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Little Goffy

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Everything posted by Little Goffy

  1. Little Goffy
    It's like the Dog's women's team have been taking tips from the men about ducking into tackles. I'm in a bad mood now because I hate it when we give away an early easy goal.
  2. Little Goffy
    Melksham not forcing himself into the best 22 at this stage.
  3. Little Goffy
    Joel Smith would have to be pretty happy with his first half! I'm excited! Interesting to see Salem being all about contested possessions and handballs, working in the middle. If I let myself hype, Sam Weidemann sounds like he might be a useful mark-kick-goal-repeat player for us, while Hogan roams wild.
  4. Little Goffy
    Anyone who has a broadcast handy or at the ground, I'm particularly interested in seeing if there is any noticable difference to the mobility of the 'sore warriors' who played hurt last season, like VDB and of course Jones.
  5. Little Goffy
    Yep, the question mark will always be there. If it looks fine for a year... will it hold up long term? If it goes alright for three or four more years... will it end up shortening his career? That's the trouble when your knee actually looks like a question mark.
  6. Little Goffy
    Sounds like we're going to be the toughest team to play against. Preseason strikes again. But at least this time the cattle look strong and well-fed.
  7. Little Goffy
    Yeah, I kind of figured the scale of the debacle would speak on behalf of the sarcasm. I keep forgetting how the wildness of some people's sincerely held beliefs make it very hard to track irony or sarcasm here! Looking at it another way, Prendergasts only 'successful' (to varying degrees) first round picks were picks where nobody else had a chance before him. 1. Watts. 1. Scully. 2. Trengove. Every other round 1 pick didn't make it. 2008 will always be the one that got away, though. Possibly the best draft pool ever. Of the top 20 picks, only four are not still on AFL lists (including Blease and Strauss). of the next 20 picks, only another 4 (including Bennell). I'm not usually into the cherry-picking 'we could have had x instead of y' draft grumbling, but when you waste two picks at 17 and 19, and the next two rounds are so packed full of talent you could assemble a convincing premiership list from them, that gets annoying. So anyway, here it is, the Barry Predergast Memorial starting 18 from only rounds 2 and 3 of the 2008 draft. F: Ballantyne Stanley Walters HF: Shiels Trengove Motlop C: Zaharakis Beams Redden HB: Wright Broadbent B: Suban Roughead Hunt Foll: Z.Clarke Sloane Hannebery Robinson Have fun, North.
  8. Little Goffy
    Re: Craig Cameron, he had one stellar draft in 1999 and was mostly ok for the rest of his time with us, but continuously failed to find the tall forward target we needed to succeed Neitz. Also burned good draft picks in trades for player who weren't really that great. As for Prendergast... 2008 to 2011... what a ride. Although we should be fair, his only misses in the earlier picks were Blease, Strauss, Gysberts, Tapscott, and Cook.... so, barely more than 1 fluffed first-round pick per draft. But let's just take a moment to reflect on how much better things have gone recently.
  9. Little Goffy
    This is really terrific news. And it isn't just a matter of being excited that a respected stalwart of the club has come 'home', but also to have an excellent, qualified person highly suited to the appointed role at the club. Having said that, WHEEEEELLLAAAANNN! WOOOOO!
  10. Little Goffy
    I struggle to even find the words for it. I wonder if his position as 'academy dude' came about because his personal sales pitch was 'I picked great players, the greatest, it is all Melbourne's fault for not developing them properly, you should get me to develop them too.'. North haven't let any of their kids from the last two drafts (2014-15) get any games, not even 15 between the dozen of them. Bizarrely, two of their three most experienced players under 24 are Hrovat and Williams.
  11. Little Goffy
    The Hawking Field - The ball is assigned a theoretical gravity well value of 100, while each square meter of the field without a Demon already in it is given a 'well' value of 1, each square meter containing an opposition player is assigned a value of 10, and each square meter already containing a Demon is given a value of -10. At all times each player moves in the direction with the highest 'well value' as perceived from their current position, after adjustment for proximity by dividing each square meter's value by the distance in meters to it. For example, other things being equal, if ball 'A' (value 100) is 10 meters away and opponent 'b' is also 10 meters away but slightly to one side, then Demon 'c' will run in a direction mostly towards the ball but slightly towards the opponent player, putting their body between the opponent and the ball prior to directly reaching the ball. Of course, this is all ridiculous. Thankfully the original theory was abandoned in favour of the much improved: The Probablistic Hawking Field - It is only based on current position. Whereas to truly make a decision you need to know both the current position AND the momentum of all the objects. Since this can't be simultaneously done through classical measurement due to the uncertainly principle, it is necessary to apply probabilistic methods to obtain a set of possible next positions based on previous observed movement of objects such as the ball 'a' and opponent 'b' mentioned above and then apply our original formula based on the distribution of those possibilities. And if anyone has a problem with this game plan, just remember that until it has been observed it should be considered both better and worse than any other game plan you might suggest.
