Little Goffy

The back spasm and soreness clearly slowed him a bit but he has continued to play his role. Definitely the week off will be important for him and I suspect we've got a few other sore bodies, both old and young, who will appreciate some time to tend to their bruises. I have a strange gut feeling that destiny is calling him to be a kind of forward tagger on Aliir Aliir, providing a priceless breakeven on grand final day. But, for now, one game at a time.

Finished the H&A season with the most tackles inside 50 of any player. Pretty sure he also has the most 'first to reach a goalkicker to celebrate' stats of any player. Always gets there. This is a player who loves his teammates' successes. According to the Gus&Gawny podcast after the Geelong game, he was running in to celebrate before the kick had even gone through.

Most capable and I would even say most lovable. I really want them to win and it is even more than just wanting a Demon Premiership - I want these people to win. I believe they deserve it.

Anyone else beginning to make random non-verbal vocalisations around the house? For example; "I should [urp] some food now so there is [heeeek] no distractions during the [phrrr-cic] game."

Emotional season. Epic game. Correct result. Hurt my gut yelling. On a completely different level, it was a great pleasure many years ago to find Dean Bailey and the entire coaching panel having a morning pre-game coffee at 'my' cafe back in Canberra, so long ago. Quick little chat and handshake then let them get back to it of course, but it is quite something to suddenly find a pocket of your life unexpectedly flooded with red and blue.

Next year we could realistically have the honorary captain and vice captain with Gawn and May both sneaking in. I'm kind of comfortable with the fact that for the next few years we have just two more players a year crossing the threshold. 2022 Gawn and May 2023 Brown and McDonald 2024 Viney and Tomlinson 2025 Salem and Hunt My gut says a few of those will go many years beyond 30, too. I for one struggle to be pessimistic about a period where our current astonishing group of younger players are at their peak. Better days ahead.

Trawling through the coaches votes it is noticeable that Oliver was very frequently a 5+5 or 5+4 vote. Those very visibly and unanimous top games should have him up there. It's hard to see him winning though, simply because of the variety of other Demons who have had BOG performances, and the highly visibly games of the likes of Wines and Bont. Then you've got Jack Steele whose numbers are every bit as good and who has stood out by a mile at St Kilda. Their next best mid is well below him for stats and a whole other level below him for the mystical 'presence' and real impact on games. I'd argue that St Kilda would have been bottom-4 without him this year and there's about 8 games where he is probably BOG and another five where he was St Kilda's best. Anyway, on that basis I've got Steele stealing it (oh, no, the headlines, the headlines, no) 1. Steele 2. Macrae 3. Wines 4. Oliver 5. Bontempelli 6. Angus Brayshaw Melbourne will have the highest total as a club, cracking 80 and possibly even 90 votes total.

Wow, that's true. Which means Goodwin has never coached a game without Oliver in the team. Except that caretaker one at Essendon. But that, like all things Essendon, isn't worth remembering. Lol. Thanks to that game, Simon Goodwin has coached the equal-second-most finals wins of any Essendon coach since 1968. I digress. Congratulations to Clayton Oliver on not only winning the coaches award but frankly romping it in!

Geez the Carlton board and nonces. There's many paragraphs to be written about undermining, and overselling, and expectations management, and just pure arrogance. But let's break it down into just one simple statement of what Before Teague arrived Carlton had won FOUR of the previous FORTY games. They gave him two seasons.

Never a bad time to praise a genuinely good commentator. In a small way it is also a little bit of thrill to see 'one of ours' doing so well.

Doesn't seem any more insightful than if you got a few random people sitting around a table talking it out. The trouble is the weighting of the stats according to position - which is done on the basis of a few people sitting around a table talking it out! Nic Nat AND Tom Hickey over Gawn is a good example. There's no doubt that Naitanui and Hickey have both excelled at the ruck-specific duties with hitouts to advantage or clearances and so on, but Gawn has them both covered for other areas of performance including marks, contested marks, marks inside 50, intercept marks, intercepts total, meters gained, rebound 50s, and even the simple fact of being on the ground 90% of the time denying opposition long kicks or drawing an opposition defender. You wouldn't swap Gawn out for either of them. It'll probably also keep Luke Jackson out of some statistically determined teams, too. Assuming he carries on his current trajectory, he will (statistically) be an excellent ruck, excellent key forward and excellent half-forward/utility, but not be the 'best' in any specific one of those positions. Statistics are dumb because people are dumb and then they put things in numbers and forget that they were dumb back when they did it.

I had a little confused churn in my gut when they said we never give up. It's like finding out your secret high school crush has been asking people about you. It's great news but now you have the pressure of actually delivering!

Let's do a deal: If Melbourne win the premiership you have to get a tattoo of a cricket with Ben Brown's number 50 on it's back!

One of the reasons we are better now than in 2018 is because 2018 happened! Not to mention the 'learnings' of 2019 and 2020. A lot of gun young players (does Gawn still count as young?) saw that it wasn't going to be enough to just be a gun player if they wanted to pursue real glory. We've also got possibly a league-best coaching and fitness group right now. That might not hold together forever but with the player-leaders we've gathered and created since 2018 I have a confident hope that the raised expectations are sustainable.

Honestly, I think this is one we just have to accept isn't going to be ours. Whoever gets him will probably be happy enough but there's not much we can do to influence the situation. Whatever will be will be.

Oh to be minus 15 again. They were good times. This thread got me thinking and I've realised it is quite possible my grandad was at every Demon premiership except 1900. The age range matches up and I know he was a lunatic in general and a very serious Demon. He was actually committed to not dying until the Demons won another flag but the story goes he was satisfied that 2000 was an acceptably high note to go out on. EDIT: Further thought, I hope this thread needs to be wildly updated in a few weeks' time!

