The Taciturn Demon

They are back. And the thing that got a lot of people through the dark days of 2007 to Roos (I would say a bit earlier, to be honest, but it's not the the done thing) - that deep down we knew we were mostly watching battlers have a crack - is no longer there. This is a team comprising players who don't just know how to win 10 in a row or fight back against very good opponents, but win a flag! And now they're routinely getting beaten by 10 or 15 goals, perennially losing to Carlton and setting the most embarrasing records in football.

The question Demon forum readers have been asking since 1999.

Shame insomnia. Why do we do this to ourselves?

It's truly phenomenal in its awfulness. People on here are talking "worse than 186" and I think in the cold hard light of day, most people will say "Actually, yeah, it's not far off."

West Coast wouldn't have lost that game if they were up by 8 goals at three quarter. That's not a throwaway line. There's something uniquely wrong with this team at this moment.

Interesting that a lot of this thread is about small moments or single problems. To lose a game when you're eight goals up at the start of the last quarter, with no notable injuries, close to EVERYTHING has to go wrong. Kozzie on the bench at the end or the 666 [censored] up are just two of dozens upon dozens of disastrous decisions and failures. You could do an entire thread alone on the absolute calamity that was our centre bounce work as St Kilda got a sniff. We didn't [censored] the bed. We filled an entire bedroom with diarrhoea. This team's fall must be close to the most precipitous of any team in the last 75 years. From bringing back a sense of pride in the club, to becoming as large a basket case as significantly less talented teams between 1970 and 2013. What an unfathomable disappointment.

Yep. Seems to get better every year and she's already very good.

Zanker! Good lord!

This is where we need to shift our attention. Stop deluding ourselves into thinking known quantities in their early 30s are suddenly going to return to 2017 form just because they move clubs. Start looking at five- to 30-gamers in their early 20s and determine whether they're not quite up to it or are simply in an unfortunate queue. Less Hunter. More Derksen.

Go big. Hold off on Sparrow but bring the rest in In: Spargo, Howes, Adams, Petty, Culley Out: May, Tholstrup, Sharp, Langdon, McDonald

It's a really fair point. He's been an exceptional one-on-one footballer. I like it in theory. I just wonder if he's got much left in practice. Those hamstrings seem like they're one small over-extension from evaporation.

Interesting that on Saturday night, Bowey, who was having another really solid game, was swung into the forward line. Like you @zoe1617, I'd love to see Langford spend more time in the forward line, although his overhead marking, which seemed like such a weapon in his under 18 footage, has been a touch underwhelming so far. I think Howes forward or an a wing would be well worth a try as well. Not so keen on May forward and JVR back. Now the season is well and truly over, I'd like to see the FD start thinking about what the team might look like in coming years and try combinations they expect to become fixtures: Tall defenders: Turner, Petty, Adams. Centre bounce midfielders: Langford, Pickett, Rivers. Tall forwards: (way less certain, but...) Jefferson, JVR, Kentfield.

Marvel/Ticketmaster probably ask you to pay a "small wallowing fee", so that's arguable.

In pools of their own misery.

I reckon I can be convinced on lots of outwardly counterintuitive things as they relate to footy. This is one that not even the strongest argument would turn me around on. Yes, footy careers are short. Yes, you need to make every game count. No, you don't need to play when very unwell or seriously affected by injured. A half-fit X is better than a fully fit Y is one of the stupidest cliches in all of top level team sport - far stupider in an 18-person game.

I just realised something amazing. Did you know Dustin Fletcher is only 50! As May gets to the end and with Lever looking a little shaky, I reckon we should be giving him a phone call. Not sure if he'd be interested, but we'd be crazy not to ask. Also, Rhyce Conca. THIRTY-TWO! That's the new 23 for the AFL. Already at the club and you know he's fit as a fiddle. Make the call, Timmy Lamb. Actually, make it a conference call. Fletcher, Daniher, Conca and, [censored] it, see what Ryan Gamble is up to.

Completely insane. But this seems like back-against-the-wall desperation to me. There's no way a half-competent football department would consider this if they didn't think they were all on the chopping block. I said Dan Houston earlier. It might be more like Byron Pickett.

