The Taciturn Demon

Depends if he's already had prior opportunity. I understand the thinking behind this, although I'm almost certain some umpires were already treating a shrug and a fend of equally previously. There's a huge difference between a typical Charlie Spargo or Nick Watson shrug, which is all about free kick seeking, and a shrug that lets you slip under a tackle and continue with the football. I hope they go really hard on the former next year.

I like that you add this. I think it's healthy. Just want to say I find your insights extremely helpful and interesting.

Very interesting to see how Viney responds. I suspect one of the many reasons King was eager to get rid of (or at least didn't stand in the way of the departure of) Petracca and Oliver was the problem of old dogs being unable to learn new tricks. Arguably, Viney was the player most unable to adjust to the shift in Goodwin's game style when it became clear slamming it on the boot no longer worked.

I agree with this. Something shifted in my mind after that game. Losing to Collingwood was nothing to be ashamed of. Losing to Carlton was unforgivable. For me, that shift was mostly about how I viewed Goodwin and his team. A sign of things to come for sure.

If the need for someone, anyone, was so urgent, why didn't Schache come on?

I've said on here before that you can extract anything you want to out of stats, so I'm being a bit hypocritical here, but if you look at centre bounce attendance in 2023, Grundy was in the centre more than Max in Round 1. In Round 2 Max got injured early. Grundy did 75% of the ruckwork that day and then was our main ruck for the next three weeks. (Perhaps because of the fitness you mentioned, in that shport period, he never got to the 90% centre bounce attendance that Max often does.) When Max returned, they had close to 50/50 centre bounce attendance until the bye - eight games. After the bye, Grundy did less, but was still spending good periods as the centre bounce ruck. He was dropped before Round 18 and that was the end. I'm perfectly willing to accept that Gawn let his ego get in the way and ruined the chance for this combination to work. But, as I asked earlier, when? Was it at the start of the season? If so, did Goodwin and the FD seriously intend to make Grundy our primary ruck and play Gawn as a 75% forward? If so - bizarre strategy. As I said in a previous post, Gawn has never kicked more than 16 goals in a season. Was the idea that the captain and one of the best ruck of modern times would play as a decoy? Was it somewhere near the bye? This is plausible, and would warrant the "big ego", "[censored] leader" calls IF Grundy was playing well. He was not. Apart from the period when Gawn was out, where Grundy had one exceptional game and a couple of good ones, I remember Grundy being very mediocre wherever he played at Melbourne. Was it near finals, leading to Grundy being ignored and Schache being named as sub in the famous semi? It could have been, but is the claim that Max knew Grundy in the ruck and him forward had a chance of working but let his own selfishness get in the way? Max, presumably doesn't have such an outsize influence he can literally influence gameday coaching strategy. So why, if we were so desperate for a tall to supplement a barely moving Tom McDonald, did Goodwin leave Schache as un unused sub against Carlton? Let's say that Gawn DID let his ego get in the way and quietly campaigned for the FD to give Grundy a lesser role or drop him. The idea that if that hadn't happened - that if he had swallowed his pride and played as a near-permanent forward - we would have been a better team has just never rung true to me. But to me, the far far more likely scenario is that the FD had a harebrained idea when it became clear Grundy was gettable. They never properly thought it through. They saw a big name and didn't spend anywhere near enough time working out how that big name would fit into a team that already had his one and only position well and truly covered. They got to halfway through the year and realised just that - they'd [censored] up. They dropped him. That's it.

Whoa. Who do you consider the top five or six kicks in the AFL?

So the theory is that Gawn agreed to play more time as a forward to accommodate Grundy and then reneged... when?

Absolute shocker. Far too often shrugged away with "worth a try". They either had to do something genuinely strategically groundbreaking or it was never going to work. Max is one of the best, defense-oriented contested marking rucks of the last 25 - maybe 50 - years and has never kicked more than 16 goals in a season. Grundy can't mark above his head and has never kicked more than 12.

I still can't get my head around the idea that Grundy didn't work because of Gawn. What did Gawn do that made this unworkable?

Heath McNamara Gillard Hore Zanker Mahony

Foxtel stuff.

Good effort against a bunch of psychos.

It doesn't get any more annoying than to watch Sophie [censored] Conway beat you.

Excellent comeback. They absolutely dominated that first quarter. We found composure and look OK.

This would be quite a thing. Which players - apart from Steele and Pickett - do you think are most likely to make it happen?

That's interesting about Toumpas. I remember being so excited about him and then being absolutely baffled by his AFL form. I still don't get it to this day, but your explanation certainly helps.

The Tapscott trap?

Of course. But it's entirely plausible - drafts where Xavier Lindsay is as good as it gets aren't unheard of - and it does conform to a worry/warning about this draft that seems to have existed for a very long time. I kind of bought the (I hate this word, but) narrative that we very deliberately traded out of this draft not just because we wanted two high picks in a really strong draft, but because we knew we were giving up a future pick in a significantly weaker one. Now we're being asked to get excited about 7 and 8. I don't think the Petracca trade was terrible, but I do wonder if the 2026 GC first rounder ends up being a better player than 7 and 8 in this draft. Pure speculation, I know, and in the end, if Jason Taylor likes a couple in this draft in those spots, I'm all for it. But I'm a little bit nervous.

I love Xavier Lindsay but... ooh geeze. That's worrying.

Is there a bit of Jai Culley to Robey - or am I way off?

If this is what he meant, it's a huge relief. I thought he was harking back to what I see as a bit of a tired cliche that supporters are just children who don't understand that in the real, adult world, player movement is inevitable and on the whole good.

I like Max a lot and think he's excellent in the media. But I notice here that he's gone the "grow up", "be mature" line. I hear it a lot when it comes to player movement. I've heard it for 20 or so years, to be honest. I get where people who run with this line are coming from: nothing is forever, and certainly not in the top level of a very popular sport, where competition is ruthless. Also, there are always circumstances like the one we faced with Alex Neal-Bullen. Yes, the grown up thing in that case was to say "Yes, we love this player and want him to stay with us, but we know there's more to life than football". But... ... couldn't you mount an argument that the height of maturity or grown up thinking would have been to nip the problems we had in the bud as they became obvious. What I mean is, yes, beloved players are always going to leave clubs and sadden fans. And there will always be excellent B-graders who are crucial to premiership success and get squeezed out when the cap space inevitably tightens. But great teams keep great players at their best for as long as possible. Great clubs naturally nurture one-club champions (or in Hawthorn's case 250-game champions who play two or three tepid seasons somewhere else). It might be grown up for supporters to now concede that it's best to cut out losses with those two players and start afresh. It also might be grown up to say that Petracca and Oliver need to accept their fair share of responsibility for our precipitous drop. I think it's also important to be grown up about the huge mistakes of the past. Ignoring them or shrugging them away as spilt milk is not mature. To my mind, anyway.

If he's anywhere close to Pickett, we should scream his name out. Watson... maybe I don't watch enough Hawthorn, but I'm not totally convinced.

Also, probably Pearce's best game for the year. Interesting to see what we do with Georgia Campbell. I think she's got it, and I think the ruck might be her best possy (especially with the forward line stacked).