The Taciturn Demon

In a lot of ways that was a very un-Melbourne performance. So fumbly and lots of poor decisions. The forward handball that served us so well in the previous two games got shut down really well by Collingwood. And Collingwood were excellent. Brit Bonnici is an absolute gun - and has been for ages. That's one of the best individual games I've seen in the AFLW. Good to squeak home, but I do worry that all the injuries might have brought us to a screeching halt. (Victoria Park is a great place to watch footy.)

I've softened on umpires over the years, but I have to agree with this. And it would be fine if it was upcoming umpires making mistakes. But by far the worst umpiring came from Chris Donlon, who's umpired well over 400 games. He just [censored] the bed in the final quarter.

Andrew Dillon! You son of [censored].

Way way back at the very start of Goodwin's tenure - year one or two of his senior coaching - he said in a radio interview he wasn't a big one for stats. I think he said something along the lines of he preferred to trust his eyes. I liked it - but I never heard him say it again. What you've outlined is one of the main reasons I think football stats are sometimes fun, ocassionally interesting, but rarely definitive. Even when someone develops a really plausible connection between certain stats and team success, it's ephemeral. Going back to not seeing the forest for the trees, my completely un-scientific and conjecture-based guess is that by the end of his time at the club stat correlations came a distant second to trusting his observation.

Definitely. 2016 Dogs is a good example. Injuries left right and centre, but those who came in kept doing a more-than-adequate job. Over and over again. You could mount an argument they had only one champion and even he wasn't at the peak of his powers.

Let's be honest: he was disastrous. He's improved significantly, although I think it's almost all to do with decision making. I think his technique remains pretty awful.

The Dogs and Carlton underscore to me how incredibly important the non-stars are in any team. And how weird it is that "role-player" is often used as a gentle perjorative.

That's News Corp levels of stating the laughably obvious.

Tyla Hanks?

At the start of this thread, a fair few people are assuming he'll be a forward. He kicked a lot of goals at VFL level in 2023.

I wonder if Latrelle's parents played a lot of NBA Jam growing up.

Is the thought with Duursma that North have just given up on him or is this just idle speculation? If the former, maybe there are obvious cases I'm ignoring, but it seems so unusual to consider trading a top 5 pick after two years and less than 20 games.

True. I also think he's quick enough. He just takes a long time to hit full speed.

I don't know how to reply to that except to ask who do you think the best kick at the club is?

Coaches' votes: 10 Tayla Harris (MELB) 8 Tyla Hanks (MELB) 6 Kate Hore (MELB) 4 Paxy Paxman (MELB) 1 Lauren Pearce (MELB) 1 Sinead Goldrick (MELB)

I thought the same. A little bit disappointing that we got were content letting him go ostensibly for those reasons but remained a team that rewarded butchery by foot.

Raise a Nippy's in recognition of a fine career.

This descended into Demonology circa 2005 very suddenly.

Doesn't really explain Langdon and D'Ambrosio, though... ... unless you think Langdon is a far more skilful footballer than D'Ambrosio... ... or if you haven't seen much of D'Ambrosio, what about Langdon versus Langford? Who's the better user? To me, what I see at the footy rarely lines up with what I see in DE stats. Kozzie is one of the most creative and deft users of the footy by foot I've seen in 35-odd years. His disposal efficiency stat suggests he's one of the very worst in the league.

Seems like late-career Robbie Tarrant to me. The 'buyer' would be desperately banking on a frankly implausible return to the form of several seasons ago.

Absolutely crucial.

The way it's measured is fatally flawed. And that means you get results like this: Disposal Efficiency in 2025: Tom McDonald 85.3% Ed Langdon 77.2% Massimo D'Ambrosio 70.6% Zach Merrett and Nasiah Wanganeen-Milera 68.8% If it measured skill, the least skilful player in the league (with over 180 disposals for the season) would be Nate Caddy. I don't even think it's somewhat useful or you can take something out of it. It's a complete junk stat.

Yes. And created a virtuous circle. Abuse lessened and gay people became more comfortable being themselves in public. That meant people who had once seen gay people as an abstraction - some unknowable entity to which they could apply any monstrous attribute they wanted - were now finding out they were in fact next door neighbours, friends, cousins, aunties, brothers and sisters... people they liked and loved. The change might have seemed like political correctness inititally. But I dont think you could have got such a resoundingly positive response to the same sex marriage plebiscite if we hadn't got to the point where those who might once have embraced bigotry now realised their former ideas were baseless and silly. That, insofar as another person's sexuality was any of their business, it had absolutely nothing to do with their value as a human.

That's so sad. Awful for anyone, of course, but goodness she was in stunning form.

Starting to warm to him. If he said the same about disposal efficiency and mentioned that Eddie McGuire was a clownish, blustering [censored], I'd be giving him a ten-year contract.