Little Goffy

Fun fact - Melbourne could make no changes to its team and just play the exact players we already have out there for another two years and it would still be a younger team than Collingwood fielded tonight. Oddly enough their only player with less than 50 games experience, Ned Long, is already 22.

Something horrible about watching people have a genuine mental implosion. Carlton players became so frightened that it kicked them out of even the most basic routines. You can see the cogs jam in their head as they make the decision 'I'm convinced that what I normally do isn't going to work, so I will do something else even though it never works at all in any circumstance'. 45 minutes of panic. They only calmed down when there was nothing left to lose. Voss will be gone first. There's nothing wrong at Carlton which can't be traced to the coaching, and Voss doesn't have any proverbial credits in the bank. Poachable, based on 'what you see is what you get' rather than any fantasies. Walsh seems to be stagnating at Carlton and is a restricted free agent for 2026. Currently still only 24yr 9 months. On his current form he is 'just another midfielder', but even as that he could be a useful winger/midfield utility. A return to his best form would be something extra. Kemp was shopped around by Carlton last season (which I hear is the ultimate sin), is a tick under 24yrs, a complex but interesting prospect who had a slow start to his career due to injury, and is out of contract this season. As a tallish (192cm) swingman he would likely have a role. No need to fantasise about him suddenly becoming much better, just filling a role.

Because the AFL is a just and fair system, Houston leaving the ground to deliver a forceful elbow to the back of a head to an unsuspecting opponent coming in the other direction will get at least as many weeks as Pickett's clumsy clip as Moore was sliding into him, yeah. Yeah? Yep. Mm-hmm.

I can only read that as a reference to explosive gastro. #whateverittakes #canyousmellwhatwerecooking Oh, my, I was just going to use those two but wow there are lot of gastro-appropriate club slogans over the seasons; #YESS #ridethenextwave #gamefaceonalways #getyourhaloon #feelthedifference #thefirehasstarted

Veteran presence, as they say. It would be a credit to his humility if he were willing to see out the contract as a kind of playing coach at Casey and back-up hard body at senior level. It's hard to find a pattern on Viney's form over his career because so often he's played injured or heavily niggled, and carried an excess burden of hits to protect young stars. Personally I'm getting angrier and angrier at the football world and beginning to think it is time we started 'asserting ourselves physically' on field and calling out the bs off the field. Losing Brayshaw was a really damaging blow to the club, but I feel like amicably tolerating Maynard's existence in the following KB game was the moment our club really stumbled. What do you stand for if you'll just 'aww shucks oh well' at something like that. Anyway... Viney. Not shy of the physical stuff and an occasional mid-season rest might do him good.

In 2023 Oliver led the competition for intercept possessions by non-defenders. Aside from immediate contests and clearance work, he played a subtle team-first game which covered space in the corridor much like Brayshaw was used to deny options on the wings. Oliver can play for the team and do it well. When he's fit enough.

AI: Pregnant women can eat portugese tarts quite safely. Also AI: pregnant women should absolutely avoid portugese tarts because an ingredient is raw egg. Y'see, it depends on how you ask and what the AI picks at semi-random to use. If it stumbles across and prioritises advice from, say, the UK NHA, then it will use that to confirm Portugese tarts are fine. If it hits a recipe first, then it will see 'fresh eggs' and say, oh, no no no, none for you. Nevermind that the recipe includes, you know, cooking the eggs. This is also why AI can credit the B-17 bomber with 100% of submarine sinkings by air power in the European theatre of WW2; B-17s were a part of the combined operations group which hunted submarines, and the AI is only looking for the B-17s and doesn't place them in context (in this case, context means the presence of Catalinas or Lancasters or Wellingtons etc). Combine fact [B-17s exist in air group X] with fact [number of submarines sunk by air group X] and you get 'AI fact' [B-17s number of submarines sunk]. It is really important to not use AI for pretty much anything. The fact that you can't turn off the Google results 'AI summary' is a disaster that has probably already killed people, nevermind ruining school projects or causing confusion on a footy forum. Pardon the digression. My goat was got.

We were all wondering who would be the comparatively low-profile expendable player who would cop the disproportionate ban to affirm that the AFL 'meant it all along' with the rule they weren't enforcing. Mansell should sue. Straight up. Get at 'em.

This post makes me want the old 'thinking face' reaction option back. I'd be slightly generous to him and say his disposal was 'unreliable', but even then, unreliable is not good. It is a little bit like there are two possible points of failure in each disposal - sometimes it is a poorly executed kick, sometimes it is a poor decision for the kick, and sometimes it comes together in a single crucial moment that costs you a semi-final (notwithstanding the team effort to kick 2.6 in the final quarter). It does make me lean a little more in favour of Viney going up forward. Let him be the hunter-killer in the chaos, where even a brain fart can still get surprising results with much less risk.

For a sense of community?

One of the great services Demonland provides is that I can get an idea of what the clickbait is without actually clicking the bait.

