Traja Dee

I like that Melbourne have given Pat a stepping stone for a new career given that he won’t make it as an AFL footballer or professional cricketer. There’s just one woman on the AFLW team’s coaching panel. Surely we could be more affirmative.

Thanks for sharing. This was the game where Jack Trengove was controversially suspended for his sling tackle on Danger (1h 5min). As a biased Demon, I felt that Trenners was hard done at the time but, looking, back, I now applaud the safety first attitude adopted by the AFL. Interesting to see who was playing for Melbourne that season. Somehow, I felt optimistic at the start of the season but now realise how far off the mark we were, especially compared to our 2018 team. Our 2018 team would have defeated our 2011 team by 100 points, IMHO. Still, I reflect on the potential in 2011. Ricky Petterd, in particular, could have been a star and I likened him to Stevie J. Nice to see Trenners up and about and Flash hitting up so many passes. Jack Watts definitely looked like a 16yo on the loose.

IIRC, his dad had an official role at St Kilda, something like Recruiting Manager.

I was expecting something like a Byron Pickett bump or Michael Long on Troy Simmons in the 2000 GF. Thinking about it, the rule should be that there must be no head-on collision with a player pursuing a bobbling ball, even if the other player was also pursuing the ball with his own head down. Is this the current rule?

Always sad to see nasty injuries in football, but how do you rate the culpability of this play? I’ve watched the video a few times (admittedly on my phone) and it looks like both were playing the ball. How do we reduce the risk of potentially catastrophic injuries? http://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2018-01-10/ntfl-player-to-face-tribunal-over-spinal-injury-collision/9316544

Interesting question that you raise @poita. How do you award points when voting? I believe that players should be awarded points based on their value to a team, and that the most valuable players in a match are often more than twice as valuable, in terms of winning an evenly-contested the game, than a player who simply fulfilled their "role". (That said, role players are vital in an 18-team, equalised AFL competition.) For instance, what points would you give 2 midfielders, say A and B, if A had 30 disposals and B had 20 but both had 80% efficiency? Let's assume that the split on tackles, 1%-ers, smothers and inside-50s were also on a 3:2 ratio. The way I imagine this situation, player A is likely to have far more influence on Melbourne winning than player B, so votes of 8 versus 4 seem quite reasonable. An extra 10 possessions for a midfielder will possibly lead to another 4 or 5 crucial plays that lead to winning a game. Then again, how do you judge a KP defender or forward in this criteria? I'd base it on something like the proportion of crucial moments won in the game.

My favourite memory is courtesy of Big Neale Balme. I was sitting in from of the old open coach's box in the MCC for a night match and KD seemed flat-footed when the opposition won a contested ball on our HFF in front of Neale and me. "Get into it Dyson!" boomed Neale. ? KD's early games filled me with optimistic anticipation but he never quite delivered. I was still keen on him after he moved north.

Just received this in the mail. Is this some kind of joke or was the club getting prematurely excited?

With the news that Casey Demons have taken over Cranbourne's VFLW license, what goes for Daisy and her AFLW teammates? Will they'd still get to play with their original VFLW clubs, such as Darebin Falcons? I'm a big fan of the growth of women's footy and our club's leadership and support. It would seem strange if Daisy plays against Casey Dees but then stranger still if she's pressured to play for a club that's 80 minutes down the road...

Some time around 1980, 3AW and Harry B had a go at commentating one day cricket matches (the Melbourne ones at least), competing against the very popular ABC Radio commentary. 3AW decided to differentiate themselves by describing fielding positions as the hour on the clock rather than the traditional name. The Age newspaper had a great headline on the day after they introduced this. The headline read "Beitzel makes silly point at 11:30". As I recall, 3AW's experiment didn't see through to the end of that season.

Sad to see the passing of Harry Beitzel, one of the top 3 media personalities when I started following Melbourne in 1975. He was huge! http://m.afl.com.au/news/2017-08-14/hall-of-fame-member-harry-beitzel-passes-away

Scintillating summary, Whispering Jack. It exceeds even your lofty standards. Thanks and double-thanks!

