Little Goffy

Wouldn't it be amazing if for the first time in x generations, a Melbourne coach finshed their time with us on a positive tone. Come oooooooon, I'd love a win today, just for the fun of it. Forget ladders and finals, just win for winning's sake.

If he signs on for five years, reaching free agency, then by the time the contract is up we'll either be a first rate club or trying to salvage the rubble all over again. Just think, who else will be in their mid or late 20s by then - if they haven't come along to be a core group of at least a dozen first-rate players, we're screwed. 30/31 - Watts, Jetta, Garlett 28/29 - Melksham, Gawn, Trengove, Vandenberg, T. McDonald, Tyson, Bugg, 26/27 - Kent, Kennedy, Viney, Wagner, Hogan, Hunt, Salem 24/25 - Harmes, Petracca, Brayshaw, Neal-Bullen, O. MCdonald, Stretch, Weideman, Oliver Wow, looking at that, Hogan would have to be mad to leave!

Ah, yes, pardon me. Herped a derp. Or maybe part of my brain just refused to believe the situation we got ourselves into.

Hey, to make the finals all we need to do is win three more games than North, and 1 more game than Port, and the same number of games as St Kilda. Win this against the odds, and we're gback to a 50/50 chance, I'd say. (I am rolling my eyes so fast your could power a dynamo off them - why did I ever let myself hope, we all knew we'd be let down in the end)

I could understand, maybe even accept the unhappy reality, of final quarter fade0outs from a young and nervous team with a legacy of 'impending doom' hanging over it. The part that really gets me irritated is the mid-game implosions. How many 5+ goal runs against us this season? Aaaargh.

I'll take another win in an elimination final, 2017, and call it even.

This season; 28 disposals (1st), 10 contested (2nd), 5 clearances (2nd), 5 tackles (3rd), 4.8 inside 50s (1st). Yeah, we should definitely drop him, maybe for a true leader like Brent Moloney, who a lot of people in this thread are reminding me of, coincidentally.

Daniher spun 'almost gold' out of 'barely even straw', given the situation the club was in and the melodrama and incompetence of multiple administrations. If I give myself permission to be excited, then I'd compare the Barassi/Northey record to the anticipated Roos/Goodwin record. Roos appears to have got us back into competitive shape in half the time it took Barassi. I note that the record PaulRB is for completed seasons, so just a few more wins this year and he'll push past a 30% win ratio for his time with us, which is damn impressive given where May Goodwin bring it all to maturity, and go just one win better than Northey or Daniher.

We're out of the first round of the draft, have an astonishingly young list, including our best 22, nevermind the fringe or developing players. Lots to find out about a lot of our players, before we can know what priorities we need to set. Also, the more we develop and progress 'naturally', the cheaper imported players become. So I'm not convinced that now is the time to go for big expensive targets. Expecting a relatively quiet trade period - delist or courtesy-trade out a few that aren't progressing to AFL level, drop one or two older players that aren't pushing 22. Use our late picks to collect somewhat speculative role-players who wont take up salary cap space. Depending on how the AFL's latest round of knee-jerk non-consultative efforts go on the Academy picks, we might be smart enough to get one high draft pick from a collection of later ones gained from the courtesy trades. One high, three or four low, ideal drafting structure for us at the moment, I'd say.

I just hope that as part of the deal we've managed to insert a clause saying "All remaining Melbourne home games for the season will be played at the MCG, by which we mean, not Etihad, Docklands, Telstra Dome, or any such similar stadium. Please sign in blood here."

Well, Wet Toast are now officially out of reach, but North continue to slump. Next three games are Port Adelaide, Collingwood and St Kilda. Unpredictable, but on current form... Then their last four games are Bulldogs, Hawks, Swans and Giants. Zero wins there? It is conceivable we could pass North with just 4 wins out of the 7 remaining games. Saints, Suns, Blues and an 8-pointer v Port would do it! Bizarre season. Top 7 could all be on 15+ wins, then 8th on 11.

Gee, this Grimes kid goes alright. 11 times emergency, finally gets a game, and on debut notches up 32 disposals at 90% efficiency, 9 marks and 8 tackles. Future captain, I say. At least, a very good low-cost trade-in from that team Mark Neeld used to coach, as much as it takes a while to reprogram players from there.

