Little Goffy

There used to be a food court in Canberra in between the Dept of Agriculture, the Attorney General's Department and the Dept of Environment. It was fine. Very normal. The fish and chip place tucked up the side of Treasury was always better if you could make the walk.

My point?

This Essendon crowd is managing such a limited murmur that it reminded me of that public service food court. It is like a bunch of small groups each making polite chat while munching their honey chicken with rice.

No matter how good a player is or isn't, my favourite feature will always be the strength of character it takes to grow and change.

Pickett's growing maturity and game sense, Melksham's late-career 'patron saint of goal assists' shift, Tom McDonald's switch forward, then back, and finally the transition to having sheer calmness be his leading trait, and even Kade Chandler's relentless efforts to claw away and overcome his weaknesses.

Looking a little further back, there's the excellent effort Nathan Jones went to, dropping weight and adding agility to extend his career and make himself a bit more versatile after a decade digging to the bottom of packs.

But maybe Viney did the hardest thing - never mind overcoming rubbish injury runs - when he rebounded from being dropped from the co-captaincy by consciously adapting the way he interacted with and led his teammates. 

When you're as good as Viney is, and part of club nobility, it takes good character to be humble.

Also, it is difficult to describe his literal and figurative hardness without resorting to memes.

Touch wood we can see him play 300. There's no evident reason why not.

31 minutes ago, Jibroni said:

And people laugh at me for still using cash: and paper tickets:

 

 

It appears even Microsoft is now focused on manufacturing bricks.

2 hours ago, DubDee said:

What are you, a Camel??

I am registered as an in-flight emotional support camel for tax purposes, so there is some pressure on to keep up appearances.

To be fair, I've never done a pacific crossing and I'm also putting off a Europe trip until there's an available stopover location which isn't a major slave market or Perth.

There's some real 'optimist v pessimist' games to decide what is best for Melbourne.

Geelong v Bulldogs

Optimist says go Doggies, to clip Geelong back so we can pursue the top-4 or home final. Pessimist hopes Geelong pick off the dogs to keep them a step behind us in the scramble for the 8.

Giants v Suns

Optimist looks for the Giants to stumble and us to pass them, pessimist says GWS can keep it's slot so long as they suppress the chasing Suns.

Hawks v Pies

Pessimist says Hawks to win because their poor percentage means they are more likely to stay behind us. Optimist says Collingwood to win because it'll be so much fun for them to still be in contention right up until we crush their dreams in round 22.

Sydney v Brisbane

Pessimist doesn't really care about this one, but the optimist hopes Sydney wins and Errol Gulden gets suspended for 10 weeks.

Fremantle v Melbourne

The optimist thinks this one will be tricky but if we win it'll make the run home much easier and make all of our potential finals opponents a little nervous. The pessimist hopes we get thrashed so they can demand Goodwin be sacked.

Finals get more coverage, people are more interested, attendances are higher and ad revenue is higher.

Obviously Solution.

Cancel the Home & Away season and just have 22 more rounds of finals.

Every one of which is a theme round.

I'm sure by now others have seen the articles describing Freo's 'nightmare' flight back to Perth from Launceston.

Personally, I don't see how we could approach in fear of a team which can't go four hours without taking a [censored]. Especially after they already spent more than two hours [censored]ing the bed against Hawthorn.

It occurs to me now that I've never used an aircraft toilet. Are they really that bad? Is it like the Indonesian truck stop drop toilets I decided to skip and wait until I made it to Surabaya?

But, seriously, that bizarre article is a timely reminder that our opponents this week are only human, and we go in with every chance of victory.

33 minutes ago, whatwhat say what said:

"since i left you" is the greatest oztrayan album of all time

8 minutes ago, WalkingCivilWar said:

And the clip for the title track is the greatest music vid of all time!

A tear just came to my eye.

I didn't know.

I didn't know they were Australian.

I'm so proud. For me, July 18th will be the new date for Australia Day.

7 hours ago, Roost it far said:

I think Melksham will play next year. He’s only 32, very fit and has just given his body 12 months of rehab.  

Fingers crossed, because I'd love to see it. But I fear lugging around that chunky Gary Ayres Medal will slow him down.

He is certainly not looking like he's struggling!

