Little Goffy

How good are we? Right now I feel a lot like 2005, where we had the long slump followed by the last three wins in a row in tight games, scraped into the finals and then got smashed by Geelong and straight out of the finals. It's been similar - we've being putting a hell of a lot in this last month, and I'd reckon doing that and still not getting the wins would be even more exhausting than those last desperate games of '05. We hit our limit today, mentally done in, we crumpled. Just be glad it's the split round and we have some time to freshen up, focus on the much more attackable draw in the second half of the season, and see how we go from there.

Part of why we did so poorly was because the veterans generally had poor games. It's not like we're about to lose our top assets to age. Our oldest player who had what I would call a decent game today was Green, and that wasn't spectacular. Moloney might be next, I'm guessing. (Yes, I know Bruce got amongst our highest disposals, but they tended to be low-impact and there were too many pieces of lazy non-defence non-pressure from him) As has been pointed out before, we also have a very wide split of ages - our older players are properly old, meaning that the large number of younger players are balanced out in the average age stat. Remember that one 33 year old plus three 21 year olds is the same average (24) as a 27 year old and three 23 year olds.

I felt quite sad at times today (well, actually quite a lot of today) when watching Robbo, Bruce, Whelan and McDonald. Add Wheatley, though he wasn't out there today. I love these guys, they've been at the club for the whole decade I've been a proper supporter/member, but it's just starting to feel inevitable that we will lose them, very soon. Some are fading out in that they are still doing the things we respect them for, but not often enough in any given two hours. Others seem to be still getting it and being involved, but not having any great impact. It reminds me a lot of the emotion at the end of '07, the big farewell game for so many, at the end of an era which we all knew in our hearts was also going to be the beginning of the end for the remaining veterans. On the other hand, hoopla we've got some good kids developing. I for one am looking forward to seeing how they go once they finish puberty!

The descriptions of Jurrah as a tall forward Aaron Davey not only have me excited, but they all make me refelct a little - I had the priviledge of seeing Aaron Davey's first game for Melbourne, in the then Wizard Cup, up close and personal at Manuka Oval in Canberra. He did a few nice things, a couple of tastes of the great high speed tackling, and then... there was a piece of play that will remain etched in my memory. Ball was just crossing the 50m arc, coming to group amongst a tangle of players. Davey just bolted into it at breathtaking speed, almost scary in so much congestion, it was like he'd been invisible two seconds earlier. At full tilt he slammed into the guy with the ball, it spilled with a barely legit and completely powerless handball, another opposition player gathers it, handballs it off quickly, but Davey is there with another fantastic tackle, this time gathers the ball himself, puts a couple of steps between himself and anyone chasing, and sends it on to the top of the square. I don't even remember the opponent, or even what happened next, I just remember the sheer elation of seeing such a great bit of play from such a new player. Quietly I'm hoping that Jurrah will play his first game up in Canberra, get to meet a few politicians and put Yuendumu on their radar, and give me another 'moment' to remember for years and years, leaning against the fence and letting him know how good it was!

The thing about Brock is, his game is built on determination. When things get a bit hair-raising and the pressure is on, he'll maintain his level while others on both teams start to fluctuate. He also works very hard to get to contest after contest after contest - the number of times Brock Mclean is there, turning what would otherwise be a two on one into a two on two, or an easy run and bounce for the other side into a hard one, it's truly impressive. He doesn't win every contest like magic, but because of Brock Mclean in any given week there's an extra dozen contests that our opponents have to work through. The work ethic, determination and calmness will be priceless in big games, for a taste we only need to look back on the Elimination Final against St Kilda.

Pair of Jacks wins over full house. Every word except 'of' in that headline uses double meanings. I'm so proud.

I've suddenly realised why it all took so long - 'Casey Mayor Geoff Ablett'. We all know how hard it is to get a signature from G. Ablett.

Is it worth pointing out that it's June, in Melbourne... We should ty to shift the date, to say, late April. Be aweseom if we added a few blockbusters in september, too. That'd give us a decent chance of good weather.

Interesting seeing Dunn and Bartram being the named onballers. Between them they will have to take responsibility for getting the ball and clearing it, as well as their habitual stopping roles. No-one else to do it.

Yep, on the one hand it's a shame he misses, on the other hand, it lightens the load for him just a little as her closes in on hideous exam time. As a developing player, and with the mature head he's got on his shoulders, he'll hardly take it personally or even as a backward step. I was startled to seem him dropped, but as pointed out, it's an appropriate call, this week.

You've written off Petterd after how many games? At what age? With what injury interruptions? And Jones will only ever be average? You also missed Bate completely. Let's try this another way, where do we need decent players over the next two years? I've dropped due to age or form (but who knows, one or two might turns things around)... Bruce, Robertson, McDonald, Whelan, Wheatley, Bell, Dunn, Newton F: Wonaeamirri Bate Maric HF: Sylvia Watts Green C: Morton Moloney Davey HB: Grimes Garland Blease FB: Cheney Warnock Frawley Foll: Jamar Mclean Jones With the interchange coming from: Johnson, Strauss, Bennell, Bartram, Martin, Rivers, Miller, Buckley, Petterd. And then of course there's various levels of speculation on... Meesen, Spencer, Bail, Jetta, McNamara, Jurrah. I guess all I'm saying is, we have a football team here, a lot of it is very young, and it's frankly bizarre to be talking of 'condemned to mediocrity' when almost half of our team each given week has less than 50 games to their name with a few more barely past that.

There are also people who trawl the internet looking at other people's personal pages and leaving abusive comments. It's only an issue if Watts never plays another game.

