Little Goffy

Geelong choking in finals again would be funny. Fremantle, from 8th, eliminating 5th-placed West Coast. The Port Adelaide football club going into fits of self-hate after missing the finals with nobody to blame but themselves. Ditto Richmond. Demons going undefeated after the bye, for 13 wins total and a 7th placed finish, ahead of the Dockers and five other teams all on 12 wins with better percentage than us.

I haven't seen as much of our games as I'd like to, but what I have seen sometimes makes me think of the bit of fun at the end of a training session where people are competing to kick the balls back into the wheelie bin they are stored - trying to bring it down neatly from above. One thing you can definitely say for Melksham, his typically low-angle kicks usually have an intended target and even if they miss they are still moving towards goals. Lot of other players, if their kicks were just left to drop on grass, they'd be as likely to bounce back on the arc they came down on. Doubly easy for defenders because all that extra air time lets them get into position better, and when the ball comes down it has no momentum towards goal that crumbers and troublemakers can try to use or protect. It means that most of the time our crumbing efforts are facing away from goal when trying to get the ball, so to take a meaningful snap requires either an extra couple of steps, a full change of direction, or an extra disposal, and that lost time is a killer.

Now There is a tangent I'd follow; does a senior coach really only need to be smart enough to understand (and humble/practical enough to actually listen to) the collection of other smart people around him? Mind you, there was also once upon a time a sci-fi novel which featured an entire species which had been selectively bred for good luck. Some kind of lottery process, and over a few thousand generations it produced real results. Maybe we need some of that. (some would say, it wont be any slower than our current progress to our next flag, ha ha ha uhhh)

I'm going to look at it as a hurdle requirement; you need to pass a certain level but beyond that it becomes less important. I must say, it is weird not just seeing Buckley at the top of Matsuo's list, but realising that I'd probably agree. If I had to pick an AFL coach for a long session of free-ranging discussion of the world, it would probably be ol' Nate. I'm on the cusp of not having any real problem with Collingwood (except a segment of their supporters), soon I'll be calling the Queen's Birthday game a 'jolly good show against a worthy rival'. Scary times.

Ahh, the memories.

Lol. Next up, there will be talk of trading picks to get Sam Day (the free agent not currently getting a game at the Suns).

Let's pretend for a moment that Bruce isn't a prizewinning -thingthing- and imagine that what he means by that is... "Geelong's five best players are all past or near 30, and a sixth is almost certainly leaving at year's end, they currently have the league's second-shortest injury list with no key players missing, they also have a big group of already fully-mature quality players aged 26-28, and while a bunch of their kids are good, none are of the quality of the veterans even in that second rank... so if they don't take home a flag in a year like this where everything has come together just right, they probably wont get another chance'". Seriously, if Geelong choke again this september, it'll be worse than all of Port's famous finals chokes combined. And even funnier, too.

Trouble is, the way modern society and especially economic oportunity is compartmentalised and all access is held by gatekeepers, with significant costs of entry. So, hypothetically, you could right this moment eradicate all racism from society, and it would still take a century (or indeed, forever) to see anything resembling equality on all those indicators you mention. If racism has been eradicated just a few generations ago, the relative fluidity of society other than discriminatory barriers would have meant that meaningful practical equality/equity would have been attained at a much faster pace. Like some kind of hideous paradox, where one barrier has been going up even faster than other barriers have been coming down. Meanwhile, in the opposite corner, if the statistics began recording 'bogan' as an ethnic group, they too would appear as very severely disadvantaged. And with the new modern barriers becoming so much more solid, their real experience of insurmountable disadvantage is looking more and more like discrimination too. I just hope we don't keep on with this drift to the American style of race-politics, where a nation hypnotised by the mythology that 'opportunity is everywhere' and it is a character flaw to be poor, turns to all kinds of brands of sectarian greivance-politics and populism to insist that their group is being particularly targeted (all with some degree of valid claim), with nobody left actually confronting the new 'modern' barriers which will block progress for any and all of the currently excluded people.

What's funny is, in almost any other circumstance, the treatment dished out to Adam Goodes would be labelled political correctness gone mad.

I believed it, and then your comment gave me hope too... but alas, a forlorn hope, it turns out. https://www.stadiumbusinesssummit.com/thestadiumbusiness-awards-2019-winners-announced/

To save time and ensure boo-equity you could have your phone divert to a recording of 'please leave a message after the Booooooooooooo!'

