Little Goffy

Excellent! Paxman's poise improves the whole game.

In the spirit of looking for new and inspiring I'll set aside the likes of Petracca, Gawn and May and focus on players who can have a big difference between current and possible. Headlining that would be McDonald, Brayshaw, Harmes, Melksham and Lever, who have all already shown they can be much better than their recent form. Credit to Lever though for showing very good signs of working his way back to it. But the ones that would bring me real joy to see lift their game - Brayshaw - I believe that an in-form Brayshaw is an uncannily effective midfielder, especially when play is not quite at a stoppage but still in chaos. I'm convinced he has great, intuitive situational awareness once the ball is in hand but isn't so great at working into the correct positions. Put him in as a true center midfielder and let the play naturally come to and through him. Fritsch - The best of Fritsch is the best of medium marking forwards playing at the time and going back some years too. A dangerous forward in his own right who also makes the priceless contribution of wisdom in drawing defenders away from the other forwards. Pickett - I love the way he plays and the more impact he is having on a game the more fun everyone will be having. Weidemann - The forward line's beleaguered garrison. No wonder he looks so serious. The poor guy is weidely underrated and with a little help from Brown I'd be really hoping his effort will see more rewards. Langdon - Yep, he's been excellent. And there are not many things I like better in football than a player who succeeds with humility, hard work that is also smart use of that effort. Would only take a little slice extra to become a huge player, AA wingman and all that jazz.

Geelong... Ablett Gold Coast... Ablett. Aside from laughing at Geelong, it is a interesting looking at the groups of players in the discussion at the clubs that have had the really big success in the last couple of decades. Black over Voss, Akermanis, Lappin and Power was more than handy. Ablett, Bartel, Selwood, Ling, Enright, Corey. [censored] Mitchell, Lewis, Hodge and Crawford, with Burgoyne replacing Crawford later. Pendlebury, Swan, Sidebottom and Beams at their peak get an honorable mention as a midfield upon which a premiership was built. An exception to that pattern might be Richmond, where much of their success has been built on really good talls at both ends, multiple hard working quality mids and just a couple of truly champion-level mids. Interesting also that Port didn't have the superstar midfield, but they did have a lot of players who might not be listed mids but would roll through and contribute in very difficult to match ways, headlines by Pickett and Wanganeen. In fact, if you look at Port's premiership team, there's not that many names you think 'oh, wow' about. Coach must have been really good at getting the most of the good-not-brilliant players. Also, it seems like four is the magic number for gun midfielders.

For the record, it is absolutely possible to train 'tough'. Hell, you can train people to be savage killers if you're willing to go that way. More practically, it is absolutely possible to train people to keep their eyes on the ball when anticipating a collision, to initiate/respond to heavy body contact in a marking contest, or to hit a pack at speed in pursuit of a mark. These things are decisions and habits that can be trained and provide something very close to 'toughness' even if you don't have Jonathan Brown's look like he's about to solo wrestle and haul out the mad ram that got into the home paddock again.

Well, that seems like a good idea. The story is very light for details of course but the more mentoring involvement there is, the better.

I'm a little slow sometimes. I don't think I quite understand your point. Could you explain it for me?

He looks very, very skinny and young. But if that's the main reason he's been overlooked it makes sense to see what happens to his body with even a couple of months in the system. There's little point leaving a spot vacant for a year.

MFC predictions Ladder position at the end of the H&A season: 3rd Position at the end of the season (e.g. stage of finals): Premiers B&F top 5 (1 point for correct inclusion, 1 point for correct place): 1. May 2. Petracca 3. Gawn 4. B Brown 5. Oliver Leading goalkicker: B Brown Most marks: Fritsch Best first year player: Bailey Laurie Most improved player: Lever (I'd say Weideman but, just quietly, his contribution is severely underrated at present) All Australian 40-man squad selections (1 point each): May, Petracca, Gawn, B Brown, Oliver, Lever, Fritsch All Australian final 22 selections (1 point each): May, Petracca, Gawn, Oliver, Fritsch Big Ben Brown will kick his biggest goal tally against: Essendon Biggest winning margin (exact guess is 5 points, within 1 point margin is 4 points etc): 127 Biggest MFC story of the year (5 points): Revealed: Goodwin on own initiative took major pay cut to ensure club could recruit Yze and Williams. Other MFC predictions (1 point each): 1. 'Good' in first half of season, to become 'terrifying' in second half of season. 2. Demons finally claim the AFLW premiership. 3. Melbourne becomes the first team in 20 years to kick 400+ goals in a Home and Away season. 4. Steven May Norm Smith medal. AFL predictions Premier: Melbourne Demons Runner-up: West Coast Eagles Wooden spoon: Kangaroos Biggest improver: Melbourne, obviously, but also Gold Coast. Biggest slider: Lions (but still considered a non-disastrous hiccup - this is more a case of very few real 'sliders' in 2021) Brownlow medal: Nathan Fyfe Coleman medal: Josh Kennedy (in one last hurrah before he is stopped by May in the Grand Final) Rising star: Matt Rowell. I mean, seriously, smoky for a Brownlow/Rising Star double.

