Little Goffy

Is it significant that Christian Salem and Jacob Van Rooyen both made their debut for the Anzac Eve game against Sydney?

No?

Didn't think so.

Imagine going to West Coast and being a blonde tall forward and the only person on the list with big shoes to fill? Although, to be fair, if he can keep himself injured for a few season he will fill the emotional need that Allen provided, 'We just need a few injured stars back in crucial positions and things will turn'.

Also, if Van Rooyen is only ever an average forward, cheers to that. We won a premiership with a decidedly average tall forward set and let's face the star key forwards consume vast amounts of salary cap space anyway.

I've decided this is my 'toxic positivity' thread.

19 minutes ago, ijustwannaseeaflag said:

Don't have too good a year son, because we know what that means

We will get to death ride Fremantle again in 2027?

Always a silver lining, but really I think by the end of the year Van Rooyen will understand he can be a valued part of our 2028 premiership team.

One of these days I'm going to make a team where the player numbers in position work out as a correct sudoku, and get everyone else on Demonland to pretend they got the answer and just @Demonstone can't get it.

1 hour ago, Lord Travis said:

Trelly is already 20 years old, as he went undrafted previously so was a mature aged when we picked him up. I’d say he’s more slightly built and further back than Kozzie was in year 2-3 with us at the same age…

He’s taller and appears to have greater scope for around the ground roles though IMO. Could see him becoming an elite half back or winger possibly, similar to Wangineen-Milera.

To be fair on Latrelle, Kysiash did kick 40 goals as a small forward in a premiership season at that age, so you can be a long way further back and still be in front of most mere mortals! 😀

Didn't realise just how much taller L is than K, a full 11cm. Then again, I never quite think of Kysaiah as being quite so small.

It is very nice to be getting reports of Latrelle showing enough that we can all agree the recruiters did actually see something in him rather than going for romance.

As for why he was passed over for a couple of drafts... sometimes a body doesn't quite click or an attitude doesn't quite firm up for a couple of extra years.

Mihocek and Fritsch were even later to the party, coincidentally in the same draft year in the end. Jai Culley had to wait for a mid-season draft and only recently began looking like a genuine AFL player. Daniel Turner also a mid-season pick who took a couple of years and now looks very handy.

A glance at our 12 players age 20-23, from Latrelle Pickett to Bailey Laurie, only four have proven they are AFL level so far - Bowey, Turner, Van Rooyen and Windsor. It is unnerving and exciting to think that the progress or not of those other 8 is going to be the defining character of our season. Just three or four solid roleplayers from that group has us back to being a fully competitive best 25 again.

I'd like to give a special condemnation here to Demonstone's 'high ceiling' joke.

Well, credit to Cornes for a somewhat original topic which has an overall positive tone and can stimulate an earnest discussion instead of looking to bleepstir.

Nice of the pundits to nominate our boy Bailey Humphrey, as a bonus Demon from our 2028 premiership team.

I don't think Kysaiah Pickett will ever quite accumulate the ridiculous numbers of Gary Ablett Jr, but his impact on games could be comparable.

It is fun to think that the obvious other contender over the coming seasons is such a radically different player in Langford.

Other than that, the optimistic side of me can see a number of our younger players becoming excellent, but maybe not the 'marquee' mega players. I am always hoping for a team that goes deep on excellence, the likes of Kade Simpson, Shaun Burgoyne, David Mundy, Jarrad McVeigh, playing out sterling 15 to 20 year careers and seeing the club through ups and downs.

Which puts me in mind of our very own Tom McDonald. 'Best young player' in 2012, and since then has rarely, and perhaps only from injury, been out of our B&F top 10, with a few podium finishes thrown in. Much of it while filling list holes so vast they were given geological notations.

Just making a mental note to get properly cranky at anyone who decides to hang [censored] on him as he approaches retirement.

The list and strategy matched, the fitness program works, and everyone had that quiet awareness that this was the case and they had a really good opportunity.

We had a core of absolute gun players who in that moment saw themselves as role models for responsible team play, rather than the focal point to be supported by the 'lesser' players.

Burgess fitness program.

Covid isolation providing insulation from the fugazi.

6 hours ago, picket fence said:

Sorry all in Port Fairy at present and went fishing at Killarney Beach and ran into... you guessed it a big Black snake! Training reports will resume in a few weeks!

I hear your boy Jefferson had a great day and particularly a ripper first half...

Obviously you already know this, I just want to share in your 'determined to remain composed' non-grin! 😁

These are the things which historians dig through half a century later and realise 'oh, at that time people were thinking this and doing that'.

Or, failing that Demonstone Jr will be setting us 'prompt your AI implant to correctly solve this riddle based on the hivemind picture archive located at Ref: Demonland Six6Six'.

It is also a bit of a touching moment for all of us who went through it.

The ship came in to port. There were storms. The ship came in to port.

1 hour ago, Ethan Tremblay said:

I’m present and have already spotted a snake; Tom Morris is watching on. I’ll shoo him away with a rake.

If gastro had gastro, it would be Tom Morris.