But... but... I'm confused, is Marvel a different stadium to the old one I remember at Docklands from a couple of years ago, I think they called it Etihad. You know, the one that managed to have wind whip through the seating even when the roof was closed, where giant concrete pylons obstructed the view from chunks of the upper decks, where the way in and out is an absurd bottleneck, and where the general sense of being inside a hollowed-out asteroid lit by mining truck lights? The same one?

Unfortunately yes, the booing of Goodes expanded to a level I've never witnessed in any other game for any other player. Not even single occasions, after some particularly ugly early incident in a game where a player was booed for the rest of the game. I have literally never heard the kind of booing that Goodes received. It was the calling the girl out, it was the dance, it was that he didn't back down on it when the nuff-nuff army demanded it. Ugh, I'm still recalling the sick feeling up at a Sydney game, when the Hawthorn portion of the crowd ramped it up. The ball was out of play, nothing was happening, people where I was were looking around and up at the replay trying to figure out if there had been a trip or someone had been thrown into the fence. Nope, just Goodes, not even involved in the play, happened to be standing near a segment of Hawthorn reserved seating. There was a tangible sadness across the rest of the crowd (including, maybe especially, many other Hawthorn supporters) as they realised what was happening. It actually sucked a lot of life out of the crowd atmosphere for a while. Not like any other booing I've ever witnessed. Acknowleging that more than a few people out there in the poltiical world have run off with this to use it as leverage, I'll try to run through my own thoughts in the spirit of honest engagement and all that. Other indigenous players generally weren't booed or abused (well, less so since the late 90s at least) because they weren't being, shall we say, 'uppity'. There's a pretty obvious unwritten code that you'll be welcome as long as you keep within the nicey-nicey political correctness realms. Think 'theme round' and special guernsey designs. That 'keep it nice' issues kind of answers the next question, about Goodes fanning the flames. No doubt it did increase the sense of confrontation, even if it was wildly overblown by the people so 'offended' by it, but I suppose the question Goodes might ask is 'why am I expected to have to worry about fanning such a stupid flame?'. Bizarrely, I think Goodes found himself in the bind that mostly people with quite opposite views find themselves in; you say or do something a little controversial to begin with, the twitter storm erupts out of all proportion, everyone starts volunteering any excuse they can to heap more confected shame upon you, and if you don't back down then you officially become the worst person in the world. As for 'how racist is Australia really'... definitely not as racist as many like to claim, definitely more racist than others like to claim. Thinking hard here... hmmm... on the one hand, Australia has made such tremendous progress on racial and cultural issues in just a couple of generations, and could make a realistic claim to being the world's least racist nation overall. Trouble is, that isn't a smooth result and there are still many filthy horribly racist corners, and there are still some really obvious racial glass ceilings. But because it tends to happen in one organisation at a time or one group of bastards at the end of the street at a time, it has very low visibility anywhere else. One way to put it - it is no longer 'normal' to be racist in Australia, but, for Aboriginal people, it is still very 'normal' to come up against really horrible racism in both personal and professional life, and to be left on your own to deal with it. So then Goodes comes out and says 'racist' - the backlash comes from not only the grubby core of actual racists (and society's layer of people who just like to hurl abuse at anyone they can find an excuse to), but also a share of the people who are proud of their own improvement and their country's improvement and don't appreciate being told that colelctively they still suck. For Goodes, the personal experience is one of having society tell him he hasn't experience the racism which he most definitely has, and then Goodes gets publicly abused and ostracised for the very act of saying what he is experiencing. For the rest of the Aboriginal community, they see that happening and are reminded that society will deny the racism that does exist, and punish them for mentioning it. Anyway, I quite agree that the documentary is unlikely to hit all these nuances, but at least it might help more people realise the normality of experiencing racism, even in an ostensibly not racist society. As you say, the mea cuplas from Gil the Dill and the like do nothing - in fact they even reaffirm the starting position 'oh yes, we have totally learnt and wont be like that again, for real, I don't invite racists to any of my dinner parties'. And this pathetic 'leadership' takes us back to this easy, cosy pattern of he comforting, plausible, not-racist image of Australia, which has still not come to terms with the idea that experiencing racism is still quite normal for Aboriginal people. You could say, Australia is not a racist society, but it is a society where the remaining racists can often expect to act our their noxious attitude without being penalised, and where the lifelong victims of racism feel that if they speak up about it they will be penalised. And that is pretty much the heart of why Goodes felt so alienated at the end of his career. And why the AFL should be so ashamed that they failed this simple test of solidarity, even as they kept decorating their brand with Indigenous-themed confetti.