Need to raise an issue. The sequence of reaction emojis has changed. I almost gave ghostwriter a vomit and Werridee anything other than a vomit. I don't know who of them would have been more confused and troubled by this, but there needs to be some kind of AI-driven warning system to prevent further accidents. Also, just a suggestion, but can we have an automatic switch-off for the auto-censor system one word before an after any mention of Maynard? I feel like authenticity is being stifled. More seriously, I've had a few opportunities (NSW Transport is in league with social media) to wander around on Demonland on my mobile and it really is a very good setup now. Not saying it was poor before, but it is noticably good now. In fact, the other day I was visiting a couple of Carlton forums just to see how much they were going into meltdown about Voss relative to our centripetal volcano about Goodwin, and, wow, Demonland really is a whole other world. I didn't realise we had it so good. Kudos to the team! I promise if I ever again have any money, I'll sling some towards the site admin.

I can see this being a serious issue when it comes time to climb back up the ladder. (I'll see myself out)

Every time I see Gawn getting another junk whack in the back of the head or behind play. By all the holy powers of football, I want Dangerfield to try his usual elbow slide to the throat of one of our kids and then be absolutely dumped on his perfumed [censored] by Viney. I want to hear the quote; "The AFL has chosen not to protect us, so we will do it for each other."

The pile-on is horrifying. Reminds me of my readings on ant social organisation. One ant finds a carcass, comes back to the nest, gives excited signals. Bunch of other ants go out to the indicated site. Come back with excited signals, in an accelerating recruitment cycle. The difference is that when eusocial insects do this, there is an equilibrium reached where ants coming back with disappointed signals (they weren't able to access the food source because there were too many other ants already on it) will discourage more ants from going to that site. It's a clever process, really, that creates a highly efficient balance. But when your target is an abstraction, there is not limit to the surface area to chew on. It's like a lynching where every single person in the mob is able to land punches at the same time.

I'd take rebuilding advice from my long-suffering Blues-loving brother before I took advice from anyone Hawk-loving. Hawks had 11 wins in 2019, so a very tight analogy to our 2024. In fact, they also went out of finals in strait set sin 2018 and 2016, with a 10-win 2017 in between. If you're going to tell me that the magic blueprint for success is spending the next four seasons lurking around the bottom four and having our next serious run at being a contender be 2031, I'm politely telling you to check your compass hasn't been magnetized. Also, they're Hawthorn, so they can get taxidermed. Their drafting has been good, to be sure. But in fairness the one thing I will definitely credit Hawthorn for is a really good, really consistent record of picking out players they can trade for who will fill set roles very well. Their recruiting from trade/free agency is as strong as Jason Taylor's draft record. Our trading hasn't really caught a bubble in a few years now. Anyway, I still feel there's something a little bit fragile about the Hawks. Weird to say, given that they'll very likely be 8-0 or 7-1 by the time we face them.

Well, this friday should be an interesting addition.

Meh. Every club has its Karen's, yknow. Can you imagine the moment any club tells them to pull their heads in because the only effect they're having is to make literally everything worse? Or started cancelling memberships of people who abuse players and coaches. I'm picturing something like a relationship breakup where the spurned partner stalks their ex and constantly harasses them to get that feeling of power over them and to 'prove' that they are the one in control. In the end, it's that basic lack of maturity, "I am having bad feelings, so I will have a tantrum and hurt people until someone else makes the bad feelings go away".

Four top-15 picks in two seasons. Only taking fringe and opportunistic mature players on very low money in trades, and filling out our list with speculative VFL tone-setters and role players who take no salary cap space. Relying on kids as our forward targets as we get games into them. And people think we aren't already in a rebuild? I'm sure the club's goal was to stay continuously competitive and have the veterans and new wave overlap enough to create a super-peak capable of grabbing another premiership, but right now, with several veterans below their par, some visible low morale, and an unfortunate string of quality outs among the kids, it isn't looking like it at all. Best case scenario, all the problem points are corrected over the course of the season and we come storming home into finals. Worst case scenario, we are absolutely pooooooooped. Like, adding an 8th form to the Birstol stool chart, pooped.

That is an absolutely on-point rant from Snapper. Sums up the entire rot at Carlton for a decade. As for Hawthorn fans, pretty sure lube and tissues come with the membership pack. For anyone watching Hawks-Giants, is there a massive wind at UTAS tonight or was it just a really weird first half?

Yeah, he hasn't had much time to show it yet but at this point Lindsay is looking like absolute gold. Initiative, awareness, skill, speed, calmness, and not at all soft either considering he's still lightly built. Could still be a good decision to get him regardless of what this year's first ends up being. At this stage we can just all breathe a sigh of relief that we didn't saddle ourselves with 27yr old Houston and his contract for a top pick!

I can only hope it'll be a rebuild like the ones Brisbane and Hawthorn had last season. We actually have the cattle, but something has clearly been taken from our spirit. Hard to find once it is lost, but once found again, rebounds hard.

Bunch of mature players need to be left alone with their thoughts for the week to decide if they're serious or not and to remember who they are. Far, far below the skill and energy they are well known to be capable of. I'd be interested to know, in the wild politics of late last season, who got what they wanted which has now created this level of confusion and ambivalence on the field?

As they say, good delivery is all about knowing when to push forward with the momentum and knowing when to take the pressure off. Hopefully the labour doesn't result in the nightmare rip from hole to hole like today's game has. In a related note, the strange creature living in my wife's belly got more kicks during this game than most of the Demons did. Contrast couldn't be sharper because little one really lifted after half time.