Little Goffy

I dropped in to visit the North-Dogs game in the third quarter for the exact ten minutes where North went from pluckily clinging on to knowing they were beaten.

Glancing over the stats, that game must surely be pushing recent records for contested marks.

Darcy 5, Lobb 4, Naughton 3, and a few others shared it around for a total of 19 in a game for the Dogs.

Larkey's 4 and the rest of North adding 6 more for 10 isn't a low count, either.

Only a few teams average more than ten contested marks per game, with most being around the 8-9 range. I think Sydney is lowest at 6.5.

20 hours ago, gs77 said:

Did you know that Pendlebury had a basketball background? 🤣

I'm surprised we almost made it to the second page before that exact phrase was used with that exact emoji.

I have a suspicion that if you sliced our season so far into thirds, we'd be absolute bottom to start, then a little inside the top half for the second slice, and most recently sitting around 14th.

But yeesh, Carlton... between this and the cascading injuries you'd have to wonder if they've completely bollocksed the conditioning program.

I haven't seen fatigue and injury hit a club this decisively since [redacted]

His ceiling is a potent blend of Melksham and Neal-Bullen.

Long way off it right now but so were Melksham and Neal-Bullen in their early years.

Preseasons, confidence, development - the part that keeps me optimistic about Tholstrup is that the factors which could dramatically improve his output are realistically improvable.

1 hour ago, YesitwasaWin4theAges said:

"If your not interested in Winning go and play marbles"

-Ronald Dale Barassi

I absolutely smashed it at marbles. Selling people's lost marbles back to them was basically my pocket money for chunks of childhood.

Also ran a very strong barter campaign for when people wanted 'rares'.

If I wasn't interesting in winning, I guess I could have played football!

1 hour ago, Howard_Grimes said:

Your first sentence set the scene. You suggested the bias is more than just perception.

Except it isn't. It's what you are perceiving vs someone else.

I am a die hard Melb supporter and disagree with what you've said entirely.

It's just a convenient way for ppl to dump emotionally after a loss and divert blame from the club/coaches/players.

As far as the May headline goes... Welcome to the world of click bait media. And of course there will be more emphasis put on sensationalising a headline when it involves a player who has a checkered history with the MRO.

Would this happen to other players who like May, have a history?

Of course.

Are one-eyed Melb supporters thinking about this?

Of course not.

Two off the top of my head;

Tom Hawkins.

Patrick Dangerfield.

Prolific dangerous acts and outright striking incidents, but to this day have an unblemished record as far as media is concerned and almost as clean when it comes to suspensions and fines.

Plus some guy I can't recall the name of at a club that isn't very important, who sends an opponent to hospital with a head injury roughly every 30 games, but still apparently smells like frangipannis and freshly baked bread.

4 hours ago, Bring-Back-Powell said:

And yet he still managed to play a fine game against us at Gather Round.

The Kent Kingsley principle lives on.

Meanwhile, should we be upgrading this thread from a Harry McKay to a more general 'picking over the Blue carcass' thread?

Unfortunately we don't have much immediate draft value to offer them, and their potential free agency have all been signed up or are being offered a Mexican silver mine by someone else already, but surely some of their mass-injured demoralised players aren't keen to sit through a re-rebuild at a club with such a perennially impatient and entitled coterie-level culture.

Kemp is out of contract but not a free agent. Had so many injuries and been played almost at random positions to the point where it is impossible to really know if he can make it at AFL level. Personally I see potential.

Walsh is an RFA out of contract in 2026, in variable form (the drop from his early career is alarming) and currently injured.

Hmm, actually, gee, there's not much I'd be trying to extract from Carlton.

I do feel fragments of sympathy for the general Blues fans, but the silvertails, the board and its connections (which in the case of the Carlton board is almost like racehorse 'connections') and the actual club executive deserve every bag of ---- coming their way.

6 hours ago, YesitwasaWin4theAges said:

Will we even kick 37 points? 😂

For sure we will. And maybe even some goals too!

Harry McKay would cost too much for someone who we couldn't have confidence in.

Already contracted to 2030. Complex injury history. Lots of form variability overall, including his kicking at goal which drifts from exemplary to comedic and back twice a season.

27 years old and he's only ever cracked 50 goals in one season, compared to Ben Brown for example, who had kicked 60 goals in three consecutive season before injury put him on the outer at North and he came to us to pinch-hit for a premiership.

I'd place more optimism in getting Van Rooyen back to form and lifting Jefferson's confidence.

Oh dear, I just checked and McKay is listed as 'knee, 4 to 6'. The curse must be averted, we must not take him, for his own good.

3 hours ago, Wizard of Koz said:

How do you know what business acumen I have? Some full on tossers here who keep barking the same condescending tripe.

The inability to google something before demanding answers and a pound of flesh is something of a clue.

14 hours ago, Wizard of Koz said:

Settle down. I see. Still a ridiculous situation. Delete your own thread Karen.

Starts a thread demanding to see management.