Gibbs is still is high quality player (ask Clayton Oliver about the third quarter the other week) but he has clearly dropped off in form from the sustained excellence of most of his career. Has always been short of the star expectations people have about No.1 picks, much like Murphy and Kruezer. Has always been picked out as looking a bit gentle on the field, despite pulling his weight for things like tackles, contested posessions, and all that. Bizarrely, it looks like even though Adelaide would probably now be regretting giving up two first round picks to get him, Carlton at the same time would be unhappy with what they ended up with, although that has more to do with the way they used their picks. I once had the pleasure of sitting opposite Gibbs at a cafe, without actually realising it was him. It was right before the trade, and the public talk was that the move was for family reasons. Coincidentally, it was the really delightful way this unknown man was having lunch with his toddler (a freak'n angel kid in appearance and behaviour) that made me look up and smile, long before I realised it was anyone significant. Moral of this story, Gibbs moved to Adelaide for family reasons, and his family is doing fine over there, and we don't even have to think about whether we want him or not because it isn't going to happen. He even has another kid on the way. We can all just sit back and wish the best to a nice guy who is doing fine. Nothing to trouble ourselves about here.

Matsuo Basho, we have a problem - I completely agree with you! Practically word for word. I'm sure this worries you every bit as much as it worries me!

Maybe we can turn this into a tangible debate about which of Cameron or Whitfield we'll take as a free agent next year?

There's no arguing with magic. Is Harry Potter available as a category B rookie?

Lynch who has never played in a final. Cameron who has kicked a whopping 7 goals in 5 finals. Hawkins who, going back over his finals career, has kicked 2,1,1,1,2, 5,1,1,2,0, 3,2,2,0,1, 0,2,2,0. Golly. That's four zeros, six ones, seven twos, and a total of two out of nineteen games where he has kicked more than a pair in a final. So he is twice as likely to kick none in a final than kick a signifcant score. You'd think he'd get the hang of it now that he's played almost as many finals as Weideman has had games total. Come to think of it, Weideman actually has a better finals record than Hawkins. Leaving just Josh Kennedy of your examples, which is a bit like saying 'a midfield will do better if it has a Pendlebury-type player in it, for example, Pendlebury'. No doubt Kennedy is one of the modern greats of the game, and certainly a more accurate kick than the 1.3 (or does Hawkins count as out on the full?)you just dished out. Meanwhile, Jack Riewoldt is no gorilla, stands at 193cm weighing 92kg, and I don't think Richmond really regret going into the 2017 grand final with him as their only real tall target, what with having 11 separate goalkickers on the day. Our current forward line is weak and it would be good to have an extra tall, no doubt. But it is also true than an in form Tom McDonald and Sam Weideman can obviously be a potent attacking pair. They would also, oddly enough, be among the tallest (194cm and 195cm) and and heaviest (100kg and 97kg) forward combinations of recent years. You'll look even more silly about your 'don't repeat 2000' when people remember that the Demons went into the 2000 grand final with David Neitz and David Shwarz, both strongly built and highly effective classic key forwards. And along the way in those finals, in the qualifying final it had been Green, Powell and Bruce who provided most of the goals while the Davids combined for 3, and even in the glorious shootout over North it was Famer (8), Powell (3) and Robertson (3) who led the way.

What I wonder about is whether the original plan was to have a whole mix of different sized and style of players in our forward line, giving us continous scope to experiment and mismatch. It was something I remember looking forward to, thinking about how many of them were highly mobile. In approximate order of total mass of carbon atoms - Brayden Preuss, Tom McDonald, Tim Smith, Sam Weideman, Joel Smith, Aaron Vandenberg, Mitch Hannan, Christian Petracca, Bayley Fritsch, Jayden Hunt, Jake Melksham, Alex Neal-Bullen, Jeff Garlett, Jay Lockhart, Charlie Spargo. Mix and match as you like from that, and you can get several different sets that each provide a good combination of lead-up marking, contested marking, all-purporse bullocking, pressure acts and crumbing. That last one, the opportunistic crumbing ans something-from-nothing snaps, actually looks like the weakest link at the moment rather than anything provided by Patton or Brown, for example. As a side note: Hogan at Fremantle is currently delivering about 60% of what he was bringing to Melbourne in his last season with us. This isn't an necessarily an endorsement of the May/KK pick up, but it suggests it was no giant blunder when we chose to move Hogan on. Anyway, personally I think we're better off looking at the draft this year. We don't want to drift into a situation of having multi-year gaps in elite young talent, and you never know when you'll get your own Selwood or Rioli to ice the cake at the right moment. I still think we'll be in very short supply for top-end draft picks for some years to come.