I think Adonski got it except he missed Lily Mithen at the very far left of the image.

I just realised why I feel a little uncomfortable about his face when I see this picture. It's because Laurie's head looks like someone use one of those face mash-up apps on... Freaking me out a little.

Before y'all go shoot'n me down, gotta get yo teach on about where I been at all day. I gots all them words all up in my face and it ain't pretty. By which I mean to say - good pick-up. I've been reading and taking notes on a pile of writing today that is all in 'American' so it must have infected me. It's important that we all monitor these things and purge them with bursts of hideous stereotype before the letter 'u' becomes critically endangered.

This is a genuine request for other people's opinions and insight. Hopefully it doesn't crash the internet! It seems to me that most areas of our list are now quite well stocked for now and for succession. We have many tall forwards, many small forwards, a variety of the running half-back types, many inside mids, a gun mature ruck and a young ruck, one outstanding winger and an list of options to experiment with for another winger or winger/forward. The part I'm not convinced is settled is in defense. Specifically, in the near future or in the event of any injury - one tall defender and one small defender. I can see that there are options including Tomlinson, Smith, Hore, and Petty for the tall, but I'm unclear which can fit as a genuine key defender rather than as a looser (not loser) role. Petty certainly has fans on here and I'd be keen to hear from them. Nobody can walk up and replace the deep character of Neville Jetta but someone sooner or later will need to take over his more material role on field. The list of options seems even shorter (figuratively and literally) for this one, despite the gap appearing more imminent. Like Petty, Lockhart has a few people solidly in his corner. After that it seems we have to talk about either attempting to develop some of our younger midfielders to be disciplined, or making the role a top priority of the 2021 draft. So, what are people's thoughts on the need for and best means of filling the future gorilla-keeper and ferret-herder roles?

Went from 'good' to 'art'. The entire arc of Davey's long kicks became so perfect that sometimes I just watched the ball fly and lost track of the game for a moment. Of course, Fraser Rosman has almost nothing in common with Aaron Davey except his species, y chromosome and red-and-blue jumper. But that's enough for me to be sure he'll come along nicely.

I'm not writing St Kilda off - I guess my point is that when we talk about St Kilda's 'youth' we're talking about players from 21 to 25. Many are guys who have been around as long as Petracca or Salem. In the last three years of drafts they have just one AFL-level young player to show for it, the excellent Max King. If they are going to make any major improvements next year it will have to come from mature players rediscovering their best form. That's entirely possible and a Crouch & Hanneberry revival could lift their midfield to outstanding. St Kilda are a mature team. Not overly old, but loaded with established players and with a pretty thin tail when it comes to new blood coming through. For two teams that finished one win apart, and counting the trade-ins as a balance, I'd much much rather be in our position.

Football is a funny thing. One win in the weirdest season ever is the difference. I rate Ratten highly and am impressed by St Kilda's bold recruiting in the last couple of years that has kept them out of what could have been a very deep hole. But... they have a bit of an issue in their lack of young talent which actually provides a really important contrast to illustrate how the Demons are placed. We've assembled an outstanding group of young players and promising kids who we can really expect to see improvement from. It would have been better to do that with one more win in 2020 as well, and one more straight kick in total for the season in 2017, so that we had three seasons of finals instead of one under our belt, but we are actually very well placed for the near future in ways that St Kilda very much are not.

