The Taciturn Demon

I agree it was a huge waste of time and effort, and was costly. But I'm interested in the counterfactual. How do you, and others who think it was mostly Max's fault, think it could have turned out if Gawn had been more... I don't know... accommodating?

And it goes back decades. Hawthorn sneered at us in the late 80s and early 90s. Pretty sure Brereton and maybe even Dunstall have spoken about this publicly. I also think 1996 did us no favours in almost every single way, including shaking the softness tag. Two very different approaches from most players and many fans to what was essentially the death of two great clubs.

Completely plausible. And I distinctly remember the handwaving. But how did they get it so wrong? I've argued elsewhere, Goodwin may have become preoccupied by stats, but a couple of stats might have raised alarm bells on this one. The Jackson-Gawn combo worked incredibly well, but Jackson never got above 40% CBA in 2021 and once above 50% in 2022 (when Gawn didn't play). Gawn has never kicked more than 16 goals in a season in his career. Grundy has never kicked more than 12. By 2022, Grundy's contested marking had gone from respectable - above average, probably - to consistently outside the top ten for rucks and outside the top 50 in the league.

I find Melbourne going after Grundy one of the most fascinating stories since... well... the merger. I would do anything to see an honest documentary on it - starting with the when Grundy was first mentioned inside the club and ending with The Schache Debacle. I'm open to the idea that this is somehow Gawn's fault, but none of the possibilities seem even vaguely plausible. Here's my take: fans and presumably business wankers with sway at football clubs put far too much store in landing 'big fishes'. Big fishes are only helpful if you're terrible and they simply become the best or second best player in the team or they complement what you're doing. And even then they don't guarantee sustained success - Chris Judd at Carlton springs to mind. Grundy is the sparkling exemplar of what happens when you get seduced by a name and give a laughable amount of serious thought to where that name will go on the magnet board. As I said, I don't totally discount the idea the failure was a product of Gawn hubris or arrogance. But I don't see how Grundy's startling inability to take a mark above his shoulders has anything to do with Max Gawn.

I agree. The entire system led to this. Missing goals that would get kicked in most other circumstances is just a small part of the problem and isn't separate from other problems.

Interested in your thoughts on energetics as they relate to Kade Chandler.

Great. So it's 1993 again.

Is he on the "probably fine to use Mitch Owens" end of the spectrum?

Wow, that injury list isn't diminishing, is it? Richmond stuck around against Essendon. I thought they were OK. This could be a bigger challenge than it might have seemed as we were steamrolling St Kilda a couple of weeks ago.

Yep. Punt Road was probably the worst venue I've been to to watch the women (although from memory it was a scorching hot evening, which didn't help).

Oh that's interesting. I thought Oliver showed some encouraging glimpses towards the end of the year, but much of his season looked to me not a huge deal better than 2024. Perhaps I set my expectations far too low for Petracca (I remember thinking there was zero change he would even be available in Round 1), but I thought he was pretty good throughout. Way down on goals, and as you've said, making inconceivably bad kicking decisions, but still contributing.

Honest question: do you have to be a regular Foxtel viewer to understand the aura around Buckley? I absolutely understand that it was real in 2012. I don't understand it now.

Ha ha. I think it's a conspiracy but not a theory. It's impossible to deny.

A lot of the play was on the other side of the ground from where I was, so this is probably badly skewed. Chaplin Hore Harris Hanks Wotherspoon Paxman

You don't hear this very often: Stinear said Collingwood deserved to win in his press conference.

Totally agree. Casey would be fine if the locals were mad for the Demons. Crowd numbers suggest they're not. Interesting to see how many Melbourne supporters were there today - more than I usually see at even Princes Park, I reckon. Hard to see what the ratio was like in the grandstand behind the goals, but in the wing seating I think the Melbourne fans comfortably outnumbered the Collingwood fans.

Wow. How good* is free agency. *And by good I mean really really bad.

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.