The Taciturn Demon

Ah, so that's what (maybe?) Kate Hore was talking about a few years ago when she said Melbourne wasn't fancy and didn't tempt players with cars. I thought it might have been a reference to Sydney, as they'd just lured Chloe Molloy.

Big mid for sure, but a very close second is a defender with really strong hands - a dependable interceptor.

I'm sure you're right. Geeze, it's brutal, though.

Hmm. I reckon she was more than adequate. Maybe this is another example of me having absolutely no idea about the defensive side of the game.

No, completely. And sometimes it changes very radically - and words, for example, don't just shift but become the opposite of what they used to mean. And often the change is completely natural and separate from powerful people shaping language for their own ends. But - and maybe this demonstrates a paranoia in me, or just an Orwellian cantankerousness - when someone says "learnings" is better than "things to learn" because it's two fewer words, I can't help but think of the true believer in Nineteen Eighty-Four saying "It's a beautiful thing, the destruction of words..."

Super interesting that you're not necessarily coming at this from a hardcore descriptivism viewpoint. I think your point about the word reflecting the times is a really good one. I think this perfectly sums up my wariness over "learnings". With a bit of syntactical fiddling, and maybe a change of verbs, you can still convey what you mean without using "learnings". Although your explanation definitely has me thinking, I still think in most cases where I read it, there's an alternative that works just as well. I too often see "Key learnings going forward" replace "What we learned", "What we discovered", "What we found out" in the same way "Our rightsizing journey" might replace "Why 12,000 people just got sacked".

This may be the only rationalisation of the word I've ever seen that makes sense and paints it as a worthy addition (or re-addition) to the lexicon. I think I, and others, complain about it because the vast, vast, vast majority of people don't use it like this. They use it to to sound smart or part of the in crowd in a corporate meeting room or in a formal document. To them, it's not an important alternative to lesson, it's just a faddish synonym. They are happy to substitute it for "discovery", "finding", "understanding", anything that doesn't have a faddish ring to it. When I hear someone use it, I would love to instantly think "Ah, that person is interested in what students actually get out of education." Instead I almost always think "That person is either out of their depth or a bit of a [censored]."

Really good. Haven't come across that channel before. The stories we tell ourselves, eh?

Yeah, she was really good. I'm so surprised she was just adrift near the end of last year's selection period.

I was wondering if this could have beeen an admin error rather than umpiring incompetence. I say that because none of the votes in Round 1 make sense. The Dogs' ruck was one of the few winners on the day and Pearce (2 votes) had fewer hitouts than Georgia Campbell. Chaplin (3 votes) didn't have a particularly noteworthy game. None of these players got coaches' votes. I don't think umpire votes should match media, coaches or a general consensus, but those three players all seem very odd. The problem with the above theory, though, is the only error I can imagine is swapping one game for another, and I can't think of one that's an obvious exchange. The best game Pisano played was Round 6 against West Coast. Zanker kicked 5. Zanker got 3 votes for that game. Bizarre.

I feel the same. If he played really well next year it would be one of the more surprising things I've ever seen in footy, not to mention a huge slap in the face to the Demons. I think it might have been @Ghostwriter (sorry if I've got that wrong) who said Oliver had said out loud at some point that he felt the game had become too fast for him. That's very much the impression I've got over the last few years. He can still win contested footy but when the ball starts pinging around, he labours. There was a huge amount of talk at the start of last season about how fit he looked and his season turned out to be completely unremarkable. I think that'll happen again.

Interesting to read on the AFL site that Zanker looks likely to go to Fremantle and whatever we get may make it easier for us to become the club that takes Gold Coast's Pick 1, which they need to get rid of because they have at least one gun academy player and several others they're keen on.

At one point we thought the most realistic best case was Farrow and Nairn.

Wouldn't the best case scenario have been that Robey and Taylor fell through.

Oh boy. Stinear and now Zanker. This is not good. And she's out of contract, isn't she?

Not sure about Oliver, but agree it was a very strange decision. The fact he so comfortably got games on the wing was the first sign to me our list was nowhere near as good as we thought it was post-premiership. I like the idea of rotating players through the wings, especially younger players or players like Howe, who haven't quite made their usual position their own.

Devastating. As I said in a different thread, for most coaches ten years is plenty. For Stinnear... I think he's something special. Feels like the end of an era. As others have said, we need to be careful we don't lose more than just the coach.

Stasi [censored]. What absolute dogs.

I desperately wish we had a Fremantle future first.

Just had a quick squiz at Rookie Me's power rankings and - whoa! Queensland footy seems to be thriving!

Hard to go past Scully. You could forgive us picking up a disloyal little [censored] who was an exceptional footballer. Or a rock solid citizen who turned out not to be the player he hoped. But to go for the greedy [censored] who ended up having two years as a B-grader, and the rest a bog ordinary running ball butcher... awful. But he captained Vic Metro and was widely regarded to be a clear number one - so a lot of people got him completely wrong.

You couldn't really get a better team to watch than Melbourne's over the last ten years. Brave, honest, often punching well above their weight in a competition that has given huge advantages to non-Melbourne teams. Kate Hore is one of the most sublimely skilled footballers I've ever seen. Our crowds are poor. Casey absolutely doesn't help, but it doesn't explain a few thousand at games ten minutes from the CBD.

I wonder what they have in mind for Molly O'Hehir. I can't help but feel a few times this year we got beaten in the middle when it mattered most, and we have very few players over 170cm who can go into centre bounces and make a difference. Purcell, Hanks and Heath will give everything, but we seem to struggle when taller midfielders start to dominate (Garner is 175cm). Beasley is 170cm and is robust. But I wonder if they might think about putting O'Hehir (180cm) into the middle every now and then next year.

Yep. Looks like he kicks sacks to me. But the movement is sublime. Interesting to see how he progresses.

Taylor Gillard McNamara Chaplin Harris Pearce