Little Goffy

Thanks for clarifying that. At first it seemed like you just started a whole new thread to vent some pessimism.

Fitness mattered a lot in the Thursday night game. Taking only the first half of each quarter; Carlton 7 goals, Richmond 4 Goals. Taking only the second half of each quarter; Carlton 2 goals, Richmond 11 goals. (Carlton also had a goal so close to the middle of a quarter I didn't want to split it) That's pretty decisive. I'll choose to take a little optimism out of it because as a team even if our overall skill level isn't so grand, it doesn't seem to get much worse with fatigue!

Pretty sure I've seen the same headline but with 'Can Gawn save the Demons?" in a previous year. Petracca may well finish the season recognised as the best player in the AFL, which is nice. But we all know that real success will come from getting consistent quality out of the players who can be very good, never mind any superstars. We have a long list of the type and they could just about all be having much more impact with just a few tweaks and improvements. Just doing a quick head-count to consider if we could, in theory, have a best 22 100% filled with at least well-above-average players if they each manage just that little extra step. Already there; Petracca, Oliver, Gawn, May, Langdon. There if refreshed, returned to their better form, or otherwise tidied up a bit; Viney, Lever, Brayshaw, Harmes, Salem, Brown Young players I'd feel confident about; Jackson, Rivers, Pickett. So that's 14 players I feel confident will be 'good' at the Demons in 2021. Somehow we have to find eight more (plus injury cover) out of that big bundle of mature but not presently reliable players and the dozen still relatively unknown younger players. For some reason I think it'll happen. There's space for multiple solid role-players to do their thing without needing to be spectacular. THAT is the benefit of having a couple of guns who can dominate.

Oscar at Carlton has 'cult hero' written all over him. What a birthday. Not only do you come out and play some of the best football of your life on debut for a new club after being delisted, but you also get your own trivia night question forever by being the first ever 'medical sub'. Hugely happy for him. I don't think it was a mistake to delist him and it's not like he is going to kick a goal every quarter for the rest of his career, but he never deserved the whinging hate that was aimed at him and I'm really glad he's made a good start with the nuffies off his back.

OSCAR! Woo! Superstar!

Premier: Melbourne Demons Runner-up: Brisbane Lions Wooden spoon: Kangaroos Moving up: Melbourne, obviously, but also Footscray Set to fall: Cooooollllingsplat. Brownlow Medal: Christian Petracca Coleman Medal: Charlie Cameron NAB AFL Rising Star: Matt Rowell Best new Demon: Ben Brown, or one of Jake Bailey or Laurie Bowey, y'know) Demon All Australian: Gawn, Petracca, Oliver, May, Fritsch, Langdon, Demon B&F: May, Oliver, Petracca, Fritsch, Gawn, Langdon, Pickett, Viney, Salem, Lever Big call: Big call after tipping us for the premiership? Hmm... Gawn, Petracca and Oliver will be considered the top three players in the game by the end of the year. Legends will be sung. At some point Charlie Cameron will kick 30 goals in a run of six or seven games. Edit: Adding one more thought - there will be a lot of teams with very few wins and very poor percentage this year. Think 2016; seven teams with 15+ wins, a couple of stragglers 3 games behind that competing for the also-ran status in finals, then nothing worth remembering Ladder prediction: 1. Brisbane 2. West Coast 3. Richmond 4. Melbourne 5. Geelong 6. Footscray 7. Port Adelaide 8. St Kilda or Carlton or loose change

I guess the Supercoach administrators forgot to make their brown paper bag delivery to HQ.

There's a solid set of Rising Stars who go on to be just 'good' players rather than best of their draft. Just since Palmer you can point to Stephenson, Mills, Hogan, McGrath, Taylor, O'Meara, Talia. I doubt their clubs are regretting drafting them (not even Melbourne, who ended up with May despite everything) and I doubt Fremantle will regret having Serong. It's a shame Kysaiah played over the ten games in his first season and isn't eligible, or he could have mimicked his uncle and grabbed the award in his second year. Of course, ol' uncy Byron turned out OK despite only getting two disposals in his first season. With the condition Pickett seems to be in, there's a real chance he'll be twice the player he was in 2020. Being involved in that many more contests, being that little bit less fatigued when taking shots, being that little bit harder and heavier when tackling. We all know he's got the alertness and initiative to be great.

The clue is "66 = zero", so why not any other number as well? Also, if 66 = zero then clearly zero must equal sixty-six. Ergo, We are in the same position 'time since premiership' as Richmond. Seems about right. Both clubs are "?" seasons from their next premiership.

And then the plumber said, "I see the water isn't running. Don't need to know anything more here."

And then the doctor said, 'Is the patient alive or dead?" and no further details were required.

One of them, for sure. But definitely not Daniel.

Pickett is looking downright sinewy in some of those. Not often sinews are a testament to good character but clearly we've got a kid who takes his training seriously here.

At least we know he's going to go home unhappy while we are laughing.

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!