Little Goffy

Trawling through the coaches votes it is noticeable that Oliver was very frequently a 5+5 or 5+4 vote. Those very visibly and unanimous top games should have him up there. It's hard to see him winning though, simply because of the variety of other Demons who have had BOG performances, and the highly visibly games of the likes of Wines and Bont. Then you've got Jack Steele whose numbers are every bit as good and who has stood out by a mile at St Kilda. Their next best mid is well below him for stats and a whole other level below him for the mystical 'presence' and real impact on games. I'd argue that St Kilda would have been bottom-4 without him this year and there's about 8 games where he is probably BOG and another five where he was St Kilda's best. Anyway, on that basis I've got Steele stealing it (oh, no, the headlines, the headlines, no) 1. Steele 2. Macrae 3. Wines 4. Oliver 5. Bontempelli 6. Angus Brayshaw Melbourne will have the highest total as a club, cracking 80 and possibly even 90 votes total.

Wow, that's true. Which means Goodwin has never coached a game without Oliver in the team. Except that caretaker one at Essendon. But that, like all things Essendon, isn't worth remembering. Lol. Thanks to that game, Simon Goodwin has coached the equal-second-most finals wins of any Essendon coach since 1968. I digress. Congratulations to Clayton Oliver on not only winning the coaches award but frankly romping it in!

Geez the Carlton board and nonces. There's many paragraphs to be written about undermining, and overselling, and expectations management, and just pure arrogance. But let's break it down into just one simple statement of what Before Teague arrived Carlton had won FOUR of the previous FORTY games. They gave him two seasons.

Never a bad time to praise a genuinely good commentator. In a small way it is also a little bit of thrill to see 'one of ours' doing so well.

Doesn't seem any more insightful than if you got a few random people sitting around a table talking it out. The trouble is the weighting of the stats according to position - which is done on the basis of a few people sitting around a table talking it out! Nic Nat AND Tom Hickey over Gawn is a good example. There's no doubt that Naitanui and Hickey have both excelled at the ruck-specific duties with hitouts to advantage or clearances and so on, but Gawn has them both covered for other areas of performance including marks, contested marks, marks inside 50, intercept marks, intercepts total, meters gained, rebound 50s, and even the simple fact of being on the ground 90% of the time denying opposition long kicks or drawing an opposition defender. You wouldn't swap Gawn out for either of them. It'll probably also keep Luke Jackson out of some statistically determined teams, too. Assuming he carries on his current trajectory, he will (statistically) be an excellent ruck, excellent key forward and excellent half-forward/utility, but not be the 'best' in any specific one of those positions. Statistics are dumb because people are dumb and then they put things in numbers and forget that they were dumb back when they did it.

I had a little confused churn in my gut when they said we never give up. It's like finding out your secret high school crush has been asking people about you. It's great news but now you have the pressure of actually delivering!

Let's do a deal: If Melbourne win the premiership you have to get a tattoo of a cricket with Ben Brown's number 50 on it's back!

One of the reasons we are better now than in 2018 is because 2018 happened! Not to mention the 'learnings' of 2019 and 2020. A lot of gun young players (does Gawn still count as young?) saw that it wasn't going to be enough to just be a gun player if they wanted to pursue real glory. We've also got possibly a league-best coaching and fitness group right now. That might not hold together forever but with the player-leaders we've gathered and created since 2018 I have a confident hope that the raised expectations are sustainable.

Honestly, I think this is one we just have to accept isn't going to be ours. Whoever gets him will probably be happy enough but there's not much we can do to influence the situation. Whatever will be will be.

Oh to be minus 15 again. They were good times. This thread got me thinking and I've realised it is quite possible my grandad was at every Demon premiership except 1900. The age range matches up and I know he was a lunatic in general and a very serious Demon. He was actually committed to not dying until the Demons won another flag but the story goes he was satisfied that 2000 was an acceptably high note to go out on. EDIT: Further thought, I hope this thread needs to be wildly updated in a few weeks' time!

