Little Goffy

Also, I remember a site called 'The drafter' previewing various players, with quite in-depth profiles. They also tried to summarise with 'a player the kid would be like if they turn out right'. For Tom Scully they had 'a zippier Simon Black' For Sam Blease they had 'Peter Matera'. The first call seems reasonable. I would probably vomit fairy dust of happy-joyness if the second call was good too! Anyway, go speedster!

Nicholson, Scully, Bennell, Blease... I feel the need... the need for speed.

I never get tired of yelling out a good loud 'JOOOOORDIEEEE' just to mke sure any opposition supporters remember the name each time he bangs into the bottom of a pack. But that flying tackle, literally jumping over other players and hitting the tackle instead of worry about where he'd come down. The tackling equivalent of taking a speccie.

Struggled for form individually (to say the least) and the team was struggling for form at an obviously psychological level, while he has been captain. Let's face it, the whacks given to him by supporters early in the year were pretty reasonable. There's no question that he is starting to show improving form, but we are all entitled to affirm that at our own pace. For mine, even if some of his possessions and goals have been comparatively 'easy', I'd rather a player who was finding easy possessions than a player who was failing to find easy possessions! A few touches that go right, a bit of luck here and there, these are the things that rebuild confidence. Green and Jurrah are both beginning to get it back, and we could be a much more potent team if they continue to climb back to being their better selves. So for now I'll be happy about anything that brings them into the game.

If he's going to be a best 22 player it is going to be as the guy who just spends all day running up and down wing giving an option. Remembering that his base fitness is as good as Scully or Jones when not screwed by injury. He doesn't seem particularly potent as a playmaker, and the kicking lets him down, no question. But I think he would be our player most vulnerable to poor pre-season condition / injury interruption. For Cale to be best 22 in this growing team, he needs two main things to happen - 1. Consistency and confidence in kicking and decisions. (one comes with the other so often) 2. A sustained injury-free period.

...pation.

I'm getting by on antici...

Bit of a shame, both are just limted in some way that has stopped them being consistently effective at AFL level. Watching Bate, sometimes I feel like he actually has some kind of bad-luck genetic mutation. The ball always bounces the wrong way, the kick is always to his knees, the boundary line is always one step to close for him to work free, the tackler always seems to line him up just right. See also; Lance Whitnall, Brad Miller. With any luck, Bate signed with GWS in the 'secret santa' window last year, and in the process has prevented GWS from signing any other Demons (not that anyone would be referring to a particular one) through the 'out-of-contract' clause. He'd probably be a good contributor for them in the solid-body competing half forward role, given the clear responsibility. Dunn... I like what he brings to the game... when he brings it. In good form he's a more than handy inclusion. But as others have already said, he's not near the top of the half-forward/midfield rotation, now or in three year's time. So I guess I'm comfortable with their contract situation - Bate end of this year, Dunn has one more to be a depth player.

NOOOOOOOOOO! Do not invoke the curse of Miller/Mclean/Grimes! Gradually the severity of the divine retribution is diminishing, as we learn to contain our 'next captain' idolatry. But we must remain ever vigilant. Though, on all things considered, Jack Trengove does look a likely type. Also, I'd call James McDonald inspirational, but I presume you're talking about the 'turn the momentum of a whole game' kind of inspirational, so won't start a bun-fight there.

Whatever happens, Austin Wonaeamirri will always be welcome at the Melbourne Football Club.

Setting salaries on the basis of potential is a disaster nd the reason there is a set scale of salaries for players in their first two years. I'm beginning to accept the balances of both results here. Scully stays, we have an extra star player with us, and it says all sorts of good things about our club. However, he'd probably cost 600k a season and seriously screw with our carefully managed salary cap, which in the end could cost us other players right as we're peaking. Sculy goes, we probably get two first round picks which we can use in any of the ext five drafts, letting us watch the development of our current list and boost our stocks to correct any deficiencies and to maintan a generation of playing momentum, al while saving a whole pile of salary cap space. Plus, we become the only club to get good crowds and coverage against GWS.

Maybe there's so much media attention on Scully that any time he's mentioned (and now, even not mentioned) on twitter there's a storm in a teacup, so he and the club decided to just drop a general blanket over public mentions because he's a private person and didn't want to be stalked online. Just a theory.

Hmm... Wonder how we'd be going with Robert Harvey added to our midfield... Fraser Gehrig was handy in 2004, too. For that matter, Reiwoldt, Dal Santo, Ball and Goddard all played full seasons in 2004. We have neither the star quality players in the key structural points, nor do we have the kids at full availability. In fact, our list of kids has been badly shaken by injury for this and last season. The comparison isn't really fair. Mind you, I still think that we ought to be doing a lot better than we are, particularly later in the year once we actually have those kids available.

With several family and friends being ardent supporters of our next two opponents, here's what I can offer from having watched most of their games this year and several last year, and been involved in a lot of conversation about them. - Carlton without Judd and/or Warnock would be a different proposition to full strength Carlton. Despite the fact that their depth has improved, and the very good performances from Murphy this year, Judd is still their best player by an astonishing margin. Don't doubt it for a moment, Carlton have three wins this season which were driven by the impossible influence of Judd at critical times. If he is at full fitness, we can probably just accept that one is just about demonstrating intensity and not embarassing ourselves. If he isn't making a full contribution we can match their advantage in the midfield drops away considerably. No/unfit Warnock takes it down another notch. It would still take a top effort, but it isn't impossible. Bombers are genuinely shaky - the immense effort which has made them so strong for the early part of the season was clearly taking its toll, mentally and physically. How they react to the bye will shape their season. Over time their game plan has degenerated into ultra-predictable straight-line stuff, which equals pick-off party time for Jared Rivers. I rate that game 50/50 with Watson and Hurley out. Possibly their two most structurally important players, with all respect to Fletcher. If we turn up to that one with one of our 'better intensity' efforts, we'll get 'em. Collingwood, nah, that'd be ridiculous wouldn't it?

