Little Goffy

It is just too slow for me. And there's the same problem that means it hasn't even worked for suicide bombers; they often have time to produce offspring before detonating. I've got a very strong commitment to the social contract, the safety net, and a society that doesn't leave people to die of starvation in ditches, but when people call nurses and doctors 'medico-fascist' and will later expect to be triaged into ICU taking critical resources away from blameless others, my inclusiveness is sorely tested. Feel free to tap your desk in irritation while contemplating that whole countries are going back into lockdown solely because of anti-vaxxers and also very much to protect those same people who refuse to do a most basic thing to protect themselves. I also haven't seen any stalls set up at the nuffy-marches where people can sign a commitment to not accept the several thousand dollars worth of treatment a significant Covid19 case requires and which the community will, despite everything, provide to them. The mood could change a little when we see something tangible like the AFL 2022 season disrupted because of this gitswarm.

Adem Yze was definitely annoyed when he was 'retired', firmly believing he had more left to give. I believe he was pretty chipper on the night, though! Generally I've got the impression that the club has made quite a bit of effort to reconnect in recent times with a message that this has been a long journey and those who kept us going at the hardest moments are a part of this victory. Not to be underestimated how much Nathan Jones' situation has compelled people to recognise that not everyone who got us to this point got to stand on the podium.

AFL trading is a village market where everyone knows everyone and knows they'll be dealing with each other for decades to come. As opposed to a ruthless metropolitan share trade floor or the like. The relationships matter. In the end the big value will be the accumulated win-win deals you can make with people who will listen and even come to you with ideas, not the occasional deadline staredown.

Richmond went 7 years with only one or two changes to their B&F top 10 each year, and many of those changes were injury related. The moment it became hard to be sure who their best / most important 10 were, they were winning premierships. We've got several players who could be considered in our bottom six but also have an argument made that they are in our most important ten. It's freak'n magnificent. Not a useless body on the field.

Add to list of things that are close to inevitable and also very good. Not many things on that list but always nice to add something.

I'm trying to think of evidence to support keeping him. Best I can come up with is; - BT's channel 7 commentary is a huge boost to radio. - every time BT and Daisy Pearce are both commentating a game, the most positive version of feminism goes a bit more mainstream. - it keeps BT busy enough to not run for parliament.

Basically the club has said to Goodwin, "Take this group, take these mature champions you have, see what you can get out of them and then once they start retiring and the list begins to turn over you can see how you are feeling." I'm happy with that. There's clearly a pretty deep bond between the coach and the leading players at the club. Knowing they are committed to chasing glory together can't hurt. I still maintain my theory that Goodwin took a personal pay cut prior to 2021 so that we could afford our elite panel (Bringing in Burgess, Yze, Williams) under the soft cap rules. I often find it hard to believe when people still scrounge and scrap about money whenever their income is over $5,000/week so I'd believe it now if someone told me he was still on pretty modest coin in recognition that it is the coaching team as a whole which maximised his strengths and completely overcame his weaknesses. Personally, I wouldn't put it past possibility that Adem Yze will be our next coach. If all goes to plan he might even get a 'freebie' Chris Scott style premiership before our current monstrous group of 24-26 year olds begin to retire! La la la la who said just because we won a premiership I can't get wildly unrealistically optimistic in October?

Just crossed my mind that by then it might even be realistic for me to make the trip down. Visit family (not one of whom I've seen in six months), visit friends (almost as sparse), do birthday stuff, and go nuts at the 'G. Should we be planning a Demonland rally point? Should someone bring a banner?

Historically the ultimate smokey is James Hird, tucked away in Canberra and taken at woopwoop pick. Unfortunately people are now aware of the existence of Canberra. Even Tuggeranong (Aaron Hamill) which is technically Canberra I suppose. Now, to be 'invisible' you really have to be from woop woop and beyond. It hurts a little to remember but, wow, what a thought it would be to have someone like Liam Jurrah arrive in the system and supports we have now.

I'm currently (in a quasi-professional capacity, what a strange world) reading good ol' boy Clausewitz's On War and came across a quote specially designed for this thread and the Demons 2021. ... "it is the noiseless harmony of the whole action which we should admire, and which only makes itself known in the total result. The inquirer who, tracing back from the final result, does not perceive the signs of that harmony is one who is apt to seek for genius where it is not, and where it cannot be found." There was no moment of genius or extraordinary innovation in the Demons 2021 that set us apart. We simply got to the point of acting as a unified group on the necessities which everyone kind of already knows about.

That we absolutely deserved the premiership we won gives me a little thrill every time.

Hibberd seems like an ideal post-2020 'playing assistant coach' type. All the enthusiasm and all the determination. Provides support which lets the coaches within soft-cap limits focus on their most crucial duties. Plus, he's proven himself to not be easily written off.

What I find noticeable is that he never rushes it. Neither of those kicks and few if any of his other shots from play seem hurried OR hesitated. It's actually really impressive despite being completely undramatic. "No dramas" Clayton, that's our guy.

I'll be looking forward to your musings. I imagine a lot of the details of those games will feel very different now - particularly the mid-season wobble and scoring problems which now just looks like a process of getting our proverbial together but was a bit alarming at the time.