After today's West Coast v North game, we'll know exactly what we need to chase to make the 8. A fading North that, looking at their fixture, could conceivably finish the season with only one or two more wins, maybe even none! We'd be chasing three wins on them, but % would take care of itself. or The flat-track West Coast, just 2 games and % ahead of us, and who finish the season with Giants (away), Hawks and Crows (away). And we play them. The percentage difference between us and West Coast works out to about 250 points, or about 6-goals a game better margins over the remaining 7 games. All I'm saying is, it is not quiiiiite time to 'play the kids'. Beside, it is a bit of a moot point when so many of the kids are legitimately in our best 22 anyway. Just on exposed form, and barring injury or illness, we could reasonably have ten players on the field aged 21 or younger.

Well, that was a thrilling final quarter...

Well, we're doing ok at holding onto a lead but I'd love to see us unload a bit of punishment and get a really good win under our belt to start the run home.

Whaaaaaaaat? Sense, something you do not make.

I think we're in pretty good shape for tall forwards in the medium and long term. Personally I prefer a 2xCHF set-up, so that there is always one offering a lead and always one lurking with menace around the 50, meaning that our midfield always has at least one sensible option for a kick to connect with a lead or gain a lot of ground and reach a credible contest. I agree with the others who have said our higher priority is getting our group of defenders organised and efficient. Our other main issue is of course the chop-out ruck. While Gawn is surely a Titan, even Atlas got tired. I'd also hate to think that his career could be cut back by 50 games because of accumulated battering just that little bit beyond weekly recovery.

How's Melksham going this year? I'd be very disappointed if a player who can actually take the field was being kept out of the team for an entire season because he'd been written off a year in advance for the sake of keeping a clear path for an imported player serving a drug cheating ban who isn't even permitted to attend training. Clear enough?

Jong is a respectable player but I don't think he is a priority 'type' for us at the moment. I wonder why there are so few rucking tall defenders? We could really use one of those. And no, I don't mean 'really really' tall defenders, ok?

Thanks Praha, respectable effort to put that together for everyone's reference. We all feel it, and it's a serious problem. Remember this goes back at least as far as 2006, when losing to Carlton twice in a season (they won only one other game for the season) cost us a spot in the top 4. Sigh.

Now, not putting too much in stock on statistics and all that, but I'd be interested to hear about any other example of 20 disposals at 90% efficiency (our best) being the daming ignoble end to an AFL career. Who are these people who keep feeling the urge to puff themselves up by making grand denouncements? "Jayden Hunt is a communist spy, calling it now!"

I'd be pretty disappointed if Grimes has been held down because a seat is being kept warm for Melksham.

Yeah, Saint's percentage kind of makes it hard. Even before today, which looks to have sealed that question. Good job Warnie. That said, West Coast have a tough final half-dozen rounds and may flater severely, it is conceivable that either of the chasers - Port and Melbourne - could pick up two wins and a chunk of percentage to slip ahead of them. Aaaaand.... North.... faltering... now only 3 games ahead of the chasers and with the worst % of the top 8, with a toughish draw coming up. It's conceivable that 12 wins with good percentage will let a team slip into 8th, if either of West Coast or North really falter.

It's a difficult decision. So many footy media people are awful in their own special ways. I find the Nosy Vicar and the Domesticated Walrus equally annoying. I am fortunate enough to rarely experience the rest, but most of the time when I do notice them I hope to not notice them again for a while. Footy media at the moment is a liability to the game.

"Growing awareness" is a mixed bag. The Tomb Raider movie really drastically increased awareness of the temple complexes of Angkor. Finding Nemo greatly increased awareness of clownfish. And for ANZAC Day... It would take a fair bit of effort to convince me that there's been much real gain from the mass-scale uncritical trope-regurgitation by casual one-day-wonders trying to sound deep or like they know all about war. My disquiet was summed up for me some years ago when Peter Harvey, the veteran journalist known as 'fourballs', led off his ANZAC Day coverage with the statement "Like no other nation, Australai's character has been shaped by war" and nobody pulled him up on it.