Little Goffy

So, area by area, our players currently (let's say roughly the last month at least) down on form. Defence: McVee, Howes, (Lever), Midfield: Viney, Oliver, Sparrow, Langdon, Windsor Forward: Fritsch, Petty, Chandler, Pickett (his extra midfield time has traded one goal a game for one clearance a game) Bench: McAdam, Billings, Hunter, Brown. Outright that's half of our best-22 spread evenly from our top 6 to our bottom 6. Not drawing any conclusions. Just staring into the darkness of being a temporarily mid-table side.

Yeah, why aren't we talking about how "Collingwood shouldn't have put themselves in a position where only umpiring errors could win them the game"?

Pfft. We're two games out of the top 4. Eight game winning streak to finish the season, including wins over Essendon, Port, Freo, Bulldogs and finally Collingwood to steal their top-4 spot. Refresh from the bye round, a nothing-to-lose reset of the midfield and forward line, and get on out there.

Is that a summary of the article, or the club at this moment?

It's all right, he was under pressure!

Hmm, we have a 'proud' tradition of mid-season excrement regardless of how the overall season goes. 2000 - rounds 11-13 culminating in a 98 point loss to Carlton, (who we dealt with handily in the Qualifying final, so watch out Freo!) 2003 - rounds 9-12 were when we pooped our season. 2004 - bizarre 72 point loss to the Saints in the middle of a very strong run. In the end a very strong season was blown in the final four rounds. 2005 - after an epic top of the table challenge of ladder leaders West Coast in round 13, a clearly mentally exhausted side lost the next two games by more than 10 goals, and didn't gather itself together again until the final few desperate rounds. Hiatus from competitive football. 2018 - 8 wins, 3 losses at round 11, and on record-breaking run for consecutive quarters won... then all of a sudden we were still 8 wins but with 6 losses at round 15. Got it back together but missed out on top 4 by one game. 2020 - does it still count as 'mid-season' if the games are in June/July but they are rounds 4 to 9? We went 2w 4l in that period while the rest of the season was 7w 4l. Missed finals by one game. Mm hmm. 2021 - only four losses for the season, and three of them came in a 3-3 period from round 10 to 16. 2022 - ten wins in a row, then three consecutive losses round 11 to 13. 2023 - seven losses total for the season, of which four came in a 2w 4l run from round 10 to 16. It is definitely a quirk in our history and absolutely a feature of Simon Goodwin's coaching term. 25 Home & away losses in total for the seasons 2020-2023. 14 of them came in the mid-winter period, leaving just 11 for the remaining two-thirds or more of the seasons. Even tighter if your go 2021-23; 10 mid-winter losses of 17 total losses. Remarkable stuff.

Despite the breathless tone of the numpty media potato, there's nothing in this but a giggle. Reminds me of David Rodan's greatest moment where he broke clear from a half-forward pack and banged a long goal from 50... in the wrong direction. It was inevitable that he would become a goal umpire, really. Maybe he is just waiting for the day someone else does it while he is between the sticks? Still, we all know that this 'story' getting the breathless treatment is just symptom of AFL political economy.

Unfortunately he has shown nothing of interest and not shown much interest either. The Billings disappointment, McAdam injury/disappointment, and Hunter injury/decline are three clear reasons our attempt to improve our movement forward has made so little progress. Doesn't excuse the overall failure of team vision but it is definitely a hole that was filled with more hole.

I guess the club knew there was no winning in a snarling match against the combination of Collingwood, the AFL executive, and Channel 7 'Australia's official home for abusers, war criminals and sex pests'. I mean, Brian Taylor actually asked "Do you think those boos for Maynard might be related to the Bradshaw incident?" [censored] I'm slowly falling out of love with football. It struck me over the long weekend that I was only ever dipping in to check on games, catch a few headlines, see if there was anything of particular note. I used to settle in for multiple games a week (multitasking of course), monitor all kinds of stats, play Supercoach (spent a solid chunk of one season inside the top 1000), knew the expectations of at least 30 of that season's draft picks, and could have made a reasonable go of naming a best 22 for most clubs. As of now, I couldn't give you the top 10 from the last draft or for most clubs. I'm Melbourne, now, and that's all I am when it comes to Australian Football.

It's an interesting side note that earlier this season one of the young East African players (I've forgotten the name) was copping all kinds of [censored] comments about how he 'didn't understand the game' and would get someone injured with his totally unacceptable habit of having the knee out directly into the backs of opponents as he went up for spoils and marks. I present to the jury, son of two-time Brownlow medallist, co-captain of Carey Grammar, premiership captain of the Oakleigh under-18s, 2-time all-Australian centre-half-back, Collingwood Captain and all-round 'good bloke' with 163 games' expertience, Darcy Moore. Guess it wasn't a Sudan problem.

You know that's normal, right? Sydney finished their win over Geelong with 5 players without a tackle, and another five with only one for the game. Hawthorn had 4 players with zero, and another 6 with just 1. Today's game has been flawed by missed shots on goal, defence pulled out of its comfort zone, a scattering of bad turnovers in bad places, some iffy umpiring as always and a star player hurt, but it has been a legit effort.

I've got that sick feeling, like a primary school flashback of the times I was punished for the times I hit back at bullies who had never being punished for hitting me. This all ties into the deepest, visceral, instinctive sense of injustice. I'm seething. But I'm so proud that - purely by luck of family inheritance - I'm part of a club which actually has a bit of honour.

Quick note to confirm that we did indeed break Geelong and should get the credit for finally ending their era. Geelong before the game against the Demons - 7 wins, zero losses. Geelong since the game against the Demons - 5 losses, one win, in which they were challenged seriously by last place. We should get a medal for our services to football.