It would seem that ever since he made the secret agreement to come back to Melbourne, it has really lifted his mood and form.

For the benefit of Essendon fans I think the table should be cut to just the last 20 years, instead of being tweaked just to include their 2000 premiership. So just looking at H&A tallies we would be;

Deleting 21 wins for year 2000, then 17, 12, 13 and 12 to through to 2004. We can restart the tally from 2005.

Making it 274 - 75 = 199, with zero premierships and zero finals wins.

From 2005 on, Essendon have only seven more H&A wins than us, despite us going through realistically the darkest period of any still-living club.

Plus, we have won six finals including a premiership.

It was obvious that the original author of the chart had skewed it to make Essendon look better, or relevant, so I just had to burn it.

Sometimes I wonder if other clubs experience the same degree of recognisable factors or moments where things turned. Some critical factor that went wrong and had a disproportionate or decisive effect on our season.

I'm thinking back as far as 2006 and the two losses to abject misery Carlton - remembering they had only 1 win and a draw that season except for beating us both times. Even splitting the wins would have been enough to put us in the top 4.

Was it two goals in the final 42 seconds which St Kilda kicked to beat us and cost us finals.

One key pattern is dropping our heads when we feel destiny has been taken out of our hands. The marker for that one for me is when Lloyd took a dive and earned a double-goal in the 2004 elimination final. We were still in front, we had just kicked seven goals in a quarter, but it was like our blood went cold.

On 16/06/2025 at 14:18, Queanbeyan Demon said:

Just quit the AFL as GM Football Performance. City Hall not big enough for all the egos - including those incoming - perhaps?

I thought there'd be more discussion of this here.

Glancing at his responsibilities, which include vague portfolios touching umpiring, mystery operations, ball-tracking technology and other things, you'd have to say his time at the palace hasn't been a success. I do wonder to what extent it is his own failures and to what extent he was simply handed the [censored] bags to carry.

If there's any possibility he'll get cranky and spill on all the trash going on at AFLHQ, I'd be keen. Could Demonland invite him for the 'great historic podcast which brings down the regime'?

Right. Time to let a bee out of my bonnet.

Tom McCarthy.

Just shy of his 25th birthday, taken in the mid-season draft.

Close to nil salary and almost as little 'investment' in his development by the AFL system over the years.

Had an actual real-person job until about four weeks ago.

31 disposals, at 93% efficiency, NINE intercepts, just short of 600m gained.

Clearly BoG for his side and possibly for the game.

So my question, with additional reference to other second-tier upgrades as well as top-performing kids, is...

What is the $20-30m a year, per club, of player salaries and football department budget actually getting?

Well, that game simplifies things.

From here on, any niggle of significance and the player gets rested. Anyone not fit gets to take some time to do a mid-season pre-season, and spots in the 22 have to be skewed to commitment to the best methods even ahead of talent.

Of course, the trouble with that is it will result in more blowouts and excessive use of caps lock in footy forums.

We can only hope the club is mature enough to push through that and keep the focus on 2026.

I mean... 'unrealistic attempt but he touched it' it is a cool call, too.

The trouble is, the umpiring gets inside our heads.

A few decisions go against us and we stop believing we control our own destiny.

Incredibly, has been a problem since as far back as the Daniher years.

Gee umpire, that was a big call.

3 minutes ago, MrFreeze said:

Awful missed tackle from Rivers

Yeeeep, that one got me cranky. It was as if he thought just moving through the same space was enough, without any need to put the clamp on or make body-on-body impact.

So many fumbles and slips and misses like that this quarter.

Feels like we're getting 20% off the best from almost the whole team.

Between that and the commentators it hardly looks like it has been a 3 goal to 1 quarter.

5 minutes ago, bing181 said:

We won a flag playing contested crash and bash, bang the ball forward footy, and built a list accordingly. Coming back to bite us.

Death by a thousand turnovers.

Fair point and true, but in the grand scheme of things to come back and bite us, a flag will have do to!

Omen watch -

Port's dopey little fireworks blew smoke directly down the Port Adelaide race and into the rooms. Strong chance it'll set off their sinuses and inflame their sniffles.

The Port Adelaide song played the second verse. Nothing good can come of that.

Hmm, 'get smashed and surely Hinkley gets the sack', makes me wonder if we should take the foot off the throat once we're about 4 goals up, just to keep Port middling for another few seasons.

Of course, taking the foot off the throat once we're four goals up is what we do all the time anyway, so no problem, Hinkley lives another day.

Proudly flying the flag is no 'wee indulgence'!

@Dee in a Kilt I salute you!

30 minutes ago, Previously known as LITD. said:

Nothing but points always disappoints.....

I've got nothing.

You've inspired me.

Explaining the scoring system;

"Dis a goal, and disapoint"

Also

"I've go next to a goal, but also next to nothing"

5 minutes ago, Clintosaurus said:

HQ hope so

It'll be a great night in the AFL corporate box.

Legal vs Operations, decided by the umpiring committee.