Little Goffy

I dislike branding people losers, especially the ones who did keep their heads up and keep working when times were awful. It is a huge test of character to keeping giving your best effort when you know the only thing at stake is your self-respect. There's a slightly different kind of 'loser', though - the one that is only interested in winning and tunes out of anything else. Any Carlton supporter will tell you that the trouble at their club is above all a case of players only wanting to do the 'fun' stuff. Carlton can score prolifically and attack very well but when things go against them far too many see it as someone else's job to tighten up. "I'm a great attacker / I'm a great rebounder, defensive efforts are for Weitering to do." It was also pointed out to me that Carlton have given away five or six goal runs in every single game this season. Of course, against Melbourne, that'll be when they decide to draw a line and become determined to work both ways. Many people don't understand MFCSS. They think it is just a lack of faith and trust in the club. You have to think big picture - MFCSS is a lack of faith and trust in the entire universe. An upcoming lowly opponent will sack their coach and have a stirring rebound game against us. That mid-ranked team will get their best two players back and finally have their preferred structures in place when they play us in round 18 after everyone else has had a soft go at them. We'll be the only club in fifteen years that misses out on a priority pick by one excess win, but also be the only club that gets grotesquely shamed for 'tanking' even when we were clearly genuinely awful. MFCSS dictates that Teague has been told to get the players fired up or get himself fired. He is almost certainly, right now, having coffee and smashed avocado with Patrick Cripps and saying just the right things to restore his confidence and focus. We're going to need to bring our best game this week, do not doubt it.

With surprising regularity the people who almost pathologically seek to undermine Goodwin's standing make points so spurious as to diminish their own standing. Three of five 'big changes' are Hunt, ANB and Harmes? And having two tall forwards plus Fritsch is a major re-think? And playing Jones and Jetta for a few games is a new declaration of loyalty to the old guard? Flibbadbliddabbada. Pfft pfft.

To be fair, the Kangaroos don't have many top end draft picks coming through... oh, wait... that's because so far they've only completed one truly bad season. Remember that in 9 years of horror featuring six years with 5 wins or less, Melbourne's grand total of priority picks was 1 (Watts) and 17 (Blease). As a timeline reference point, North just hit 2008.

Why not also give one to Hawthorn and Collingwood?

If we were currently in the pack on four or five wins I'd be mildly annoyed that we play the Dogs twice and have the Cats a second time. But we are three games clear inside the top four and even a 50/50 win rate for the rest of the season will see us settle on 15 wins. That means that the occasional loss when it happens is something we can take 'learnings' from without tearing our hair out and we can keep our focus on improvement and working out our best combinations instead of fretting over every game. In 8 games so far we've played three opponents currently in the eight as well as 9th, 10th and 11th who would each be in the 8 if they had beaten us, so it hasn't been a particularly soft draw and we've met every test against opponents with a wide variety of tactics. I came into this season anticipating a 'pretty good' start, then a bit of adjustment, followed by a really potent late season. I'm still very comfortable with that prediction. Truth is, at this stage only our defense and our general pressure are areas that have been truly outstanding - clearly those are the two best things to be outstanding in - but we haven't dominated the clearances the way we would like to and probably ought to, and we haven't had the whole forward line work well at the same time. Eight wins in and yet not a single 10-goal margin our way tells the story - we are getting the job done. It sounds silly to say it about an undefeated team, but I'd argue it is much more likely that we will lift further before the end of the year, rather than slip too badly.

Probably hasn't had a Brownlow vote in two weeks. Dump from leadership group.

