Go Ds

I'm fine with it. It's good to have more strings to our bow and the elements of surprise can be handy. If the only difference last Sunday was May kicking two goals we win

I find it so hard to watch matches without choosing a side to barrack for. But the silly thing is by August each year a lot of results I cheered on meant Melbourne finished lower on the ladder, even if that's still 4th . But still I'll keep doing it

Umm , just looking at the fixture wasn't that loss in a practice match??

Interesting. This is too simplistic but I hope we don't follow the trends of those above. After these matches Collingwood took 15.5 years to win the flag, Richmond 24.5. As for teams debuts some still haven't won an elusive flag and the most successful was Port 7.5 years later and the 'state team' Adelaide 6.5.

Wow that's impressive! 🤣🤣🤣 If he can run that in about 30 minutes he could probably run (allowing for exhaustion slowing him down a bit) maybe 75km in 2 hours. If a 19yo can improve and the record for the 42.2km marathon is just above 2hours I think we've recruited the best marathon runner the world will never see!

Do you have stats for previous years? It is quite likely GWS were fitter than us. One of the ways that could show up is a drop-off late in quarters, yes? We should wait for a bigger sample than one.

That was a sample of one! We were probably rusty yesterday. Add to that that was Jefferson's first ever game, Roo had back problems recently and may be 100% soon, Fritta is having terrible patch of form and either recovers his mojo some time or gets replaced perhaps by someone like Disco, we get Kosi back, and if the likes of Rivers, Lindsay, Langford and Windsor can fill in well enough midfield Petracca can spend more time forward. Right now it's so easy to get stuck in the moment here basing all our expectations on one game/one and a bit rounds. Right now GWS look better than us and other sides had big wins and we're already one loss closer missing the top 2, the top 4 and the top 8. But it's so early! In so many years of following football Melbourne (as well as other teams) after round 1 end up nowhere near my original expectations (good or bad)

Is this really true?!

Despite everything they only conceded 11 goals, yes? I'd guess even a lot of premiership sides have more than that kicked against them per game. Melbourne were far from perfect today. But they can improve a fair bit I reckon.

God knows how much damage was done when Melbourne couldn't even make the finals in the years between 1964 and 1987. If a kid was like 8yo in 1968 and STILL 15 years later his/their Demons were still just also-rans it'd be pretty easy to lose interest and find other 'hobbies'. Not only are such fans lost but often their kids and now grandchildren. *Sigh*

No, no kids and maybe teenagers are different these days. I'm disappointed we lost today. If both sides had kicked 8 more goals each today I'd still be disappointed we lost today. You know what would have made me happier or excited? THAT WE WON! Honestly even if we had been 20%worse but won cos the 'Greens' and Taylor were badly injured in the first quarter I'd still be excited that we are 1-0. What do your young relatives say is why they've stopped following Melbourne? I'm scratching my head cos from being a young kid in a Melbourne jumper all the way up to now Melbourne wins mean joy and excitement and losses the opposite.

Yes and no. A recent AFL term is "defensive forward". Honestly if you're helping your team kick goals or you're stopping the opposition doing that you've had a good day. And if a forward's efforts mean a top defender or defence bring about way less opposition scoring chains or inside 50s as well as being excused for not scoring his day could be lauded.

Yep, as much as losses, especially closes ones or after being in front for so long, are infuriating sometimes they will just happen. I doubt our players tonight are casually shrugging off the loss. Honestly, after nearly every type of result a club will try and reset in a couple of day's time and get back to aiming at winning next week (and winning as many games as possible for the rest of the year.)

Exciting? What's exciting is winning lots of games, especially against the best teams, and especially premierships. Doing that gets more short-term supporters and hopefully more long-term ones too. I'm just not sure that that many footy fans choose their team based on recent exciting game plans or almost lose complete interest when their team is too defensive. (Ever wonder why club presidents talk about making finals or winning flags rather than their team being exciting or doing dances on TikTok?)

We benefited from it last year and now the opposite with this BS of pitching teams from the Opening Round against a team without that extra 'blowout'. If the AFL must have that hollow, interstate 'half-round' those participants must play only another of those participants in round 1. Stop adding more disadvantages to the fixture. This one probably was the difference today .

Whatever , dude. If you feel like rain, hail, shine you have to watch every second of our home games at the ground then fine. Every one's different and it feels weird believing in divisions among Melbourne supporters. Anyway for all we know we have a higher percentage of ultra-devoted supporters and lower percentage of the bandwagon ones anyway. (And even if our supporters actually are the worst then so what?!)

Melbourne's MCG games with an interstate rival (barring finals or being match of the round) have been notoriously under attended for decades. Don't blame the coach. Besides it's better to win 18 boring H&A games and get a double chance, rather than finishing 10-13 but "entertaining".

There would be billions of instances where footy fans (or even just the general public) have cancelled things outside because of the weather. Sorry, but especially if fans haven't 'prepaid' with a membership it's so easy to just stay home and watch today's game on telly (without having spend time travelling or possibly overpriced food and drink.) - especially if the weather's lousy or you think (especially after a week of GWS being likened to the second coming) your team will be outclassed. As for the F1 there are people that will prefer a yearly event as opposed to one twenty-third of their teams H&A season. If anything blame the AFL for starting the season this bloody early (and giving GWS the huge advantage of an extra game to condition them in this almost practice-matchLESS era )

Wow, that's a big call. I'm guessing right now the bookies would offer punters only 25-1 on (1. 04) for the Hawks from here. I was expecting the Hawks to drop back a little this year. I doubt both Swans and Essendon are bad teams. So now I'd the Hawks scraping into the 8. (Given they barely lost after May last year and their percentage post-round 7 or 8 was around 130 ending up on 13 wins and 105 per cent age come September would still be a step backwards)

Hmm six newbies, plus Petracca 'replacing' whoever filled in for him for 6 months plus 2025 Oliver 'replacing' 2024 Oliver and hopefully the likes of Roo, Rivers, Windsor and Tholstrup (and even Petty) being noticeably better this year there is so much of an X factor for this year! It's so hard to know right now how our year will pan out. But even the fact that good players Jetta and 'Chunk' were superseded by the end of '21 helped us go all the way that year. I'd love to see history repeats itself

Don't know why but I adore this 'dumb' movie. 😂 And, yes, right now we have a chance at everything, except maybe the spoon.

Well we've had 7 teams play in these 4 H&A matches. Every team that won their pre-season game has lost and every one that lost theirs is atop the ladder unbeaten.

But we like Roy https://frinkiac.com/video/S05E07/31mXjIhfPCza1im1ckHMyz_1f6E=.gif

So with the new upgrade can we choose which Demon player reads out posts over our shoulder? @Ghostwriter , can you and your inner sanctum friends help set this up. 😁

I trust the MFC brains trusts knows more than me. But with hindsight it could be that we couldn't go for some more Moneyball-type players who would've added more value It could also be that Reid ends up more the standard of Travis Johnstone as opposed to Judd, D Martin or Fyfe.