Little Goffy

Jordan Lewis always struck me as a person of good character. Meanwhile, Sam Mitchell must be just about the only Hawthorn champion left who doesn't hate Hawthorn.

This game against St Kilda would have to be the first time this season we've gone in with a serious expectation that we'll win and win solidly. Here's hoping for setting a new tone the way our 2018 games at Alice Springs did. Actually, I'm just beginning to get a little bit of 2018 vibes from this season. A real 'He's beginning to believe' tension. Will also be fun to see if we can get a better crowd in Alice than the Saints got at Docklands this week.

Can there be such a thing as a 'life ride'? I would happily watch any club do better just to see Essendon suffer in the draft, but it is truly sweet when it is us. I guess you could call it a 'resurrection ride'.

Not sure there is a more enjoyable game of football than one where you feel like the better team right from the start, the opposition hangs in enough to keep it interesting, and then you just smash them completely to get a full scoreboard representation. There's also a lot to love about watching potent veterans regaining form, and a whole group of really young guys growing together.

Interesting football. Big packs forming, lots of close checking when the ball is in the same area for a moment, both sides sending heavy numbers to the ball, and then whoosh when it gets loose there is often a lot of space and distance covered. The only pack bigger than the ones on the ball is the one of people trying to chew Spargo's liver out.

Spent a chunk of the morning at my favourite local cafe - first time in weeks because I was working a contract with [censored] hours in an [censored] location. Coffee and food was as good as ever and I was slightly taken aback at how ridiculously attractive all the staff are. Is that subconsciously why it is my favourite cafe? Now hiding from in-laws by taking a 'nap', but they'll be gone by game time. All groceries have been restocked, the house is acceptably clean, the sun is out after a drenched week. All is well. By coincidence I also have Tim-Tams. Not actually my favourites but sometimes that is just what the mood calls for. May this game enter history as the Tim Tam binge game.

We really need all our defenders to take Hayden McLean aside today for a quiet chat about how great his opportunities would be at Melbourne, with clear puzzle holes of 'big lump of a forward' and 'supporting ruck' perfectly cut for him to fill. Mate, buddy, my friend, can you see, can you see how much we'd appreciate you? So much love, and the money, oh yes, you'll get a lot more than a usual role player because you'll be filing such an important role. You could be the new David Hale. Glory and respect awaits!

My favourite use of plinking was during the gulf war (1991 edition), by US Air Force pilots constantly referring to 'tank plinking' instead of tank busting, no matter how many times command insisted on busting for a more appropriately butch manly-man term. It also refers to flicking a bug away. I guess the closest thing to a definition would be 'effortless destruction'. I for one would love to see us plinking the Swans this afternoon.

Amazing innovations like this are the reasons executives at AFL House get the big bucks. Anyway, my agents in the MCG cleaning and maintenance teams have been instructed to block all the toilets as they finish their friday day shift, and then switch their phones off. By the end of the game, you wont be able to tell the crowd apart.

I can identify that painting! It's a thin Vermeer of competitiveness. It's a sign the umpires are asking for more Monet. The supporters are leaving by the Kahlo. No? Not convinced? Well, I can at least confirm that This Is Not A Magritte.

I suspect the poor guy is absolutely knackered 90% of the time. It is one thing to carry the club's inside game AND be the stalwart calming influence on fans and coteries, but making Cripps play in the ruck for extended periods actually sits for me as the marker that Voss should go. A coach who looks at their best player, who is best in the competition at their primary role, and says 'you can sort out my positional disorganisations' is inviting a lightning bolt. On a related note, it wasn't that long ago that the Cripps-Walsh pairing was looking like becoming the core of an unstoppable midfield. Cripps with the sheer volume of impact on contests and Walsh with the relentless running and effective attacking use. Now, Cripps is wearing down to dust and Walsh just isn't a top level player - just by the numbers he's a solid 20% off his younger form.

I spent all week in Sydney wearing my Demons scarf (fair enough in the weather, too) and got not one interaction for the trouble. Soulless zombie-with-makeup city. Anyway, I would guess their online forums have been especially busy this week, what with the solid 24hrs of the entire train network coming to a halt. I was coming home from Sydney's west in the mid-afternoon and gut instinct saved the day - after another 'waiting for information' announcement I got off and walked from Granville to Ashfield and (let me be clear I am not exaggerating) I probably covered that 16km trip faster than anyone else that day. Walking past Lidcombe I diverted through the station just to check on progress and FFS there was one station guard looking after at least 2,000 confused people with no official communications coming even about train replacement buses. He was actually getting ready to abandon his post at the station to go down to the street level because there was beginning to be a real sense of danger as footpath traffic was spilling onto main roads. So, fingers crossed, hopefully Sydney's game tomorrow will run as smooth as their train network.

