The Taciturn Demon

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.

And he very nearly was. Before he became the player most supporters were devastated to lose, he was told by the FD he'd be best to explore options for a trade.

I'm not excited by Tholstrup at the moment, but this is an excellent post. I don't think you can underestimate just how bad we are at lowering our eyes and finding a leading target. Inside 50 it's very obvious, but it happens further up the ground as well.

It did. It just doesn't anymore. The two ingredients you need is fervent support from players and fans. This doesn't exist.

I'm too young to have seen Dixon play, but will forever be grateful for his anti-merger advocacy during a period where so many players and ex-players were pro-merger. I think we underestimate just what a profound, overwhelmingly negative, effect the merger attempt had on this club. And while we can pretend that it was, in fact, just a sneaky takeover, the truth is there would be no more Melbourne Demons without resistance from people like Dixon, Flower and Alan Johnson (and of course the many no voices at Hawthorn).

Exactly. Unless you're in a coterie group or have some special connection to the club, you really only hear from the coach through website puff pieces and the press conferences. And, on one glorious occasion, in a self-filmed video involving red wine and pasta. Yes, press conferences are strange and awkward and sometimes punctuated by the most idiotic questions, but they're not completely useless. And, whether you think they're an absolute waste of time or not, they're there (at least in part) for fans. I think you can get a fair bit out of them. For example, Goodwin refuses to resort to ludicrous conspiracies or woe-is-me nonsense like many of his contemporaries. For the most part, I think we should admire him for this. A coach should never be satisfied with "The opposition was just too good", but they should never fall into the trap of "We were, once again, the better team, but X, Y and Z conspired against us." And on the other side of the coin, as others have said hundreds of times, he's obsessed with corporate cliches that occassionally verge on New Age [censored], as corporate cliches so often tend to do. If that's what he needs to do to avoid giving away trade secrets or to avoid making harsh public statements about individual players (which just isn't his style), so be it. But when the whole thing is just a string of platitudes and buzzwords, it's so deflating. Worse when there's not even any internal consistency - are we about to turn the corner with this group or are we still finetuning the 'process' that will lead to 'outcomes'?

I'd say Salem has been in people's cross-hairs since very close to the start. Understated footballer who seems to be the first on the "let's trade" list. (A long while ago, I know, but widely underrated in the GF.) I've been a huge fan for a long while. I do think he's slowed noticeably and at this stage I'd be open to making "tough calls" on anyone over 30 other than Max. And I think the lack of take-the-game-on aggression is a fair critcism. But I wonder whether how he plays - reasonably cautious short kicks that change angles around half back - is exactly what he's asked to do by the coaches. Only a couple of weeks ago Goodwin mentioned him by name in the press conference, something along the lines of "He's back to his very best footy after injury." I'm not suggesting that if he wasn't being asked to do this, he'd be playing like Jake Bowey. I just think there's a fair chance he's following instructions to a T. But I may be wrong. He may be dropped later today or later this year.