Little Goffy

I never thought I'd say it, but now there is a worse pre-season pump-up clip than the Ren & Stimpy 'Happy happy joy joy' one the Demons produced around 2009ish.

All righty then, let's see... B: Bowey Petty Lever HB: Salem May Rivers C: Langdon Petracca Brayshaw HF: Grundy [BBB/TMC] Hunter F: Pickett Van Rooyen Fritsch Foll: Gawn Oliver Viney and your favourites of Tomlinson, Harmes, Jordon, Neal-Bullen, Spargo, Smith, Sparrow, Laurie, Dunstan, Melksham. I'm tipping only one of Brown and McDonald will be in the round one team and that Van Rooyen will be ahead of the other. Grundy will be playing the traditional role of rucking half-forward/third tall! Langdon will have a wing left as open as possible while Brayshaw will take a wing-to-defence and Hunter will take a wing-to-attack role on the more congested side (i.e., the side May always kicks out to!) I think Laurie might sneak in if his practice games are good enough, becoming a dedicated small defender and pushing Rivers to the bench as another reasonably flexible runner. I think we may yet see Tomlinson string a chunk of games together as Goodwin has a go at positional moves, trying to confuse opponents and test out the best way to use Gawn/Grundy and maybe induct Petty as a swingman option.

So, Kangaroos it is.

A mosquito's main methods of detecting and approaching suitable prey include body heat and also, surprisingly, carbon dioxide emissions from breathing. The obvious solution is to wear a full wetsuit and use snorkel. You'll be in 'Dutch vs the Predator' final battle mode. A bit inconvenient for most of us but Uncle Bitters can just grab his usual saturday evening finest.

This is getting into 'curse' territory for Adelaide and tall defenders. Never played in a win.

I'm just glad it wasn't the video Jake Meklsham has of Simon Goodwin.

I see where you're coming from - perhaps a better emphasis would have been that even now it takes a certain type of courage to be able to open up about your vulnerabilities, even to a professional. Like you, I dislike the implication that only talking about it is strength and courage. But damn I'd wish people coming back from war had had the option to talk if they wanted, without all that old noxious pressure to keep their pain to themselves because society craves clean heroes and politicians crave controlled 'memory'. But I'll also never deny the fundamental honour and quiet kindness of not burdening others with a trauma they can't possibly comprehend.

Got it. They all hate cats. No?

Purely as a contingency, I'll be death-riding Port as well as Freo in 2023, just to make sure they can offer us at least a top-5 pick and change. ;) But seriously, Kysaiah Pickett is a rare player. Not many forwards - let alone small forwards - top 40 goals in a season in consecutive seasons, and he has managed in every full season he's played!

Happy birthday, Brian!

It'll be interesting to see what happens with Jackson, and somewhat ironic that if they are using him as their forward target he could so so important to their success that the better he does, the worse our compensation for losing him will be! Personally I think he has always looked best running among chaos, in bursts of labrador puppy level enthusiasm, chasing everything, getting involved in everything, and showing off his incredible level of initiative for a tall. He might become a very high quality forward but I think that will always be a little sad. Think of it as if West Coast had plonked Naitanui up forward all career; a scary and effective target but the team and football in general would have been poorer for it.

Two things that really stood out for me were his ability to keep his feet and be 100% anticipating the loose ball from a marking contest, and just how quickly he can set himself for a kick after taking the ball from sometimes quite awkward positions. First one gains him half a second on opponents reaction and the second means he needs half a second less to make a realistic shot on goal. Those two traits have earned him somewhere in the range of 10-15 goals in 2022.

Ahh, rumination, this how our Collingwood friend gets the roll down. Mystery solved and it explains all the spitting, too.

Taxes on inherited wealth are a debated but not particularly controversial topic among economists. Personally I prefer different levers for reigning in super-accumulation of wealth, but they involve a much wider reform of the relationship between corporate taxes and personal taxes as well as a redirection of the business tax burden from 'profit' which is not in itself a problem, to 'externalities', which is now a plausible goal thanks to the dramatically richer information available.

Oh dear. I dislike bad policy settings where government interference in the market rewards passive rent-seeking while actually discouraging enterprise and productivity improvement. I guess your ridiculous comment is kind of right in a way; I instinctively don't like it when people are given money for no reason except that they already had some. If that is the same as 'success' and 'make' to you, then okay.