Tick. We did, after all, have seven of our best 22 out. Oddly enough, with an average games experience of 39. Only 1 (Jamar) had more than 100 games experience. Trengove, Scully, Grimes, Jamar, Garland, Wonaeamirri, Bail. We also lost Tapscott early. Thinking it through, we were out there playing mostly with the team we had BEFORE we started the rebuild. In partcular, Gysberts was the only person we had out there from our 2009 superdraft. Meanwhile, Green was ordinary and Davey was poor. 'The future' wasn't really on show on saturday, so the past (St Kilda) got a look in. But we're still in a slump, and that s%$@s me.

I'm frankly excited by the progress Martin has made this year. Gotta remember he had a great big question mark over him, would he even 'make it' to be a contributor at all. His efforts in the last couple of weeks have been great, and built on a bit of humility too, which I like. He clearly understands that he isn't often going to be the dominant tap, so sets himself to following up with real intensity. On the other hand, when he was lined up against weaker ruck opponents (Like Koschitske! ) we went for the tap all-out. He knows his opponents and thinks through how to handle them. Very good signs for a still-young ruckman. Throw in his usefulness as a defender and we have ourselves a pretty useful player. I agree this gives the footy department a great opportunity to experiment with the Russian as a big target for longer periods, staying a little more at home inside 50 while he returns to full match fitness for a couple of weeks. But Jamar is a true ruckman first and foremost and definitely should be at those bounces and throw-ins whenever sensible. Cook and Fitzpatrick will need plenty of time yet. Watts will never directly compete with Jamar for similar roles. So all is ok on that count.

This thread was started immediately following a game where Jake King was prominent. Enough said as far as the No 1 goes. Hayden Ballantyne from Freo is clearly a very irritating player to play against, but amusing to watch from a distance. Brent Harvey a definite podium finish. Something just so... grating, about that guy. He's smooth like sandpaper. Hmm... throw in the Tip Rat and it looks like being short in AFL = being annoying. There should be a whole other category for players who may or may no be annoying themselves but become annoying because of all the stupid hype around them. Adam Goodes at least doesn't seem to milk it so much, but Lance Franklin, Alan Didak and the like, yep, definitey a whole other category. Oh, and Kyle Reimers needs his own category, too. He even annoys himself.

It's a funny thing, I remember with both Bruce and Mclean, I was staunchly in the 'stick by them, they can still come good' camp. (As with Jamar, Dunn, Bartram, and Watts) But, the moment Mclean was gone, and even the moment Bruce left, I was happy in a way. Relieved might be the best word. Relieved that I didn't have to invest all that emotional effort into believing in them. I hope Brock keeps stomping along and makes himself a useful career as a high-endurance 'get to contest after contest' kind of player, though that will rely on hi oy holding up. But you wouldn't now expect him to ever become the gun we thought we were getting, back around '06. Bruce and Mclean were two of our most potent players on that day, back in that Elim Final win over St Kilda. Now they would both be unmitigated list cloggers if they were still with us.

Failure to lay the groundwork in Sydney. What's it been? Approaching 30 years, and they never lowered their eyes and really got into the meat and potatoes of building the game in the community. From Eddelstone to GWS, the AFL has had a major lack of strategy in NSW. They believed that good results (salary cap bonuses) would automatially lead to good support. How'd that work out for North Melbourne even after the 90s? Why is the AFL still running with that plan for Gold Coast and GWS?

Start of the year we would've been looking at this as a 'just so some fight' game, really. Now we have to look at it as a 'with intensity, we can beat them' attitude. Win this game, and we get a valuable lesson, possibly even make a transition of sorts, into the next 'gear' or stage of development that we've been looking for. Big opportunity. Sure I'm nervous, but hey, it's an odd numbered round, we'll be fine.

Only genuine incidents (barring a dozen 'duty-of-care' items...) I noted were Dunn with the late head-high hip into a North player on the ground - oops, and of course the punch n the head that Pratt delivered, which was comedy gold start to finish. Newton has been hit with a 147 game suspenson, cut to 110 games with an early plea, for 'looking like me might be about to do something serious' repeatedly for five years. This latest incident apparently pushed the MRP too far.

1956? Good start time if ever there was one. I choose to believe that your return will herald the new era of triumph! As for the slow-start issue, I remeber a couple of years ao reading a series of very interesting articles about approaches to 'firing up' for a game, from a sports psychology perspective. One thing that came up a few times was that if a team (or individual) was too keyed up at the start, and came out too pumped up at the beginning of a long contest like AFL or Tennis, as opposed to a sprint race, then the 'down' as the intitial adrenaline spike faded could actually be more damaging than the benefits of being fired up in the first minute. It is certainly the case that after quarter-time on saturday most of the team seemed to lose that urge to hunt relentlessly, and that was the unmistakable death of us for the day. Maybe on this occasion it could be put down to being over-hyped pre-game... maybe not. As for the other game and halves where we've just lost the drive to hunt, I dunno the answer, but it is clearly the big 'question' on the Demons at the moment.

'Fine THIS'.

Yep, the best protest would be to tackle like berserk beasts. In effect, daring the AFL to continue to crack down in their special la-la-land nonsense way.

I wouldn't want to be North Melbourne this weekend. I hope to see a few three-finger salutes after heavy tackles.