bananas

The last quarter will have lessened the differential, but at 3/4 time I noticed that we were smashing them in uncontested marks. I'd hazard a guess that it's the first time this year we've won that stat, let alone won it comfortably. Great indicator of the team working hard to spread and present options for each other, which leads to an increased ability to find those options (the skills today looked way better than they have in ages --- probably as much to do with bad Bulldogs defensive pressure as anything we did, but hell, it's a start).

Big week for Big Max, with only Fitzy as relief. Has Max played a match yet where he's been the only clear #1 ruck option? From memory all of his matches have been with Jamar or Stef or Spencer in the team as well.

Still the best footy experience of my laugh. It'll take a Grand Final win to top it.

Another possible element: the other umpires (subconsciously) don't respect her decisions as much because of her gender, and feel more free to butt in.

Sorry Rusty, I must not have been clear. What I was trying to say is Yes, Rodan can do that kind of thing at this level, and whenever he does we'll think 'Gee, he should be in the seniors', but the reality is that at AFL level the first opponent tackles him and wins the ball. The dance won't even start.

Just got in, not a whole lot to add to the previous reports (and KC's gonna come on here and make me look silly soon enough) but: Magner, as well as being good at the stoppages, seemed to be working really hard to spread and provide an option. I noticed him be the second or third man in a chain of possessions quite a bit. I have no idea who Essendon were playing in the ruck today, but Spencer and Fitzy carved him up. Some of Spencer's taps to advantage were beautiful, putting the ball right where an already-on-the-move midfielder was about to be. Lovely stuff. Rodan did some nice things, but his highlights were all the kind of flashy thing that an AFL team wouldn't let him get away with in a million years (dancing through three opponents, etc.). I reckon he'll look good at this level, but never again be able to recreate it when he steps up to the 1s. Taggert did some lovely things and looks to have a good footy head on his shoulders. A couple of kicks that were weighted just right and played the angles perfectly had me excited about his future. Blease is still classic hot'n'cold Sammy. There were a few times he dashed through the midfield, lowered his eyes and hit his target on the chest ... and there were just as many times when he dashed through the midfield and blazed away. More of the first, Sam, and you could be a real player. Jordie Mac will play seniors next week, and every week after that until he retires, or we get more than a couple of blokes who go as hard as he does. He's got his limitations, sure, but when actually trying seems beyond most of our team, Jordie has to play. While I doubt Fitzy is improving quickly enough to force his way into the seniors this year, I do think he's now a good to very good VFL forward. If he plays the majority of the year at Casey, there gonna do very well with him and Hogan together up forward. And Hogan is really good. There was one moment where, with the ball kicked to his side of a one-on-one contest, he sought out his opponent's body, shoved him away from the drop of the ball, and plucked it with an ease that bordered on contemptuous. It was the kind of mark that Wayne Carey took a thousand times in his career, and you could just tell that the ball was safe as houses in Jesse's hands. In the first half he was getting a bit frustrated with the delivery often favouring his opponent's side of the contest. It was only after halftime, when Casey really took over the midfield, that the supply improved. Still, even in the first half, there were a bunch of times he halved a contest he had no right to get anywhere near. Also, loved his smarts. If giving it off was the best option, that's the option he took: there were a number of times he could have blazed away, but did the team thing. To be honest I wouldn't mind a bit of that "F you, this is my forward line!" type thinking, but it's sure nice that he's not just a beast, he's also a footy player. Oh, and Daniher is going to be very good. The only lingering question mark on him is whether he has the body type to put on enough muscle for his width to match his height (he's skinny as hell, in a Morton-ish kind of way), but he moves beautifully for a guy his size, and has excellent skills to boot.

That's the plan! ;-)

Yeah, I'll be there. Go Dees!

Possible protests: Go, but don't clap or cheer. Or go, but wearing the other teams colours. Or, if (just kidding, when) the score blows out again, walk down to the boundary and then turn and face the other way, turning your back on the game.

