Little Goffy

As requested, I trawled through the options and have found perhaps the most "23rd-playerish" of all possible 23rd players.

We all remember him affectionately but nobody is quite sure why - the great Kepler Bradley.

Meanwhile, poor @Timothy Reddan-A'Blew has drawn a neat circle on the target but not the dot in the middle. Pretty sure the main purpose of these quizzes is a personally vendetta against his sanity.

An early and probably useless clue is that there may be a bit of MFCSS history here. Indeed, my research for the team will throw a little light on the conjecture once the quiz is done.

It is a new year with new beginnings for all. The perfect time to rake over old coals and wonder what could have been? No! Although many fit the category, this is not in fact a team of players that Melbourne coulda shoulda woulda had!

It isn’t even a feline-themed team, despite the heavy supply of Cats, Tigers, Lions and presumably ‘Blues’ is referring to the adorable floofy domestic breed.

A top of the table team for sure, with epic father-sons and some top pick guns, an all-time Rookie list special and also… um… Kurt Tippett? Oh well, you can’t win on every line.

So, what does this high quality team from across the 21st century have in common?

Answers in private messages only, of course.

Winners get free insurance coverage for houses being trained down throughout January.

On 31/12/2025 at 12:34, picket fence said:

Dear Sir,

I am writing in response to your request for additional information in

Block 3 of the accident report form. I put 'poor planning' as the cause of

my accident. You asked for a fuller explanation and I trust the following

details will be sufficient.

I am a bricklayer by trade. On the day of the accident, I was working alone

on the roof of a new six-story building. When I completed my work, I found

that I had some bricks left over which, when weighed later were found to be

slightly in excess of 500lbs.

Rather than carry the bricks down by hand, I decided to lower them in a

barrel by using a pulley, which was attached to the side of the building on

the sixth floor.

Securing the rope at ground I went up to the roof, swung the barrel out and

loaded the bricks into it. Then I went down and untied the rope, holding it

tightly to ensure a slow descent of the bricks. You will note in Block 11

of the accident report form that I weigh 135lbs. Due to my surprise at

being jerked off the ground so suddenly, I lost my presence of mind and

forgot to let go of the rope. Needless to say, I proceeded at a rapid rate

up the side of the building.

In the vicinity of the third floor, I met the barrel, which was now

proceeding downward at an equally impressive speed. This explained the

fractured skull, minor abrasions and the broken collar bone, as listed in

section 3 of the accident report form. Slowed only slightly, I continued my

rapid ascent, not stopping until the fingers of my right hand were two

knuckles deep into the pulley.

Fortunately by this time I had regained my presence of mind and was able to

hold tightly to the rope, in spite of beginning to experience pain.

At approximately the same time, however, the barrel of bricks hit the

ground and the bottom fell out of the barrel.

Now devoid of the weight of the bricks, that barrel weighed approximately

50 lbs. I refer you again to my weight.

As you can imagine, I began a rapid descent, down the side of the

building.In the vicinity of the third floor, I met the barrel coming up.

This accounts for the two fractured ankles, broken tooth and several

lacerations of my legs and lower body.

Here my luck began to change slightly. The encounter with the barrel seemed

to slow me enough to lessen my injuries when I fell into the pile of bricks

and fortunately only three vertebrae were cracked.

I am sorry to report, however, as I lay there on the pile of bricks,in

pain, unable to move, I again lost my composure and presence of mind and

let go of the rope and I lay there watching the empty barrel begin its

journey back down onto me. This explains the two broken legs.

I hope this answers your inquiry.

Yours sincerely

AMBIDEXTROUS WORKER NON ALIGNED

Somewhere out there in the world is a Swedish short film reenacting this joke. Perfectly delivered in deadpan style. Has the guy covered in bandages and splints filling out the form on a typewriter, one-finger typing, mixed with very brief flashback fragments of the events as described.

Saw it back in the days when SBS was in the sweet spot of not so much soccer and being more a genuine source of global and obscure stories, but before it became a campaign content broadcaster.

Gee, there's a lot to choose from. It would be a bit much against the MFCSS requirements to imagine they all go well.

I'll set aside the kids, and think of 'break out season' in terms of a player who had plateaued a bit early in their career and then pushed to a new level later.

Sparrow. A big watch simply to see how he emerges after being sausage-filler behind the Petracca-Oliver midfield steaks.

Chandler. His best runs of form actually put him into the very elite for the complex role of pressure forward and half-forward with two-way responsibility. All he would need to do is sustain it for a season.

Petty. Will surely now be trusted with responsibility in the role he is best suited for. Will finish the year as our primary key defender.

Turner. Part of what I just said about Chandler, part of what I just said about Petty. Will be our No.2 defender by the end of the season while also giving a bit of swing forward once in a while for fun. Potentially more creative and damaging than Petty.