There's a problem here which in the past I looked at in the context of hospital expenses and the 'baking in' of ridiculous price margins on things like latex gloves. Once the final retailer has added a crazy mark-up, their supplier starts pushing the wholesale price up to get their 'fair' share of the final price, and then that flows further back upstream to the input suppliers, manufacturers, and if the supply chain is linear enough it can even reach primary producer commodity prices. Trouble is, if then some good-hearted hospital-owning private equity firm (ha ha) decides they don't want to impose a 400% mark-up on latex gloves, they find that actually a large part of that mark-up is gone, absorbed by the wholesaler, supplier, input manufacturer, primary producer. To unpick that mark-up would require getting every step of the supply chain to simultaneously agree on a price cut. In the free-to-air TV and football context, every 'supplier', from coaches to players to managers to executives to pundits to marketing gits and even the beer and chicken strip providers, has had their price calculated based on the TV rights deals and the estimated ad revenues and the estimated revenue of memberships and gate/food takings. It is all pretty clearly a bubble. A major 'market correction' is going to have to happen eventually. Annoyingly, there's clearly a whole lot of useless dead weight (BT's salary, Michael Christian's oxygen, for example) which can be cut dramatically with almost zero effect on game itself, but the political state of Australian football is such that the least useful people are the same ones currently deciding who are the most 'valuable'. Basically we're looking at the primary thesis of Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Or Ibn Khaldun's analogy of the indolent self-consuming fourth generation of any dynasty. The fundamental meaning of decadent, when not referring to dark chocolate. Any minute now we'll see gothic mercenaries guarding our borders.

I have to reassure myself that this is a purely tactical or 'managed old bodies' change, because McDonald has been a proper stalwart this season even at the roughest times. While they have very little else in common, I think Bowey and McDonald share the all-important defender's traits of general calmness and an awareness of what they realistically can or can't do in any given situation. On the other hand, with Amartey and Francis out, a look at Sydney's marks inside 50 rankings has only resting rucks (McLean and Ladhams) as tall targets up there. If there ever was a week to rest McDonald, this would be it. The danger, of course, is that Sydney are forced to play smarter and pick out their smaller players and/or running and gun it across the 50m arc, which would suggest even having Lever come in is going too tall! Best case is that he and May can get right back to the smart positioning combos and push up aggressively enough to be taking intercepts halfway up the ground, as in days of yore. If that happens, we will crunch Sydney horribly, though I suspect no matter how much of a squeeze we can put on, there will always be dangerous moments where their ultra-attacking mids find their space.

Always disappointed when Geelong wins, BUT Melbourne are now outright best results over the last five games. On a five-game basis we are top of the ladder, and we just beat the reigning premiers! Can you caveat a woot woot?

2028 is a lock. The footy gods have been consulted by my personal alphitomancer. But do not fear, the other seasons are still opportunities.

Just for a laugh, and with all the caveats about who we've played recently... Right now, at 4w 1l from the last five games, we are the form team of the competition alongside only the Bulldogs.

We should continue to show our interest in him even if for no better reason than to force Geelong to provide him with a bigger asparagus farm. Midfield depth at genuine AFL level is always a good idea, though. A lot of our promising kids can play plenty of time across wings and flanks and if their sessions in the middle are against opponents tired from grinding out against the likes of Viney and Worpel, all the better. Remember that the Petracca-attack tactic of yesterday was all about letting him take additional breaks early in the game, either forward or on the bench, and then sending him in during the third to be both brilliant and fresh. All that grappling and bumping and getting from contest to contest is a heavy load for the chunkier bodies to carry, so sharing the burden there is just as important as having elite wing running like Langford. And then Windsor and XL will come through and knife you before you know they are there. #2028Premiers!

Somewhere in a storage box in the shed at my Mum's place is a guernsey signed by Max at a pre-season visit to the Demon shop, I think it was before he ever played a game, maybe just those first couple before injury. . Proof of timing would be the sponsor logos and the fact that it was also signed by Ricky Petterd. Oh, it might even be as No.37! Am I quietly sitting on an heirloom?

Similar quote from, of all places, The Pentagon Papers; "If we set out for victory then at least a negotiated peace might be reached. If we set out for negotiated peace we will surely lose everything".

Whatever comes from the rest of the season, you have to respect the club for holding their nerve. Demonstrated 'learnings' from last season, I guess!

Sydney are very up and down from game to game and quarter to quarter, and it depends very much on pressure applied not just to slow their top players but to stimulate the nerves and uncertainty that is creeping through the less celebrated players. Carlton would absolutely have had Sydney's measure if it was De Konig instead of Pittonet out there. And they got a bit unlucky, too. Of course, aside from the potent rucks our team is radically different to Carlton. The headline being the key forwards. All games, ultimately, are decided by the efforts of the lower-rated half of the side, but this game will be a particularly strong example of that. I'm sure Petracca has had a weight taken off his shoulders by the fact that the team is getting it done without requiring him to be his supernatural best. In contrast, Heeney and Warner are simply too important to Sydney - they bring half Sydney's clearances and a third of Sydney's goals. Unfortunately I don't think either would be a good target for Clayton the super-tagger!

Our tail is getting shorter. 'Lesser' players are making more effective contributions. Almost every players can feel respectable with their output today. But also importantly, almost every player is still capable of doing more. Just two wins out of the 8. That's all that is going on now.

6 Melksham - almost single-handedly made our forward line unpredictable 5 Gawn - was just a 'Gawn standard' game until he took three important marks in the last five minutes At this point you begin to realise how even the team performance was. 4 Rivers - Had a huge surge in the third quarter 3 Oliver - remembering how much I like to reward players pushing through bad form 2 Pickett - creative, creative, creative 1 Petracca - recognisably Petracca without a lot of huge moments. Big apologies to a few, especially Bowey and Langond, and Fritsch who did very well coming in a sub, and also Dan Turner who competed hard.

Grim. I won't pretend to have anything further to say, just want to acknowledge this is awful, and to give a nod to everyone who might be feeling that very worst of tensions.