Little Goffy

Hey now, Zak Butters kicked a goal in 2025, and I bet it was a really good one, too. But seriously, just adding some noise to your point - there's a completely even spread of goalkicking from the collection of the top midfielders. It point to a role and a style, not to quality. 0.3 to 0.4 - Bailey Smith, Andrew Brayshaw, Finn Callaghan, Zach Merrett, 0.5 to 0.6 - Noah Anderson, Tom Green, Patrick Cripps, 0.7 - Nick Daicos, Nasiah Wanganeen-Milera, Hugh McLuggage Above that it is who? Chad Warner, Marcus Bontempelli, Isaac Heeney and Kysaiah Pickett? For all that, Clary only just scraped into the top 100 for score involvements, and that does point to a problem when it is a prime mover in your midfield.

By the end of 2022 he had two Coaches Awards, three All-Australian nods, four Melbourne B&Fs and at 150 games was on target to hold the all time records for contested possessions, clearances, handballs and a few other sundry stats. He had 110 Brownlow votes before his 150th game. In his 150th game he clocked 3 brownlow votes. In his 151st another 2 votes. Since then, in total for two and a half seasons, just six more. Not sure there has even been a more dramatic 'two halves' of a career than what seems to be forming for Oliver. But he will have fun and be well used at GWS, given they had a key list need for clearance support for Green, particularly with both Coniglio and Kelly out with injury again.

Our 21st century has been marked by a great many players who were very good for a long time but only touched real greatness for relatively short periods. Picking some out from the Daniher era is easy - Robertson, Johnstone, Yze, White, Green, Bruce, McDonald, Woewodin and Davey might even have played a game together as a group except for those last two not quite overlapping. All of them could be in All-Australian contention in their better seasons, but none of them were in that range consistently. Now of course we have had two really dominant players move on from the club and we'll be left to wonder if they will really be 'Demons' of the 21st century. Do people still think of Callan Ward as a Bulldog? Gawn is the best ruck of the modern era, and Pickett is now at a level where he will be in the conversation as best 'small forward plus midfielder' every season. Then it is up to the kids. Will 2028 be the dynasty-starting premiership?

Clearly he saw this thread and was inspired.

2026 will be a huge year for a number of our young-but-not-junior players. New coach to impress and big shoes begging to be filled after some prominent but leadership-deficit departures. Pickett, Rivers, Chandler, Sparrow, Turner and Petty all have a chance to make it a career defining year. Bowey also if he can make best use of his recovery time and then come back strong. You could contrast it with McDonald and Green, both of whom rose to the occasion as captains but both of whom could have benefited from not being thrown in the deep end so late in their career. At the very least as a club we have a short window now to identify and prepare leaders to avoid the Grimes and Trengove scenario, both of whom had the character to be leaders but could have benefited from not being thrown in the sewerage end so early in their career. Who will be our 2028 premiership captain?

At the very least that is top shelf trolling. But on the other hand, if he joined the Pies he'd start next season as their best player under 23. (His birthday is just after the start of the season so he scrapes in, while Daicos is a January baby.) If he can survive on their list for a couple of seasons he will become a core midfielder even if he doesn't really improve much.

The key question is still unanswered; Will Tomato be ripe by the end of summer? Any updates since last training?

To be fair, a lot of that is players recovering from old injuries or conservatively managing 'hamstring awareness' in Gawn's case. Bowey is a terrible blow but we've all seen what he can do when coming into the team late in the season. Any mention of concussion, especially for a young player, makes my skin crawl but on the other hand just a few seasons ago a knock like that would barely have been mentioned and he'd be back at it with only marginal precaution. It's a bit like [censored] statistics going up dramatically when they actually get reported properly - there wasn't an increase, it is just that we are noticing them now and responding. Touch wood and wash your mouth out, but we shouldn't be crying about our injury list at this stage. I'll be watching intently to be reassured that the new regime embraces the long-term view of injury management. Not just conservative timelines - I'll echo other people's comments on the training thread in saying I'd be more than happy to see players doing their own 'in-season pre-season' to build up fitness before being returned to the side from long layoffs.