Rivers. I'm less sure about Rivers than some are. I feel like he had opportunity but didn't take it. Well, now he has responsibility, more than just opportunity, so a very interesting one to watch. One of those players who seemed to just a tiny bit short of doing good things, over and over, and just a half second faster initiative and a half step less speed lost to fatigue there will be a totally disproportionate effect on his contribution. (Think Luke Jackson going from negative headlines to full hype again over at Freo - he didn't suddenly go from bad to good, but he improved the fundamentals just enough that his double-grab getting spoiled became a mark, and so on)

Van Rooyen. 40 goals for the season, 2 marks inside 50 and 1.5 contested marks per game. That's all it takes for him to become an absolute core player, and it is only an incremental improvement - similar to what I'm saying about Rivers. Sustain just that level for the future and he finishes his career as the curse-breaking legend of the Demon tall forwards.

14 hours ago, picket fence said:

Gees mate not denigrating fence posters or shearers but maybe he might surprise with life after footy. Apparently family are very good folk, just a pity things didn't work out with his former partner Sophie who was a really good influence. Um yeah I hope he finds fullfilment after footy!

Definitely not denigrating fence posters or shearers! My point is simply that Clayton will be craving the physical demands and there aren't many jobs which put in a more relentless days labour than those. They also have the rhythm of always having the next task in front of you and you keep going until you are done.

In contrast, imagine him in a corporate cubicle farm!

2 hours ago, picket fence said:

In my wildest dreams I could NEVER see Clarry shirking hard work! That in essence wasn't what drove him out. It was Kings wishy washy spin that would see him potentially play a different position and spend time at Casey! I SAY IT AGAIN CLARRY AT CASEY??? BEGGARS BELIEF!

I'll call 'fair play' on your first point there. Once he got into it Clayton lived for the routine of physical training. Catching the 'workout bug' in his late teens was what turned him into one of the all-time single-season draft bolters. I think we would all agree it was only when injury denied him that routine that he really started to struggle.

Post retirement from football he's going to need to be a fence poster or shearer just to keep his mind occupied!

This topic got my attention enough to go digging around, but I've mostly come up with just trivia and curiosities.

Assoc Football has an enormous number of sprint actions, above 50 per game per player. Compared to 10-20 as the best estimate I found for AFL. On the other hand, there's a difference in how sustained those sprints might be. An AFL player's sprints could be over 50m, while that would just look silly on a soccer pitch.

AFL players cover similar or slightly more total distance in a ~120 minute game compared to the 90 minutes of soccer.

The ball is out of play for 1/3rd of the time in an AFL game, and almost half the time in soccer. Resetting field position is also much more demanding in AFL on account of double the total playing field size. (See the new ruck rule, for example)

NFL timekeeping is weird and the rapid set-play and reset structure of the game means almost every play is done at full freshness. Hence the frankly obese but immensely powerful scrimmage line players. There have been rare but genuine NFL games with less than one minute of total time with the ball actually in play!

To round it off, I'll finish with some data I just stumbled across, shared a few years ago by Topend sports.

World Cup players 2018

https://www.topendsports.com/sport/soccer/anthropometry-worldcup2018.htm

AFL Players 2012-2018 https://www.topendsports.com/sport/afl/anthropometry-position.htm

There's some interesting thoughts to brew there, for sure.

As I understand it, the round ball game never really stops. Between Premier, Champions, National representation and a few gap fillers, a top level footballer is more often stuck to choose between competing fixtures than to have time off.

Fortunately for them, soccer has a more narrow range of physical demands, and each individual game isn't anywhere near as taxing as top level Australian football.

17 minutes ago, Demonstone said:

Yes, @Ghostwriter has reaped the rewards for her perseverance and becomes one of the Famous Five.

Matthew 20:16 - "So the last will be first ..."

The solution to the teaser is that the last letter of each player's first name is also the first letter of their surname.

Tom (Thomas) Sims was a naughty ruse. I don't know if it made any difference to people's thinking or not.

The baton has now been passed to @Little Goffy who has his next effort ready to go (or so I am assured).

Oooh, a naughty ruse indeed you cad!

In about four minutes my wife and baby son will come out the arrivals gate after six weeks away, so there will be some delay while airport staff figure out how to restore me from a pile of quivering jelly on the floor.

Did I ever mention I love youse guys? Cos I love youse guys. Even Cranky and Pickett are all right, y'know.

As a recovered public servant, I'm a big fan of jokes slipped under the wire so stuffy serious people don't notice it.

At the micro scale, a boss of mine in the public-facing private sector always included explicit stipulations about quality and quantity of muffins to be provided at all client-called progress meetings.

