The Taciturn Demon

Has our handballing significantly improved or did our run out of defence and through the middle just make it look better than it has been before?

Underrated footballer. Very sorry to see her go.

No, because trading him to Richmond or North would get us what we want, but he'd never say yes.

That sounds fair to me. But every indication is that he wanted to leave. I can sympathise with enormous frustration. But I find it very difficult to admire a desire to just walk away.

You've got to give players games if you want them to accept new contracts.

How come?

He definitely can. And as a leader of the club, you can't just shrug away his responsibility (I did with my comment earlier, so sorry about that). If the rumours of a "suck it up" approach to Petracca's injury are true, that concerns me. But all a lot of supporters have to go on when judging people at the club is public statements. At a time when a lot of what we heard was incoherent, insincere and corporate waffle, Gawn came across as honest, reassuring and realistic. He strikes me as a good person with a deep love of the club. If that's all a facade, he is a brilliant actor. I'm not convinced that if another person had been captain during this time, things would be significantly different. He also remains the most reliable player at the club, which is vital for a captain.

Beatification? Yes.

They do.

Going by the Port praccy match, not quite there yet.

Very good win. 6: Hore 5: Mackin 4: Chaplin 3: Heath 2: Goldrick 1: McNamara

This is such a good point. I heard Bob Murphy say a similar thing a day or two ago. So much of modern media is financially invested in and ideologically predisposed to player movement absolutism (player movement is good in and of itself). One thing you very rarely hear about in the media is the many, many, many times a trade move clearly doesn't work for the player who's decided to leave.

I know a lot of people have asked "What did you want Roffey to say?" This interview demonstrates (to me at least) that as difficult as interviews on this subject are, they're not impossible. Now, it's very difficult to be as charming and self-deprecating as Max Gawn. And it's much easier to do an interview when the tone is friendly than when it's inquisitorial. But it's not that difficult to be "across your brief" and (carefully) honest. "Authentic" is massively overused, but that's what Max was. Happy to be told where it went wrong, but that to me is a very good interview. Maybe I'm falling for spin, but I feel slightly better after listening to that.

I'm not sure if this is quite the right question but: what's the knock on Kynan Brown? I didn't quite understand why they brought him in, barely played him then consigned him to Casey, even after the season was clearly gone. Another way of putting it: he seems like a goer and we kept playing end-of-career plodders and then wondering why our effort wasn't "at the level".

Sadly, this is a template for a few of the public statements I've heard from her. I thought her point about Viney - clearly a media beat up - had the potential to be the basis for a strong argument. Something along the lines of "If I carried out my duties based on every single media rumour or demand from a pundit, I'd never sleep." But the stuff about the media quickly descended into, as you said, incoherence.

I don't expect the President to be a polished media performer. I do expect them to be, if not a nuffie in a business suit, at least across a lot of club stuff and well-connected with every important person at the club. Important people include all the players and their immediate families. What I took from that interview, and a few Roffey public statements, is that she's neither a good media performer nor obsessively interested in everything happening at the club. In the Whately interview, she seemed to imply that she hadn't spoken with Petracca's family because their absence from the club made it inconvenient. If that's not outright negligence, it sounds like the excuse of someone who doesn't really have the time to be President. I like the idea of a president saying "This isn't my area of expertise; I'll leave it to the people we employ to do specific jobs". But talking to players and their family after a very serious injury and a very public desire to leave seems like something clearly within a president's remit.

The end of last season was worrying and I reckon we'll miss Casey Sherriff a lot. But the team we've named against Geelong still looks pretty good and Beasley and Wotherspoon looked good in the praccy match against Port. Interesting to see how we go on the weekend.

Such is my disdain for Barrett, I read this as completely unironic.

I genuinely don't get this. Even if you put aside the fact this is such a weird and self-aggrandising thing for a non-American sportsperson to concentrate on, does it even bear weight? In 2022 there was only one team that got higher home crowds than Melbourne in the home and away season. In the finals we played two interstate teams and averaged 70,000. In 2023 we were comfortably in the top four for home crowds and all crowds during the home and away season. Our two finals both had crowds well over 90,000. In 2018, our crowd numbers were strong, as well, in the home and away season and in finals. This year, our crowds fell away very badly... after the King's Birthday... when Petracca wasn't playing. Is this literally just a desire to play for Collingwood, which has had very good crowds for 30-odd years, or is he unaware that every other club's crowds wax and wane depending on how they're going?

This is a good post. The nuffie Demons fan in me - my inner Swooper Northey - is screaming "How dare you treat the club this way!" I find the idea of a genuinely great player just walking away from a club because it no longer suits him outrageous. The angel on my shoulder, however, keep reminding me, this is a human doing completely normal human things: being overwhelmed and disoriented by trauma, finding confrontation difficult, telling different versions of a story to different people, getting bad advice from radically biased sources. I also have no doubt he has legitimate concerns that the club should treat extremely seriously. The "personal brand" and "bigger team" stuff is hard to swallow. The rest, if it's true, is understandable and even relatable.

Sorry - double post.

Harambe vibes.

Absolute certainty. Not just his injuries but the broader idea that "the market reality is..." All ably assisted by an AFL media overwhelmingly wedded to the idea that "all player movement is good". Weirdo libertarianism - we must bow to the market as a benign deity - is rife in that world. The problem is supporters will buy it. It's already creeping in to this thread - people are earnestly posting absolutely awful deals.

I often tell myself, as I pass 40, that under no circumstances should I become the old man yelling at a cloud that I see everywhere around me. But when it comes to "building a personal brand" I'm full on Grandpa Simpson. One of the biggest, most pernicious loads of [censored] dreamt up in the last century.

Am I missing something or is a "godfather offer" kind of irrelevant unless Petracca agrees to the trade? Free agency was a zero sum game. The (best) players got enormous power. The clubs had it taken away.