Hmm, I wonder how our team has changed for 2026 since the disappointment of 2025. I think we've hugely boosted our leadership depth in direct contrast to a couple of stars who were more 'consumers' than 'producers' in that area. The thing I'll be particularly interested in for '26 is how a bunch of currently mid-level players respond to being out of the shadows. Consider; Midfield Sparrow and Rivers Forward line Van Rooyen and Chandler Defence Petty and Turner. We may even see a little refreshment from the likes of Salem, Fritsch, Langdon and Lever who are all just young enough to believe that if they help push the rejuvenation through then they can still have one more run at the top. I put the case to you - that is nine players (not including Turner) we could say were meaningfully short of their best form in 2025. Seven of those were premiership Demons, no less. Absolutely beyond doubt we can attribute our string of close losses and bed-wetting quarters to the lack of assurance which should have been provided by these experienced players. It's a bigger variable for 2026 than even the progress of the kids.

I miss Melbourne so much sometimes. I'm seriously considering pushing my end of year plans forward a week just to add this to the schedule. Picturing a Demonstone quiz live. A Ghosty hug booth. Picket Fence giving 'summer slithera safety' training while wearing a guernsey with Clarrie's number and name still on it. And all the Demonland mods getting soused on fine wine and absolutely mouthing off with the details of every scandal ever because they can't be sued for ranting in a park. And if you like, there'd even been a big area where people eat their snags and speculate merrily about whatever comes up. And any time there's a lull, the Ashes will be there, doing it's sacred duty.

It's all a bit silly. Campbell, McAdam, Johnson, Henderson all drop out of the numbers without affecting our starting team. But pick out best 4 veterans and toss them out, we are completely knotted. Do that with Collingwood and ... as I noted the other day, they have more people in their top-10 best and fairest aged 33 and over than 23 and under. That's a struggle. On the other hand, with Brisbane if you tighten it to best 22 and they still go alright, with Ashcroft, Ashcroft, Marhsall, Morris, Fletcher, Wilmot and Lohman all 22 and under. Thanks to an epic run of father-sons Brisbane were able to get the proverbial sit and push up another level. Their Ashcroft bounty was a bit like the timely injection of Selwood or Rioli, or indeed our Jackson-Pickett-Rivers draft which lifted us. Brisbane also provide the highlight of how silly an age profile is for predicting the future; if you can bring in a steady stream of good draftees and elite 26 year old players and leaders from other clubs, who cares?

I'm picturing Steven King and Jason Taylor doing a promo where Steven says what set he wants and Taylor figures out which pieces of Lego are need to make it and calls them out individually. "Pick one. White brick, six dimples."

Yeah, nah. There's nothing to it but a list of every gripe and negative media spot from roughly 2017-2025, bookended by a bit of 'oooh here's a self-help book for sports people' and an astute comment from Chris Fagan about the importance of preventing a sense of entitlement creeping in after a premiership. It's just breadcrumbing, and did not have any new information or insight. Exactly the same content in the same order could be rescripted to create a video of 'How Melbourne's dynasty was stolen by the white ants'. Neither, of course, would have much merit. I'm a bit annoyed about the 45 minutes of my life that consumed. (I run youtube at 1.25 speed, ever since I noticed it made Gerard Healy sound normalish)

If Ghosty forgives, then I can forgive. But he's still a Freo player with a bad haircut and funny ears and his eyes are too far apart. He looks like someone mis-clicked when they were creating a character in a computer game.

Oh, come on, everything means that in Scotland.

"I'm doing cricket a favour, mate."

'Known for his aggressive opening style'.

