Little Goffy

Strange times. One can only guess that a whole string of clubs have reached in principle agreements on what they would need, and now it is all being shuffled around, while a whole bunch of points-picks are getting ready to be hurled into the fireplace. Looks like once again we'll have that weird situation where picks 15-30 or so are all pushed back a few places by the early bids, while picks 30+ start to compress as a dozen picks get cooked out for the academy sauce.

Well, that would open up both salary space and role space for a certain back-ended Gold Coast player If it ends up being Hunt & Harmes out for not only the trade-value picks but also and Bowes & 7, we're probably pretty good winners. I do like Harmes, and together we will always have that perfect run and kick to Fritsch's lead at the pivotal moment in the Grand Final, but in the end he is a 'contributing but not crucial' player overall. Happy if he stays, but I feel that it can work out well for all if he does go.

Just confirming - in the last ten minutes he won the game for Vic Country with a goal weaving through a pack followed by a goal from a strong leading mark? Noice.

Especially after we give them fifteen different sets of complete instructions on how they should be doing it / should have done it.

The great news is we can all go back to affirming that Jordan De Goey is a #$%& without having to worry that next year we'll be celebrating his goals.

Agree that we should be pushing to make sure we don't get screwed, but every time we 'play nice' and make it smooth for a player to come to us, or to leave us, it makes us that little bit more desirable for other players to come our way. A lot of young key forwards would be thinking they could make their mark at Melbourne as the missing piece, and we want them having a warm fuzzy feeling any time they think of us!

Well, it's a speculation about a speculative approach to a speculative player.

Two separate injuries. Ankle and leg. Not chronic. Will be starting preseason untroubled.

Interesting thought that (if we got him + if he meets projections) we could end up with three forwards who are each the best of their different types (Fritsch, Pickett & Sheezel) but none of them would be the classic tall forward. We'd be in sore need of our own Cameron Mooney!

[puts on anthropologist hat] [reconsiders writing some kind of massive essay] [takes off anthropologist hat] You're welcome. No, seriously, I think I deserve some credit here. You all know I'm perfectly capable of producing a feckering wall of text.

Fun tax fact; the ATO has a scheme which applies to certain professions such as farmers or professional athletes where they can smooth any unusual or windfall income across several years or even offset their tax obligations from a good year by matching it with losses from a poor year. Originally intended to help with the boom-bust and drought cycle for farmers, and for potentially one-off windfalls for athletes, such as prize money. I'm not sure exactly how it applies to athletes in this situation where a contacted income just happens to fluctuate due to backending, but I'd be confident it does because otherwise players would be unlikely to accept big spikes of salary like that. This just reminded me; can anyone remember in more detail the story about Koutafides? As I recall, he agreed to multiple rounds of backending his contract in order to allow Carlton to manage its salary cap mess of the early 2000s. In the end, in his final seasons he was paid an astronomical amount and some people were acting like the salary cap problem was his fault; that he was the overpayed and underperforming star. Bad business, that. Best avoided.

I'm so glad for the Brad Scott news; First, it basically ensures Essendon won't really go anywhere. Second, since I don't like Brad Scott, I won't have to feel bad when the Bomber 'faithful' start papercutting him to death for not turning the club around by next tuesday and also not being James Hird. Third, the overlap of the combined umpire-decision-reaction-faces from Essendon supporters and from Brad Scott will likely create sonic-boom like waves. Fourth, as well as wanting to hold onto him, I am just relieved for Adem Yze because being a new first-time coach at Essendon in 2023 would have been a deplorable experience. The only downside is that now the AFLHQ has to pick another clown who wants to prove their can do credentials by implementing a bunch of daft proposals. Reminds me of the public service stories about Heads of Deptartment in the smaller states - they are there to add things to their resume, no matter how dumb and discredited the initiative, with the sole purpose of smoothing their promotion to a bigger department in a bigger state or at Federal level. True story - this is why the ACT's education system is a mess despite appearing to have absolutely every circumstance working in its favour. There you go, football mirrors government again.

For the Demons now it is all about deciding whether we want to be great or just really good. Got to go hard all game, not just dominate the early game then cruise once we are looking secure.

Fremantle: Gives 13 + salary cap space, gets Jackson Melbourne: Gives Jackson, gets 7, 13, Bowes. Gold Coast: Gives 7 and Bowes to Melbourne, salary cap problem is moved on to Freo. 7, 13 and Bowes for Jackson looks pretty suitable to me. Fremantle must, surely, have salary cap space given Mundy's retirement, the overall age range of their list, the years of sucking and the multiple mature players being moved out this trade period.

I answered 'yes'.

Hey, just checking, we're only running this thread to see if Tom Browne starts reporting it, right? If so, mods delete this post and let's play on.

Kane Cornes just finished running across the country and is already starting a new exhausting marathon. You can disagree with his hot takes but there's no doubting his stamina.

Ah, the Rhodesia Solution!

Last time Geelong won a premiership, James Podsiadly was their leading goalkicker for the season. He was stretchered off midway through the second term of the Grand Final.

Well, looking back over the Grand Final winning teams, they've EITHER got a pair of outstanding key position forwards OR they've got solid key forwards who provide a contest and must be watched and in that process they open opportunities for other types and 'shapes' of players to really hit hard. You can compare the Riewoldt-only Richmond with the Riewoldt+Lynch Richmond, or the 2022 Hawkins+Cameron Geelong against the 2007 Mooney+'Young' Hawkins Geelong. If your key talls are able to play their role and you've got some dangerous other forwards and mids (Eg. Chapman & Stevie J, or Fritsch & Pickett), then there's no need at all to have superstar key position players out there, and the draft selections and salary cap could be better used. Side note, the teams other than Geelong with the 'best' (most goals) pairs of key forwards are Carlton (the last two Coleman medallists, no less) Richmond (Reiwoldt & Lynch) West Coast (Kennedy & Darling) Gold Coast (Chol and Casboult) Adelaide (Walker & Fogarty) Hawthorn (Lewis and Gunston) St Kilda (King and Membrey) It predicts nothing. In fact, the 'two good targets' teams are almost perfectly evenly spread across the ladder.

Tradition must be upheld.

On the pace so far.

As anticipated, I'm spending the first quarter loading a wagon for Vietnam. At this point I'm genuinely more interested in the unmasking of our resident 'Baldesarri', WalkingCivilWar, than I am in the game.

I'm genuinely debating with myself; "Watch this grand final or use the time to go shopping for vitamins and supplements with my wife, ready for her visit to overseas family."

Another good solid win. Would have liked to see the scoring push on int he second half as that has been a weak point for the season so far, but hard to judge it given the weather and also hard to really complain about such a clear win. I really, really don't want Melbourne to be 'second best' for another season though, so I'd like to see ti all click into place and some absolute thrashings handed out.