to a man on his own...goal! Or else we whack it long and high from half back for a taller freo player to outmark us. Or overuse it up forward and kick it away for Freo to cut us up with the same running handpass patterns till the longer kick out the back. Were SG and the other coaching staff watching the same game as us? His metric for success is winning flags or finals at a minimum. Home and away results only count as stepping stones to finals. Stop trying to gaslight us fellow demon fans by defending really rubbish leadership by setting us up so badly and tolerating poor effort like today. The problem wasn't the Kolt it was clearly Petty in the ruck. Belatedly stealing Roo from the forwardline left us without our best target. It was not good enough the first time and twice in one season is totally unacceptable.

This is only good news if he gets his confidence back and SG plays him where he belongs down back. Not forward or ruck where in many games we may as well be a man down

Be fair Binman, I put my money where my mouth is. I pay for Redlegs and go to pretty much every home and Melbourne based game every year and bring my older two with me when I can. They're also junior members. I'm delighted that Goody led us to the 2021 flag, but I'm genuinely frustrated and upset by the years since and by this season most of all. You love the Dees too so you'll want us to win everything we can and be our best. You can't be happy with what's happening lately and there are contributing causes? Coaching and forward line coaching and latterly midfield issues are a big part of our struggles. I agree with VDL in that I think numerous other coaches have figured out ways to beat our setup. This has led to lower ranked teams targeting us as a scalp they can take when we should be good enough to win. A predictable thing that could change for the better might be Goody's viewpoint on the game. I think him being at the bench is a negative thing and he'd have a better view of the game from up high (like me!). Is this something that's lacking since Yze left? It's not in Goody's nature to have knee jerk reactions, but the higher seats give you a clear view of what's happening. For example when teams are setting up to lose the bounce; or when they're leaving someone outside to benefit from the contest; or when they're going chipping around our zone or whatever other tactic the oppo coach is employing. An earlier reaction and changes could have won some of those games. I think him being at the bench is a desire to have an emotional and verbal connection with the players. To me it seems like a general commanding from a bunker with incomplete information and a poor overview of the battlefield. I don't think he needs to be their friend during the game, but he needs to be a cold analytic leader. As you keep saying yourself we're not far off. On the whole the defence and contest serves us well. We do well when we don't blaze away with high aimless panicked kicks from midfield. We do well when we don't all flood the 50 at either end. We do well when it's not boring predictable slow ball down the line. By contrast I find it joyful when players take a moment to look inside for a low delivery on an angle or to a lead. Doing the same things over and over and losing is the frustration. Especially when everyone in the stands can see it unfolding but nothing changes. This is particularly the case with inductive ineffective forward patterns, delivery and pressure. A few victories would make all the difference on the ladder and for many of those games it just needed a couple more timely goals.

Hi VDL, I'd like us to be more predictable in some aspects. When your friends ask you questions like "ooh are you a bit worried about the Eagles this week?" or "any nerves about North today" that I could confidently reply "Nah we'll whip those bottom placed sides and boost our percentage". Same thing with a WhatsApp message that came in at 3/4 time last week: "season on the line, back up at 5th... For Now!" I had to ignore it and not reply because I knew our coach and his staff will find a new way to break our spirit. In reality we're too nice and too boring. We didn't stick up for Gussy and we don't call out [censored] umpiring or AFL shafting. Our coach trots out meaningless cliches and platitudes so often that I think he's brainwashed himself. Yet he's unpredictable in doing stuff that goes completely against wisdom like persisting with players out of form or position. I predict we'll still be here having the same arguments next year and the root cause will still be on his journey of learnings.

Yes, we saw that too and commented on it. It was remarkable for how significantly they celebrated it and him. I'd love to see him get back his confidence and play good football again. I think that would happen quickly if he returns to defensive duties. The poor fella seems really unhappy. Most Dees fans I've talked with over the past few weeks have the sense that things just aren't quite right at the club and with the team at the moment. It's mystifying

I was there but there was little to cheer for. I'm glad we played so many young players, but someone deserves a go ahead of Petty next week. Many of us were dying inside watching our midfield unnecessarily hack kick the ball up high and lose it to a 2v1 or straight to an opposition mark. Then not chasing back and letting a bad side score without being tackled. It felt like a car crash where everything goes in slow motion and we would inevitably let the umpires and the bottom placed side win. That last quarter was excruciating to watch and I'm not sure I've ever enjoyed a win less than this? It a truly a Bad Win