Spare a thought for the snake which has eaten something so large it had to dislocate its jaw and poke its windpipe out the side of its mouth in order to swallow... and then gets gastro.

4 hours ago, Rodney (Balls) Grinter said:

The Demonland auto censor is tuned a little too sensitively in MHO. I can understand it being in use for the most offensive expletives, but it actually limits the ability to express even some fairly benign things at times, which actually pisses me off, but I'm over trying to work around it or edit posts to use a alternate expression.

Perhaps that could be the topic for another thread, regarding the relaxation of the auto censor, if the admins are open to it?

Surely any thread which mentions anything Essendon related is the right place to discuss relaxing censorship of expletives?

2 hours ago, Piano lifter not player said:

I like to keep optimistic at this time of the season but I'm struggling a bit to come to terms with us being a long term [censored] team again. It was so nice watching games and expecting a win for a few years there. A predictor or gauge I like to use is to consider which of our players would be picked in a Brisbane side.

I know it isn't really how football and list comparisons work, but I'll make the slightly tongue-in-cheek point that we beat Brisbane at the Gabba mid 2025. Just 8 games before we sacked out coach, we beat the eventual premiers. Weird things like that keep football interesting!

Now you've got me wondering, who would come out of our own 2021 premiership side to make way for who in our current team?

Oh, that took me to a dark place. Five our our best on the day are either still playing but somewhere else, or cruelly out of the game. Petracca, Oliver, Brayshaw, Jackson and Nibbler.

That said, Footscray have almost entirely turned over that list - Just Bontempelli, Treloar, Liberatore, Naughton, English, Bailey Dale, Bailey Williams, Weightman and Vandemeer still at the Dogs!

Anyway, without going too much into 'how much better is Pickett 2026 compared to Pickett 2021' and other players still with us I think you can make a case for;

Steele over Sparrow. Chandler over Spargo. Van Rooyen over Brown (with all due respect to Brown and moderate optimism on Van Rooyen). Langford over Harmes.

After that it is a matter of successors rather than comparisons.

1 hour ago, Fritta and Turner said:

If you want to be insulated from the noise what are you doing on Demonland?

Demonland is the tip of the spear for fine football observations and insight. How dare you call us noise!

40 minutes ago, La Dee-vina Comedia said:

Am I the only one who read this and for a fleeting moment thought we'd lost the cruise company as a sponsor I never knew we'd had?

Unless it is a reference to Trac and Clarry being told to PO, that is still my best guess! Next minute we'll be revealing that we've had an Ansett sponsorship deal officially on our balance sheet for the last 30 years.

4 minutes ago, DubDee said:

The author mentioned playoffs and no one batted an eyelid

thanks AFL, you’ve officially americanised the game we loved

My eyelids definitely batted. They batted as deep as a 2000s Australian cricket team. I'm still managing the cramp.

12 hours ago, Rodney (Balls) Grinter said:

If we'd gone out and chased a has-been coach like Malthouse or Pagan at Carton after making a knee [censored] reaction to replace a developing coach who was starting to produce results and thrown a bunch of money at a few overrated players, I think the season could have disaster written all over it, but that's far from the approach we have taken.

I like this point but I really, really like how the auto-censor has hit it to create knee-[censored] reaction. Strong fetish vibes.

Reminds me of early attempts to auto-censor words in corporate emails, which were countered by staff agreeing upon euphemisms/dysphorisms. So [censored] became 'turkey slice' or [censored] [censored] became 'fire hydrant'. Sure enough, once management realised they were being called a bunch of turkey slicers who had added even more fire hydrants to the reporting process, the censorship had to be extended... and the cycle proceeds...

Melbourne right now is a pundit's dream. You could say just about anything and make a case for it. Except possibly 'everything will click in 2026'.

Our defensive unit will either wither with age and injury while young talls stall their development, or there will be a terrific overlap of rejuvenated and motivated veteran core providing stability for dynamic successors.

Our midfield will either be crushed under the weight of effort to provide a sustained full unit, or our two veteran warriors will provide the guardianship and defensive solidity for an eminently complex and unpredictable mix of heights, styles and strengths from an enthusiastic young group which believes in their future together.

Our forward line is either built around a young tall who plateaued early and will never quite be effective at AFL level, a forward-ruck who isn't quite the real thing, unfit smalls, and some ancient veterans who can barely move even when they do get on the park... or we have put together a critical mass of some of the smartest and most experienced forward-line movers who can guide our young highly mobile talls to make the most of their different instincts and a frightening collection of smalls who can appear anywhere without warning and will hunt anything that moves.

Our ruck is, of course, a bit of a Gawn or bust situation.

Up in the box and on the bench, and on training days, our coaches are either a brilliantly selected cadre of specialists under a senior coach who has been nurturing a vision and planning how to communicate it for years, or it is a grab bag of whoever happened to be available on the cheap and willing to work with that big dork Stephen.

So, yeah, that about covers it. Predicted finish from 19th (behind Tassie) to 4th, I'd say.