He's the anti-Lachie Schulz. And the anti-Brodie Grundy: legs six times larger than his torso.

Yes. And so we should be. He also mentioned during the Carlton press conference that he's inculcating habits and behaviours that make sure we stop having enormous in-game periods of uncompetitiveness and losing to flailing semi-VFL sides. This is exactly the line he was pushing in 2016 - and Roos before him. You can't be returning to the absolute fundamentals AND bringing in a 32 year old who really only played exceptional football when his side were absolutely humming. I noticed on another thread someone mentioned a rumour that Goodwin was not just safe but possibly looking at an extension. This astounded me, but I far prefer that than Goodwin feeling like he has 12 or 15 games left to prove himself and so countenancing the most outandlishly unlikely throw at the stumps.

Totally agree. If there's any truth to this, it [censored] infuriates me. This is doubling down on the delusion that we're so close. This is Dan Houston times infinity.

Hear hear. It's going to be so much fun. They looked distinctly ordinary at the start of last season but came home with a wet sail. I reckon the list is in good shape. Can't wait.

But when it happens over and over again doesn't luck become a less and less likely explanation? "They're playing out of their skin" and "We've got the yips" makes sense to me once. Maybe twice. But four times? I've had the feeling for a long time that we don't have lopsided goal to behind ratios because we're technically incompetent or mentally fragile - although these may be factors. We have them because failing to put teams away is buried deep in our style - an unintended consequence of numerous things that the current regime has built over many years. This could be nothing more than a stupid hunch or just dark, irrational thoughts after the disastrous fall away of the last few years, but one of our biggest strengths until 2024 may have hidden one of our biggest weaknesses. The strength was being competitive. Between 2020 and 2023 we almost never got smashed. The weakness was being comfortable with arm wrestles. We had some strong wins during this period, but we weren't a go-for-the-jugular kind of team. In 2022 it didn't look like a weakness at all. I remember Melbourne fans laughing at our ten consecutive wins because so many were sloppy - we had become that thing many of us thought we'd never see: the team that "just knows how to win". By the end of 2023 this didn't seem to me like something we should treat with glee. We were scraping over the line against some really ordinary teams, keeping them in games so frequently it seemed almost planned. And then the ultimate disaster came in the 2023 semi where a hyped but (I will forever maintain) thoroughly unexciting Carlton stayed within 20 (and usually 10) points all game and then won with seconds to go. Of course, it might have been nothing more than bad kicking... but by then we had been giving [censored] and middling teams a sniff for a long long time. We're not remotely close to the team we once were and that strength of never getting thrashed is a full 14 months behind us. But, or so my half-baked theory goes, the weakness remains, more glaring than ever: we don't close out games against really bad teams. And wayward kicking alone doesn't explain it.

I think a lot of people in decision-making positions at the start of the year thought we had the list and gameplan to comfortably return to finals. One obvious stumbling block would be if Gawn got injured. Having a very large, experienced ruck to break even was considered a sensible continency plan.

Exactly. The closest I can get to an umpiring conspiracy these days is not really a conspiracy at all; it's just a problem of human nature. Nobody wants to be screamed at in their job. As an umpire you can't avoid it. But there are different levels of being screamed at. Three seconds of moderately loud booing is very different from the violent howling of a Carlton or Collingwood crowd. Or the victim complex crying of an Essendon crowd. I have very little doubt, for example, that whether unconsciously or consciously, the umpire that failed to pay the deliberate with a few second to go in that Adelaide game where Clarry had an all-timer did so with crowd reaction in mind. This doesn't explain, though, absolute disasters like the Kozzie trip near the start of the year and the Clarry holding the ball on Saturday night. Even the most one-eyed supporter understands that there's nothing ambiguous about a run-down tackle with no push in the back, or an ankle tap, so there's no need for an umpire to worry about being scolded by tens of thousands of people. Anyway, my theory, which probably doesn't bear out when you look at entire seasons or longer periods of time, is the louder and more aggressive the crowd, the more likely they are to get a 50:50 go their way. Not a nineteenth man, but maybe one tenth, or one fiftieth, of an extra player.

What a legend. A player I always liked but, in hindsight, completely undervalued. We've missed him very badly.