Jacks Aces. We've got two of them out there after all. You realise this is actuallty the perfect game for Jack Grimes to go berserk out there. He's had a bit of time to find his feet, been very good already. And he's been waiting most of his life for a chance to personally thump Collingwood, like a true Demon. Jack Grimes to get this week's Rising Star Nomination, while Watts does a few nice things in a solid debut with a couple of promising contested marks that keep us all drooling for the future. Is that too much to ask?

In a further thought, West Coast play eight of their remaining games against current bottom eight teams.

Yep, that's the way it is. If Richmond also finish with the 4 wins or less, they get their pick at the end of the first round, since it would only be their first (consecutive) year at the bottom. For what it's worth, I don't think West Coast is likely to win just the one more game for the rest of the season, They've already beaten Port and the Dogs at Subiaco as well as us, and have only been smashed once (by St. Kilda at the Dome) so far. It pains we to say it, but West Coast, right this minute, are a better team than us, substantially because they have a few key stars holding them together while the kids develop, which we simply don't... yet. Regardless, I'm hardly about to sweat on the difference between pick one and two versus pick one and three. It would make winning five a bit more painful; assuming we pass them and also Richmond, We could start at pick 4!

Well, funnily enough, there's Nick Riewoldt. Was 18/19 in his first year, as opposed to Watt's 17/18. Played six games, kicked two goals, laid a total of three tackles, and averaged less than ten disposals. Of course, then he got 11 brownlow votes in his second year on the way to picking up the Rising Star award. Speaking of Rising Star winners, Jared Rivers collected a whopping 5 disposals in the three games of his debut season, total. Moral of the story? Sit down and shut up. The kid got 20+ disposals as a HFF/Winger, at 197cm, working from an interrupted training schedule. Can't be all bad.

Jamar has always taken contested marks, not as many as yesterday, but he'll take one or two a game routinely. He's also routinely among our top tacklers! Consistent racks up a few every game I'm thrilled that Jamar has had an undeniably great game. He puts in a huge amount of work and gets far too much crap from people expecting him to be Dean Cox or Matthew Kruezer or something.

On a positive note, at three quarter time we became eligible for the Federal Governmen stimulus money... I watched Bennell pretty closely today and finally got an answer to my nagging doubt about him - his disposals tend not to find teammates as often as would be ideal. I've concluded that the reason for this is that he tends to get the ball at times when really it shouldn't have been possible.

There's a theme to my thoughts about 'we should have drafted x over y' discussions. Like the Rioli v Morton debate, the Watts v Natanui, Rich etc. debate is one of close margins between apples and oranges. It's not, as I've said before, like we're looking at a Fiora/Pavlich or Tambling/Franklin comparison. Those oranges are definately a cut above the apples.

Haven't heard about the foxtel piece, can anyone fill me in? Great report, and I particularly liked the understatement on these mysterious skilled midfielder and marking forward prospects.

Our involvement with the VWFL at staff and administration level will do a lot to improve that potential sponsor engagement which obvously was a long, long way from acceptable standards, as shown by your experience. It's hard to build professinalism when resources are so limited and so thinly spread. Both the alignment with the other Melbourne clubs and the China experiment should have worked, but then CEO Steve Harris is a [censored] who doesn't follow through on his 'big picture' declarations, or sytematically analyse the appropriate strategy, so they didn't. (Yes, I'm not a fan of Harris). I'd expect better from Stynes, Connolly and Schwab.

I marketing terms, those 1000+ women playing in Victoria would be 'champions', they would be advocates for the game and for whichever club (that would be us) gave them real support. Being able to say 'Yeah, the players from the Demons come around to take us through some skills sessions once in a while, and for extra training before state tournaments' would give a real boost to the sense of legitimacy and significance which womens footbll has for the participants and for anyone they talk to. Essentially, what we're doing is sending a message that we're taking women's football seriously. That will be really appreciated, will help the women's league gain new players, supporters, and sponsors, and something for which we will be remembered - particularly if the women's league really starts to grow over the next couple of years. Which, by the way, is something that was already on the cards - they are starting to get much better organised. Actually, noting that our involvement will also be at staff level, this means that the key decision-makers in the WVFL will be highly aware of and sympathetic to the Demons for some years. And of course talk of a player emerging from the WVFL to AFL ranks is obivously very long term. But in ten years time, with a couple of premierships under our belt, a long period of late draft picks and guys like Blease and Watts getting a bit long in the tooth, it might be handy having dibs on one or two bonus decent quality players. We may even get some form of scholarship player arrangement like the NSW scholarships. But yeah, all things going well, we would probably be talking ten years before the development pathway was properly in place and the club/fan culture was ready to cope with such controversial actions as allowing people with ovaries into the AFL. Another thing to look forward to - the Victorian women's state representatives joining in running Auskick clinics with the Demons. Now THAT makes for good role models. Nothin make sme happier than seeing people I'm associated with doing the right thing, creating a great win-win situation, and reaping the rewards simply because they had the initiative to do it when other's lagged behind.

The article says 1000 adult players, in the formal VWFL. Then the juniors. Marketing wise, we just smashed our way into the young, athletic, women's market, and will gain general positive support from a much wider population as well. Leadership wise, we just gave women's football and women's inclusion in football a significant boost that will see it become a stronger and stronger part of our game over the years. Culture wise, we just established an ongoing relationship between our players and women athletes in a cooperative environment working on the same tasks and goals. And that will be very important when, many years from now... On field wise, we just got first dibs on AFL's first 'Lauren Jackson' (playing HFF I would think)

It's another one of those things which worked out well for all involved. Brisbane would be happy overall with Johnstone's performance and what he offers, though he has had some poor patches. We ought to be thrilled at the potential Grimes is showing. And Travis has had a fresh start which seems to have done him good. Apparently no razors available in Queensland, though.

Whatever.