Slightly more forcefully, my dad infamously added the staff who had worked copious unpaid overtime to the 'sponsors' page for a certain peak body's annual report, right next to Linfox and Visy et al.

But if you ever want to witness an exercise in deadpan humour carried out in full, there is the 1999

Report to the Minister for Defence on the Collins Class Submarine and related matters

The utlimate shaggy dog story. Just from recall;

• the propeller blades were misaligned causing cavitation which in turn caused the defects in the propeller manufacturing to be exposed as sudden potentially catastrophic cracking

• the propeller shafts were not designed to match the size and RPM of the propellers, so wore out quickly and needed frequent in-port maintenance, dramatically limiting missions range and capabilities.

• the periscopes were not hydrodynamic and would begin vibrating loudly and potentially breaking if the submarine moved too much while periscopes were in operation

• the periscope mirrors weren't properly shielded, such that at certain times of day around dawn and dusk the periscope operator could suddenly be hit by a concentrated glare that would leave them blinded for minutes.

• the hull shape wasn't correctly modelled and had to be modified after construction to prevent the submarine generating a bubble-wake

• the hull paint/coating wasn't on spec for acoustic dampening

• the engines were prone to collecting backwash water, radically reducing performance and causing constant loud banging, causing corrosion of parts, emitting fumes, and vibrations damaging parts such as gear trains and pistons.

• the contracts defining who was responsible for what were hopelessly lacking in details, leading to months of lost time and legal wrangling over almost every issue which came up. Some contractors were released from their contractual quality standards because it was all too much trouble to administer

• the various offices involved and the key people in the project (Navy/Defence Materiel-DSTO/Australian Submarine Corporation) all developed such an intense hatred and 'trench warfare' culture towards each other that they actively avoided calls and the meetings required to make progress

• At no time was there enough crew to field any more than three of the six subs, and typically only two

• but that wasn't particularly relevant because it was unusual for more than half the fleet to be available for service anyway, or even for sea trials in preparation for service, given the continuous maintenance burden

• the performance limitations and genuine risks of operation at high loads meant that crew training and development was far below the rated expectations for service

• the computer systems (both software, and, by the time the software was updated, the hardware) which were initially installed were out of date by the time they arrived. The networking was so unreliable that crew were writing down the details from the screen in front of them to pass to the person at the next screen - for example, target information from sonar was no longer accurate by the time the weapons officer's screen refreshed.

Now, I did say this was a shaggy dog story. So the final punchline is, of course, that after more than a decade of hilarious shemozzle...

(put on your best Norm MacDonald voice)

"The Collins class submarines are well designed for Australia's special requirements and have generally been soundly built."

You said reply only in PMs, but didn't say the had to be Australian PMs. So here is my guess;

England has just dropped off the chase for Essendon's claim to worst failure streak in world sport.

This is good news because it makes Essendon look even sillier.

3 minutes ago, Ghostwriter said:

My little grandy found these pom-poms at mine and immediately fell in love with them, to the point where she refused to let go of them. She even napped while holding them. This started off as good news and it still is, to me. To her parents, not so much. 🤭

Until this moment I had no idea you could pluck stawberries out of the face of toddlers.

(I didn't sleep well, okay?)

2 hours ago, Ghostwriter said:

Supermarkets are the worst. It’s like folks are shopping to restock their underground bunkers for the apocalypse. One day without access to shops turns people into wild beasts.

Awful lot of bunkers out there heavily stocked with prawns. Not an ideal long-term companion to wait out the nuclear winter, I'd say.

As for the good news, since there's already been some toddler joy! My rapidly-less-tiny about-to-be-6-month-old is about to get back from visiting the in-laws overseas. He's been utterly loved by his little cousins and has survived the attacks of swarms of asian aunties.

Fun fact - all babies get nicknames in Vietnam, often well before birth, and they are often used in priority over actual names, especially among family. So when Sam is in a group with his little cousins, they are 'Pumpkin', 'Peppermint leaf', and 'Moon' - all one-syllable words in Vietnamese so it sounds cuter. I don't even know their formal names!

On 21/12/2025 at 17:56, Bring-Back-Powell said:

He was essentially the best player at the club in the last month of 2017 as we unsuccessfully tried to break our 10 year finals drought. Had a couple of 25 possession 2 goal Brownlow vote games during that span.

A well liked versatile Dee after a slow start with the club in 2013.

Stats from his consecutive Brownlow vote earning games late in 2017. He would have had the three votes in both games except two were deducted against Brisbane for taking running bounces while nominally being a tall forward / ruckman, which as we all know is against the law and spirit of football.

Melbourne defeats St Kilda Round 21

Melbourne defeats Brisbane Round 22

Played >90% game time while being backup ruck for Gawn who was on the field for ~85%.