Hmm, you're quite right. I've accidentally added in income that doesn't relate specifically to the sale price. My old 'mental note' that I was drawing on was the total net income from a $1m portfolio at 80% borrow-to-invest, purchased late 90s and then put to market 2022. So that figure includes the net revenue from rent greater than costs over the period. The original comparison made (not the one in this thread) was of that hypothetical portfolio vs a full-time worker over the same 25 year period, where the portfolio kept pace then pulled ahead. I tripped up here because in casual footy-forum mode I noticed the coincidence of the totals ($10m from $1m, being ahead of FT earning) and didn't think about it further. So, I amend my comments, and will go full verbose for the sake of precision; The Oldfield Mansion has appreciated significantly more than the general market over the reference period, such that Mr Oldfield has derived a capital gain from his dwelling (less the spending on improvements) comparable to that which would have been earned by a purely investment portfolio generating both capital gains and tenanted revenue. Either scenario represents a net income or capital gains of greater than a full-time minimum wage over the same period. Now, tongue back in cheek; Each of these scenarios implies that civilization is facing impending collapse as society splits into a division of those with so much passive, rent-seeking capital that they are unmotivated to invest in genuine enterprises, and those who are so certainly excluded from capital accumulation that they are unmotivated to excel or advance in their occupation, resulting in a gradual stagnation of productivity of both labour force and capital formation, with an exquisitely ironic resemblance to the dysfunctional control economy of the Soviet system, i.e. "They pretend to pay us so we pretend to work."

For what it is worth, a $1m 'ordinary' portfolio of housing assets purchased in 1997 without improvement would by now have appreciated in price by even more than our mate Fred's little mansion. The relationship between Australian housing prices and the differential access to and pricing of finance based on explicitly 'class' benchmarks enabling existing property owners to increase their paper assets, gain profit based on speculation in a tax-favoured environment while displacing all risk to tenants and to government is a textbook case study of 19th century theories of accelerating division of worker and owner into mutually hostile groups in an unfettered market system. Hence, I made a little joke about proletarian revolution. Also, calm your farm. Saying you're not a class driven person while going into thin-skinned snappy mode at an imagined slight upon your honour as a tall poppy is not very dignified.

Last sold for 1.3m in 1997. 25 years, 9 million dollars... so that's more than a full-time minimum wage 'earned' every year since buying it. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with Fred Oldfield, but the general case for proletarian revolution is mounting. Anyway, surely at that price he is more 'dyed in the silk' than the mere wool.

Sometimes I wonder if Australian football has been slightly protected from some of the worst attitudes of humanity precisely because it isn't a world game. It is already confirmed, again, that a solid block of the 'supporters' who invaded the pitch and attacked players are known to be part of ultra-nationalist groups. It has for a long time been a crippling problem for soccer in Australia where this type of 'supporter' creates boundaries rather than bridges; locking out new support because they lack authenticity rather than welcome newcomers. Not to mention, the grand old Chelsea tradition of getting hammered at the game then going out bashing Pakis for the night. Hashtag patriot. Then, of course, there's that global worst-of-masculinity that is the soccer hooligan feeling entitled to go on idiotic rampage to 'defend the honour of their nation' after... what, an unclear but probably valid free kick? So you go trash an f'ing patisserie? Set fire to a gozleme stand? Wreak a terrible vengeance upon bus stops? Actually, that made me think of a focusing of some people's comments about low scoring being a pressure cooker; that low scoring and the very high impact of free kicks in certain positions creates a critical moment of contention. If you're a thin-skinned insufferable entitled agro [censored] then those moments will completely send you tilted.

HA! Playing football against Jack Viney was too rough so I took up UFC.

I have had a vision of Jason Taylor turn up on draft night with a big bowl of soup.

I'm comfortable with our age mix. A number of the older players have successors and even credible improvements coming through already, and the 2xfirst and 2xsecond round picks in next year's allegedly strong draft will allow for some targeted decisions. Clearly our age pothole is at the very tall end of our team. Except for untested young guys, our rucks and key forwards are all past or near 30. That's my only real concern and why I was keen on a Barnett/Keeler collection this draft. But I'm not at panic stations.

What I like is that if Fremantle do well next season, that's fine, we're okay, all is as expected. But on the other hand, there's a real shot at the kind of draft booster that nudges 'very good' list into 'terrifying'. I'm trying to feel a little sorry for having such negative attitudes to another club, but really... nah. Bring on Failmanlte!

Taken as a rookie, but I predict he will be escalated quickly.

So many one-touch marks where he has also met the ball at full stretch and timing. That's definitely one of those deep-rooted traits that are very difficult to develop once you're already an adult. Good cloth and our defence program seems to be pretty good at tailoring it.