And what do we do if we have a choice of taking him or Dustin Martin?

To be clear - I haven't abandoned my oracular declaration that we will not lose another game this season and Melksham will finish his career in the greatest blaze of glory ever known.

However...

Gee, it's gonna be tough this weekend.

Extraordinary. Changing the draft rules just a few months before the draft.

How unprofessional can this outfit get?

Don't answer - I know there's always room for more.

Okay, but seriously.

Gawn, May and Viney are our three crucial older players. Short of recruiting both De Konings and LDU as free agents in 2025, that's going to be a tricky one to solve in the near future.

(with all due respect to the excellent renewal of McDonald and the triumphant return of superstar Melksham who is currently ranked 1st for goal assists, 12th for goals and 4th for marks inside 50 per game in the entire league)

We seem to have a deficiency in the middle but that could be nothing more than Oliver's poor form and missing Petracca. 2025 may even be stronger in the middle thanks to the opportunities opened by this situation.

The really unpredictable part of our list is the tall forward and defender stock. There are three 'ifs'; whether we retain Petty, and the progress of Jefferson and Adams.

I'm not sure we haven't already done 80% of a rebuild already.

Although the De Koning and LDU option sounds good to me anyway.

I want to see this reenacted by Taylor and Goodwin.

"Even though it was little, you don't want anything stuck to your list. So I tanked a season to try to get the picks, when seven guys start screaming at me because now the tanking is slowing us down more than the lack of talent. What you've got to do; you've got to draft them in and let the culture lift them up, then draft more in, and lift them up, in a windmill motion. In and out until you've got it."

"The selectors aren't choosing for a season, they are choosing for a premiership, and if you don't think that draft pick swaps shouldn't matter... and if you think that I am going to miss even one opportunity to pick up half a round of draft position, you are absolutely out of your mind. When it costs us nothing? When we give up nothing?"

Hmm... harsh rating on the draft effort. By the numbers, the only club which has extracted more games played by its 2017 draft class is Freo, which had picks 2 and 5 and another six to follow.

You could make a solid case for Fritsch being safely inside the top 10 group;

Brayshaw, Rayner, LDU, Naughton, Cerra, Allen, T De Koning, Worpel, Miers, Kelly.

A little unfortunate that this season has been very bad for all our 2017 draftees, with Spargo hurt, Petty hurt then struggling to engage a new position, and Fritsch being oddly out of form with limited impact for the 8th-ranked goalkicker in the league.

Still, Fritsch has had six goals from two games since Melksham came back in, so touch wood the form is turning as the system begins to work.

Honestly, all it would take for this draft to be rated an absolute world-beating blinder would be for Fritsch & Petty to regain their 'normal' form.

I do also wonder if Spargo and Melksham have had long and thorough discussions during their shared injury layoff. If Spargo can add just 20% to his game he becomes a solid 22 contributor instead of constantly on the fringe and disliked because of his awkward combination of low-visibility strengths and high-visibility weaknesses.

21 hours ago, Lucifers Hero said:

Not much to do on this horrid Melbourne winter day.

So put this together for discussion. 

Kind of incredible that if you include the game just played, we finish the season by playing every team from 5th to 12th.

As to our final 8 chances... well, it almost defies analysis because our fate is so completely in our own hands.

I tried. I turned out a few paragraphs looking at each team, but it just got silly. Long story short;

4 wins, 2 losses - we play finals, and probably have a home final, too. Nice and simple.

3 wins, 3 losses - if any one of Port, Footscray or Gold Coast get 4 wins, we're cooked. Nice and simple. We'd want our three wins to be the three games against these teams!

Collingwood aren't a contender because the devil has finally come to take their soul. Their supporters might seem upbeat but that is only because they don't know what 'eternity' means. It means you have just two good players under 24yrs old, and the devil is most certainly from Tasmania.

Hawthorn never had a soul for the devil to take, and will miss out on finals by percentage because they are flat track bullies. Tasmania will still come for them, just enough to ensure their rebuild falls just a liiiiitle bit short and they get stuck in the levitating potato mid-table zone for a decade.

Was bitterly disappointed when we didn't take Oscar Bert'n'Ernie. I had banners already planned which showed those three muppets standing on each others shoulders while secretly operating their ruckman disguise.