As much as Weitering has been huge this season and was something beyond even that against the Bulldogs, Josh Bruce kicked 5 and Aaron Naughton kicked 2 and the Dogs scored 16 goals for the game. At the moment Carlton are a team built around too few, admittedly great, players. An optimistic Blues supporter would look at Richmond's situation just before they came good - a similar problem of having a strong core group but nothing like a full AFL-level 22 to work with. A pessimistic Carlton supporter would just console themselves with Collingwood looking like being on the brink of implosion. Carlton will struggle to contain Gawn/Jackson (they had a second gamer against them in the ruck for the Bulldogs), they will struggle to cope with our possible goal-kicking midfielders, and they aren't going to get the kind of lop-sided centre-clearance counts that kept Sydney in the game against us. Three things keep Carlton in this and keep me nervous - 1. The difference between a Patrick Cripps bad game and a Patrick Cripps good game. 2. Carlton must win to keep a realistic hope alive. 3. If we drop our pressure, it brings any given opponent into contention.

Do we have any actual idiots left at our club? Feels like every Demon who opens their mouth is at the very least earnest and respectable. Even the kids just sound young rather than young and dumb. It's just not a proper football club!

We should be appealing the fine, asking for a staging fine for Franklin. While we're at it, throw in a workplace health and safety lawsuit if no action is taken about that appalling off-the ball spear tackle with no purpose except aggression. Just to add to the dirty Swans list, did anyone else notice the delightful Mr Papley picking/scratching at the back of Harmes head where Harmes had previously been bleeding from? Charming stuff.

Threads like this are popping up on Demonland, on other supporter forums, and even on Bigfooty. Alas, [censored] marketing managers who have only ever dealt with 'products' and transcations instead of community institutions and relationships are very sure they know better and none of the deeper stuff fits on a spreadsheet anyway.

We need some kind of 'keeping a lid on it pledge' thread.

Just sharing because why not.

Is it possible that he waited a couple of weeks so it didn't crowd Jones' 300th celebrations? Because that would be pure class.

The paint on the laundry ceiling of my apartment is already peeling off in large flakes despite allegedly having been redone before we moved in. Clearly an inferior brand of non-Melbourne-sponsoring paint. You'd never get such failure from our esteemed friends at Haymes Paint!

The collection of things going unexpectedly right is beginning to make the hairs on the back of my neck quiver. Just need to do a couple of quick checks - Centre for Near Earth Object Studies I'll keep everyone updated.

Seems like every week is a new test of our legitimacy. Cope without two key forwards? Check. Out-compete the reigning premiers? Check. Get our act together against the presumptive wooden spooners? Check. Manage a new disruption to our forward line, midfield and defence at the same time? It's the disruptions like this and the inevitable stumbles of a long season that make the early winning streak so valuable. Of course, much better than covering a stumble is covering a stumble and still winning to go three games clear of the opponent in 4th place.

Sometimes they go on income.

I'm just glad he had enough time to prove he can play the role, earn respect and be confident of his place in the team upon return. But that's a small mercy. What a Hawthorn-flavoured sandwich.

Since Selwood, Dan Hannebery, Daniel Rich, Dyson Heppell, Daniel Talia, Callum Mills and Jayden Stephenson have all played finals in their Rising Star winning year. So a team with a Rising Star winner is more likely to be playing finals that year than not. Some place-getters might want to mention their early success too!

If that earns a suspension Dusty might as well not come back from New Zealand.

I'm getting set up for the game on Kayo and their 'past classic' on the suggested playlist is the 1996 North over Melbourne by 113. Boooooooo. Kill. Kill. Kill.

If people learned to try that before calling the helpdesk we would be living in a different world! To get back on the thread; has anyone tried turning Fremantle off and back on again?

With Ben Brown finally coming in I'm having a happy moment remembering how worried so many people were that our season would be over by now. Some people were even getting aggressive at anyone who stayed positive after the loss to the Dogs in the pre-season. Keep the run going, Demons - you could actually change personalities!

It's fine. Jones himself is probably much more interested in being as fresh as possible to give him a chance for the late season. Fairytales don't climax with an early winter win over the presumptive wooden spoon team. We also still have some kinks to work out and partnerships to fine tune if we're really going to challenge in September and Jones is the most 'known quantity' of known quantities.

Did I see it correctly that there were only 24,000 at the Collingwood-Gold Coast triumph today? Top deck of the MCG looked closed whenever it appeared on camera, so I'd believe it. But... where do they go?