Little Goffy

North going into 2025 is very much like Melbourne going into 2010. Obviously many specific differences - North have been given far more draft concessions and other support than we were, and have been right at the bottom for longer than we had been at that time. It'll be interesting to see if their injection of maturity this trade/agent period will help stabilise them enough to be competitive and gain some belief. Also interesting to see what comes of their draft wave - we still haven't really seen anything of Goad, Dawson and Hardeman from 2023, and some of their picks from previous years are still in the 'promising' category rather than breaking out. They could very suddenly become very scary, or else... hmm... it is hard to see North surviving as a club if they don't at least become competitive in this wave.

Some people get 2 year contracts, some people get 4 year suspensions. It's a funny world. Glad he's set at Geelong because I was genuinely anxious about him coming to Melbourne, providing close to nothing on field and continuing to be an off-field swamp at a third club.

Ko****knee is the zero on the scale. Story goes that he did a peripheral awareness test where little lights go off at various points around you, and you just have to push a left or right button when you notice the light. During the test a technician came over to check it was working properly.

It was strange to recognise Sam Redford's name and then need to think for a moment why I recognised it. Tried some googling but can't find much info about what he's been up to since being a casualty of the Covid crunch. Can anyone bring me (and all of us) up to date?

Wait, you mean to tell me that all this time there have been systematic reviews going on and some major reorganisation planning happening? I am shocked. I was sure the club was sitting on its hands all this time.

This thread has gone berserk so I'm sure any comment I make will be three pages back within minutes and never seen again, but I'm going to go on record with my feeling about Pert. 1. Extremely capable and driven. Had clear visions for change to bring about success as a club at both Collingwood and Melbourne, and personally committed to making it happen. Surging financial positions and on field success came to both clubs under his leadership. 2. An 'excess of awareness of own abilities' (I am so polite) led him to not respect role boundaries and the decisions made by others, at both Collingwood and Melbourne, leading to a continuously accumulating breakdown of role definitions and an undermining of the crucial need for unity of purpose once decisions and plans had been set. I suspect he may even be addicted to creating change. This appeared to particularly affect the football side of things with both clubs experiencing unexpected and not fully justifiable slides after their premiership peaks. As Sun Tzu said, to understand the weaknesses of anyone you must study their strengths.

Someone needs to get in Yze's ear that we are definitely taking Smillie with 5 and what is 23 really worth when you have half the first round already?

Just going to take a little breath to enjoy how there has not been a single media speculation about this being 'on the cusp' in the week or two leading up to it. The article about this on the AFL website literally bumped out the 'What should be the Demon's priorities this off-season' chat from apparently 'star' reporters Barrett and Edwards posted last night.

If there was a formal scale for measuring peripheral awareness and anticipation, the benchmarks would go from Jacob Koschitzke through to Scott Pendlebury. I think Jagga Smith might give Pendles some competition. Neither of Smith of Windsor will ever be big guys, but having those two driving our ball movement out of contests could be transformative.

On the assumption that Tom Morris never quite gets anything right... I'm going to suspect that Jones is coming in as a specialist stoppage coach and there will be a general midfield coach as well, tasked with overall ball movement between the arcs. We've surely got quite a bit of soft cap space at the moment, and would have to be seen as a desirable place to take a coaching career when you consider that we've had assistants take up senior coaching positions for two years in a row.

Back in 2009 they did! It was a whole draft event, I don't think there were tickets sold as such, but a pre-registration for interested members. I'd guess as many as 100 people showed up for the draft night event hosted by Chris Connolly, who gave us all a rolling update on who we were hoping would be available. Scully and Trengove were wheeled out for a quick interview within an hour of being drafted. Fun fact - we had our eye on Melksham but he was gone by our pick, so Gysberts it was. Each of Tapscott, Gawn and Spencil were exciting sliders - we would allegedly have taken Gawn at 18 except we were so keen and surprised that Tapscott was available, and would have taken Spencil at 30 except Gawn was unexpectedly there, and then Spencil was still available at pick whateverish. Allegedly. That was how they played the spin live on the night. Hmm, wondering who else here was there on that fateful and strange night?

Probability that sydneydee also complains about millenials being soft snowflakes with main character syndrome is looking high.

Brisbane and Fagan did brilliantly (and I've long loved Fagan since his time with us, increased by his underdog credentials from his time applying for senior position after senior position and getting knocked back). But I'm pretty sure every Melbourne player who ever made the all-Australian shortlist squad of 40 was either injured or just plain had a personal stinker in 2024! Koleman, McCarthy, Gardiner and McInerney is a problematic hole. Petracca, Oliver, and Brayshaw is >20% of the salary cap value of the team. That's an abyss. Having said all that, I actually agree we still have a problem with mental brittleness within games and over the season. A problem we've had for... as long as I can recall, actually.

I congratulate you on learning how to use thesaurus.com to bypass the auto-censor.

Presumably I cannot describe how noxious and vain posts like this are without getting some kind of black mark from the admins, but it gets so boring wading through this stuff and the sheer volume of it even in unrelated threads is slowly driving me off the site.

Choosing a reply from so many options; "I guess it is nice for Essendon supporters to have a team to follow where the ladder position matters." "That's fine, but still nobody cares where Essendon finishes."

Take Brayshaw out of Melbourne... #maintaintherage

I thought it was related to indigenous smoking ceremonies. As in, an autochthonous censer.

It is like walking through a shopping mall food court at 5.50pm on a wednesday. If there's one last bento box left and you want it, it is yours.

I'm sorry, but, you think that is a woke thing? Like, you're joking, right?

Pickett and Neville Jetta sealing the deal during social football over in WA the other day? "Uncle Nev, I've had an idea."

Does this mean we have to get Paul Kelly as midfield coach?

The 'soft cap' is called the 'talcum cap' down on the peninsula. What a f'ing disgrace.

Pretty sure that is Robert Harvey with heavy plastic surgery, in a final ploy to crack 400 games.