Could be wrong, but I think Gawn has to come off the LTI List to play for Casey. Otherwise clubs could say any of their young/crap players that aren't in the frame for senior matches are "injured", and elevate rookies willy-nilly.

Jeff Farmer, in the season or two he was at his absolute best, was one of the great small forwards. He kicked 76 goals in 2000. For a forward pocket, that's freakish. He'd have a field day sitting under the feet of Clark and Dawes.

AFL Predictions: Brownlow Medal: Gary Ablett jnr. (if the Suns improve at all surely he'll rack up votes left and right) Coleman Medal: Buddy Franklin Rising Star: Jaeger O'Meara (if he turns out to be good I'll have to learn how to spell it) Grand Finalists: West Coast and Hawthorn Premiers: West Coast Wooden Spoon: Still GWS Biggest AFL Story of the Year: Peptide fallout. Much like tanking last year, it'll be the thing journos pull out every couple of weeks to keep the papers full. The Biggest Improvers: Carlton, Richmond The Biggest Sliders: St Kilda, Adelaide MFC Predictions: B&F: Jones, still the only real man in the midfield. Smokey is Watts, playing like Goddard across the HBF. Leading Goalkicker: Jeremy Howe. Clark will give him too much of a start, and he'll consistently get his two goals a game. Dawes might match him, but I suspect CD will have more down days. Best First Year Player: Dean Kent. Only seen him in two quarters of kick'n'giggle, but I really liked the look of him. Most Improved: Neville Jetta. Please let it be this year that he finally stakes a spot in the team. Otherwise Dunn, finally settled and being used as a release from defense. Final Ladder Position: 13th Biggest MFC Story of the Year: We get through the whole year without ever being a big story! Please let it happen!

Just got back, here's my take. The main difference between the two games (apart from the obvious difference in fatigue level between us and Richmond) was in the forward structure: first game we built a solid forward line around Dawes, Hogan, Pederson and Howe. Byrnes was presenting at their feet, and Kent also looks a likely type playing across the half forward line. Not only is that (sans Clark, obviously) close to our A1 forward line, but Dawes was conspicuous in the way he was directing traffic and making sure we held our structure. We never got pulled out of shape, so there was always something for the midfielders to look up and kick to. A couple of leads and marks from Howe, in particular, looked sharper than any Melbourne side I've seen in ages. In the second game, Dawes didn't play, Hogan was used sparingly, and after Spencer went down, Pederson spent a fair bit of time in the ruck. Suddenly Colin Sylvia was our major marking target across half forward, so the midfield looked a heck of a lot worse, because there was nobody presenting, and no big body for the get-out-of-jail-free kick to a contest. Then the smaller forwards started creeping up the ground going after the ball, and the whole structure collapsed (I was reasonably impressed that the coaching staff obviously adjusted to this and altered things, and the last quarter was significantly better from a structural point of view ... there's an example of game-day coaching from Neeld, if anyone wanted it.) Oh, and Hogan is gonna get me to a bunch of Casey games this year. Loved him. He, Dawes and Clark are (touch wood) going to be pretty incredible.

There'd also be a chance that in certain drills you'd put your A backline against your A forward line and A midfield, to give them a tougher workout. Chip Frawley should practice against the best we can muster, know what I mean? (edited for spelling)

Last week, before this whole story broke, I read this fascinating article, coming at drugs from the perspective of a U.S. sports fan. http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/8904906/daring-ask-ped-question As bad as the current situation is (and however bad it gets), at least here in Australia we're (finally) trying to right the ship. The level of power the players have in the U.S. makes it sound like they'll never have a week like this ... but they'll never be clean, either.