Not sure if it warrants it's own thread but Alex Neal-Bullen finished the season with the most tackles inside-50. Incredibly, Pickett missed out on being second by just a couple of tackles, finishing 3rd. Honorable mentions go to Viney, McDonald and Brown (Yep, Ben Brown) who all finished in the top 30 based on average per game.

I think it is hilarious that until this year Goodwin vs Scott was 0% wins in home and away and 100% wins in finals. Going back a bit further the Melbourne-Geelong history still holds. Round 21, 2006 - 94-94 Draw. Other results went our way in the final two rounds so it didn't decide whether we played finals, but missing the win did end Geelong's finals chances and the game itself was desperate and magnificent. Round 20, 2005 - 100-99 Win. Featuring a seven goal haul from Russell Robertson. This and the next two games were all must win to regain our place in finals after a roller-coaster season emotionally charged by the loss of Troy Broadbridge. Clearly emotionally exhausted, just three weeks later we we easily bundled out of the finals by none other than Geelong. Round 21, 2000 - 126-108 Win. At the 'G for a change, and in front of 75,000 fans, Melbourne directly seized a top 4 spot from Geelong which we held onto in the final round. In every season this century (including 2000) in which Melbourne have played finals, there has been a crucial late-season game against Geelong. Anyway, there's a pretty fair chance we will play them in finals; - meet in prelim if one side loses qual then wins their semi while the other side wins their qual. OR - both sides win their qual and prelim to get into the grand final. OH HELL IT IS FINALLY DAWNING ON ME THAT WE ARE PLAYING A QUALIFYING FINAL AGAINST BRISBANE THIS COMING WEEKEND AND NOTHING ELSE MATTERS.

Ranked 271st for score involvements but that one must count for extra.

The range of important stats which both May and Lever feature in prominently is all the more impressive because of how well they shared the burden of responsibility. On a less dramatic note, Lever was the player who spent the most time actually on the field in the 2021 home and away season with 22 games 99.14% time on ground. Confusing Archimedes no end, Lever has been an immovable object.

I had he pleasure of being at that game. Strange feeling on the way there as it was within a few hundred meters of the vaccination hub I'd been to twice in the previous month. Also a very strange atmosphere with the crowd restrictions leaving three quarters of the stadium empty while everyone was packed shoulder to shoulder in the remaining part. They also didn't lay on the facilities to appropriate scale; imagine there being queues to get in and an urgent struggle to get so much as a half time coffee at half time when the crowd is under 4000! But we all had a good yell, and very strangely there was no sense of doom when we were a bit flat in the first half and behind at half time. The nine goal to three second half was great fun. Possible omen coincidence - the last time Gawn had a shot after the siren our opponent the next week was Brisbane, who we defeated solidly.

When a game is so epic that even the losers aren't interested in sour grapes, that's good football.

I was hesitant to add that thought because it is all so complex, but then didn't want to add a further wall of text. I don't personally favour the polarising 'Australia is wildly racist all the time' angle but there's no doubt that close enough to every Aboriginal person in Australia goes through life just a few steps away from the next time some b43t4rd will openly insult them or, much worse, undermine them. But, yeah, not looking for a political angle here so much as just noting that for an Aboriginal kid there's... how to say it... always someone ready to tell you you don't belong.

It's a thing often noted with child prodigies that when they finally come up against something they can't do they can really struggle to focus on working through the problem systematically and they can get very emotional and angry about it. Similar stories are told of the 'big' teenagers who developed a little earlier and had a bit more bulk and power as key forwards, dominating their teenage opponents but then getting a serious shock when they find themselves always the smaller guy at AFL level. Just a hypothesis, but I think a lot of the tragic faliures of high draft picks (ours and in general) are partly that shock of suddenly finding you're only okay or, very commonly, hit the second-year blues where your game reaches a ceiling and opponents have worked you out. It takes a lot of personal courage to acknowledge you can't go on the same way that worked just fine for your first 18 years of life and to then change the way you go about things. Jackson is our only very high draft pick since back in 2015 (Oliver and Weideman) and 2014 (Petracca and Brayshaw). He seems to have come in with a terrific attitude while the three midfielders have all been on the proverbial personal journeys to get where they are now. Weideman is the odd one out and I think his story supports the theory - he always seems to be playing with enormous pressure that he's put on himself. He'll miss doing the 'outstanding' and then the confidence drops and he'll struggle to follow up with the grunt work that keeps you involved in games. I think it served us well to not have a couple of very early draft pick kids for a couple of years - not to mention that got us the very important characters of Lever and May. Meanwhile, every other new kid on our list has had to prove themselves -after- they were drafted and do so by following instruction and playing according to the team's needs. Sure, Pickett was a pretty early pick and had some pre-draft hype... but he is Aboriginal so, you know, has never really been allowed to feel completely secure.

One person decided that their symptoms didn't warrant a test and they would go visit their frail elderly mother in a nursing home anyway. After working to midnight last night my wife and several other staff are currently working for their full weekend to help radically reorganise a large aged care roster, identify who needs to be isolated and where needs to be deep cleaned. This process includes the awful aspect of needing to relocate people with varying levels of dementia. All this is being done in the full human condom PPE outfits. She'll be skipping lunch because it just isn't practical. That story just keeps repeating and repeating everywhere you look in any part of the care sectors. I'm running out of patience for the self-indulgent gits of Australia, whether it is the smug complacent establishment types like Kennett and Hazzard or the parolee social club out 'protesting' on the streets of Melbourne.