Little Goffy

On a lighter note... it was Brayden Maynard who stood the mark when Dom Sheed kicked a certain excellent goal once upon a grand final. So, he'll always have that.

This thread is NUMBERWANG.

This post objects to Port Adelaide fans!

Yep, just adding to the sentiment to keep the feel-good thread going. I particularly like that he persevered through multiple periods where it would have been quite acceptable to pack it in and find a less emotionally demanding career. His current form and finals appearance are character rewarded and that's always good to see in any context.

The pre-finals bye makes an interesting difference to the value of the week off, and yes, even prior to that in 20 years there were five different QF losing teams who clawed their way to the premiership. Plus throw in the Dogs doing it from the bottom half of the 8. Let's just look at the most likely scenario. To be premiers in 2023 we need to beat Carlton, Brisbane and Collingwood. Fascinatingly, we're now 1 win 1 loss this season against all three of those teams! Total margin from those six games is... (11, 17, 4, 1, 4, 7) 44 points, or 7.3 per game. It is absolutely knife-edge stuff and if you think it can't be done please stay away from the club until it is over!

Mess with everyone's head by getting free agent McKay from North to play forward.

Qualifying final was Van Rooyen's worst game for the season. He's spent the season up and down from 'young forward giving a good contest in a difficult situation' to 'young forward being a bit exposed without the support of more mature bodies and experienced targets around him'. I'm not worried about Van Rooyen's future, at least. I'm not particularly worried about Jefferson, really - he's played under similarly under-protected and under-supported circumstances at VFL level. Looking at the spread of the tall forwards taken right at the pointy end of the draft also gives me a comforting reminder that even those top picks, protected by being secondary targets (behind Naughton, Walker, Franklin, etc) progress at very patchy and different speeds. Jamarra Ugle-Hagan (1), Aaron Cadman (1), Riley Thilthorpe (2) and Logan McDonald (4), are a pretty random mix of development paths but all look to be coming through and there's not really any reason to write off Jefferson so early.

I love that the chart in the opening post has Sydney 'make a semi final' and Carlton 'win a final' as if they are different things. Anyway, as much as I think we're better placed to beat Sydney, I'd rather Carlton won tonight because I am simply sick of the sight of the Swans continuing to get by on massive draft concessions and 'loose' umpiring.

Language warning, but these kind of sum up how I'm feeling about the AFL media at the moment;

Some common football acts; Kick, mark, handball, tackle, bounce, driving your shoulder into the face of an opponent at speed.

It would have been hard to imagine that ALL of Brown, McDonald, Grundy, Smith, Petty, Schache and Melksham would be either out of form, unsuited or injured. That said, it is entirely predictable that it will be the situation next week and next season, so action both immediate and enduring is required. I fully agree that in the off season a couple of contracts need to be paid out and retirements brought forward to open space.

We are, according to tradition, the fine and dignified Anglican wing. Though in true Anglican spirit we are happy to compromise and welcome anyone to the fold if it will get us [censored]. I mean, that's the whole original point of that church, right? 47 minutes to go. .. .. ..

According to https://www.lightningmaps.org Mazatlan in western Mexico is getting absolutely smashed with more than one bolt per second in a 10km box. But aside from sporadic action in Seymour, Victoria not getting hit much. I love that site. I used to play a fun little game of finding street webcams in areas where super-storms were hitting. Once I got to see a Ferrari-Mazerati outdoor car show get obliterated in Dubrovnik. This game can't start soon enough.

Lots on the radar at the moment but it is moving fast. High and gusty winds expected. http://www.bom.gov.au/products/IDR024.loop.shtml#skip It's like a deliberate taunt at Melksham being out, but we shall persevere and overwhelm!

Have you tried the Protestant v Catholic angle?

We're not even the most overrated 4th placed team in the last 12 months!

Just the other day I had the option of salty curmudgeon but went with the pastrami sandwich instead. But that would just make them illicit illiteracies. An illicit illiterate is basically our opponents tonight. I'm alarmingly relaxed about this game. Positively oxymoronic in mood. Whatever happens, I suspect we'll see them again in a few weeks, if you take my meaning.

Countless times I've had the thought of how lucky it was to end up, by near-random chance, supporting the club which I would be most proud to support if I had to pick one on careful consideration now. It's like meeting a sibling you never knew you had and discovering that they are your favourite person. Ben Brown is certainly a part of that. He is somehow visibly one of those 'generous of heart' people who you would want your kids to spend time with and who can probably stay patient and cheerful in a dementia care environment. But, interestingly, one of the things I like about the club is that two radically different people (Brown and McDonald) can both be important and tightly connected parts of our premiership forward line and also each be excellent human beings in their way.

I suspect McDonald will be given a job to limit Moore, because staying tight on the opposition's key reader of the play is a great way to get your brain back in the right spaces, and because Moore's limited preparation will minimise the impact of any lingering preparation lag for McDonald as well. That said, in general I'm too much of a fan of the negating forward because I deeply hate watching the inside-50 -> turnover uncontested mark -> rebound 50 routine.

I'm far from excited but I guess with both Dunstan and Melksham doing ACLs 😭 there might be a need for the extra mature mid-sized body around. Rarely goes goalless. It is always hit and miss with the top-up type players; Dunstan, Grundy, Hunter, Tomlinson, Brown, and Langdon being our recent run, which you'd have to say has given us a great overall result for very little trade cost. A side thought on this is, if we are already bringing in an additional depth player through trade, just how many list spots do we think we're going to have open? Who is on the retirement or trade out queue already?

I for one applaud WCW for pushing through injury for the team, and hope she is able to spend most of summer sitting in dappled shade drinking sangria and dangling her foot in a cool stream.

Yep, that would make him a successor to Hibberd, but not to May or even Lever. Hibberd successor types is one area we have a lovely harvest coming up! I'll return my focus to the draft, even if my draft-crush Curtin isn't likely to make it to us!

If we recruit him he goes straight to the lookalikes thread as the Tradie Undies guy.

Found some footage of teenage Tayla Harris from before her AFLW career allowed her to channel her aggression.

Tall forwards starting to get a run on and the midfield starting to believe that if they get it in there the results will come. Positive feedback loop looking dangerous now.