praha

He epitomises the losing culture.

Booooooooooooooo

Jones, Dunn, Garland should all be put up for trade. They set the tone and epitomise the worst of Melbourne as a club, even when they're among the best. We need to rid this club of losers.

I'm following updated stats on the AFL app. Carlton players dominating by the looks of it. Melbourne players make up the bottom of the list.

Eh, I disagree tbh. If we have improved we should value games like this as a means to fuel confidence going into the off-season and build up momentum going into 2016. I know there is a big gap there during the pre-season but I don't think we should undervalue wins, no matter who they're against or what there is to gain from the match. I don't think Carlton wants to win its 4th spoon in 13 years after having 0 spoons in 100+ years prior. Barker also has something to coach for. Every win for this club at this stage is important. We can't undervalue that. We diehards don't value this as much as the casual or neutral fan trying to weigh up whether to invest in the club in 2016. We should smash them by 10 goals. Winning games and winning games well when they should is just one of many corners the club has to turn. They haven't done that for years. Coming out and giving Carlton and sniff would undermine a lot of what Roos wants to do, a lot of the narrative coming from the players, and, really, the salary we're paying Roos. This is a pretty big game insofar as it's a match we should win and win well.

No issues with him. He threw in the towel after 186 and clearly had his mind elsewhere. Best thing for both parties was that he left. Wasn't a huge loss. Appreciate his efforts 2004-2010.

"Viv" is a cool name.

...make some popcorn and spend the night on Demonland.

You're missing the bigger picture. Of course they won't go up for one day. But penalty on any given public holiday tend to lead into a rise in costs over time. Penalty rates generally come hand in hand with rising minimum wages which create that rise.

Living costs rise alongside wage increases. They are mutually exclusive. The more you pay someone the more the product or service costs. A living wage is high because the cost to provide basic services is so high.

I'm excited as well by our best. Roos said yesterday that we need to "play like maniacs" against Carlton. It took losing by 100 points to come out and drive that sort of narrative. I just want to see more of that.

Granted, although Essendon isn't nearly as bad as they're playing though. We all know what its like to support a club with off field issues and we see what it does to the playing group. The 96 merger The 99 salary cap Off field issues in 2001, 2003, 2011. Carlton is different. They're just [censored].

What has that got to do with anything?

Gee, we won with Terlich,Bail,Jones, McKenzie, Grimes, Spencer and Evans in the side. If we don't smash them by 10 goals on the weekend, there's no saving this club.

3/4 of businesses surveyed said they would not open. Most cafes in the city service office workers. Have you been to the city on GF Parade Day? As opposed to a public holiday? Parade Day is alive because stores are open, people are in the city as normal. Lunch in the city on a normal day, the sidewalks are packed. You can barely move around Bourke, Collins, Elizabeth and Flinders. Arguing that no office workers won't have a bearing on the city's vibe on the day is hogwash. You will have fans of competing teams there, and that's it, and half of that crowd would have already been in the city. The city will be dead. I hope I'm wrong.

This is the most Demonland post ever.

What a stupid post. Money and business *shock horror* is what gives people a reason to come into the city. Businesses would rather close and make nothing than open and lose money. If you're not spending anything, you're not losing anything. You don't need to be a Liberal supporter to see how brain dead stupid this holiday is. A moron in my office said at the election, "I'm voting for the guy that's promising the GF holiday." These are the morons the policy is aimed at. Vote buyer trash aimed at the lowest common denominator. And who loses out? Hard working business owners who normally had a bonanza business day due to parade attendees plus normal people working the city. The city will be a ghost town. BOOKMARK IT. Do you need to be a Liberal supporter to care about how prosperous and exciting your city is? I'm sure Union Hall on Lygon St will be jammin' on GF Eve!

I have worked in the city for a decade. The parade, there is a buzz around the city. It's a normal work day, but it's Friday, it's a parade, it's a celebratory atmosphere. This will ruin the day. The city will be a ghost town. Why would a cafe that serves white collars open on that day?

You know, it's nice seeing another club in turmoil for once, but I'm willing to bet that Essendon will play finals again before Melbourne.