Couple of people have mentioned Jai Culley as an occasional ruck chop-out.

Thought I'd mention firstly the coincidence of Jack Silvagni being the same height, and then the chats from Blues fans that he is actually a bigger loss than it would seem. Many blues reckon his terrible injury run and overuse as a hole-plugger has cost the Blues more than a few wins over the last few years, as well as his contract.

Anyway, the main connection is that Silvagni was being used as an undersized ruck stop-gap all over the ground in 2023-24, and actually did that role pretty well. Just 3 hitouts a game, but he was always an option because he already played in all areas of the field.

The remedial works on my building have progressed to the next engineer inspection and just now the engineer, site supervisor and lead concreter all 'inspected' the balcony works. Picture me slurping my coffee, checking Demonland and glancing up to see three grown men doing gumby jumps outside my third-floor window.

"Well, that one's pretty solid," said the engineer.

16 hours ago, Demonstone said:

My English teacher said that I'd never be any good at poetry because of my dyslexia.

Well, I showed her. So far I've made two vases, a coffee mug and an ashtray.

I did not believe there were any of these I had not heard before. Congratulations.

20 hours ago, Timothy Reddan-A'Blew said:

How can I resist an appeal like that?!

The general connection is their first names are all Australian-region cyclone names.

The specific connection is that these names for cyclones have all been 'retired' due to the high human and/or economic impact of the cyclones so named.

Credit where it is due, that is a pretty cool theme.

Debit where it is due, I never, ever, would have got that!

And I've considered Batman villian names.

2 hours ago, DemonFrog said:

Any good news to report?

Littler Goffy made a fun mess of the banana but has now been provided with civilization's second greatest invention (after the epidural) - a holdable squishy thingy you can stuff soft foods in and which babies can then safely gum away at as little slobbery blobs squeeze out. It's like a teether and a self-feeder in one go. Honestly, it is just historically ingrained habit which stops us from all using these for all food, all the time.

'Breakout season' is such a personally subjective term, like when people talk about 'A graders and B graders', the boundaries can be radically different for different people.

The two main notions seem to be either 'went from being a fringe player to a core AFL-grade player', or 'went from being just another good player to being a noted star'.

Just for fun I'm looking back at some of our current veterans to see when their breakouts might be noted.

Gawn is an interesting start. He clearly had a breakout half season in 2015 after returning from injury. Clearly the penny dropped at some point in that long layoff. By 2016 his numbers weren't that different but he was suddenly very visible, played the full season for the first time in his career, and people were ready to call him a star.

Salem finally got some blocks of games in, despite still having injury interruptions, in 2017 and that was when he really looked like changing from 'interesting prospect' to core player. He set his personal standard in 2018, and has maintained that level as best as injury has allowed him since, including of course some gems in 2021. That perennial injury issue has probably cost him the opportunity to make that second layer 'breakout'.

Fritsch went from VFL to regular AFL after being mature-age drafted. Was promising but not allowed to / able to find his best position for a few years. And then 2021 happened and for a while there he was as good as any medium forward you care to name. But given the subtle changes in role and a bit of inconsistent form since that epic peak, does it count as a breakout?

Turner is the natural example of the first type of breakout and probably the best analogy to what people are hoping for from Culley. A couple of seasons on the list wrecked by injury and an uncertain place in the pecking order. Really started to show a bit in 2024, and then in 2025 became a reliable, essential part of our starting team.

Anyway, all four of Culley's games late in 2025 were legitimate AFL grade contributions. He took some contested marks, got some clearances and a high ratio of contested ball, gained some metres, laid some tackles, and had remarkably few clangers.

He would barely need to improve to be considered a very solid part of a dynamic, complex midfield mix. If he is having a great preseason and looking highly motivated and confident, then you could just about bank him having a notable 2026.

I confess I am completely beaten.

Okay, so it isn't THAT funny but when it is mixed in with some of youtube's driest content I did the proverbial cornflake spit.

Military History Visualised is a detail-oriented historiographer primarily of WW2 combat realities, particularly but not exclusively mechanised combat, and particularly but not exclusively German as the author is German.

Some years ago the channel produced a video explaining why the anti-tank missile never superceded the main gun in tank warfare. Sensible content, discussing pros and cons of reload times, velocity, armor penetration, cost per round, training demands, etc etc

Many many visual aides to assist concentration through the technical points of the anti-tank guided missiles (ATGM) era...

1 hour ago, Coolx2 said:

They both support Gates's population reduction from 8000 million to 500 million. Maybe GREEN is the connection i.e Soylent Green.

Wow, this thread sure took a turn which would make the boxing day pitch look stable.

1 hour ago, adonski said:

Could the 'related videos' end to that clip be the basis of nicknames?

I got a video of a man 'asleep' with his mouth open while his pet chicken picked his teeth clean.

Hen's Teeth Pickett?

6 hours ago, Timothy Reddan-A'Blew said:

''Tis in season': what season would that be now in Australia's part of the world?

C'mon, I'm practically giving it to you all!

I see the clues and check in with my brain but all I hear is crickets.