They weren't kidding when they said Rosman had 'athletic attributes'. He looks three pre-seasons ahead of time. Looking back over some of the other recent galleries I'm going to abandon my skepticism about Jackson's body transformation. Also, less decisively, but I'm got a hint of optimism now about McDonald getting back to his mobile self. Looks a bit lighter and leaner when he appears in some photos and ina couple of training videos. I hesitated for a moment on that call in one photo but then I realised he was next to Jake Lever.

No doubt premiership window is an annoying buzzword that has been given silly amounts of imagined meaning, but at least the actual summaries in the article are reasonable. A 'bell curve' analogy might be more useful given that the concept is very much about whether you've got the maturity and will be able to train that over coming years. If I recall, the use of 'premiership window' was originally all about needing to get a premiership before the stars you have get too old. My differences of opinions would be - Collingwood are just barely clinging on to relevance. They had eight years of continuous incremental decline after their premiership and then managed to suddenly throw themselves right back into contention, but now that pattern of decline is back. They have 13 kids under 21 and another fun Daicos on the way so I wouldn't be crying about the future is I were a Magpie, but at both ends of the ground their tall stocks are very limited and what they do have is at or around 30 years old. Fremantle I just don't believe in. The articles notes their defence, but the Demons only gave away 60 more points than them for the season even as our dysfunctional forward line score 200 more. That the article so specifically points to Fyfe and Walters actually points to a key problem - they have very little mature, quality leadership to look to. Their mid-age mid-sized core won't make anyone think of premiership threat, though they are all perfectly reasonably players and appropriate trade-ins; Conca, Wilson, Aish, Acres. It's okay, the top-pick kids are coming along nicely, but it is hard to see how Freo can get everything together in the short term. Geelong. I'm in the 'too many old bodies' school of 2020 grand final fade-out explanations. Now they are a year older and then some, with Cameron, Higgins and Smith coming in. Jeremy Cameron, at 27 and 8 months, if the seventeenth oldest player on their list. Sixteen of those seventeen are in the best 22, as well. Maybe they've got one more shot at it, but at some point they are going to absolutely implode, and I already think the sheer volume of old thighs has been decisive. Other than that, I'd just slightly downgrade the Saints and slightly upgrade the Demons.

Thinking on that, I'd speculate that the austerity situation plus the soft cap on football department spending might actually see some veteran players retained as additional off-field support and de facto mini-coaches as well as providing some depth coverage. For example, it's easy to see how that could have influenced the decision to retain Jones for the extra year. New kids are cheap on the salary cap but expensive in footy dept spending.

Good. Will give our millstone midfield a proper chance to grind others into dust, and the necessary rotations will mean that our glut of midfielders will get proper minutes in their best positions.

I can see the good sense in getting a closer look at players by inviting them to train with us prior to the supplementary selection, but it is quite a surprise to see Kaine Baldwin still available when he was talked about as being well inside the first round before the injuries. Can anyone clarify how pss selections are made? It's not a draft order thing but a direct agreement with the player, yes?

I'm really surprised by Willingham, McCallum and Hampton being unique surnames. Adem and Reece I would have expected to see more of, too. Aliir and Daw won't be unique for long, they are the cultural equivalents of Smith and Jones and the community is taking to AFL like Islanders to Rugby or Irish to sunburn.

Four cups, not one, not two, not three, FOUR cups.

Eccles, Mermaid, Cletus, Badoinkadoink,

Righto, I'll have a go since there are prizes on offer - Caleb Poulter, Jack Carroll, Kaine Baldwin, pass

Further reflection; two things that make me confident that Williams is an ideal choice. 1. At Port he was able to keep the team united and motivated and playing league-best football for consecutive seasons despite heartbreaking finals experiences. That stability of effort is priceless and something crucially missing from our culture. 2. At about the time Richmond recruited him I was looking over their B&F lists to confirm a hunch that they had barely had any movement or new arrivals in the better half of their list for some five years or more. Shortly after his arrival there was a surge of contribution from previously minor young players who stepped up to consistent quality AFL standard and made appearances in the club's top ten. Lifting that 'pawns' group is another crucial part that we are missing from our list and culture. Somewhere along the way the MFC leaders have set about rationally assessing what we need and then determining how to get it. People decry the Lever trade but if nothing else it marks a turning point where the club began to pursue greatness instead of minimizing risk.