The Taciturn Demon

Absolutely convinced St Kilda have the worst list in the league.

Yep. Also puts free agency out of the picture. Imagine Kozzie continues to steadily improve and clearly becomes a top ten player in the comp, then he exercises his free agency right in 2027 and we get pick 10 or 12 or 14 or some [censored] in compensation.

The only person who says they know what May said has a patchy history with facts. He suggested it was something extremely tepid - along the lines of "Did you think you had less time than you had?"

Leigh Fisher, who played for St Kilda, has umpired more than 250 games.

Good lord! They poached him after three seasons. The [censored] gall.

It should be in the Constitution that you have to call him this.

What a legend. Get her back to the Demons as soon as possible.

Interesting watching Kozzie when under pressure and forced to quick quickly yesterday always opt for the low mongrel. I get that sometimes you just need to turn and dump it, but like you say the big garryowens aren't working.

This is an important point. Saying "Whoa! Look. Players yelled at each other! What a story!" is fine in a vacuum. In the context of elite level sport, it's a preposterous thing to give more than five seconds of attention to. It pales into the palest insignificance when you put it against the things that would be said behind closed doors - even, or maybe especially, the things said without aggression or in the heat of the moment. Imagine working for years and years to become an AFL footballer, getting drafted, doing brutal pre-seasons and then being taken into a room at the end of your third season, without having played a game, and told "You're not good enough. We're delisting you. We hope you can find another club, but we doubt it." Or imagine being at the centre of one those ridiculous "honesty sessions" that were big a few years ago, but were nothing more than soviet struggle sessions dressed up in idiotic corporate language? Just being told "you're soft and nobody trusts you" in front of 40 peers. Or imagine being told you need to harden up and get back on the ground even though your ribs are broken. But no. Let's find a sixth camera angle of May saying "What the [censored] was that kick?" and Max telling him to "[censored] off".

Well put. There was a lot of genuinely interesting stuff to talk about after that game. Parts of the footy media have, yet again, decided to put a spotlight on something superficial and barely notewothy, then frame it as sensational 'drama'. It's A Current Affair level 'reporting': assuming the audience are bordering on vegetative.

I used to think it was stubborness. I'm coming round to the idea he has very few other options. He's slowly getting the team to move the ball a different way and lower eyes when kicking inside fifty. It's still not happening as often as we'd like (and even when it does start happening, every team kicks long and high at some stages during a game). For that reason, you need someone who can stand and grapple and make contests. As many others have noted, Petty isn't great at it. But who on the list would be better? I think many of us thought, or at least hoped, it would be van Rooyen now and for many years to come. It may still happen, but he looks a mile off at the moment. Turner looks a conssumate key back to me. He's in terrific form. Why would we want to change it? Jefferson? I haven't drawn a line through him like others, but I think he NEEDS that proper key forward beside him to excel. He can't be the one. Johnson? Maybe. But now? It's a lot to ask of a bloke with six months of experience on an AFL list. Kentfield? Good size but coming from a long way back. Fullarton? I was hopeful when we got him. But no. I would much prefer it if Petty was playing down back. I would be really disappointed if he was playing forward in 2026. For now, I understand why he's playing forward.

Some of the most obviously terrible umpiring I've seen for a long while on Monday (the Melksham shepherd/tunnel one on the member's wing was breathtakingly horrible), but I don't see any conspiracy or feel that umpiring has clearly got worse recently. I absolutely understand that umpires are pressured by crowds but even then, it doesn't explain the Bulldogs getting an extraordinary run (going simply by frees for and against) over multiple decades and Richmond getting the opposite. What I know for sure is the game has got much harder to umpire. The equation an umpire has to do in their head to determine holding the ball, for example, is now a complete absurdity. And while I agree that better facilities and generally more care from the AFL would help, I don't think an umpire working full time in the best facilities tutored by the best coach could consistently get holding the ball right at the moment. I loathe the idea that the umpires are in any way responsible for the look of the game. The idea that an umpire should err on the side of "letting them play" or making the game "flow" is ludicrous. The game should never be made harder to umpire in the pursuit of "a better product". That's clearly happening with holding the ball, where excellent tackles go unrewarded because after a seemignly endless amount of time the ball is jarred free. Making the rules more black and white would cause some frustration among fans initially but the angst would soon turn into acceptance and then the job would be easier and, presumably, the umpiring more consistent. I don't really like the last touch out of bounds rule (as used in the women's comp), but it's preferable to a discretionary rule encouraging blatant inconsistency like we saw yesterday. Hands in the back is another one. Yes, the strict interpretation from a few years back was frustrating. I think it may be preferable to the huge spectrum we have at the moment: all the way from rucks jamming an opponent into the second row but it being fine because he kicks a goal to a gentle nudge followed by a sprawling performance getting whistled. I quite like the new concept of a small push being OK unless the pusher then fails to touch the ball, but that happened yesterday (Elliot, if I recall) and went unpunished. Umpiring like yesterday's makes my blood boil, but I can't help feel sympathy and even grudging admiration for umpires who do a naturally hard and high-pressured job that's made all-the-more-difficult by rule interpretations that become progressively more complex.