It is pretty simple really. Once our opposition breaks out from their backline or midfield, they are able to move the ball faster than we can get back to help defence. Big open spaces to lead into and lots of time for kickers to line up a target. Kicks running into an open goal don't often miss. The other stat to consider here is how often inside-50s against us result in a goal or score. We are ranked an uninteresting 10th for inside-50s against per game, with 51.4 . But we are ranked first for goals against at 13.7. But these extra stats also support the 'opponents so accurate' point - the other teams with the same problem of goals against (Bulldogs and Kangaroos have basically the same figures for inside-50 -> goal against) also give away a few extra behinds compared to us. The most likely interpretation of this is that while they still let scores happen, they at least manage to clog up the space right in front and prevent some of the gimme goals.

Personally, I think he should come in as a way to ease the load on Gawn a bit each game, since it isn't really practical to rest big Max outright. Even if Preuss is only barely adequate in the role, it is worth it if Gawn getting a slightly easier run at it for half a season in 2019 means he is a bit fresher and, for want of a better word, younger, in years to come. Plus, it might just be that what Preuss needs most is a good run at AFL level. At least nobody will be left wondering what the real options are for 2020. If he goes well, then good, if he doesn't, then now we know.

Wow, I'm not sure how I can describe BT's comments there without overworking the censor filter. Of all the poxy pathetic attitudes... the sheer stupidity that it takes to think that only the last shot on goal should be highlighted. And boy oh boy wowee didn't Weidemann look like he was relaxed and comfortable about it already. Seriously, this is stimulus-response stuff, amoebic-level reaction, I expect better from homo sapiens, y'know. Even marginal ones like BT.

Now now, metaphors can mean whatever one like's remember? Sam Mitchell has fought in the trenches, obviously. He's dropped the soap with the boys, got blood on his hands, been around the block a few times, been bent over a few barrels, and even been chewed up and spat out. Dude's had a rough time, gotta give him that. Don't know if it makes him coaching material though!

Trigger warning: football statistics Interesting to see that despite many of his stats being a little bit up here, a little bit down there, most of them haven't actually moved much. Goals down a little, rebounds and intercepts up a bit. But the big change is a full doubling of his clearances numbers, perhaps partly due tot he rule change but maybe more of just a direct involvement in clearances after hitouts. Another interesting thing I stumbled across is that while so many of Gawn and Grundy's figures are amazingly close, Gawn thrashes the Magpie for the newfangled stat-of-the-day 'metres gaines' - 250 to 150. Make of that what you will, but like others, I'll be watching keenly on monday to see how thoroughly Gawn splatters Grundy all over the 'G, as he vents his mountain-troll rage at the disappointment of season 2019.

The gap between us and finals is only slightly wider than the gap, for Carlton, between last and not-last. I was still speaking optimisitcally about Carlton's medium and longer term prospects early this season, on the understanding that their cluster of young agile midfielders could develop in a wave, with Cripps and now Walsh providing the star-level core. But that optimism has faded for me, and more importantly it looks like it has evaporated within the Blue's themselves. Carlton supporters will be shaking with anxiety about the prospect of losing any of that handful of stars that keep the flame flickering. For example, Charlie Curnow might decide that the reason for his stalling progress is the team he's playing in (and when you're out of form but have still kicked a third of your team's goals in the last two rounds, you could start to think that way). To have him leave in a meagre trade when he is at such a low point himself would be just devastating for Blues fans, especially when they can already spend each round counting how many more goals ex-Carlton players have kicked compared to the entire Cartlon team. Garlett 3, Betts 2, Robinson 1, Kennedy 3, vs Carlton 4 Charlie Curnow might be a handy acquisition on the cheap, come to think of it.