I relied on AFL Tables for the list of names as it is definitely the most complete publicly available list (After all it had our friend Mr Frood!) and is reasonably easy to navigate. To simplify the process I only used current players for the team and checked to be sure there was nobody alphabetically adjacent. Along the way I discovered some interesting trivia, as I was also considering making a team where every name could produce it's own starting 18. There are even a few names which could assemble a best 22 AND reserve 22. There are six 'Mc' prefix names which could form their own team - McCarthy, McDonald, McGrath, McKenzie, McLean, McMahon. But even so, just from current players there are at least three unique 'Mc's - Hugh McCluggage, Beau McCreery and Daniel McStay. Anyway, reviewing the clues... one moment... Has become more common in recent decades is simple enough in hindsight, an effect of waves of migration and the inexorable spread of the hyphenated name. What they have in common they also do not have in common and "The individually unique is the collectively unbiquitous!" A collection of Demon names, rated for surprise level. And then Geoff Frood. Mr Frood, aside from being a cool dude who knows where his towel is, has the kind of name that might make people thing 'wow, that's an unusual name. Slartibartfast never played Australian football at a senior level, unfortunately. Reacting to Demonstone's Demonwiki dive - Margitich no surprise... and each Jakovich not being eligible because of his brother was because there are no other Jakovichs. Jakoviches? Jakovichii? I would be eligible, and so is Andrew Gaff, who I don't like because if you touch a Brayshaw you are my enemy. Neitz and Ditterich I was just throwing in some more uniquely named players, while Green, Jones and McDonald were announced as 'especially not eligible' as they were in the 'can form a starting 18' list. Flower, like Jakovich, would have been eligible for the team if not for his brother Tom. That there's only two Flowers in the entire AFL list is quite mind boggling! I told demon-4-life "At this stage you are both the first and the last. Maybe you should be on the team?" as a reference to his uniqueness at the time. So, congratulations to @demon-4-life and @poita for being the only people who could see the trees for the forest! And thanks to Matthew Jefferson for being a red herring that would turn away another red herring. I'm still amazed. Jefferson is like the name AI would give to a generic anglo male character in a novel. Actually... hmm, at a staggering 50 players and first in alphabetical order for the 'can form their own team' list, AI would probably choose... (gasps)

Righto, here we go. It is shockingly simple. Every player in the team has a unique surname for an AFL player. Yep. Sorry.

I think we'll go all right in 2026. The whole new broom thing. The change of coach allowed a moment where we could remove two players who, for all their merits, weren't cogs in the machine that we were trying to transition to. It is interesting to think that part of King's appeal is that his overall plan for our way to play is very close to what Goodwin and the team were working towards already. King has just been able to come in without the baggage and with a mandate to make the brutal changes needed. Nil predictability for 2026 Demons. On the other hand, you have to laugh at Essendon's mark being 10 wins. "Just keep being what you have been for the last nine seasons, we all love it." Collingwood's mark being a grand final is presumably on the basis that it is 'win or bust' for them. When your best and fairest top 10 has more players over 33 than under 23... I'm stunned that anyone thinks merely 'avoiding the bottom 4' is good enough for North Melbourne. Alistair Clarkson has barely outperformed Mark Neeld despite coming in with as much authority and credibility as any coach could hope for, and a mandate to do whatever he felt necessary to turn things around. Maybe I just don't like Alistair Clarkson? Who knows.

We have another winner! @poita has threaded the needle and his prize will be to select any player named Brown to be returned from history and added to the Demons list as a Category Pi rookie. I'm going to put the answer out for everyone at 3 o'clock. The agony must end. @Timothy Reddan-A'Blew is going to absolutely spew because he did everything short of describe the answer without being able to grasp it.

Correct. Although Flower was surprisingly close - I believe, like Jakovich, he can blame his own brother for exclusion. At this stage you are both the first and the last. Maybe you should be on the team?

One last clue and I promise to put this to bed this afternoon if everyone else promises to record themselves going 'What? JEFFERSON?" Max Gawn is in the team and is the first eligible Demon Captain since David Neitz, and before that all the way back to Ditterich. On the other hand, Green, Jones and McDonald are each about as far from eligible as it is possible to be.

WE HAVE A WINNER! @demon-4-life comes through with the breakthrough. He also got there just moments before the Allen Jakovich clue was given so gets to feel extra smart. As reward he gets his choice of any past or present player named Smith to revive and add to the Demon's 2026 list.

Since Allen Jakovich came into the conversation, it could be a powerful clue to mention that Allen has yes another thing to blame on his brother - if not for Glen he would be on this team for sure! Of course, like most brotherly quarrels Glen might say the same thing right back at him.