Time to burn off the parasite which expects to be thanked. Collingwood is a blight on the game. We are the honourable competitor. Winning means something and we have everything we need to make it happen.

Just because Angus had football taken away from him by concussion doesn't mean he wants to spend his time being a 'concussion ambassador'. Maybe he's always wanted to learn the cello. Or be a travel show host.

Start practicing the 'No Reid, no Eagles' taunt because it is going to be fresh and current for 15 years. Like having Judd but no Cousins, Kerr, Fletcher or Chick. Lol. The ultimate winning culture midfield.

"We absolutely hyperbolated them." Bookmark it now.

It's all inflation. And a fair bit of this 'shrinkflation' that is becoming popular, too. Like how these days, for not particular reason, you need a Bachelor Degree to do what would have been a Diploma job twenty years ago. Meanwhile... The things you find when you search for 'Too many GOATs'. https://www.themanygoatsproject.com/ A project to coordinate research on goat behaviour across numerous sites because it turns out one of the main features of goat behaviour is that their surroundings can influence their personality in radically unpredictable ways, so it is necessary to simultaneously study goats from a wide range of environments to allow for that situational effect. This is exactly the kind of the research collaboration that the internet was originally created for. https://www.goodgrowth.earth/post/too-many-goats There are too many goats. Not just in sport, but also, Mongolia. Cashmere got cheap, so cashmere goat farmers increased their herd and production to try to still turn a profit, which made cashmere get cheaper, so goat farmers increased their herd and production to try to still turn a profit, which made cashmere get cheaper, so goat farmers increased their herd and production to try to still turn a profit... Who would've thought that the world was in need of a Goat Cartel?

I'm kind of shocked. Something went horribly wrong against Fremantle and I'd like to be alarmist but so many others have hit the panic button before me that the fun has drained out of it. We came into the season seriously behind. I was thinking we'd be lucky to even have a 50/50 win loss record at the mid-season break. After the Alice springs disaster we're now 7w 5l and outside the 8 on percentage alone, and in this wacky season we're still one win short of the top 4. Anyway, the problems are easy enough to identify; Our forward line is an abject disaster. Not a single forward has been in form, and those who have been at least keeping the scoreboard moving or providing contests are the not the ones who can define a structure by contesting over and over - Fritsch and Pickett aren't built for the role, and Van Rooyen is eventually built for it but still too young to be doing it alone. Our mature-age depth recruitment drove off a cliff. From the epic run of Langdon, Hibberd, Melksham and Brown all playing their part to make a team complete (and even Tomlinson had an important run of form before his injury), we've now had Dunstan, Hunter, Grundy, Billings, McAdam, Schache and Fullarton all cost us more than they have been worth to date. And of course the elephant in the room of losing Angus Brayshaw right on the cusp of the season, when also previously losing the depth which would otherwise have come in, James Jordon. The hole in our hearts is matched by the hole in our list. And the other elephant in the room of Oliver's messed up pre-season and 'just another midfielder' form. Simple statistics will say he is down about 20% on the levels he sustained consistently for seven years. That feels about right, but maybe exacerbated in the sense of "getting it 20% less, and then doing 20% less with it." It is pretty clear that the emotional strain of holding it all together under such trying circumstances got the better of us at last, away in Alice Springs and without Lever's reassuring screaming keeping everyone in line. None of this is a surprise or mystery. And yet we're right in the mix after playing through one of the hardest draws of any club in the first half of the season. Congratulations Max Gawn on being an epic captain providing the example of even-tempered grit and excellence the club so desperately has needed during this time.

Wow, you must really hate Robbie Flower.

Completely beaten. So many kicks and handballs falling short of the target it is comical. Turnovers or lost contests everywhere and then holes all over the place for the opposition to come through. I've not seen us that flustered and all-round ineffective in four years. Clearly at the moment we are wildly up and down each week and the up isn't as up as the down is down. For all that the result has been just about decided already, this second half is an important one for the mentality of the club.

25 minute interview with Brayden Maynard's mum on AFL website's vacuous "Mum's with mics" segment. The shaping of the narrative has started early. Talking about the 'media coverage' and how upsetting it was. I've watched it an extracted most of what was said about the incident, so nobody else needs to wade through the rest of the tedium. "It's pretty hurtful stuff. It's pretty hurtful stuff. Because [shrugs and smiles] it's a footy act. It's a footy act." "No one - no one intentionally goes out to do anything like that... and if they did, they shouldn't be playing footy. But it is - it is a contact sport. Like, it is, it is, and, sadly stuff does happen." "I think the fact that a career ended... to be pinpointed on my son, that just breaks my heart because that just - that just is not the case. It's not. No." No, they did not mentioned Angus Brayshaw by name at any point, nor express any condolences or sympathy for him or, for that matter, his mum. For example as you can see in the quotes here, it was 'a career ended'. Time for your periodic reminded that Brayden Maynard has hospitalised an opponent with a head injury every season since Craig McRae became Collingwood coach.

wut? Not even talking about you. 🦃

That's what happens when you hire a Holy Ghost writer.

is it getting weird that we keep taking players from St Kilda? I think we can safely say that Petty has been committed to the transtion to being a forward (whatever you think of Crow rumours) which means we have three currently playing tall defenders over 30yrs old. So the question is; Would Battle be another in the string of 'yeah, okay' players who struggle to find a spot in our best 22? OR Would he be a valuable defensive role-player who finds a place in the system and plays 100 handy games for us?