Whispering_Jack

James Harmes Nathan Jones Michael Hibberd Harrison Petty

Captain Banana goes to dinner.

Excellent idea!

Steven May Jay Lockhart Bayley Fritsch Christian Salem

Angus Brayshaw Christian Petracca Jake Lever Tom McDonald Neville Jetta

Ed Langdon Joel Smith Marty Hore Jake Lever Sam Weideman

Pickett Petty Jackson Sparrow Lockhart

Seems to me that today’s training isn’t the full blown thing but more of a PR exercise given players away at Jake Melksham’s wedding and others in rehab etc. Does anyone know if Harley Bennell’s going up to Maroochydore as he presumably won’t be taking part in any intense training. Wouldn’t it be better to remain here to do the limited work he’s doing under his current circumstances?

Tomlinson Bedford Baker May Langdon

The 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games opening ceremony is now precisely six months away. This is a highly significant fact for Melbourne fans because the last time that the games were held in Tokyo was in 1964 and we know what happened in that year, don’t we?'

On KK, a few years ago Heritier Lumumba retired after the drafts due to injury and he couldn't be replaced. Does anyone know if the rules have changed since then to allow players to be replaced on lists in the March special draft if a player is a long term injury?

Luke Jackson reflects on his experience at last week’s Players Association Leadership and Induction Camp - Jackson ready to embrace the challenge

Training will resume shortly ~

This was Melbourne this morning on the Plume Ap which measures air purity around the world. Usually, it registers well below 50 and on a really fresh day, under 20. The city that routinely registers the worst numbers is New Delhi - it’s measurements from this morning are in the next panel below.

Anyone traveling to the big smoke to watch training?

The golden haired recruit from our country zone promised so much but, due to injuries, he never quite delivered at Melbourne. He did meet the Queen though (and long before Harry and Megan). Ross Dillon: Dees and Redleg royalty

He was no champion at Melbourne but he gave it a crack. A legend at Norwood SA. Alex Georgiou – the Competitor

One aspect of the team’s performances that was often commented upon until well into the season was its general inaccuracy in front of goal compared with that of the opposition. This was particularly noticeable in the final quarter for game after game. The Adelaide game was a perfect example but there were a number of examples until the wheels fell off completely in the last seven rounds. I was discussing this with someone from outside of the club who is well qualified and highly thought of in the fitness field. His observation was that he attributed it mainly to lower levels of stamina at the end of games brought on by an insufficient fitness base of the group due to a lack of a proper pre season. Once the tiredness sets in, it also affects the mental side of things as well. This is something that we’ve known for some time but what we underestimated was the severity of the problem. Because so many of our players had limited preseasons it hurt us badly.

A valid question and I’ve often wondered about that myself with the conclusion that it’s unlikely he would have reached the same heights at Melbourne as he did in his career at the Blues. We weren’t much of a side until John Northey came along and that was well past the halfway mark of Johnston’s career.

There’s a Demonland connection there because Redleg and I were his managers at the time (early 1979). Jonno, who kicked 70 goals for Prahran but was residentially tied to Carlton) was struggling in his early practice matches with the Blues and was named on the extended bench for a “probables” v “possibles” game which means he was most likely not in their best 40 after allowing for injuries etc. He was lucky to get a run because a couple of recruits from Bendigo didn’t make it down to Princess Park but he only had a few kicks in the first half and looked deflated at the main break ... then ... Jezza, who was a playing coach, pulled off the coaching move of his career by putting Jonno on a half forward flank and playing against him at the start of the the third quarter. Jonno kicked four goals for the term and, in the words of Springsteen, “that was all she wrote” - they were never going to clear him for any price (they wanted Robbie’s brother Tom Flower who had kicked 5 goals against Collingwood in the last game of 1978). We missed out on quite a few good players back in those days because we couldn’t match the professionalism and the commercial might of the big clubs like Carlton, Collingwood and Richmond. A decade earlier, we cleared a young Prahran player named Kevin Sheedy to the Tigers because Norm Smith didn’t think he was good enough and KB also came from that neck of the woods.

Troy Broadbridge, who played 40 games for the Demons passed away on this day 15 years ago. Troy married Trisha Silvers on 18 December 2004. Eight days later, while spending their honeymoon in the Phi Phi Islands, Thailand, he drowned after being swept out to sea by the tsunami that followed the Indian Ocean earthquake. Trisha survived. The red headed defender was a terrific team manager. He will always be remembered.

I think you’re going to find that everyone else on the list is behind Pickett in X factor. On what I saw at training, the closest to KP is probably Kade Chandler.

Correct. And not long afterwards, some doofus ate the banana.