It would depend on a range of factors apart from the player's ability at AFL level. For instance, it depends on the nature of the injury and whether the player needs a few VFL games to regain conditioning, particularly if the rehab prescribes ramping up game time. It would also depend on the team's form and the "importance" of the match. Maybe an extreme example question would be "who is good enough to bump another fit player out of a balanced team on a 4 game winning streak, even after a 8 week injury?" Very few would fit into this category; maybe Jones, Viney, Lewis.

I've been a Demons fan for 40 years, and the first goal that comes to my mind with the OP was a flash of Sean Wight #27 magic. He was playing one-out as full forward in the goal square and was starting to lead toward the flank with his opponent pressing hard. The incoming ball from the 50m line on a 45 degreee angle was too strong and looking like it was going to bounce at the top of the goal square and skid through for a behind. Sean had other ideas: he doubled back, still with his opponent pressing hard, watched the ball coming over his shoulder and then VOLLEYED the ball through for a goal! Magic. I've seen soccer players do this sort of thing on very rare occasions but this this was the one and only time I've seen an AFL (VFL then) player do it with a 50m kick. It was magic. One travesty is that the game wasn't televised (there was once such a time when only some of the games were televised) so there is, as far as I know, no video footage. When Sean passed away, I saw one other Demonlander recount this story, so I know I wasn't dreaming. The OP got me thinking about how some skills that we marveled in the 1980's are now quite common. Peter Daicos was marveled for his dribbling kicks that rolled in an arc through for a goal, and Pies fans cheered like he was Jesus on a donkey and the rest of us gritted our teeth and silently thought that it was pretty good. These days, we see one of those goals almost every week. Similar story with the snap kick that Stevie J pioneered is almost the kick of choice of some players, and that boomerang kick that it replaced has just about gone the same way as the drop kick - thank heaven for Clarrie's on the Adelaide Oval boundary to keep it alive. Jacker's bicycle kick that others mentioned was also pretty special. Gazza's 70m bomb at Waverley to get us the win against Carlton was great. Nietz's bump on McCabe was great and Schwartz's goal in the final against Carlton after snatching the ball from a forward flank through in was a special feeling. One slightly more obscure goal was kicked by Flash against David Wirrapunda from West Coast at the MCG in about round 10 in 2004 (if my memory serves me correctly). It was great because it was a set play that started with a throw in on the back flank. I didn't realise what was happening at the time, but the Melbourne forwards subtlety moved toward the wing and left the centre square almost vacant, where Flash walked with David Wirrapunda. With Jeff White in the ruck, we won the knock-out from the throw in, the ball was hand passed to a Melbourne midfielder streaming into the centre square just as Flash did a u-turn and started to spring back toward the vacant 50m arc. The midfielder kicked the ball over Flash's head so that he could easily run onto it and into a vacant goal square - nice. Once again, we've seen Jeffy do this a few times in the past few years but this was the first time I saw it, and I'm sure that it was a set play specifically to set up a goal when there was a throw-in on the back flank.

I deliberately avoided bringing up Mark Neeld's post-match interviews. They were textbook examples of how not to conduct an interview and to promote our club and they demonstrated remarkably low emotional intelligence. Even Neil Craig performed better in the interviews. On the flip side, Paul Roos' interviews were probably textbook examples of how to conduct post-match interviews. In fact, I've realised that I model how I behave in my professional work on Paul Roos manner in general - imitation is the best form of flattery after all.

Thanks Fifty-5. I agree that Goodie is appreciably forthright while not descending into a Mark Neeld type heaviness. Absolutely agree that transition involves both offence and defence. When the opposition holds the ball in transition, our role is to apply pressure to cut off options and pressure the ball carrier in order to effect a contest as soon as possible rather than an opposition goal.