We just got Luke Dunstan for nothing and Dunstan is one accurate kick per game short of being as good as O'Meara. Expensive and unnecessary. But at least I get an excuse to bring out my favourite picture of him;

Starting to look like they might even be doing it -worse- than the Demon's first rebuild 2007-11. Wingard, Mitchell and O'Meara are only in the 27-28 years range. They have a dozen other players older than that and many of them are also important to the team. It is a big risk to be trying to dispose of your remaining mature players when you are already about to lose a host of them naturally. But I guess that works both ways - if they don't hit the panic button and get whatever draft selections and young players they can, they will be in all sorts of trouble anyway. Looks to me like the only part of the ground they have reasonable prospects in from the younger players is defence. That's important (As we so happily know - Oh hey, did you hear we won the premiership? Yeah, we did that) but damn they look threadbare everywhere else. They've got just 80 games total into every player they have 21yrs or under (Demons: 220!) and that's a fair reflection of what's available in that group. I've looked at it and talked myself in a circle but the conclusion is; I cannot see a way Hawthorn can avoid a really awful and sustained slump. YAAAAAAAY! WOOOO HOOO!

Anytime I think about St Kilda's history it is that period from late 70s to late 80s which really makes me grind my teeth. After their 66 triumph St Kilda played in a whole string of finals and another grand final in 71. They had become a serious and competent club again. But then... I don't even know how to describe it fairly. The fact is the club's culture was destroyed by people, including senior administrators, who were far more interested in the social status and opportunities to get laid which being part of a football club gave them, rather than actually pursuing a premiership. 'St Kilda party boys' was just the tip of an incredibly toxic iceberg. If "footy boys culture of the 80s" was the tip of the iceberg, St Kilda boys culture would be the iceberg, and then in that visible "St Kilda boys culture" would be the tip of another iceberg that descended all the way to an organised and prolific pedophile ring using the club's junior leagues as it's happy hunting ground. I really hope today's St Kilda can go through a process as rejuvenating and honorable as our Demons have been through. I wouldn't even mind if they snagged a premiership in the next five years or so - I'm sure we'll have at least one bad year eventually!

Yeah, massive touch wood and all, but as I recall it Oliver hasn't missed a game since debut. Goodwin has only coached one game without Oliver in the side, and that was as a stand-in for Essendon! 124 games at 24 years is a good start. Many of our other mid-age players have had injury interrupted starts to their career or took a while to find their feet at AFL level, which makes 300 a little harder. Jones himself had 12 seasons missing only one or zero games, which is just incredible and shows the kind of injury and form run it takes to hit 300. If I had to take a guess from the kids I'd actually suggest Trent Rivers. Think Kade Simpson - never got an All-Australian nod and took ten years before he won his first club B&F, but he just kept on being excellent and deservedly notched 342 games. Contradicting what I said a moment ago about the difficulties of reaching 300 after an interrupted early career, I wouldn't put it past Lever to just keep going and going. Ten years from now he will have lost a few steps of speed but he will also only get wiser and harder. I can see him doing a Fletcher-style run. Maybe not to age 40 but enough to clock 300 games. Plus, his injuries cost him form more than so many actual games total; missed about 20 games from 2019-20 overall. This exercise has put me more in a frame of mind of thinking about just how many realistic 200-gamers we have on our list right now, and even more than that, just how many of those still have a hundred games in hand waiting to play!

When I was feeling melodramatic and giving in to corny feelings and all that just before the grand final I built a notion in my head of the three values of the club as they appeared; "Enthusiasm, humility, love". So I'm slightly relieved to see the latter of those mentioned in the OP. Mind you, at the time I also lost 20 minutes of my life creating a 'Gawndalf' photoshop thing. They were stressful times, all right! Anyway, there's something truly beautiful about seeing two of the absolute best players in the game have a really potent working relationship. The touch wood part is of course that they don't end up alienating the other very good midfielders we have by their side, but just on instinct I don't feel like that's likely to be a problem.

Something just made me think of Luke Ball. It's a similar situation except that in Dunstan's case he's been pushed out, there isn't the slightest hint of mercenary, and as of yet the St Kilda coach hasn't bagged out the ex-player. The situational contrast with Ball is making me realise how mad the Saints are to push Dunstan away. When they lost Ball they had four diverse midfielders each with 15+ Brownlow votes that year; Goddard, Montangna, Dal Santo and Hayes.

Any sense of inferiority or cringe is certainly washed away by beating Geelong three times in a season including denying them them the minor premiership with a shot after the siren and then absolutely belting them in a preliminary final (83 points? Seriously?). But. Given that I don't think our team has quite peaked yet, and Geelong are dancing on the edge of a list cliff which they've been pushing their luck on for years already...

Tell you what, I wouldn't want to be the coach assigned to manage the rebuild three years from now.

Nice work, Daisycutter. There have been times this year where people were using this thread to discuss football matters and it was seriously derailing from the original esteemed purpose. Premiership Bananas. The way it should be.

My early gut feeling was that we would target one of the multiple 'hard' medium defenders as a succession plan for Hibberd. There are I think four of them predicted to go from 15-25. I'm even more comfortable with that guess now, and I'd be really keen to know who The Great and Wise Jason has his eye on. Alas, we'll have to wait. Of course, the chances we'll actually finish with 17, 37 and 49 are minimal.

Well, I absolutely didn't think this would happen. To the point where I didn't even give it much thought. Lots of respect going around for Dunstan's character, so that's a good starting point. Free Agent, reportedly fairly low salary. Tick. My gut feeling when I saw the news was that St Kilda must be mad to be letting him go. Good sign. The question marks are on his kicking and his durability. We might be able to help with both as it seems we've got a pretty good system in place for improving these things. I like it. I like the comfort of knowing that we have a little more depth in the engine room. We were very lucky/well managed with injury this season and it is a comfort to know that we aren't just assuming we will have a run like that every year. Very cost-effective pickup, a definite quality AFL player. I'm genuinely concerned about St Kilda, though. In particular the burden placed on Jack Steele. If they break him it is a crime against football as well as the death of their competitiveness.