  12. Little Goffy
    "Has great evasive skills"
  13. Little Goffy
    One solution might be for coaches and players to develop the tactical insight that throwing yet more players onto the ball isn't always the most effective use of effort. Personally, I'd rather have an extra unguarded player lurking around CHF/HFF with a good chance at turning even a panic kick out of congestion into a chance at the goals, compared to the dubious benefit of one extra player doing 50x50m sprints every game just to get thrown into a swamp on the wing. You could probably justify one extra player forward AND one extra player back, as better 'percentage' options than player number 9 or 10 sucked to the ball. The proof would come when your opposition follows your positional change. Which would null the benefits but also have the effect of reducing congestion at the ball. Football is the winner!
  14. Little Goffy
    Congratulations to Lily, she wasn't perfect but never slowed down and got into everything. A likely long-term keeper with what seems like a top attitude. Tell you what, with only 7 rounds and such a huge number of new and young players, she must've beaten some serious competition to get the nod, good on her. So, who is next? And on the topic of individual awards, after two rounds who looks like being in the women's all-Australian, and B&F for club and league?
  15. Little Goffy
    Its a bit like comparing Daniher and Goodwin as coaches. Fact is, all but about four of those players in the Grand Final team played long and respectable AFL careers. Interestingly, for very few of those players was the grand final around a midpoint in their career. Most either had only a few more years left, or had only been around a few years by 2000. Main exceptions would be Neitz, Farmer, White, and Leoncelli. Essendon had maybe only a couple more players in that mid-career point, but a whole big mature group that played about four more seasons after 2000. Got me to thinking about the present situation for us. Let's imagine for a moment that things go approximately to plan for us, and in the next 2-3 years we reach a point where we are seriously contending. We'd have just a few players in the Shane Crawford age range of 'win a premiership, retire happy' - Jones, Vince, Pederson, and Lewis. Hibberd, Jetta and Garlett would be approaching or reaching 30. Watts, Melksham, Gawn, T. McDonald, Vandeberg and Trengove would still only be around 27-28. Pretty much everyone else would be feeling confident they still had more than half their career games left to play, but would also have 75-125 games under their belt.
  16. Little Goffy
    I'd suggest that the pace and pressure of the game actually puts even more value on being able to kick with the non-preferred foot, offering a competent alternative when being closed in on from your preferred side. Similarly, the amount of tactics and mid-week video analysis of opponents that goes on these days makes being a bit unpredictable a bit of a bonus, too. I do wonder if there is also a general kicking benefit to putting players through non-preferred kicking drills, in that it forces them to concentrate and think through correct ball drop and so on. Anyone got advice on that?
  17. Little Goffy
    But at Collingwood, changing coach is something you do when you're winning. The one reason to hope Collingwood make the finals - the possibilitiy of beating them four times in a season. The women's game has opened up a fun new kind of pre-season optimism!
  18. Little Goffy
    Did anyone need a refreshing new reason to hate Collingwood? Good news that Downie is ok. Great stuff with the comeback, and a really dramatically improved performance in the second half, much cleaner and bolder.
  19. Little Goffy
    Well, those are three of the best goals in the women's game so far. (I might be biased)
  20. Little Goffy
    Sweeeeet.
  21. Little Goffy
    Well, at least we can be sure that failing to make effective use of inside 50s is a true Demon thing. I'm frustrated but not giving up on it just yet.
  22. Little Goffy
    Ok, seriously, is Katie Brennan a niece or cousin of a Channel 7/Fox executive? Last week the entire third quarter and large chunks of the rest of the game was a chat with her about any random thing people could think of. Now we've just spent 20 minutes of the pre-game talking to her about her favourite training mats, or something. Got no problem with her, she seems perfectly nice, but what is going on with the commentary plan?
  23. Little Goffy
    I tend to have a lot of respect for players who aren't the top-level guns and stars, but who build full careers making a real contribution all the way. Think of players like Andrew Thompson at St Kilda, 200+ games based on solid contribution, or David Hale who made such a low-key but pivotal contribution to Hawthorn's premierships. Not a lot of names come immediately to mind, for obvious reasons. I'll also mention Adam Goodes, partly because ____ you to anyone who thinks he is anything short of one of the great champions of the modern game.
  24. Little Goffy
    Don't get me started. If I had my way, there'd be a fast rail link going Brisbane-Sydney-Melbourne-Adelaide with about half a dozen 250k cities and another half-dozen 100k cities strung along in between. Oh, wait, you meant the other guy. Sorry.
  25. Little Goffy
    Well, that's a pretty disappointing result and effort. We looked alright for one quarter but just got steadily worse all game. Can't help noticing the much better credentials of the Lions' coaching group. We'd want to catch up on that front in a hurry. Six games left to sort it out and earn our way into the final.
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