Simon Goodwin’s post-match interview after Saturday’s game in Alice suggests that he may have been watching a different game to almost everyone else. It got me thinking about the post-match routine I have established to capture other’s thoughts and exactly how much credibility I give to different sources. In this post, I’ve summed up some of the differences between Goodie’s post-match sentiment and the sentiment in George from the Outer’s report. I’ve touched on the framework I tend to use when analysing games (contests and transitions) and then listed my go-to sources for post-match reviews. For the Alice match against the Suns, Simon used expressions such as: “I’m very proud of the victory “We were really happy with the way we were playing in the first half in a lot of ways (and I know that that sounds a bit strange).” “At no stage did we feel like we were out of the contest.” “We made a lot of blues in the first half… we couldn’t connect with our ball use” “It was really just doing the simple things well.” Compare this to “What the Dickens” - another well researched, considered and entertaining read from “George in the Outer”. “Once again, Melbourne got off to a shocker of a start in the game.” “Sadly, forwards played behind their men, dinky kicks were persisted with, instead of long telling kicks, handballs went sideways” “they (Jones and Hibberd) simply dragged the Demons out of the foolishness that they had offered in the first two quarters” Maybe I’m quite unusual, but I love analysing games and try to understand why one team outscores the other. The way I look at a game, it’s a series of contests joined by transitions. Which team wins a specific contest depends on the number of players each team has at the contest, the athleticism and skill of each of those players, the system adopted (like where the players position themselves, which players are tagged, etc) and always an element of random luck. Usually, the luck evens itself out over a match. Transition is the phase when one team has won possession from a contest and starts to move the ball towards their goal. They can either be free-flowing, such as plays when Jayden is running with the ball freely off the half-back line, or under pressure, such as plays when you see a desperate chain of handpasses trying to find a loose, outside player. When planning a game, I imagine that the coaching panel establishes assumptions about the strengths and weaknesses of their own team and the opposition team in contests and transitions, and develops tactics for accentuating the positives and eliminating the negatives. This is how I understand the term “role” that players refer to, where players are told to refine their normal style of play in both contests and transitions to accentuate the positives for the team. After the match is a time to review and analyse the accuracy of those assumptions (i.e. player performance compared to expectations) and consider how to update those assumptions. This is the analysis that I’m particularly interested in. So, where should a “tragic demon” such a myself go to conduct one’s own analysis and reflection on games? Personally, I seek out the following reports every week, rightly or wrongly. Simon’s Post-Match Interview This is my most valued source of information as it is closest to the game plan’s architects and their underlying assumptions, as well as the beginnings of post-match analysis and review. I’m aware that the coaches sit down a day or two after a match, watch the videos and “code” the match, which I assume is the codification of every contest and transition. Perhaps it’s only after this review and analysis that the underlying assumptions can be truly assessed, which really underscores the premature nature of the post-match interviews. I’m also aware that the post-match interviews usually are tinted with a certain “spin” as honesty will create all sorts of headaches that the team doesn’t need. Demonland’s Featured Articles Let me say this to the administrators: these articles are gold, extremely well written and readable and significantly more insightful than all newspapers’ match reports - thank you! The feature of these articles compared to newspaper articles is that the Demonland authors have a far deeper understanding of our team and our players, and write their reports with analysis of what the team did right or wrong. The downside of the Demonland articles, I presume, is that the writers don’t have the insights to the coaches’ game plans and underlying assumptions, and what roles are assigned to different players. Like the rest of us, they can only presume what the coaches were thinking. Jordan Lewis on AFL 360 I love how well Lewie articulates the team insights and appreciate the respectful conversation with Jack Riewoldt. On the downside, there may be only 5 minutes of Melbourne discussion and what they discuss is haphazard and influenced by Mark Robinson, who I and many others don’t rate as a football intellectual. At least these interviews occur after the match review. Lewie was a bit of a tease a couple of weeks back when he referred to some of the team’s KPIs, where the team was scoring well in most of them (such as contested possession) but underperforming in others which he wasn’t prepared to share. Joeboy’s 3-Word Analysis These are bad enough to be good, and thank Joeboy, I enjoy reading them and look forward to them. I’m intrigued by the challenge of summing up each player’s 100 minutes of effort in 3 words with no insights into roles and game plans and no post-match analysis. What I like about it is that it reviews every player and provides perspectives that I haven’t necessarily seen. The AFL Coaches Association Votes I enjoy reading these as I respect the coaches’ football knowledge and their brief insights into which players performed particularly challenging roles. I’m presuming that they downgrade the “bling” such as an outside player who receives easy goals, but then again, Jack Riewoldt scored 10 for the ANZAC Eve match for kicking 6:2 from 12 disposals with a few of those on the rebound with loose marking from Melbourne defenders. Demonland Player of the Year Votes I have to admit to skimming just the first page or 2 of these votes. I really like that different supporters see different qualities in the players and maybe have different assumptions about player roles. The comments are particularly interesting, though I tend to only skim the votes with numbers only. So this is my list of where I go for post-match analyses. Where do others go for their reviews?

