Little Goffy

They forever crave the Richie Benaud, Allan Border, Steve Waugh successor. They continue to demand the form but cannot get the function.

A gorgeous cousin AND you can keep the inheritance safely in the family? Commendations for a very well-chosen name, Sequoia, for a family tree that is just a big straight line.

Second place has been claimed by @demon-4-life. Prize is full cover in the event that his home is damaged by players blowing the roof off.

Small beans, @Go Ds . You've got to clear the full A.E.I.O.U, the classic Habsburg dynasty latin motto which translates to 'Go big or marry your cousin'. (Full credit to Useless AFL Stats)

CONGRATULATIONS @Timothy Reddan-A'Blew for adjusting his reticle and pinpointing the answer. I hope he can rest easy now in the knowledge that his home is fully covered by Little Goffy Insurance Services, with as new replacement on all dwellings reduced to rubble by pre-season training. Terms and conditions apply. Sometimes at random. Offer excludes ironies such as houses trained down by clubs in rebuild mode. Meanwhile, @demon-4-life is stalking the same trail as Timothy Reddan-A'Blew followed. And it is time for a clue! Those who suffered the worst yet still paid attention to football will have learned the most! A fairweather fan who never knew pain would also never gain wisdom!

Cricket Australia rejecting spin? Now we've seen everything. (Just a little joke there, see what I did?) But seriously, not taking the chance to develop our spin bowling options will haunt us. There's going to be a series soon enough where pitches favour spin or simply the opposition batters get their eye in against pace and we'll having nothing else to give.

Let's play the 'media tasks which have been reduced to slop because executives think AI can make a judgement call and now even when a human does it they are expected to half-4rs3 it' game. May I add a resounding obscene gesture to this thread? It has taken me... 3 minutes to find the following; Round 2, 2021 - Oliver, Petracca and Pickett go 3-2-1 for brownlow votes, which might be a little harsh on Steele who was the Saints' leading goalkicker with 3, as well as easily leading their contested possession count with 14 of his total 25, and six tackles. How could any broadcaster overlook the opportunity to combine showing a new recruit with showing the very peak of the two stars who have just left? For a more recent runner up - Round 17, 2023 - Thirty-one disposals, 12 tackles and a goal. On a day where Petracca kicked four straight and Steven May got three brownlow votes!

As requested, I trawled through the options and have found perhaps the most "23rd-playerish" of all possible 23rd players. We all remember him affectionately but nobody is quite sure why - the great Kepler Bradley. Meanwhile, poor @Timothy Reddan-A'Blew has drawn a neat circle on the target but not the dot in the middle. Pretty sure the main purpose of these quizzes is a personally vendetta against his sanity. An early and probably useless clue is that there may be a bit of MFCSS history here. Indeed, my research for the team will throw a little light on the conjecture once the quiz is done.

B Darcy Byrne-Jones Dylan Grimes Andrew Mackie HB Josh Kelly Jarrad Waite Blake Acres C Marc Murphy Trent Cotchin Adam Cerra HF Adam Schneider Charlie Curnow Murphy Reid F Jack Darling Tom Hawkins Izak Rankine Fol Kurt Tippett Ollie Wines Darcy Parish Int Will Ashcroft Jye Amiss Brent Staker Zach Williams Coach: Sam Mitchell It is a new year with new beginnings for all. The perfect time to rake over old coals and wonder what could have been? No! Although many fit the category, this is not in fact a team of players that Melbourne coulda shoulda woulda had! It isn’t even a feline-themed team, despite the heavy supply of Cats, Tigers, Lions and presumably ‘Blues’ is referring to the adorable floofy domestic breed. A top of the table team for sure, with epic father-sons and some top pick guns, an all-time Rookie list special and also… um… Kurt Tippett? Oh well, you can’t win on every line. So, what does this high quality team from across the 21st century have in common? Answers in private messages only, of course. Winners get free insurance coverage for houses being trained down throughout January.

Somewhere out there in the world is a Swedish short film reenacting this joke. Perfectly delivered in deadpan style. Has the guy covered in bandages and splints filling out the form on a typewriter, one-finger typing, mixed with very brief flashback fragments of the events as described. Saw it back in the days when SBS was in the sweet spot of not so much soccer and being more a genuine source of global and obscure stories, but before it became a campaign content broadcaster.