From the sounds of things, we finally have a Football Department that knows what kind of environment/standards are required to develop a group of willing players into a top flight AFL team (there's little actual evidence of this yet, though I could point to the differing paths taken by Blease and Gysberts last year: the willing player works hard and significantly improves, the unwilling player doesn't and gets dumped). Now that the group is 100% willing (I presume those gotten rid of during the trade period were the unwilling ones), the kids coming into the club now (Toumpas, Hogan, Viney, Kent, Barry, etc.) will only know one way of doing things, the right way. So if I'm being optimistic, I'm actually most optimistic that we'll be able to turn draftees into good players with greater regularity now. Or, to put it another way: imagine if Jurrah, Morton, Gysberts, Bennell, Woneaemirri and Cook had arrived at a club where, from day one, they'd been given no option but to conform to elite training and preparation standards? Sure, not all of them would have made it, but I reckon at least one of two of them would have. With the power of hindsight about the Bailey years, I'm comfortable saying that Dom Barry, for instance, has a much greater chance of making it than Jamie Bennell ever had, purely because of the radically improved environment that Barry has entered.

Yep, loved his interview, loved his smile (he was probably relieved to avoid internment at GWS...), and I love love LOVED that his highlights package is about 90% made up of shots of him sticking it right on the chest of a leading forward, something we haven't done a hell of a lot of recently. Clark, Dawes and Pederson are probably smiling just as much as Dimitri is ...

Could end up with 'mini-tanking' ... team in 6th place after round 16 'rests players' and 'experiments' to drop to 7th for a week and get an easier run home. Also, if the team in 13th at the right moment goes on a massive run against the crappy teams and sneaks into the finals, the teams who were 7-12 would have a right to feel pretty aggro. It's pretty good, but until we get enough teams that everybody playing each other once fills a season's worth of TV rights, it'll always be inequitable in some way. ed. for grammar.

Love the way people are saying 'we didn't get value for Morton/Martin.' These trades were never about getting anything in to the club. They were about effectively delisting guys who Neeld clearly doesn't want at the club any more, but who were still contracted. If Petterd had a contract, we'd have given him up for pick 100. Instead, we get to delist him normally. If anything, we've made out like bandits on the Pederson/Gysberts deal, because we've swapped a guy who Neeld was never going to play, for a guy that he clearly will. How that can be anything but a massive win escapes me.

I've been curious about Luke Tynan all year. He kept turning up right at the pointy end of Casey's 'best' every week, and now he's come second in the B&F, I just wanted to ask: What kind of player is he? How much older than Josh is he? Might he be worth looking at with a rookie pick?

Was actually thinking something along the lines of the OP just the other day (after seeing Man City's brilliant Champions League away strip). We're the red and the blue, of course we are, we always will be, but why are we so inflexible when it comes to clash jumpers? AFL fans are (to the best of my knowledge) the only sport fans in the world who demand the same colours in the alternate uniform, negating the whole purpose of the alternate uniform anyway. If we clash with other teams that have red and blue, then obviously the sensible thing to do is have an alternate strip that's completely and utterly different. Our away game versus the Saints this year was a joke: we wore an 'away' jumper that accentuated the clash, rather than negating it. I'd be happy for the Dees to run out in green and white the three or four times a year we have to change. And if we make that choice and then stick with it, it'll come to take on its own kind of tradition. I kinda like the idea of having this conversation sometime in the 2050's: "Granpa, why do we wear green in our away jumper?" "Well, Timmy, there was an Irishman named Jim Stynes ..."

Outside of my immediate family, the Melbourne Football Club is the thing that I've loved the longest. Unless it ceases to exist (merger/folding/relocation/etc.), I'll still love it. At this point, it's not a choice any more.

Jetta's front-on tackle on Sandilands a couple of years ago remains etched in my memory. Also, I noted a couple of times this year he got his name into the mfc.com match write-ups for his hardness at the ball. I reckon he'd be the kind of bloke Neeld would love.

For years I had the same thing ... then New Orleans got Drew Brees and Manchester City got bought by a sheik. Things can change!

Jim Stynes' on-field journey was one of the most amazing stories our game has ever produced. It's the mark of the man that his football career ended up being pretty much the least amazing thing about him. He was a giant, and he'll be missed ... but never forgotten.