Little Goffy

You know Hate Kore has the opposition spooked when there are four of them covering the space around her. Shame we didn't create an alternate option in the gaps that must have left. Still some problems in our forward line but the persistence in keeping it up there and not giving easy groud away means we're not being punished so much. As always with this team, I feel like we're just arms length from being all-conquering.

Those Irish have strange names. Sinead Goldrick-Only-Knows-One-Direction.

It could be a major pay-off for a couple of our team's features. May and Lever being the core of our defence means we have two excellent readers of the play who know when to use their running effectively and efficiently. Our game style under Goodwin has always accepted significant risk of the rebound coming too fast for mids to run back and clog up and for that reason we accept the need of keeping a couple of defenders closer to their 50. It means a lot less running up and down over and over. Our midfield is also, so very clearly, intended to be a deep top-quality rotation. 2020 was cruel to several of our mids who missed out on a lot of time in the middle because there simply wasn't the need to rotate the first choice group out so much. Where trying to find mixed and other roles for Harmes, Brayshaw, and even Jones was a bit of a liability in 2020, this year those additional capable mids will be even more valuable than pre-2020. Remembering that a big part of our successful run in 2018 was build on the fact that opposition midfields and their on-ball groups in particular simply could not keep up with our hammer and anvil squad in there. Also helps to have the game's fittest ruck out there. We won't see him to begin the season, but Ben Brown routinely played 95%+ game time and that is a product as much of his wisdom as his fitness. He knows when to go on a run and when to loiter for a contest. It is one of those small things that keeps my eyebrow slightly raised, flirting with the possibility this year could feature a major improvement from us.

Hardwick and Richmond with him was the No.1 target of AFL failure jokes by the end of 2016 and over the 2016-2017 preseason. Daniel Prestia was considered bizarrely delusional when he offered the prospect of success as his reason for preferring Richmond as his new club. Finished 13th, with 8 wins and a percentage of just 79, after making finals but never winning one for three years in a row. They were cooked. Just take a quick look at that season's afl.com predictions, as a light example. https://www.afl.com.au/news/75478/crystal-ball-aflcomaus-2017-season-predictions Richmond weren't even interesting. Who knows, maybe Goodwin's secret weapon is a willingness to collaborate with top quality assistants and the 'team of coaches' model will become the new norm. Certainly it will be better for all coachs' mental health.

But he added 'statement' after a period. Interjection.

No, No, Mr Spalding, it's, "May and Lever would be our best defenders in 20 years except that Goodwin ruined them so now we've wasted all those high draft picks and turned two great players into front running pea-hearts." Anyway, for the topic itself; I think May has managed to demonstrate he is legitimately elite and we have every reason to be confident he will keep it up. Sustain his current/recent level and he is indeed our best KPD this century. Lever still hasn't been able to put together his best aspects all at the same time in any kind of consistency for us, so I wouldn't go that far yet. It's definitely possible though. As others have noted, the other 'best key defender' options have been either more on the dependable worker end of things (which deserves full respect for sure) or only had shortish bursts of being really outstanding.

His mother died.

Clearly.

Calm ya farm.

A side note on the suggestions of Petracca; tragically we only have one of him, but so long as he is mixing between the guts and the forward line he is an opponent that the opposition has to think about in their plan for both, and in both areas he's a nightmare match up. Put him on the wing and even if he does it just as well as his current role, the damage won't be as great. We don't need one of the game's top players out there, just someone appropriate for the role.

It's a curiosity that in a team which is collectively supposed to be on the better end of fitness we have so few players with fitness and relentless mobility as their individual strength. It's particularly frustrating that the possible options who fit the role in some ways each have limitations (sustained speed, height, general form collapse) which rules them out. My read of the winger role is that you have to be at least reasonable in most areas to be effective. Even Langdon suffers disproportionately from his one weakness. Best solution I can think of without some player stepping up is to adapt our structure to keep one side of the ground as more open for Langdon to enjoy while we keep tge other side more congested. It means accepting that we give up some territory whenever opposition switches play but if we manage it consciously that's probably better than the frequent accidental giving up of territory just because our mids can't concentrate for 120mins!

Or is the point that has been easily missed that women should not have to tip their hat for permission to participate in community events according the whims of an ancient and venerable bastion of quite explicit chauvanism? Even symbolically. Anyway, the very easy adjustment has been made and you can take your little teacup and it's little storm and sip it till you burst.

