Little Goffy

Laurie, Bowey and Rosman are still unknown quantities and we've had a problem from a list planning perspective for quite some time - lots of our young guys on the fringe have been delayed and disrupted by injury such that we can't get a clear picture of what they can be. It is possible we already have what we need on our list: A determined and smart small defender with respectable kicking seems a high priority. And as much as our half-forward hunting pack is fun, we do need a replacement for what 'Good Melksham' gave us for a while or we simply won't get enough of that time in forward half turned into actual goals.

You'd hope for both Salem and Viney in, which makes a real difference to our whole operations. I'm a Fritsch fan but that's too many stinkers recently to ignore. If he's not going to do the work required of a medium forward then I'd rather have a genuine tall forward in for him instead. Melksham was good for a quarter but barely sighted once the sun went down. Sadly, Jetta didn't do enough to be at AFL level. Out: Fritsch, Melksham, Jetta, In: Brown, Viney, Salem. That's a big difference.

My wife yelled and banged tables then went to a dark room for a few minutes. Then came out, checked the fixture on her phone and has marked Round 22, August 14th for revenge.

Very good interview. Really thoughtful reflections on football life. Nibbler certainly doesn't speak like a fringe player, that is for sure! Nice to get a bit of a plug in for CoinJar at the end as well.

Funny thing about Essendon - their existence is meaningless. They've had between 10-12 wins eleven times since their last premiership. Basically half of the seasons since then. Barely scraped into finals a few times but haven't won one since 2004 and have never looked like doing anything serious in September. There is no point to Essendon. They're a tepid bath of a football club. At least at Melbourne you're always going to feel something.

Oddly enough, many of the big Soccer clubs have their own crypto-currency. And to echo what others have said; crypto-currencies get people excited because once in a while the random token you bought a $100 worth of will jump by 200% and you can go tell everyone how smart and rich you are. The rest of the time it is just tick... tick... tick... down. Exciting success, boring failure. Always the key to marketing success. I'd urge people to only buy if there is a particular practical reason such as building up your polonium stash through the Darkweb or a relaxing bit of saturday evening money laundering. Although, I'd be tempted to buy a few DemonDollars for a laugh. A bit of GawnGold. PetraccaBucks? ClaytonCoin? PickettTicketts? MarketLeverage?

Adding a separate thought about Korda's confidence level; "I can tell you behind the scenes membership is over 80,000," and 24,000 of them turned up for the game against the Suns. In fact, Collingwood haven't cracked 30,000 for a home game against an interstate team this season. Unlike, say, minnow club Melbourne.

Coincidentally, I recently finished a full read of The Pentagon Papers and 'A coup would not be good for the club' was one of the more frequent quotes. Basically the story goes, 'Don't plot a coup, we need stability and have to hope this current lot get their act together,' to 'Don't plot a coup, we've been backing this lot through all kinds of corruption and atrocity so it would make us look idiotic to flip now'. Until, finally, 'Okay, there's been a coup and this new lot are just as bad, but don't plot a coup, we need stability so we have to hope this current lot get their act together.' Continue the melody with minor variations until fall of Saigon.

When (if) we do lose a game: If we lose to a bottom team - Drinking bathwater. If we lose to a top team - Not ready for the pressure of big games. If we lose to a middle team - Never as good as our wins made us look and really the middle is where we belong. Similar commentary will align with it being a big loss, small loss or middle loss. The only realistic option is to not lose again. Ever.

Yikes. Just took a glance at the North/Hawks game in time to see the end-to-end Hawthorn goal about 25 minutes into the second quarter. There were three separate half-effort tackles by North players and a couple of defensive efforts that barely meant the Hawthorn player had to change direction a little. Wish North had played like that against us. Meanwhile, everyone remember that it is okay to barrack for Collingwood today and not just because Sydney losing opens up the gap a little more. From this point every Collingwood win just makes it more difficult for them to go through the renewal process they so desperately need. A bit more complacency just adds more time to the rebuild.

I think what you're looking for is 'Back in Black - Instrumental'. It's all over Youtube. You're other issues I can't help with and kind of wish you'd stop posting a new thread for every one! Maybe a dedicated musings thread you can add to each week? Have you been introduced the the No t$ No b$ thread yet? Anything goes there!

Top of the ladder joy: as long as you keep winning at least one team falls further behind you in every other game! Example: If Port beat the Dogs, we go two games clear on top of the ladder. But if the Dogs beat Port we go THREE games clear for securing a top-2 spot. When you're winning, everything is a win. I love that all the club and players have to think about is winning and the rest will take care of itself.

Sydney, but it is interesting to notice that in my mind when I'm on Demonland I am back in Melbourne. Mentally, for me, this conversation is taking place in Melbourne. Talk about virtual communities - there's a Ph.D in this. Cairns is strictly metaphorical. As in, "I hope this club never makes a trip like that again."

Yeah, let's just call it an encouraging remission with 'monitor closely for symptoms' instructions from the doctor. I am heartened by the fact that even a pretty ordinary list would be in contention every game if playing with the determination and system we have right now. As it is, sometimes our effort level will be enough to cover a poor skills day and sometimes our talent will be able to cover a poor effort day. It is still a surprise to be 8-0 - no club would or should ever expect to never slip up - but we are doing what it takes to put an ordinary team into finals and a good team into top 4.