Not sure if it warrants it's own thread but Alex Neal-Bullen finished the season with the most tackles inside-50. Incredibly, Pickett missed out on being second by just a couple of tackles, finishing 3rd. Honorable mentions go to Viney, McDonald and Brown (Yep, Ben Brown) who all finished in the top 30 based on average per game.

I think it is hilarious that until this year Goodwin vs Scott was 0% wins in home and away and 100% wins in finals. Going back a bit further the Melbourne-Geelong history still holds. Round 21, 2006 - 94-94 Draw. Other results went our way in the final two rounds so it didn't decide whether we played finals, but missing the win did end Geelong's finals chances and the game itself was desperate and magnificent. Round 20, 2005 - 100-99 Win. Featuring a seven goal haul from Russell Robertson. This and the next two games were all must win to regain our place in finals after a roller-coaster season emotionally charged by the loss of Troy Broadbridge. Clearly emotionally exhausted, just three weeks later we we easily bundled out of the finals by none other than Geelong. Round 21, 2000 - 126-108 Win. At the 'G for a change, and in front of 75,000 fans, Melbourne directly seized a top 4 spot from Geelong which we held onto in the final round. In every season this century (including 2000) in which Melbourne have played finals, there has been a crucial late-season game against Geelong. Anyway, there's a pretty fair chance we will play them in finals; - meet in prelim if one side loses qual then wins their semi while the other side wins their qual. OR - both sides win their qual and prelim to get into the grand final. OH HELL IT IS FINALLY DAWNING ON ME THAT WE ARE PLAYING A QUALIFYING FINAL AGAINST BRISBANE THIS COMING WEEKEND AND NOTHING ELSE MATTERS.

Ranked 271st for score involvements but that one must count for extra.

The range of important stats which both May and Lever feature in prominently is all the more impressive because of how well they shared the burden of responsibility. On a less dramatic note, Lever was the player who spent the most time actually on the field in the 2021 home and away season with 22 games 99.14% time on ground. Confusing Archimedes no end, Lever has been an immovable object.

I had he pleasure of being at that game. Strange feeling on the way there as it was within a few hundred meters of the vaccination hub I'd been to twice in the previous month. Also a very strange atmosphere with the crowd restrictions leaving three quarters of the stadium empty while everyone was packed shoulder to shoulder in the remaining part. They also didn't lay on the facilities to appropriate scale; imagine there being queues to get in and an urgent struggle to get so much as a half time coffee at half time when the crowd is under 4000! But we all had a good yell, and very strangely there was no sense of doom when we were a bit flat in the first half and behind at half time. The nine goal to three second half was great fun. Possible omen coincidence - the last time Gawn had a shot after the siren our opponent the next week was Brisbane, who we defeated solidly.

When a game is so epic that even the losers aren't interested in sour grapes, that's good football.

I was hesitant to add that thought because it is all so complex, but then didn't want to add a further wall of text. I don't personally favour the polarising 'Australia is wildly racist all the time' angle but there's no doubt that close enough to every Aboriginal person in Australia goes through life just a few steps away from the next time some b43t4rd will openly insult them or, much worse, undermine them. But, yeah, not looking for a political angle here so much as just noting that for an Aboriginal kid there's... how to say it... always someone ready to tell you you don't belong.

It's a thing often noted with child prodigies that when they finally come up against something they can't do they can really struggle to focus on working through the problem systematically and they can get very emotional and angry about it. Similar stories are told of the 'big' teenagers who developed a little earlier and had a bit more bulk and power as key forwards, dominating their teenage opponents but then getting a serious shock when they find themselves always the smaller guy at AFL level. Just a hypothesis, but I think a lot of the tragic faliures of high draft picks (ours and in general) are partly that shock of suddenly finding you're only okay or, very commonly, hit the second-year blues where your game reaches a ceiling and opponents have worked you out. It takes a lot of personal courage to acknowledge you can't go on the same way that worked just fine for your first 18 years of life and to then change the way you go about things. Jackson is our only very high draft pick since back in 2015 (Oliver and Weideman) and 2014 (Petracca and Brayshaw). He seems to have come in with a terrific attitude while the three midfielders have all been on the proverbial personal journeys to get where they are now. Weideman is the odd one out and I think his story supports the theory - he always seems to be playing with enormous pressure that he's put on himself. He'll miss doing the 'outstanding' and then the confidence drops and he'll struggle to follow up with the grunt work that keeps you involved in games. I think it served us well to not have a couple of very early draft pick kids for a couple of years - not to mention that got us the very important characters of Lever and May. Meanwhile, every other new kid on our list has had to prove themselves -after- they were drafted and do so by following instruction and playing according to the team's needs. Sure, Pickett was a pretty early pick and had some pre-draft hype... but he is Aboriginal so, you know, has never really been allowed to feel completely secure.

