Little Goffy

The more obvious the injustice the more excessive and repetitive the lie must be reaffirmed.

Sounds like he already has 60,000 friends. Ooh, i just imagined the ultimate MelbourneFC promo. Every member attending X game gets a bottle of wine on the way in.

I've been trying to mentally sort the key forwards (who are even remotely possible acquisitions) into 'expensive gun' and 'quality role-player' types. Figured if I put it down in writing it would reduce my overall level of confusion. So, with an invite to people putting a line through them, adding a question mark, endorsing them, mocking them, or suggesting what they reckno the trade cost would be, here we go; Expensive guns; Aaron Naugton, Pick-any King, Jack Lukosius, Oscar Allen, Harry McKay Quality role-players or young potential in crowded forward lines; Jamarra Ugle-Hagan, Todd Marshall, Jake Riccardi, Darcy Fogarty, Logan McDonald, Hayden McLean, Riley Thilthorpe, Ben McKay (switching forward?) My personal preference from a value-for-trade/money perspective would go Riccardi, McLean, Thilthorpe and then the fantasy of getting Lukosius.

People on here often accuse me of writing excessively long posts about things. So... Crush. Kill. Destroy. Annihilate. Obliterate. Pulverize. Smash. Raze. Ruin. I want this current Demon team to become the Miyamoto Musashi of the Women's League. The unreachable legend. The example which generations to come will strive to emulate knowing that they can never truly do so. Not merely the greatest there is, but the greatest there could ever be. And also to beat Geelong on Thursday.

If only the AFL had a stable, transparent system for such things. AHHHH HA HA H AH AH AH AH HA HA HA HA HA HA GARG HARG HURG SNORK SNORK SNORK. Setting aside the specific needs or not of North Melbourne; The AFL was badly governed twenty years ago and its governance standards since then have declined at every moment of scrutiny and in every aspect of accountability. Government by executive decree is how you destroy any intergenerational organisation. Ibn Khaldun described it in terms of four conceptual generations of rulers. Those who built the new dynasty, Those who learned directly from the builders and carry on the disciplines of rulership, Those who faithfully follow established habits without really understanding why, and then... The destroyers; soft willed and only interested in indulgence and consumption, not creation, who will eventually be wiped out by hardened invaders from the deserts, starting the cycle anew on the ruins of the old. The AFL has slipped unmistakably into the fourth generation.

The story is actually about Thom Hawkers, the famous street food seller who Simon Goodwin met on an end of season trip to Thailand. Definitely worth a 2-year contract. What other club can offer unlimited pineapple fried rice and pad thai to prospective new players?

New studies have found that people who try to manifest wealth through positive visualisation are significantly more likely to declare bankruptcy. If we now get Brayden Preuss on a five-year deal I'm blaming you. If we're helping out Gold Coast with their salary cap problems, I'd be much keener on Lukosius (obviously) and also, pretty sure that is Max King in the opening picture.

I'll never forget the day I learnt my wife could levitate. And also that she probably loves Bailey Fritsch more than she loves me. Here's a strange detail - sometimes I've only re-watched the early part of the third quarter just to be reminded of the sensation that it was all slowly slipping away. That we were grinding the game down enough to slow the Dogs' scoring but showed no signs of being able to hit back, and it seemed inevitable that once in a while Bontempelli would still show up and cut another hole through our defence, making the situation ever-harder. It is as if I've been training myself to associate that feeling of tension on the edge of despair with 'massive victory good times.'

The instructions from above were 'be intimidated by the crowd'.

I still harbour a wild fantasy that we get a second pick in the top ten and end up with both Curtin and O'sullivan and spend the next decade in a paradise of tall defenders who can swing into other roles. I mean, I'm harbouring a lot of wild fantasies (draft related) at the moment because there are just so many variables to play out and we have our best draft/trade hand since 2014. This is going to be the ultimate 'butterfly effect' trade and draft season. You'd need a meteorologist to get a reasonable prediction.

Is there such a thing as GWSSS? They sure looked messy out there for the first 20 minutes but Collingwood failed to do the damage and now Western Sydney seem to have steadied a bit.

Not sure which is most annoying... the Daicos worship, the cheering for Maynard, or the 'Mason Cox has done that well' every time the ball spins ineffectually off him. Ah well, come on Hogan, kick seven and make 'em cry.

Good to see the old MCC stalwarts made it along, too.

Can't see any harm in it. Leads hard and straight, kicks long, has shoulders. Especially since we'll have some late picks we'll have to use after we see our late first round pick, two second round picks, and the returns for Grundy and Jordon all get squished together into one big points pie for the big trade play! Keitel would be a great sidekick to Lukosius, giving us a multi-pronged long-kicking forward line capable of dragging defenders away from goal and opening up space for the smart medium and small types to run into.

