Little Goffy

"He signed the roof off" "Contracting the house down" One which always applies for young players; "He could be anything in a few years!" Like, by 2029 Langford could be a barstool, a giant octopus monster, or a new stand at the 'G.

A figurative and also literal giant of Australian sport - I had the pleasure of once encountering him ducking his way out of a lift at the 'G. I came to AFL about the time his presence was peaking and his voice and style are synonymous with the game. Would I even be so invested in the game if not for his beautiful blend of calm enthusiasm? An enthusiasm which always seemed sincere, unconfected, and give space for (and probably amused by) the rest of us periodically losing our minds.

Well I know it wasn't me who bit him, officer. Now I'm having flashbacks to a police transcript which included the line "Yeah, and they sewed my nipple back on" Get well soon, Fritta. It could be worse.

Aww gee doing just one is hard. I'm going to stack a few sub-claims into the big one which is of course Melbourne making the top 4. So the contingent claims are; Freo lose both games against West Coast, costing them the top 4 slot. Geelong finally stumble through a combination of age and, finally, scandal breaking through the mysteriously opaque media. Their brittle defence cracks under a Kingsterminded attack, costing them a crucial 8-point game and bringing Melbourne into the top 4 instead of them. Collingwood just aren't that good, and enter into another long slow decline, with Tasmania playing finals before they do again. Not really related but just fun to picture. Giants injury crisis hits their top players, with no game this season featuring all of their 2025 best 6 and nobody from that group playing more than 17 games. Hawks get fugured out and found out by fast counter-attack. Suns, again, think it'll just happen for them because they are so hot, and drop games they should win. From the other end of the ladder, each of North, Richmond and West Coast improve significantly while multiple teams finish the season in the 10-12 win range. The shortage of easy pickings means that just 14 wins and good percentage will slip you into 4th spot. So there it is, my outlandish prediction that has to have the entire season assembled around it. But lock in the 2028 Demon Premiership. Just like the old gypsy woman said.

How many people can say; "Won a premiership where the whole team strategy relied on what I could do, which I did better than anyone else in the league."

Nice. Not as if it gave us all deep insight into tactics and selection, but I enjoyed a bit of relaxed 'presence' within the club. Probably a ton of editing work to get that assembled, so credit to the media team for the effort.

How did you get Bryce Gibbs' scans? Returning to the topic for a moment, is anyone else feeling conflicted because of a deep relief about no apparent concussion, but real bitterness about a kid on the cusp of making AFL grade being pranged out at the very last obstacle? Batman will rise again!

If you put some pressure on you can get results back by tuesday, but they might be someone else's hip replacement scans.

Wash your mouth out! Don't you know 426 is where this tall forward curse all began!?

"You get to have a foot stress fracture!"

I'm taking some time to quietly gaze out the window, watching a tree in the rain. Y'know.

@Rodney (Balls) Grinter I also know you to be a thoughtful poster and appreciate the sincere engagement. This stuff burns on the same level as dismissive emergency room doctors who send people home with a couple of panadol.

It is a truly horrible mirror to hold up. Comments like 'you get to go to school' directed at kids who are having a horrific time at school are pure gaslighting and the only people they reassure are the parents and other people who want to imagine that nothing deeper is wrong and their kids just need to cheer up and have a better attitude. Basically teaching a child that the problem is them. I went to high school in the 'suicude 90s' and I have a long memory and do not always mourn silently.

Crime is down significantly since the 90s and earlier. Very significantly. Also, there's no real way to compare mental health issue prevalence because until recently mental health problems were something you suffered in silence, self medicated with alcohol, or inflicted upon your loved ones. Lance Franklin had mental health issues and addressed them and is apparently continuing to thrive. Gary Ablett Sr 'didn't' have mental health issues and masked these non issues by partying so hard a teenage girl OD'd in his apartment, and has since then been a borderline recluse. 30 years ago Dani Laidley would have just quietky cut her wrists in the bathtub. Pretty much everything except capital gains tax optimised housing speculation, the run-down of public assets, deregulation and the shift to meth has been a real improvement these last 30yrs.

I think I may have developed a really personal vendetta against whoever invented foot stress injuries. An awful injury that seems to always find awful timing.

I do feel like I captured the essence of the thread. 😁

Persevere, always. Some day a kindness will invert your trauma to victory. Are you not a Demon, after all? At uni I once had a craving for nachos (from a particular, locally legendary place in a particular way) so intense that when the cafe told me they couldn't do it because they ran out of sour cream, I went to the supermarket and got some for them. They were so surprised and so pleased that I got my nachos for free that day. They also did great banana smoothies. Clearly a cafe of worthy repute.

I live on a street named after a breed of chicken. Quite a charismatic chook, too, I must say. Oh, did I already share that some glorious mad fool booked a dual vunj sleeper box on a German overnight train and turned the whole thing into a chicken coop complete with straw, egg trap nests, and half a dozen apparently quite happy chooks? Then he disappeared, leaving the solution to this in the hands of German rail.

If I recall correctly, knee and shin protectors went through a peak during the jumping ruck phase before the anti Jeff White rule shifted ruck to more wrestling. We might see them more now that the anti Max Gawn rules have been introduced to encourage more Jeff White style rucks. I do also have vague recollections that for shin and knee protection to be strong enough to protect the wearer they had to be so hard they became a danger to opponents.

That collection of stats isn't even as sophisticated as Supercoach points. Whatever happened to the Inside Football player ratings pages? Daicos N. 57 disposals, 1452 metres gained, 17 score involvements. Rating: 5 "I just don't like the guy, okay." But in all seriousness, that one line of justification for the score for each player, each game, built up a really interesting picture.

And risk getting on Kane Cornes' naughty list? 😵

I mean... Butters is a free agent. We could use the cash saved by trading Petracca to get him and the pick-equivalent gained by trading Petracca (and cash saved by trading Oliver) to grab Mr Bumphrey. That'd be a result for the ages.

Sam Walsh would have been a nice player to gain via free agency on a pretty good contract, but >$1m is wild. What a strange time for Carlton to be looking to set its list in stone. I guess they are still dominated by the 'just a little more and it'll click' view.

A couple of strange ones, a couple of omissions. He gives a rationale designed to be a decoy to the fact he's just lazy. Ah well, mostly I'm just annoyed that someone is getting paid good money to half-4R53 it like this. @WERRIDEE by all rights should be a millionaire in this media market. His teams are frequent and he gives them a full 4RS3 every time.

I feel like refreshing a thought I tossed in about 40 pages ago. 'The injury' was the first time in Petracca's life he had experience actual fear, he didn't cope with it, then he didn't cope with the fact he didn't cope with it, and in trying to find external reasons for that he completely transformed his relationships to fit a perceptions that it wasn't him who didn't cope. On the one hand, it is a sincerely sympathetic story and just unfortunate that the damaged relationships were with 'us'. On the other hand, it is triggering my 'oh, poor little rich boy with the ultra-supportive large extended family and talent for a thing society celebrates out of all proportion to its value, did you have a boo-boo and only had the support of some of the world's very best medical services and a realistically unlimited budget to access those services? awwww, awwww'. But that isn't a part of me I like. I'm trying to compartmentalise it to being just another reminder that most AFL-level footballers have had a supportive and resource-rich structure around them and their chosen path so far back they were still wetting the bed. I can resent that and still feel okay about myself.