Gee, there's a lot to choose from. It would be a bit much against the MFCSS requirements to imagine they all go well. I'll set aside the kids, and think of 'break out season' in terms of a player who had plateaued a bit early in their career and then pushed to a new level later. Sparrow. A big watch simply to see how he emerges after being sausage-filler behind the Petracca-Oliver midfield steaks. Chandler. His best runs of form actually put him into the very elite for the complex role of pressure forward and half-forward with two-way responsibility. All he would need to do is sustain it for a season. Petty. Will surely now be trusted with responsibility in the role he is best suited for. Will finish the year as our primary key defender. Turner. Part of what I just said about Chandler, part of what I just said about Petty. Will be our No.2 defender by the end of the season while also giving a bit of swing forward once in a while for fun. Potentially more creative and damaging than Petty. Rivers. I'm less sure about Rivers than some are. I feel like he had opportunity but didn't take it. Well, now he has responsibility, more than just opportunity, so a very interesting one to watch. One of those players who seemed to just a tiny bit short of doing good things, over and over, and just a half second faster initiative and a half step less speed lost to fatigue there will be a totally disproportionate effect on his contribution. (Think Luke Jackson going from negative headlines to full hype again over at Freo - he didn't suddenly go from bad to good, but he improved the fundamentals just enough that his double-grab getting spoiled became a mark, and so on) Van Rooyen. 40 goals for the season, 2 marks inside 50 and 1.5 contested marks per game. That's all it takes for him to become an absolute core player, and it is only an incremental improvement - similar to what I'm saying about Rivers. Sustain just that level for the future and he finishes his career as the curse-breaking legend of the Demon tall forwards.

Definitely not denigrating fence posters or shearers! My point is simply that Clayton will be craving the physical demands and there aren't many jobs which put in a more relentless days labour than those. They also have the rhythm of always having the next task in front of you and you keep going until you are done. In contrast, imagine him in a corporate cubicle farm!

I'll call 'fair play' on your first point there. Once he got into it Clayton lived for the routine of physical training. Catching the 'workout bug' in his late teens was what turned him into one of the all-time single-season draft bolters. I think we would all agree it was only when injury denied him that routine that he really started to struggle. Post retirement from football he's going to need to be a fence poster or shearer just to keep his mind occupied!

This topic got my attention enough to go digging around, but I've mostly come up with just trivia and curiosities. Assoc Football has an enormous number of sprint actions, above 50 per game per player. Compared to 10-20 as the best estimate I found for AFL. On the other hand, there's a difference in how sustained those sprints might be. An AFL player's sprints could be over 50m, while that would just look silly on a soccer pitch. AFL players cover similar or slightly more total distance in a ~120 minute game compared to the 90 minutes of soccer. The ball is out of play for 1/3rd of the time in an AFL game, and almost half the time in soccer. Resetting field position is also much more demanding in AFL on account of double the total playing field size. (See the new ruck rule, for example) NFL timekeeping is weird and the rapid set-play and reset structure of the game means almost every play is done at full freshness. Hence the frankly obese but immensely powerful scrimmage line players. There have been rare but genuine NFL games with less than one minute of total time with the ball actually in play! To round it off, I'll finish with some data I just stumbled across, shared a few years ago by Topend sports. World Cup players 2018 https://www.topendsports.com/sport/soccer/anthropometry-worldcup2018.htm AFL Players 2012-2018 https://www.topendsports.com/sport/afl/anthropometry-position.htm There's some interesting thoughts to brew there, for sure.

As I understand it, the round ball game never really stops. Between Premier, Champions, National representation and a few gap fillers, a top level footballer is more often stuck to choose between competing fixtures than to have time off. Fortunately for them, soccer has a more narrow range of physical demands, and each individual game isn't anywhere near as taxing as top level Australian football.

Oooh, a naughty ruse indeed you cad! In about four minutes my wife and baby son will come out the arrivals gate after six weeks away, so there will be some delay while airport staff figure out how to restore me from a pile of quivering jelly on the floor. Did I ever mention I love youse guys? Cos I love youse guys. Even Cranky and Pickett are all right, y'know.