The difference between Melbourne and Carlton is about the same as the distance from here to Cairns. (Cranking out a mighty metaphor there, and not entirely flippantly)

But, but, but, I thought Hawthorn were... A big club. With hardened, loyal fans who weren't at all soft. Financially well organised. Not inflated by favouritsm at all. Not dependent on pokies revenue. And also, of course, on Mother's Day - The family club.

Looking forward to some Weed and Weit match ups just to trip the tongues of the commentary team. This may be one of those blessing in disguise moments where we get to try out the Brown+McDonald+Weideman forward line without too much angst as we are bringing in a tall to replace a tall. Can also see Gawn getting back to defence more than going forward with that set-up, which will be a nice comfort to young Petty. As for Jackson's return in a few weeks, I don't have any problem with him being the world's tallest utility but there's not that many players 'demanding to be dropped' just now. On the other hand, he puts selection pressure on just about anyone anywhere on the ground. We'll just have to see how it all goes, but I feel uncomfortably comfortable.

Patrick Dangerfield has stepped up to defend AFL players against little old ladies who get too much shopping to carry just so that they can post on social media when an AFL player comes to help them.

Curiously, Carlton have had very accurate opponents this season, with a scoreline against of 110.87. Even with the bizarrely accurate run against us early in the season we're still at 72.60. Those figures also highlight the key difference in the teams - we are the stingiest team in the competition right now while Carlton are prone to leaking buckets of goals. Carlton have only had two games this season (rounds 3 and 4 against Freo and the Suns) where they didn't give away 15 goals. For us, the highest scores against us are identical; 11.7 73 by the Kangaroos and St Kilda. Not sure where that leaves us for positional changes. Do we go with the three genuine talls to expose Plowman and crack the Blues reliance on Weitering or is it more important to keep runners available to stifle their crucial Saad/Docherty territory gainers? I reckon there's a case for Harmes to put a close tag on Walsh, who can be brilliant but struggled once tagged in the second half last week. There's not much point tagging Cripps because he is either untaggable when on or already tagged in his own head, poor bstrd.

I dislike branding people losers, especially the ones who did keep their heads up and keep working when times were awful. It is a huge test of character to keeping giving your best effort when you know the only thing at stake is your self-respect. There's a slightly different kind of 'loser', though - the one that is only interested in winning and tunes out of anything else. Any Carlton supporter will tell you that the trouble at their club is above all a case of players only wanting to do the 'fun' stuff. Carlton can score prolifically and attack very well but when things go against them far too many see it as someone else's job to tighten up. "I'm a great attacker / I'm a great rebounder, defensive efforts are for Weitering to do." It was also pointed out to me that Carlton have given away five or six goal runs in every single game this season. Of course, against Melbourne, that'll be when they decide to draw a line and become determined to work both ways. Many people don't understand MFCSS. They think it is just a lack of faith and trust in the club. You have to think big picture - MFCSS is a lack of faith and trust in the entire universe. An upcoming lowly opponent will sack their coach and have a stirring rebound game against us. That mid-ranked team will get their best two players back and finally have their preferred structures in place when they play us in round 18 after everyone else has had a soft go at them. We'll be the only club in fifteen years that misses out on a priority pick by one excess win, but also be the only club that gets grotesquely shamed for 'tanking' even when we were clearly genuinely awful. MFCSS dictates that Teague has been told to get the players fired up or get himself fired. He is almost certainly, right now, having coffee and smashed avocado with Patrick Cripps and saying just the right things to restore his confidence and focus. We're going to need to bring our best game this week, do not doubt it.

With surprising regularity the people who almost pathologically seek to undermine Goodwin's standing make points so spurious as to diminish their own standing. Three of five 'big changes' are Hunt, ANB and Harmes? And having two tall forwards plus Fritsch is a major re-think? And playing Jones and Jetta for a few games is a new declaration of loyalty to the old guard? Flibbadbliddabbada. Pfft pfft.

To be fair, the Kangaroos don't have many top end draft picks coming through... oh, wait... that's because so far they've only completed one truly bad season. Remember that in 9 years of horror featuring six years with 5 wins or less, Melbourne's grand total of priority picks was 1 (Watts) and 17 (Blease). As a timeline reference point, North just hit 2008.

Why not also give one to Hawthorn and Collingwood?

If we were currently in the pack on four or five wins I'd be mildly annoyed that we play the Dogs twice and have the Cats a second time. But we are three games clear inside the top four and even a 50/50 win rate for the rest of the season will see us settle on 15 wins. That means that the occasional loss when it happens is something we can take 'learnings' from without tearing our hair out and we can keep our focus on improvement and working out our best combinations instead of fretting over every game. In 8 games so far we've played three opponents currently in the eight as well as 9th, 10th and 11th who would each be in the 8 if they had beaten us, so it hasn't been a particularly soft draw and we've met every test against opponents with a wide variety of tactics. I came into this season anticipating a 'pretty good' start, then a bit of adjustment, followed by a really potent late season. I'm still very comfortable with that prediction. Truth is, at this stage only our defense and our general pressure are areas that have been truly outstanding - clearly those are the two best things to be outstanding in - but we haven't dominated the clearances the way we would like to and probably ought to, and we haven't had the whole forward line work well at the same time. Eight wins in and yet not a single 10-goal margin our way tells the story - we are getting the job done. It sounds silly to say it about an undefeated team, but I'd argue it is much more likely that we will lift further before the end of the year, rather than slip too badly.

Probably hasn't had a Brownlow vote in two weeks. Dump from leadership group.