The very end of his 21 season was poor, but up until then he was superb. Your point still stands, though. No need to play him forward. I'm not sure we even need to play him back. Fantastic season to date, and extremely unlucky to be pushed out, but he's 34 and has talked openly about his clanking body. We need to plan for the future now.

Yep. Although I'd say over the borderline of elite in 2021. This is a really good summary. I like Petty a lot, but pretty much strictly as a key defender now. He has some of the raw skills forwards need, but as you say, not the craft. In a game like yetserday when we returned to blasting it in with little thought, we needed someone to just bring the ball to ground. It's far more difficult than it seems and we need to keep looking for someone who can do it regularly. Van Rooyen? Jefferson? Johnson? Kentfield? Derksen if we can get him next year? Another mature player traded in? I'm not quite ready to give up on Lever but I definitely want to see Disco and Petty in combination as defenders. Unless Petty has his eyes on a free agency move to SA, this is the future.

Good call. Lever isn't done yet. But Turner is fast becoming a first-picked defender. Yes, it's tempting to throw him forward, but we've found one and we know his best position. Keep him there and try others forward.

Goodwin mentioned in the press conference that they put a lot of time into Wanganeen-Milera. He and Wilkie will be vying for the ten coaches' votes and three Brownlow votes. Yes, the kicking was appalling. But we attempted to blunt two of their best players and completely failed.

Coached by Nev Jetta.

Always found her incredibly frustrating. Terrifyingly poor kick of the footy.

Releasing resentment at having carried her for four years as she incomprehensibly got All Australian gurnseys while consistently beaten one on one and falling over more than late-career Jordan Lewis.

A little bit aside from the issue of retaining Kozzie (which seems to have such a homesickness factor to it), I find this such an interesting part of top-level sport. I remember during the Tom Scully disaster that many, many people argued Scully had essentially no decision to make: it wasn't rational or realistic to suggest he might ignore that amount of money stay at Melbourne. This always struck me as just as naive as saying "Every player plays only for the jumper and money is irrelevant" (which is mostly just a strawman version of a more nuanced side of the argument). Of course, Robbo might have been making it up or exaggerating or giving prominence to just one reason why he stayed above others, but even still, it's telling that he would say that.

Well put. Although a lot of people applaud this lack of understanding - and have for decades.

Yes. Good call. Plenty of time to have watered in the new game plan; Windsor, Lindsay, Turner and Langford with a solid bunch of games under their respective belts; some healthy list turnover (not-quite-good-enough triers replaced); maybe a ready-to-go free agent or trade target to strengthen the best 22. There are lots of variables - the biggest being Kozzie - but if we started 2026 like we started this season, I think even Goodwin rusted-ons would start to reach for the DW-40.

I never understood why we went for Grundy. There are all types of rucks, but to my mind one is clearly more valuable than all the others: the contested marking powerhouse. Grundy has never been that. Grundy versus Max on Sunday was yet another example of most stats being completely unrepresentative and unhelpful for analysis of the game. The stats suggest it was an even contest; most people who watched would agree it was a bath.

Yeah, and what recognition of his season to date from Cox! I was surprised when I looked at his stats at the end of the game. I thought they would be higher because I seemed to keep noticing him at important moments. In hindsight, what I observed was less of the dash and delivery that have defined his season so far, and more of the little stuff - a hand in to stop a Sydney attack, for example, or strength in a contest that didn't always result in a possession.

Really? That's extraordinary.