Brown and McDonald were recruited/retained to give us mature talls in our forward line, which without doubt won us a premiership. Similarly, they were held on to through 2022/23 because we needed mature talls up forward to provide steady targets and experience while our investment in tall kids through the draft took time to progress. On both counts, it was the right decision to make. Having both of them on the list ought to have provided us depth, but in the end they produced simultaneous terrible seasons for various reasons, and then of course every player sent into the cursed zone was also hit by the FUstick. There's a case for paying them out into retirement, and there's also a reasonable case that if our list is turning over enough anyway then there's no point kicking them to the curb for the same eventual contract cost, just to gain pick 64 and 82 in a draft described as strong but not deep. Currently already four senior list players on the way out (Dunstan, Hibberd, Grundy, Jordon) while Brown and McDonald are two more possible among multiple other veteran exits.

And then you found out you were direct descendants of Lord Mountbatten and had inherited a series of Loire Valley Chateaux, which is awful because you just know how dusty those things get.

Careful with the payout promises. At this stage all Nudge has claimed is; "A thing might happen" Clearly took on the learnings from the punishment handed out for his previous seasons' more itemized speculations.

I think Caddy did his reputation a service in his interview on Gettable today. https://www.afl.com.au/video/1036516/gettable-caddy-rises-dons-look-to-sign-star-blue-to-move-another-crow-to-go?videoId=1036516&modal=true&type=video&publishFrom=1695176147001 Started off a little nervous and fumbly (or maybe that was just the impression because I always run these things at 1.25 speed), but he settled in and gave the impression of being a humble and wise young man aware of what he needs to work on and keen to do so. He might be too high for our current second pick, and too low for our current first pick. Of course, with the sheer volume of trade pick shenanigans coming up it would be no surprise if we finished with a selection around 7 or 8. Unless we can get ourselves a crucial player type in the trade period, I suspect we will even put our 2024 first round pick on the table to get into this draft as much as possible.

If a review is a systematic evaluation of what is working and what is deficient, with input from all sources and 'ranks', then, yeah. Ideally that should be a near-continuous process but it is difficult to maintain under sustained operational pressure. It is certainly something which should always be given a solid chunk of resources. Consultation and continuous reform is something that has to be kept ahead of the need. If your efforts to invite and seek out opinions get too far behind the pace of people forming opinions, they're going to feel a need to start expressing them in less constructive ways.

You're not in Sydney, yeah?

Literally turn two behinds into two goals each game, and we've only lost two games in the whole of 2023. Our problems are obvious and therefore targetable. We have players leaving who have moderate trade value but aren't established in our best 22, and retirements of similar type which enable significant list renewal. We go into the draft with roughly one pick every 7 selections in the first two rounds. I think with just a little bit of column A (the premiership-winning draft pick-ups of Selwood and Rioli at 7 and 14) and a little bit of column B (Richmond trading aggressively to fill their list holes in 2016, getting Caddy, Nankervis and Prestia) and a little from column C (meaningful assessment and reorganisation of the coaching panel) we would be going into 2024 on a huge boost. I think we're more likely to have a rebound on the scale of Essendon 1999-into-2000 than any kind of flop.

Also noted Joel Smith's sincere concern for Weitering after the throat knock. Lingered with him, patiently helped him up. The body language was eloquent. We're definitely the good guys. Will make climbing to being great again all the sweeter.

Let's be honest, Campbell Brown has skin in the game when it comes to insisting head injuries are no big deal. Both on and off the field, if I recall correctly. With thanks to Reddit; THE CAMPBELL BROWN RAP SHEET Charges: 14 Guilty: 13 Matches suspended: 29 Fines: $6,400 Suspensions One week for striking Brett Montgomery (Port), R3, 2004 Four weeks for striking Jason Winderlich (Ess), R11, 2004 Four weeks for striking Matthew Lloyd (Ess), R20, 2005 Two weeks for striking Lynden Dunn (Melb), NAB Cup 2007 Two weeks for charging Matthew Kreuzer (Carl), NAB Cup 2008 Two weeks for striking Nick Dal Santo (StK), R17, 2010 Two weeks for forceful front-on contact on Barry Hall (WB), R3, 2011 Two weeks for striking Callan Ward (WB), R3, 2011 Six weeks for forceful front-on contact on Aidan Riley (Adel), R23, 2012 Four weeks for unnecessary contact to the face of James Strauss (Melb), R20, 2013 Off-field issues 2005: Dropped for one week by Hawthorn coach Alastair Clarkson as punishment for breaking a convenience store window after Luke Hodge's 21st birthday party. 2007: Fined $15,000 for giving misleading evidence to the AFL Tribunal in a bid to help Chris Judd escape a misconduct charge. 2011: Stripped of leadership position at the Suns after being detained by police in Thailand following an altercation during an end-of-season trip. He was released without charge. 2013: Sacked after fracturing the jaw of teammate Steven May in an altercation in Los Angeles. Oh, yes, here we go. Small world. https://www.afl.com.au/news/58998/gold-coast-sacks-campbell-brown-after-assault-on-teammate-steven-may

Depends how carefully you crush them. Oooh, a reduction sauce might work; "Different components of the liquid will evaporate at slightly different temperatures, and the goal of reduction is to drive away those with lowest points of evaporation... simmering allows impurities to collect at the top and be skimmed off periodically..." Could try a consomme but there aren't enough egg whites on this earth.

It's a tough game and Dunstan has not been lucky. Never once played an uninterrupted season. Congratulations on 121 games, and all the best for the future.