What's Nev worth to the team, say in terms of net goals per average match? I reckon that he could be worth as much as 3 goals per game, partly in recognition of just how good he is as a small, shutdown defender and partly due to having no real replacement. For instance, Le Cras scored 2.2 (unknown assists) in the JLT match with no Nev. and Eddie Betts, for one, always struggles against our Nev. I'd even go so far as suggesting that he may scrape into our 5 most valuable players in terms of his affect on the score line. What do other Demonlanders think. i ask as I was chatting to a footy loving friend at a BBQ tonight and he was surprised that I rated Nev so highly

This makes so much sense - thanks! The AFL have done great work in establishing so much momentum so quickly; I can think of no precedent in my life time. Im ok with h the standard of play. When I watch, I see extreme commitment and courage, interesting back-stories and enough good passages of play to encourage me regarding its future. And to see OUR team hold on last night, against the odds, to keep our slim premiership hopes alive was the awesome. I try to avoid this cliche, but it just goes to show that my heart really does bleed red and blue, whether it's the men or women playing Well done to Daisy, Mick, Debbie, Peter J, the team and everyone else at Melbourne for what is already a successful inaugural season.

Apologies to everyone for my somewhat insensitive post but thanks for reading. Believe me, I'm a genuine supporter, have been since 1976 (still remember just missing out on the finals that season thanks to Carlton drawing with Footscray) and the OP was a genuine question. My perception was that the teams that finish 8th usually just make up the numbers, and I was wondering if making up the numbers still has some benefit for the team's mental state for the next season. Soo, I've gone and looked at the numbers; i.e. all results since the 2000 season, and here's what I found. Of the teams that finished 8th in the 15 completed seasons since 2000, 7 finished higher than 8th in the next season, 7 finished lower and 1 stayed on 8th (Essendon in 2003). For those 15 seasons, 6 won the Elimination final, but only 2 of those 6 winning teams finished higher than 8th in their next season. Mind you, those 6 winning teams include North beating Richmond last season and Carlton beating Richmond in 2013 (maybe it was Richmond just making up the numbers in those seasons...) In the 9 finals series since 2007, 8th place has won 3 elimination finals (including 2 against Richmond), with the average losing margin (not counting the 3) being 53 points, a sour way to finish the season (the point of my OP!). Of the teams that finished 9th in the 15 seasons, 8 went higher in the next season and 7 went lower. Despite the Elimination Finals carnage in recent seasons, my conclusion is that whether a team finishes 8th or 9th in a season has no significant bearing on their prospects for the next season. That said, I'll be watching the game this afternoon from 2000km away, cheering from the couch and crunching the ladder percentage at the end of the game. I'm tipping (and hoping for) a 10-goal-plus win, placing our percentage in striking distance for Round 23! Go Dees!