In the end, I think we would have lost him Darren Jolly style anyway, as he is strictly a ruckman.

Gawn was a better ruck and on-field presence than Grundy and neither of them were able to adapt effectively to being a 50-50 ruck so Gawn was selected ahead. No ego issue to it, and I must say such scuttlebutt isn't going to endear you to anyone . I think you do however get a pass if you bring in a medical note from your MFCSS specialist!

Fullarton didn't play against Essendon because of the weather forecast and because Draper is a Butter Tarzan who could be neutralised by an effective effort from a solid tall, which turned out to be mostly Van Rooyen.

I suspect Fullarton is more likely to be given a role against Freo because Jackson is harder to nullify and at the least Fullarton can be given the explicit task to stay with him all day (can there be such a thing as a ruck-tagger?).

We'll want to have our tall forwards in their position a bit more because Freo's defenders aren't likely to do a Ben McKay and have four metres gained per disposal. Seriously, McKay had 17 intercepts against us, 12 kicks, 9 handballs, and yet just 82 metres gained. Freo defenders don't try to hatch a chicken from the sherrin before deciding what they want to do.

For all that, rain is expected out west for much of this week and the coming weekend, so who knows?

EDIT: Sean Darcy is expected to be back in. I think against two top-shelf rucks with very different styles we're just going to have to commit to throwing Fullarton in there.

Unfortunately, no matter how many times you give Stringer a bath, he'll still stink.

I also want to quietly slip in that not every gun half-back needs to be turned into a midfielder. I'd be perfectly happy for McVee to take up the Corey Enright status as 'the most underrated 6-time All-Australian in the competition', even as Rivers becomes the new midfield Burgoyne.

I guess we'll know in about 250 more games.

1 hour ago, WalkingCivilWar said:

We broke the record for number of Zs on one banner, and his real name doesn’t even have one. 🤣

And Collingwood can't even spell Isaac.

17 hours ago, DubDee said:

7,305 will bring up 20 years

what a time to be alive

Is there a week off before finals again this season? Because the Bombers have a September 4th deadline to avoid the 20-year mark and the week off would start finals on the 6th.

The last time Essendon won a final without Kevin Sheedy coaching; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1968_in_Australia

Wow, you do not think of Kylie Minogue and Penny Wong, or Hugh Jackman and Scott Morrison, as being the same age.

I could almost be satisfied missing top-4 just to play Essendon in an elimination final and crush their dirty cheating entitled souls.

What I'm loving about Pickett's overall progress is the perfectly normal maturation of a deeper awareness of the system and the situation. I think that is what sets players like Rioli and Bruest apart is the awareness that allows them to not only do the brilliant thing but also make sure it has brilliant effect.

For all the hype about Buddy & Roughhead, having the creativity of both Bruest and Rioli in a team is pure luxury. It was also an underrated aspect of Eddie Betts' game - about 3/4 of his disposals, throughout his career, were score involvements!

Pickett's growing game awareness and demonstrated commitment to personal growth are why any debate about the best small forward from his draft is now leaving Weightman in the dust.

Gold Coast hanging on through the third quarter, which is good for our home final/top 4 aspirations for the optimists (and for anyone anticipating a snort-laugh at the 'Pies dropping to 12th), but for the pessimists it is all about the late sunday shift with upsets for West Coast and Richmond offering pure icing on an already good round 18 cake.

1 hour ago, old dee said:

I am streaming but no sound. Anyone with same problem.

Based on last weeks 'commentary' reviews, is no sound that much of a problem?

1 hour ago, Swooper1987 said:

He's a premiership coach - the only Melbourne premiership coach in my lifetime and he deserves to be respected as such.

"Only"? I prefer "first". 😉

The wider genius question comes down to what we learn from this game. Sacrificing numbers forward in order to scrap and congest close to the ball worked brilliantly in the wet against uncontessendon. Now that we know we can do it, it might neutralise our previously significant weaknesses in the wet. It may also prove to be the moment we come to terms with not having an elite inside mid group this season.

Our losses this season have all featured a long tail of players making very limited contributions, but as Windsor, Tholstrupp, AMW and others are getting more involved, confident and effective we may yet overcome that as well.