The Taciturn Demon

Fair call. Seeking a change from the status quo is completely understandable. I just think he comes up an extraordinary amount for a player who, as you say, is 34 and injury prone. I would add that even at his very very best he has never been an intense, agile lock-it-in forward. There's no better example of absence making the heart grow fonder in footy fans than Melksham. They can play a huge part. I just don't think these particular injuries explain losing so badly to a team with the youngest average age and the third least number of average games in the league.

This is such a good point. Reminds me of the rapturous applause West Coast supporters gave Andrew Gaff every time he got the ball after breaking Andrew Brayshaw's jaw and knocking out his teeth.

I'm struggling to get my head around a few repeated ideas in this thread: 1. Rivers has failed as a midfielder and must return to half back. Rivers has attended 8 centre bounces over two games - 14 percent of all centre bounces. He was at zero centre bounces in the North game. As far as I could tell he played on the half back flank. 2. Charlie Spargo was rushed back in and was a liability. Spargo, a bloke who lowers his eyes, hits targets inside 50 and makes himself an option at half forward, is very close to the least of our worries at the moment. Did you expect him to get 25 and kick 4? 3. Melksham will make a huge difference when he returns. No he won't. 4. It all comes down to injuries. I'd love Windsor, May and McVee in the team (and Pickett makes a huge difference) but if you can't cover three or four best 22 players, you have a major problem with depth. North belted us without Logue, Wardlaw and Archer. Brisbane are winning without Coleman, Cameron, Lohmann, Doedee and McCarthy. St Kilda beat Geelong without King, Owens, Howard, Butler and Phillipou. The Dogs are more than competitive without Bont, Treloar, Weightman, Johannisen and Jones. Hawthorn haven't had Mitch Lewis since the end of the last ice age. They're making do without Calsher Dear. Injuries make it tough, but unless half your best 22 is out, that can't be an excuse for ten goal losses.

Gosh this is depressing.

My |d|ot's understanding is that instead of slowly moving the ball, kicking down the line, scrambling to create a stoppage and then getting the ball inside 50 by any means possible, the new system involves chipping around half back (or going the full switch) to move the opposition around and find an angle, preferably a player in the centre square, then using fast, aggressive forward handballs to break into the forward 50. I think we all saw the sideways chipping in the GWS and North games. Against GWS the aggressive handball chains weren't numerous but they seemed to work reasonably well. Against North they almost seemed almost accidental to me - when they happened it was messy and panicked and even big turnovers never led to easy goals.

Campbell seems like a trustworthy battler - someone you can rely on to keep contesting. I like that we went and got him. But I also think the FD hate the idea of playing two pure rucks in the same team (which makes Grundy acquisition seem completely deranged). We all hoped Max would be dangerous as a resting forward and he just isn't. Campbell has gone at half a goal a game as a career average at both AFL and VFL level. I have to admit I really liked the idea of Fullarton when we got him and while I understand players sometimes don't turn out how you'd like, I'm amazed by how far down the pecking order he seems to be.

I thought the same. They gave us chance after chance. Goodwin spoke about them in the press conference like they'd played a near-perfect game. They certainly went hard and didn't relent, but they were so sloppy.

Fullarton is such an interesting one. Clearly the FD think he's extremely suspect in the ruck, but he only needs to be at centre bounces for 20% of the game. He was recruited in part because he kicked goals at VFL level at Brisbane. His average has fallen at Casey, but Casey were awful in 2024. I didn't mind what I saw of Johnson against GWS, so no problems bringing him back in. I also understand if he's simply not up to it - but so are several others in the senior team at the moment. Are they seriously going to let Fullarton go a full two years without a game and then (presumably) delist him?

Yep. Those who thought we would finish top 4 (and there seemed to be a lot of them in the prediction thread) were always setting themselves up for major disappointment. At the start of the year I thought sneaking into the eight was extremely optimistic. Ninth to fourteenth more likely. But 10 goals against North surprised even me.

I'm pretty confident Turner will end up as a defender. And I think he may need to return there sooner than many of us expect. But probably not in the next few weeks. Van Rooyen? No. The list management team need to go tall crazy in the coming drafts.

I don't think there's any getting around this. Kozzie suddenly seems like the most important player in the team. I'd expect Langford to be back in the side very quickly now.

I agree. The manic intensity doesn't seem to be there anymore and the kicking is a huge problem. Not a convincing combination, but I thought Chandler into the middle was well worth a try. I thought persisting with Langdon for so long was truly bizarre. I have absolutely no idea why anyone at the club thinks he's a CBA midfielder.

Very Chris Scott.

Good call. Although, in fairness to the Lions, they played some really nice precision-kicking footy in that GF... and the one before it.

...Then they came for the Demonland website. And I did not speak out. Because I am not a Melbourne supporter.

I agree. It was a bit of fun and the crowd got into it as it went on. On the whole, I like Melbourne going for daggy entertainment rather than doing the cringeworthy "let's speak to the kids" straight-from-America garbage (the word "activation" brings bile to my throat) you see St Kilda and the Dogs do at Marvel. But as a celebration of Ireland it was one step away from leprauchans and people saying "twiddly diddly dee". As a celebration of Stynes it was an absolute mile off. I will say, I think the way Max Gawn talks about Jim Stynes (especially stories about Jim encouraging young Max to defy convention and certain expectations as a reflection of how he spoke with young people in general) is underrated. That short presentation from Max on the screen at half time (?) was really good. Yes, I've heard it before, but I think it's a story worth repeating. I'd have liked to see more of that - how Jim's words and deeds affected others (or changed their lives for the better). Alongside a fun celebration of Ireland? Sure - but as you said, Ghostwriter, with a bit more thought and effort.

*sigh* Sadly, entirely true.

If you buy a GA ticket to The [censored], can you sit on the top level?

Forwards needs to be able to bend down. I'm going with no.

I'm not a big fan of using stats to make solid determinations about gamea, but if I was going to mention one it would be Max yet again absolutely dominating the taps and Melbourne once again getting comfortably beaten in clearances. I thought the centre square stuff was mostly good - better than a lot of last year from what I saw. The rest wasn't.

Booo! I wanted him to go full Jayson Daniels.

Yep. Thought the same. Worth a try as a final roll of the dice. (If I'm being really harsh, I think Caleb Windsor would have been a better choice than Ed Langdon, who in his 11th season of AFL football is finding a way to get comprehensively outmarked by Darcy Jones.)

He was so good, wasn't he? I still think Ricky Petterd's is the best debut game I've seen from a Melbourne player, but Lindsay's was very close.

This is me when people talk about Billings and Melksham.

I agree. It was fun to watch us go forward with hands in a way we really haven't for a long while. I'd have loved to see Windsor get onto the end of a couple more chains. I honestly expected them to beat us comfortably and probably carve us up in the same way they went past Collingwood last week (I know this is precisely how they kicked the winning goal, but we seemed knackered). Kicking 11 was pretty good. Keeping them to 11 was excellent.