Take notes, Max Heath, it can be done!

1 hour ago, John Demonic said:

I can see West Coast / North Melbourne becoming the next West Coast / North Melbourne for the next 5 years

At which point North starts looking more like the next Fitzroy. Wouldn't ever wish it on them, but there's a little hint of background anxiety about it.

They are currently on the worst 6-season form run of any club in the AFL era.

O'Sullivan their only rising star nomination in 25, and since/including 2020 there's been Wardlaw, McKercher, Archer, Ford (since delisted), Sheezel, Jason Horne-Francis (traded), and Curtis Taylor (delisted).

Just 4 rising star nominees on their list from the six years they have been on the bottom of the ladder.

A lot hangs on Wardlaw coming back and the midfield reaching critical mass. If it gets moving, that young midfield could be absolutely game-breaking.

But West Coast, honestly, they are welcome to sit right where they are. I don't get enough to look closer!

Ned Guy is being recruited as a big-picture level strategist, and has a track record of making tough decisions and being hated for it. Part of him must be thrilled that the Demon's have already made the toughest of tough decisions.

Early in his time as list manager he was under huge pressure to keep the list topped up by retaining and regaining 'beloved' Collingwood players, such as the ultimately disastrous trade for Beams (for pick 17 and the next year's 18) and the excessive long-term contract for Grundy - both of which we're resoundingly popular decisions made under board pressure at the time.

Later, he was deeply hated for making the salary-cap-management decisions to move on Treloar, Stephenson and Tom Phillips. I think hindsight favours him there.

From an article at the time of his departure from the Pies;

Highly regarded and well-liked internally, especially by those with an understanding of the dire mess Collingwood was in with its salary cap, externally Guy has worn blame for the ugly post season.

Quoting Graham Wright - "Recalibrating our player payments structure was a tough and necessary job. Our future payments profile is healthier in large part to him. In years to come his achievements will become clearer."

15 minutes ago, DubDee said:

I think it’s clear he will Synergise backwards overflow and integrate interfacing functions.

Or maybe take 2 years to write a mission statement

Sounds a lot like the tasks my baby Sam is working on.

The 'integrating interfacing functions' part is great fun, but I could do with a little less backwards overflow, synergised or not.

An AI hallucination of this appointment briefly appeared at the European Marine Energy Centre website.

Basically, AI assembled;

'Melbourne decision'

'Former boss'

'ending time at AFL HQ'

And concluded Melbourne was ending Ned Guy's time as the boss of AFL HQ.

It is hilarious in its way, but if there are any C-level executives on here, please remember to expunge AI from your organisation before it gets someone killed.

If you watched those highlights you might be tricked into thinking that all we had as a tall, strong marking and accurate set shot forward with the situational awareness to also create opportunities in general play and who can quickly and accurately snap goals from anywhere up to 55m out.

Which is selling him a bit short, really.

He's so smart in general play between the arcs - has potential for Brayshaw level game sense.

Probably his best single attribute is being able to reliably send a very long kick forward with purpose instead of just banging it mindlessly.

Just watched an ecological sciences video about a 'dead' forest which had been abandoned as a forestry zone but never actually given any work to restore a functioning ecosystem, so it was just a mass of the monoculture harvest trees left to go feral, blocking all light to the understory and stifling new growth. There was no birdlife, no small animals or even bugs, no mushrooms, and it was consuming groundwater to the extent of diminishing streams and agricultural water lower in the catchment.

A key part of the restoration strategy was to cut down some of the most established trees which were dominating the ecosystem without contributing to it, so that a more complex and resilient network could take hold.

The transformation happened surprisingly quickly. So, cheer up, Ox, our situation has solid metaphors.

I really like that Cameron Pedersen has earned such enduring respect. It is as if some instinct is telling us all that 'Everything this person has, he earned.' A feeling that he took nothing away from anyone else, either.

1 hour ago, Hellfire Dub said:

It might be the best and funniest Kris Kindle present I've ever received. My Hawks colleague trolled me with a 40cm bobble head of 2021 Norm Smith medalist Petracca #5.

It's still too soon.

Bastad colleague and Bastad traitor.

Apparently it was reduced from $100 to $10. At $15 dollars postage it cost more to ship than to purchase; plus a packet of crisps.

'Cost more in postage than the actual product', sounds more like the Oliver trade.

I've never heard his name before.

Quintessential COO on that count!

2 hours ago, Demonland said:

Last training session of the year. Farewell 2025. Bring on 2026.

Well golly gosh darn it. And also [censored] [censored] [censored].

I arrive in Melbourne Friday morning and was kind of hoping.

Are you sure they can't throw in an extra session for me?