One person decided that their symptoms didn't warrant a test and they would go visit their frail elderly mother in a nursing home anyway. After working to midnight last night my wife and several other staff are currently working for their full weekend to help radically reorganise a large aged care roster, identify who needs to be isolated and where needs to be deep cleaned. This process includes the awful aspect of needing to relocate people with varying levels of dementia. All this is being done in the full human condom PPE outfits. She'll be skipping lunch because it just isn't practical. That story just keeps repeating and repeating everywhere you look in any part of the care sectors. I'm running out of patience for the self-indulgent gits of Australia, whether it is the smug complacent establishment types like Kennett and Hazzard or the parolee social club out 'protesting' on the streets of Melbourne.

Oddly enough, in the drawn grand final and replay if you total the scores from both games, both Collingwood (25.26) and St Kilda (17.18) had more behinds than goals. That Collingwood would have won the drawn grand final easily if they had managed even a 50/50 rate supports the OPs observation. Hmm... now I'm looking at grand finals specifically and noticing that a lot of the losing teams had very poor accuracy on the day. In fact, it looks like about 90% of grand final losers had more behind that goals, and that includes some real stinkers. GRAND FINAL SCORING SINCE 1990 WINNERS: 511.421 (55%) LOSERS: 313.381 (45%)

I saw that Tom Browne segment at half time. / He was asked, "Do you think Adelaide have a case to host the grand final or would Perth still be in pole position despite the easier travel to Adelaide and the presence of Port as a contender?" I swear that man is some kind of malfunctioning android. There should be a twitter account dedicated to determining if the passes the Turing Test.

So many factors to consider. Was it for form or fitness reasons? Like for like replacement or bringing in a specific roleplayer? Are they still being retained as a depth option?

(imagine that I am saying this is a very quiet and hesitant tone) At the other end of the scale from Parker, King, Cerra and the like, poor ol' Paddy Dow has been omitted. Apparently because he still had a tiny fragment of confidence left and they needed to completely Carlton that out of him before the end of the season. Dow seems a tragic case of the high pick blues and for relatively little trade cost or salary, and still only 21 years old, I'd wonder if our club has the culture in place to turn him around. He doesn't have to be a champion but he's a bit different to our other midfielders and if he can be 'rebuilt' as a role player without the pressure he could be very good value. Just to make sure I wasn't being completely stupid, I watched a bunch of tapes of him and one thing I noticed is that he is reasonably good at getting a few steps away from the pack and then scooting a handball to a loose player (usually Cripps, oddly enough). I've commented elsewhere about how much it could add to the Petracca/Oliver weapon combo if they had other players taking a little more of the extraction task... so maybe Dow fits with what would be appropriate to grab for midfield depth.

Both Petracca and Oliver thrive when given even a couple more steps to work in. If Sparrow is doing okay at bashing and crashing and drawing attention to himself at the contest that means the ball is coming out to Oliver and Petracca a bit more instead of them having to go in after it and getting sat on. That'll be worth goals. That said, the effectiveness of Sparrow Viney and Harmes is very dependent on their humility. It's very visible that Viney's best is when he is playing a selfless defensive and blocking game. It's even more visible that Harmes' worst games and moment come whenever he thinks he is a star.

I would guess that Jordon is being rested given the lack of a week off. Might be a similar deal with Hibberd and Smith. On the one hand, Hibberd is old enough to benefit from a week off as well as mature enough to not lose form while away. On the other hand, after so much time out of the game Smith needs to be tested and run in if he is going to be any part of our finals effort.