The complete story as told in Mary Poppins; And they all lived happily ever after.

Personally, I'm not going to take australopithecus as a role model for social organisation in a post-industrial society. On the bright side, we're following the path biology was already moving us along; sexual dimorphism in humans and human ancestors has been erratic but clearly trending downwards over time. Another million years or so, the CWA will have no reason to reject Bitters except for Bitters being, you know, Bitters - and that's even before you factor things like tool use.

Lol. It's your text.

I found myself curious about where exactly on the spread of this discussion one finds people blowing this thing out of proportion, seeing gender conspiracies everywhere, contriving outrage, fantasizing about slippery slope catastrophes and just generally being bizarrely passive-aggressive?

Humming supercalafragiliciousexpialidocious as he went, I presume?

A system of redoubts perpendicular to the main defensive line, which; - force opposition advances into predictable paths ending in kill-boxes, and - provide an advanced rallying point for swift counter-offensives.

There's a subtle difference between a 'Coterie focused on x part of the community' and a supposedly 'all' event held at a place that specifically excludes women because they aren't considered proper parts of the business community. I wonder, how many women will be encouraged to contribute more to the club by holding events at places where they are not permitted to be members? "Not for a lack of invite," you say, but something tells me it's a little more complex than that, hey? But wait... women DO contribute a lot to the club. Both as cash donors and in all manner of active contribution. In fact, I could've sworn that grassroots football was heavily volunteer reliant and that the various controversies aroud volunteering (the insurance costs debacle and then of course covid restrictions) have caused terrible problems for many clubs from the most basic Auskick right through to the AFL levels. When you say 'probably 100 to 1' you're just making stuff up, right? Like, completely, wildly, no-connection-to-reality making stuff up? The actual event planning by the club is just a silly out of date blunder that is not that big a deal provided it is (so very easily) corrected. If anything, it is the sheer ease with which this could be updated that is the reason the error is annoying. But the confected outrage-outrage is not edifying. What's that? You found offended people on Twitter? Congratulations.

Disappointed that we didn't grab Baldwin. Could be a gun if he eats enough bananas in the preseason. Essendon seem to be going for a lot of high-risk high-reward types and plenty of low-possession high-impact types. Anyone else quietly hoping that they finally do the full house of cards collapse that has been waiting to happen for years? All they need now is for Hurley's illness to be found to be related to a certain program of medically unsound... hmm... out of respect to Demonland, I won't even use full sentences in case some clutz (looking at you, Jon Ralph, yeah, we all see you there.) is trawling supporter forums for rumours to present as scoops.

It's a bit awkward, there's only really meta-outrage so far.

Well, that's just a dopey little error. How could any executive or event manager of any public-facing organisation not think to check the venue's reputation. And it is the reputation that counts - while that club has made some 'hey we really like women, some of my best mistresses are women' efforts in recent years, it is symbolically not a good association to have. Unfortunately it also speaks as a little reminder of the snooty upper class conservative side of MFC's own heritage. I wonder how many of the board that sacked Norm Smith for not being a proper pukka sahib were members? It's not smart. It should be tidied up. But football clubs rely on personal connections and networking to drive donations and sponsors and extract favourtism from public offices. The Australian Club is a a club for rich [censored] to hang out at and decide what vanity project they want to use their power for... I mean, ah, discuss their philanthropic contribution to the community. "Sponsor m' footbool club, guv'nor?"

I added a thank you but now I've got My Sharona stuck in my head right before trying to go to sleep. To prevent this spreading any further I'm going to stay home, wear a mask, wear earmuffs, get vaccinated. Whatever it takes. Sharona 2021 would just be too much. (Parov Stelar youtube search saved the day) Also, many thanks for another quality report, Trooper Picket.

If he can hold onto his 'better habits' version and use space from stoppages a bit smarter to get more effective clearances, that puts him in the absolute top bracket of midfielders. Just need a bit more of what was in the 'video of the week' from the practice match! Either way, Oliver easily led the competition for clearances last year. He is surely in the same mix as Cripps, Macrae, Steele, Wines and Boak.

Some curiousities there. Three tip Petracca for the Brownlow while also tipping no Melbourne in finals. How often does the brownlow go to a player not in a top-8 team? Also interesting to see two tips of Goodwin out but even they can't agree on who replaces him. Oh, I know just the guy!