The Taciturn Demon

Harsh but fair. If not the end of this year, certainly the middle of next. Same goes for Lever, and - I know it's highly implotic to say it on here - for Langdon.

No. I don't think so. If McVee did play on him it was only at times. I'd say Turner was on him more often than others. I really really dislike Carlton's list but I really like Moir. That's not to excuse at all. We shouldn't be letting talented six-gamers kick four goals at any time, let alone when we're playing half a VFL team.

If Petracca wanted to leave last year because of poor standards, what would he have seen this year to suggest his concerns have been addressed? Was he worried about something (or several things) in particular that the general public isn't privy to? Or was it more of a general "We're so much better than 2024" kind of deal?

Petty ate that bloke.

I think Goodwin genuinely believes this. Or that Kozzie becoming a 95% CBA player is all the change we need to worry about.

We had 13 Premiership players out there, as well as Jake Melksham, a bloke who was emergency in a Lions flag and a bloke who I now think should be captain after Max (Turner). Despite this, Goodwin is talking about embedding basic discipline and "behaviours", as he was in Year 1. That's incomprehensible.

I've been keen to see where the new gameplan takes us. Not anymore. It's one of two things: In a permanent state of "nearly there". Or - and I'm starting to think this is the horrific truth - this is about it. This is pretty much as good as it gets. Goodwin: "Clearly, you look at the last three quarters and you can see something." Nope. I can't.

It's impossible to be. They turned it over again and again and again. And we spectacularly failed to hurt them.

Allowing that Carlton team to kick 78 points is scandalous. Any vaguely competent side should be walking in five to ten goal wins against them.

I went through acceptance and seem to have discovered the stages are not just non-linear but circular. Anger doesn't begin to describe what part of ouroboros' digestive tract I find myself in.

I thought my days of ranting on footy forums was long over, but [censored] me. What a shameful effort. That Carlton team shouldn't come within eight goals of that Melbourne team. Absolutely pitiful.

Am I misremembering or did Hogan ask to be traded to his home state? I remember desperately wanting to keep him and being resigned to the fact there was little we could do: he didn't want to be at the club.

Yep. And how dangerous he himself is when lowering his eyes and looking for a target inside 50. I was going to reply to this thread telling everyone why I was in (what I expected to be) a minority hoping we wouldn't trade him. Doesn't seem so. The general frustration with him on this forum is either something I've overblown in my own head or doesn't translate to "Get rid of him".

Good summary. I find myself doing this silly to and fro between "Well, we're clearly not good enough. The list is awful." and "Why can't this team we beat Port, St Kilda and Hawthorn? We're clearly good enough." I feel the club vaccilates in the same way.

I'd watch an upstairs-downstairs drama where the manor matriarch is in fact a foppish man in drag who spends much of the day seeking out illegal 'tanning' tinctures.

Definitely. What they now have in ruck contests is absurd. Numerous rules that apply everywhere else, just get ignored in the ruck. If Brodie Grundy did what he does in the ruck as a key defender, he'd have 45 free kicks against him a game. The AFL is obsessed with "the product" (on of the most insidious terms in all of footy), but have turned rucking into the ugliest, most uninteresting contest imaginable.

Looked like a very ordinary number one pick for a long time. Injuries, including the big knee, didn't help.

I didn't realise it was that far back. I think this is a great example of "stop changing the rules" having its limitations. This was a much-needed rule to stop what was essentially institutionalised cheating. Same with front-on contact. The 10-metre circle, from memory, was a response to a perceived rise in PCL injuries. I think Goodes stopped rucking because of a PCL, and the theory was if you removed the big run up and the prospect of huge shin-on-shin collisions, you might get fewer injuries of that kind.

And if she had meringue for hair she'd be a pavlova. For every "we were just one moment away from victory" there is an example of being one moment away from a larger defeat. Champion Data has a lot to answer for. It lets you tell any story you want about your team and have it backed by a serious man in chinos and a jacket holding a clipboard.

Eternally wrong.

At Essendon.

It went a fair way to getting us the first cup in six decades.

I think this is fair. Maybe you could argue 2018 was bordering on great given how young we were and that we lost Hogan on the eve of finals. I'm much less impressed with 2022 and 2023 than most (because I just don't buy the "we were unlucky" in finals line), but think "underperformed" is a decent description. A flag rightfully gives you latitude as a coach. Especially if you've got the first in 57 years. I don't agree at all with the idea we missed a trick by failing to sack Goodwin after 22 or 23. Or that we fluked or stole a flag in 21 - nobody flukes premierships. I am, however, very open to the idea that the list has underperformed - not because I expected three flags, but because I expected a longer, more successful run of finals appearances when it became clear we had a well above average list. I guess if you take the more extravagant emotional stuff out of this thread, it's really comes down to how much post-flag latitutde is fair. And is it fair to take the whole coaching tenure into account or just everything since the peak? I think it's reasonable to look at the full nine years. And one of the reasons I can't see how Goodwin can stay beyond next year is that five finals wins in 200 games isn't a particularly good record.

A player got an inside edge that passed the stumps on the diagonal and went for four. I've now put a fielder at fine leg.

I reckon this is the difference between everyone in the massive disposal category most players fall into (somewhere between terrible and good) and the very best ball users. For anyone who's not great (I hate the word elite), there's a period of cog-turning between realising you're a chance to get the footy and getting rid of it. For the best, that cognitive processing is so fast it seems like it doesn't happen. The great thing about "just get it on the boot" or "blast it down the line" is it dispenses with the need for that processing. In 2021 it gave poor or average disposers freedom to concentrate much more on getting it. What to do with it? That was a problem passed on to Max Gawn, Ben Brown, Tom McDonald and Bayley Fritsch. Now our players are being asked not to do that anymore, and many are finding it difficult to adjust. (I know that doesn't explain Tholstrup and Windsor, but this post is a bit of a tangent.) Some will get there. Others just aren't naturally good at it. I keep thinking, though, that Tom McDonald shows you don't need to massively improve your kicking to massively improve your effectiveness. He is comfortably one of the worst technical field kicks I've seen. But the disastrous turnovers have almost completely dried up, and not just because he went forward and spent a lot of time kicking at goals rather than players. He's dependable in the backline as well. In great part, I think, it's about playing within limitations. Where previously he would attempt to bite off kicks Aaron Davey couldn't make, now he takes the safe, although not always completely conservative, option. I'm sure you can get better at making quicker, better decisions. But for some players, it might be best to demand that they play within their limitations - look for the handball or the easy sideways kick to a better disposer - than hoping they'll increase the speed of their cog-turning.