I suspect it'll be a lot closer than previous years. Hogan has been one of our most consistent. I'll say: 1. Vince 2. Hogan 3. McDonald 4. Jones 22. Lumumba

What I mean by normalisation is that, you need to be able to differentiate between "improvement" and what is to be expected. Yeah, we should *expect* a minimum of 6 wins. That's like, a bare minimum of where you'd think this club would be at considering what we have brought it. Our win/loss record merely reflects the natural progress of the team relative to the talent we have brought in. It's a stretch to suggest it's "improvement". I believe we're playing well, WELL below highest capacity capable of being reached by this squad, so yeah, everyone should be challenged and held to account for that. I don't know if that's Roos, the playing group, certain players. I mean, how many coaching careers can this playing group ruin? I said at one point last year that Roos' game day coaching and style is at odds with the branding exercise Jackson is implementing to get the club stronger off the field. Basically you have a coach that is trying to polish a turd, and sitting behind the desk is the manager trying to sell the turd on the promise it'll be the best and cleanest turd ever when Roos is done with it. Granted Jackson would be in the same situation had it been any other coach, but sometimes it's like Roos is playing with the turd and smearing it all over his body, then turning to the camera and saying, "IT WASN'T ME!" You have a pretty fragile club here that has stabilised in recent years but is still a far, far way off becoming sustainable. There must be a directive there to get the team playing attractive football. I can't believe that there isn't. I don't see how trying to instil ultra-defensive disciplines is worthwhile when you can't even string together more than 2 hours of good football. We saw how damaging Neeld was. Maybe we just need to accept that Jones, Dunn, Garland, McDonald, the Melbourne "veterans" that really tend to shape the narrative around the club, are attackers, not defenders, be it attacking midfielders, attacking defenders, whatever. I'm just starting to think that Roos' style here is futile. Our best football is when we actually playing attacking football. It's when we go into habits of becoming defeatist that we get super defensive and completely and utterly break down. I respect that defense wins flags, but I don't think Melbourne has the flexibility here to lose games by 100 points anymore. I mean, we're going into a round against the bottom-placed side, and it's a must win. Anyone saying it won't be disastrous if we lose is truly delusional. Pre-season is every club's prime time to sell their product and you can't do that when you close the year out losing by 10 goals. Roos needs a tangible product now. It's been 24 months now that he's been at the helm. I get that we're coming from a long way back, but it's not even that we lose. It's how we lose. Either a message isn't getting across, or the players just can't execute and are dumb. I REALLY hope it's the former because we can't afford to start ANOTHER rebuild.

#normalisation

So basically we went from competing for whole matches, to competing for 1 maybe 2 quarters, letting the opposition bang on 7-12 straight goals, and losing by 40-60 points.Right. Gotcha. Selective. The North game was won and lost in the first quarter. At the end of the season they started off flat. No excuse. Same against the Dogs. Their losses this year have been bigger hits to confidence than most losses last year. Our wins are better this year but our losses are worse. Consider we have lost two games by 100 and more games by more than 50 this year. The gap between best and worst is GREATER than last year because they have both grown. Only Melbourne somehow gets better while also getting worse.

Agreed.Dogs lost major experience and key parts of their Prelim runs. They have spent 3 years down the bottom, never bottomed out, and now look like Hawthorn did in 2007 and 2008. Last year we should have won 10 games considering the position we were in over 10 matches. Losing the final 10 games wouldn't have been as damning had we won 8 games prior to that (Port, Bulldogs, Saints, Suns, who we all led at one point in the last). Throw in Port again, Lions, Dogs again. That's 7 games we were in very winnable positions in. That hasn't been the case this year. Of 12 loses, we have only been in it 4 times: Adelaide, Collingwood, St Kilda and Essendon. The other 8 games, we were never a chance, and the loses against the Saints and Bombers were disappointing in the way that they should have been wins. We went from competing in 2014, to disappointing in 2015. 6 wins is merely normalisation. We added Hogan, Garlett, Lumumba, Brayshaw, VB, a good balance of experience, big bodies and young talent. To suggest we are only a 2-win better side than last year is comical. 8 wins is still the pass mark. Carlton is a must win. And it must be a strong win. Compete against Freo. And [censored] those runts from GWS. Otherwise yet another season is lost after a handful of bad loses to end the year. You can't undervalue the importance of closing the year strong if you aren't in the finals. Great clubs play to win. We're beyond merely passing off loses and matches as being worthless. Roos will earn his pay the next three weeks. It's integral for the team's development, sponsorship, memberships, free agency that we play a brand of football that showcases how far the club has come. If they can't do that, 2016 will just be another year. You can't get away with just passing off loses. It plays on the mind and opposing teams will take advantage. I'm surprised that after a decade, some here still undervalue a win, even wins against teams like Carlton.