Little Goffy

No longer teetering between glory and madness, but fully embracing both! I'm still stuck and teetering between surly and sullen.

I declared myself 100% stumped and request, nay, DEMAND clues. Ideally clues that give it away completely at the exact moment I next check demonland.

It is conceivable he'd go full Gary Ablett Jr (and we'd happily throw him an extra 100k or two just for goodwill. I mean, world war three, domestic hover cars and a digitally enabled hive mind could also happen by the end of the contract. And I think we all understand that Kozzie Pickett is probably the best hover car race driver in Australia.

Fascinating. So the financial account of the liability is assessed now but the actual disbursement will be as per the salary cap accounting each year. Presumably this differs compared to, say, Pickett's multi-year salary because that is still potentially variable, while the payout to Oliver is considered unconditional dead money.

Each row is worth the same scrabble score, provided Trent Rivers is on a double word score, the H in Nathan Jones is on a triple letter, and you cheat extensively. But I actually feel like I'm on the right track here. (I am the dog that brings its own red herring to the hunt)

Oh, Fremantle, never change.

Hard to get a proper steal when we keep pushing our picks to the front of the draft! That said, Langford was a steal even at 5. It's interesting that our excellent draft record under Taylor is built on getting most of the early picks right and then bringing a steady flow of solid citizens who fill the best 22, ranging from Nibbler to Rivers to Chandler. If not for the curse of 426 ruining our tall forward selections, we'd be close to flawless in our drafting.

I suspect Xavier Taylor could take the field very early. Versatile role, not frail physically or mentally. Matthews will be making sure he's fully ripe back from injury, Onley will be doing 1000 hours of handball drills, and if you can predict what a Pickett will do you just got yourself a SSP place as a small defender. Funny side detail - White doesn't appear on the draft details list on footywire. Presumably it is a glitch in the system where they don't have a slot for filling 'rookie F/S pre-selection'. Has it even happened before?

Geez, we were in the running. I was going to say something along the lines of comparing it to the men's 2000 season where it was 'always going to be Essendon', but... no, it wasn't like that at all. We were right in this one and a few deep breaths at the right moments could have tipped it. I'm already in hunt mode for 2026. For a couple of seasons now I've been stewing on the feeling that we are on the cusp of being terrifying, and having some really promising young players, both tall and small, just makes me look forward to next season all the more.

Okay, so, let's imagine you've got five bricks. You pick up the first one and drop it on your head. You pick up the second one and drop it on your head. You pick up the third one and drop it on your head. You pick up the fourth one and drop it on your head. You pick up the fifth one and drop it on your head. You exclaim "There's something wrong with that fifth brick, it dropped on my head! Stupid brick!"

Talk of being able to train at Caulfield by 2028... Everything that is happening at our club makes sense if you back-fill the timeline from the 2028 premiership.

Funny thing is, if Gold Coast are anticipating losing Ben King, then they'll be death riding themselves because obviously he'd get them an additional first round pick in FA compensation.

Dylan Grimes was available for the entire national draft, in which we had six selections, none of which were Dylan Grimes. I'm beginning to convert my irritation into a kind of petrie dish fascination.

When people described things like his willingness to break through tackles and play on from a mark, I got nervous picturing a guy who was just bigger than everyone else and stomped through them, or who was so used to being able to get past the opponent on the mark that he automatically went for it. So I'm pleased with the details where he clearly knows to turn his direction just a little and give his body a twist to shake tackles off, rather than just crash through them, and he also lands on his feet ready to move after he takes a mark, which gives him a one-step advantage if he decides to take on the marker. My read is that his strengths come from things which are innate - instinctive play and simple physical advantages - while his weaknesses are trainable if he is willing to do the dreary grind to correct them - the ball drop and the handball power. Could really be something if he chooses to.

Literally every 2009 pick before Joel MacDonald was also a pick where we didn't take Dylan Grimes.

Aye. And I'll always find it hilarious that we had four top-20 picks which went wrong each in different ways, and then selected a hall of fame player at 34. Noting that back then the drafts were staggered and recorded a bit like cricket seasons '2009-10'. So 2009 national draft is the same drafting period as the 2010 pre-season draft. https://www.footywire.com/afl/footy/td-melbourne-demons?year=2009 Weird that footywire has a typo which makes both 1 & 2 'priority' selections. And before anyone else plays the 'look who we could have had' game. Yes, we totally could have selected Martin, Fyfe, Duncan, Gawn and Gunston. Congratulations.

I don't know what made you wake up this morning hating Joel McDonald, but his selection wasn't even a podium finish for poor selections just in that draft period, and coincidentally that very same draft also includes our best draft choice ever.

B- That's also what we got last time we drafted a Pickett. I'm not even kidding. Our 2019 Jackson, Pickett, Rivers was rated a 'B-' draft. To get an 'A' you need to pull of amazing hauls like Carlton's 2019 of Kemp, Philip and Ramsay. It is all lining up for a 2028 peak, just as the gypsy woman said.

Concentration started to slip in the last, and there were too many contests and loose balls we were second to get to. Great effort, needed just a bit more for a bit longer.

a moment of defensive panic and overdoing it Well, at least now we know we must attack and attack again

top stuff Shelley Heath with the two pursuit tackles.

Worth switching on just to see tiny Nat Edwards trying to interview Tahlia Gillard on field.

Righto, let's broaden some horizons! And now we've had a little light fun, time for something rarer than an actually easy Demonstone quiz. I was pretty pleased with myself for finding this a few weeks back. Wolf Hunt, presenting the voice of a young wolf trapped in the encirclement created by a mass hunt, breaks the rules of tradition by crossing the lines of flags and ropes set up by hunters to deter the wolves from escaping the closing hunters. Generation after generation of wolves are massacred because they never break the rules, but this one breaks free of the rules and suddenly finds itself free of the massacre as well. And that's a story he told in Soviet Russia in the late 1960s.

At 195cm and named Onley... and here's me in a strange mood lately of being obsessed with nicknames. Welcome to Demonland, 'Big If.'

You think we're going to go back-to-back? 😉