As a recovered public servant, I'm a big fan of jokes slipped under the wire so stuffy serious people don't notice it. At the micro scale, a boss of mine in the public-facing private sector always included explicit stipulations about quality and quantity of muffins to be provided at all client-called progress meetings. Slightly more forcefully, my dad infamously added the staff who had worked copious unpaid overtime to the 'sponsors' page for a certain peak body's annual report, right next to Linfox and Visy et al. But if you ever want to witness an exercise in deadpan humour carried out in full, there is the 1999 Report to the Minister for Defence on the Collins Class Submarine and related matters The utlimate shaggy dog story. Just from recall; the propeller blades were misaligned causing cavitation which in turn caused the defects in the propeller manufacturing to be exposed as sudden potentially catastrophic cracking the propeller shafts were not designed to match the size and RPM of the propellers, so wore out quickly and needed frequent in-port maintenance, dramatically limiting missions range and capabilities. the periscopes were not hydrodynamic and would begin vibrating loudly and potentially breaking if the submarine moved too much while periscopes were in operation the periscope mirrors weren't properly shielded, such that at certain times of day around dawn and dusk the periscope operator could suddenly be hit by a concentrated glare that would leave them blinded for minutes. the hull shape wasn't correctly modelled and had to be modified after construction to prevent the submarine generating a bubble-wake the hull paint/coating wasn't on spec for acoustic dampening the engines were prone to collecting backwash water, radically reducing performance and causing constant loud banging, causing corrosion of parts, emitting fumes, and vibrations damaging parts such as gear trains and pistons. the contracts defining who was responsible for what were hopelessly lacking in details, leading to months of lost time and legal wrangling over almost every issue which came up. Some contractors were released from their contractual quality standards because it was all too much trouble to administer the various offices involved and the key people in the project (Navy/Defence Materiel-DSTO/Australian Submarine Corporation) all developed such an intense hatred and 'trench warfare' culture towards each other that they actively avoided calls and the meetings required to make progress At no time was there enough crew to field any more than three of the six subs, and typically only two but that wasn't particularly relevant because it was unusual for more than half the fleet to be available for service anyway, or even for sea trials in preparation for service, given the continuous maintenance burden the performance limitations and genuine risks of operation at high loads meant that crew training and development was far below the rated expectations for service the computer systems (both software, and, by the time the software was updated, the hardware) which were initially installed were out of date by the time they arrived. The networking was so unreliable that crew were writing down the details from the screen in front of them to pass to the person at the next screen - for example, target information from sonar was no longer accurate by the time the weapons officer's screen refreshed. Now, I did say this was a shaggy dog story. So the final punchline is, of course, that after more than a decade of hilarious shemozzle... (put on your best Norm MacDonald voice) "The Collins class submarines are well designed for Australia's special requirements and have generally been soundly built."

You said reply only in PMs, but didn't say the had to be Australian PMs. So here is my guess;

England has just dropped off the chase for Essendon's claim to worst failure streak in world sport. This is good news because it makes Essendon look even sillier.

Until this moment I had no idea you could pluck stawberries out of the face of toddlers. (I didn't sleep well, okay?)

Awful lot of bunkers out there heavily stocked with prawns. Not an ideal long-term companion to wait out the nuclear winter, I'd say. As for the good news, since there's already been some toddler joy! My rapidly-less-tiny about-to-be-6-month-old is about to get back from visiting the in-laws overseas. He's been utterly loved by his little cousins and has survived the attacks of swarms of asian aunties. Fun fact - all babies get nicknames in Vietnam, often well before birth, and they are often used in priority over actual names, especially among family. So when Sam is in a group with his little cousins, they are 'Pumpkin', 'Peppermint leaf', and 'Moon' - all one-syllable words in Vietnamese so it sounds cuter. I don't even know their formal names!

Stats from his consecutive Brownlow vote earning games late in 2017. He would have had the three votes in both games except two were deducted against Brisbane for taking running bounces while nominally being a tall forward / ruckman, which as we all know is against the law and spirit of football. Melbourne defeats St Kilda Round 21 Melbourne defeats Brisbane Round 22 Played >90% game time while being backup ruck for Gawn who was on the field for ~85%. Take notes, Max Heath, it can be done!

At which point North starts looking more like the next Fitzroy. Wouldn't ever wish it on them, but there's a little hint of background anxiety about it. They are currently on the worst 6-season form run of any club in the AFL era. O'Sullivan their only rising star nomination in 25, and since/including 2020 there's been Wardlaw, McKercher, Archer, Ford (since delisted), Sheezel, Jason Horne-Francis (traded), and Curtis Taylor (delisted). Just 4 rising star nominees on their list from the six years they have been on the bottom of the ladder. A lot hangs on Wardlaw coming back and the midfield reaching critical mass. If it gets moving, that young midfield could be absolutely game-breaking. But West Coast, honestly, they are welcome to sit right where they are. I don't get enough to look closer!

Ned Guy is being recruited as a big-picture level strategist, and has a track record of making tough decisions and being hated for it. Part of him must be thrilled that the Demon's have already made the toughest of tough decisions. Early in his time as list manager he was under huge pressure to keep the list topped up by retaining and regaining 'beloved' Collingwood players, such as the ultimately disastrous trade for Beams (for pick 17 and the next year's 18) and the excessive long-term contract for Grundy - both of which we're resoundingly popular decisions made under board pressure at the time. Later, he was deeply hated for making the salary-cap-management decisions to move on Treloar, Stephenson and Tom Phillips. I think hindsight favours him there. From an article at the time of his departure from the Pies; Highly regarded and well-liked internally, especially by those with an understanding of the dire mess Collingwood was in with its salary cap, externally Guy has worn blame for the ugly post season. Quoting Graham Wright - "Recalibrating our player payments structure was a tough and necessary job. Our future payments profile is healthier in large part to him. In years to come his achievements will become clearer."

Sounds a lot like the tasks my baby Sam is working on. The 'integrating interfacing functions' part is great fun, but I could do with a little less backwards overflow, synergised or not.