I've said for years that the team that finishes 8th and scrapes into the finals (post 1992) is, with very few exceptions, just making up the numbers. Often, the 8th placed team gets smacked by the 5th placed team in the first week, and I suspect that it does more harm than good. Soooo, with Melbourne still a remote chance of finishing 8th after next weekend, the question takes a much more emotional element. My key question is: will Melbourne's 2017 season preparation will better served by seeing us finish in or out of the finals? Advantages of Finishing Eighth The players get valuable experience playing finals that will benefit the finals campaign in 2017. We have momentum, like 1987, that means that we'll be one of the exceptional 8th-placed teams that progress past the first week. Advantages of Finishing Ninth (assuming we win against Blues and Cats) Our team starts preseason at least 2 weeks earlier. Players who need post-season operations can get them over and done with 2 weeks earlier. Our players can spend the pre-season reflecting on the importance of switching on every week and not losing games like this year's Essendon game. Hence, they'll be even more ferocious and hungry in 2017. In other words the players can reflect that they were good enough and threw the opportunity away, as opposed to the risk of arriving fatigued to the first week of the finals and enduring a confidence-sapping loss (of course wouldn't happen to our Dee's but just supposing). What do other 'Landers think? Will our preparation for 2017 be enhanced or possibly handicapped by making the finals in 2016?

6. Watts - For sticking it up the Magpie Army and booting straight in the first half, plus his defensive efforts in the second half. 5. Kennedy - For sticking it up the Magpie Army with a smashing goal in the first quarter 4. Viney - Some aggressive and daring runs 3. Wagner - I just love fairy tales 2. Pedo - Had his marking hands today - woo hoo! He seemed to pop up at crucial times across the back and half-back line and helped to the son of Demon-Pete under control 1. Jetta - For keeping Fasolo quiet - Jet's renaissance continues Special mention to #38 for Collingwood for giving me a glowing feeling of hubris. I loved his apparent personality and high marks but he rarely seems to quite do enough to justify himself in an AFL team.

Ahhh, 1975, my first season of following Melbourne (kind of). The first game I attended was the Anzac Day St.Kilda match. Aged 7 at the time, I had badgered my dad to take me with my older siblings for quite some time. I finally made it and was then bored witless by midway through the 3rd quarter - the result didn't help. We sat in the old southern stand, and I remember seeing a female Saints fan with a craggy face and sitting on her own while chain smoking cigarettes. I also remember the August 9th Carlton match, being the same day as my dad's 50th birthday party, which was the biggest party I had seen at my place in my life. A number of my dad's friends were also Melbourne fans, and we all had a chuckle over our unexpected win. Thanks for the memories.

You have to remember that we finished 7th after the 1994 home and away, the first season when the finals expanded from 6 to 8 teams. Before the start of the 1994 season, I bet with my employer's 2IC that we'd make the finals. After we made the bet, they expanded the finals' system to 8 teams and we snuck in. He was so filthy that he didn't pay up; well he was a Geelong supporter :-( We started the 1994 season with a bang, then faltered, then did just enough to make the finals; sound familiar? That said, I was super confident that we'd beat Carlton in the first final - what a glorious spring day with one of my favourite Schwarter goals from a throw-in on the forward flank. Sean Charles absolutely towelled up Tommy Alvin :-). From memory, Jacker played his last game at Princes Park in July (8.1 against Hawthorn - I had to look that one up), not that we knew at the time. Schwarter was looking a million dollars. If Gazza, Jacker and Schwarter were all fit at the same time, it would have been one of the best and most spectacular Melbourne forward lines ever; if only... I was living in London for the home and away in 1998 so I can't really compare. But nothing would compare to a forward line with a fit Gazz, Jacker and Schwarter.

I have to admit that I get off on this sort of stuff. I'd love to understand the theory of game plans and the KPIs used more. I've just made a suggestion to my local library to buy this book. For what it's worth, this TED talk called The math behind basketball's wildest moves talks about how data scientists are unlocking the patterns in NBA basketball. It seems to me that AFL stoppages are a heap more complex than my naive understanding of basketball, but I wonder if there is an opportunity to apply the same techniques to AFL.