hardtack

My band played our last gig for an indefinite period of time on Saturday 12th April. As the chemo has had a direct affect on my voice, making it quite fragile, I brought in some friends from local bands to help out. They included Paul Field (The Cockroaches and Sacred Hearts), Brendan Smith (The Stray Dogs), Marcus Phelan (Brave New Works and The Beatels), and Mickey Mahoney (The Treble Clefs and The Allniters). It was just as well that I did invite this crew as during the first set, I gave myself three songs to perform and by the second I was starting to sound like the love child of Tom Waits and Donald Duck! Fortunately, by the time the second set came around it had warmed up and worked well for the rest of that and the third set. Other invitees included Richard Burgman (The Saints and The Sunny Boys), Richard Rhule (early Dynamic Hepnotics drummer), plus a couple of unplanned fill ins. It was a real spirit lifting afternoon despite it happening at the end of the first week of my fortnightly chemo cycle which is when I’m at my lowest ebb. Later during the week (last Wednesday) I again met up with Seiko, Mitsuteru and Takami from the Japanese band Buddhadatta, for coffee and general chatting. A nicer bunch you couldn’t hope to meet and another real spirit lifter! The Irinotecan and Fluorouracil that they have me on for my chemo, is having a cumulative affect on my body, and while not being too vicious on my appetite and my general energy levels (I can still walk to the shops just making maybe three stops on the way to regain my breath), but it has now completely [censored] up my taste buds… everything, but…EVERYTHING tastes absolutely foul!

Yes, but what does it mean?

I wasn’t going to read through this topic to see if it’s been asked already, but what is the “shadow puppet duck” hand signal that Petty gave after each of his goals, and as the players got around him to celebrate, what did the two handed shove in the chest signify?

And his trying to wrench the ball from Melksham’s grip… that was a real jaw dropper!

Their best games for the club!

Personally, I’d rather we find someone who has played the game in relatively recent times., and is across the modern game (yes, I know SG fits that description, but he ain’t working). Search for another Mitchell… it may take time (so start NOW), and there’s a certain element of risk involved, but I’m tired of Melbourne always taking the safe road.

Treacy with 3 goals in the first 7 minutes! Richmond with 3 goals… looks set to be a fast, open, high scoring game. My only complaint… do we have to listen to Derm?

I think that rather than stubbornness with the game plan, it’s his inability to come up with a new and effective game plan, and, it would seem, a backup plan; he is incredibly slow to react to what is happening on the ground. With no backup plan, when things are getting away from them, the players just seem completely lost. I think after yesterday’s effort, his cards are probably marked, and the search for a replacement is probably underway, behind closed doors.

No, in the starting 22. Start Fullerton at FF and Jeffo is used to give either Fullerton or JVR a break… it gives us some height up forward plus it means we’ll have rested forward to come in when one of Fullerton or JVR is taking ruck duties.

Short for ‘Interchange bench’.

I want Fritta dropped back to Casey for a reality check. I want Fullerton to be sat at FF and JVR moved to CHF. And Jefferson on the bench.

We have a Hore for Hire?

Not really… the Cats were all over us, but off target for the first three quarters. We were never a genuine chance. Sure our pressure was ok at times, but we were never able to sustain it. We seem to be unable to rid ourselves of the desire to just bomb the ball long into the forwards… watch the Cats, time and time again, they were able to find players with space in the forward line and hit them on the chest. We looked like a team without a clue and without a plan. We looked lost! There’s just one word that sums up how I feel: Flabbergasted!

Absolute rubbish… we have no forward line, no effective mids, still just play up the wings, cannot hit a player on the chest to save ourselves, our skills simply aren’t up to scratch… awful to watch!

Regardless of whether or not we have pick one, we cannot wait to start a rebuild, as next year is the ‘Tassie draft’ and as such, will be severely compromised for ALL clubs, except Tassie of course. We will have to trade players for picks, and as I opined in another thread, the most likely candidates are Trac and Kossie, who will (read, should) net us at least three first rounders and a second rounder in this year’s draft. There’s no time to hesitate!

If we’re going the rebuild route, then it MUST start at the end of this season, as next year we’ll have the Tassie team scooping the pool. Trac and Kozzie are the obvious trades and should net us at least 3 first rounders and a second rounder between them. I agree with BDR in that we should keep Fritsch, but a real conundrum is, what do we do about the likes of Sestan, JVR, Jefferson, Adams, Fullerton etc?…I’ll probably be accused of blasphemy, but, if JVR doesn't show anything this year, then does he get traded while he has some currency? On current form, we’re likely to finish in the bottom four, so we’ll have good picks for, hopefully, picking up a couple of decent mature age draftees in the second and third rounds; of course, a lot of how we can use our picks will be dependent on where White is rated, assuming he is our F/S pick.

I don’t know what to make of this team. They look like they just aren’t invested in the game plan (whatever that may be), they don’t appear to be working for each other (very little talking or awareness of what team mates are doing) and they just appear to lack energy. Honestly, I feel like I’m watching a Neeld era match… it’s so [censored] awful!! Fritsch can’t buy a goal, Rivers is having possibly the worst game I’ve seen him play, Viney appears to be disposing of the ball to players that we can’t see, Salem doesn’t appear to want to lay a tackle, Oliver still having the occasional expensive brain fart etc etc. And on top of all of that we lose Lindsay, one of our most productive players in the first two rounds, early in the game. I am liking Johnson’s attitude if not his skill set, and I’ve liked Sharp’s run. Back to the game now…

He was actually shown as injured in the list of outs when the team was named, yesterday.

I don’t know if anyone else has noticed this, but I received an SMS from MelbourneFC this morning saying: “The only way to watch Dees v Suns LIVE tomorrow is with Kayo. Sign up mfcde.es/Kayo“ I know Kayl is a subsidiary of Foxtel, but as the game IS available on Foxtel, it is not exactly true, and could mislead some people considering it comes hot on the heals of FTA coverage being dumped on Saturdays (or is that just the night game?). First world problem I know, but I had to take a walk up to my local pharmacy today and it’s left me feeling completely rooted and a bit grumpy.

Nice work matey… looking good!

Thanks Damo! I’ll just keep posting my experiences both good and bad. It’s not a sympathy seeking exercise, but more designed to show some positivity in the face of what could otherwise be an extremely devastating time. I’m fortunate in that I’m a fairly pragmatic person, and as such this is having very little affect on my state of mind. I just hope that if there are others on here, and the odds are that there are, who if they are going through a similar close encounter, that this might at least let them know they’re not alone and that it is possible to clear one’s mind every now and then.

Um, actually you did: “To think that you are privy to what the players actually think of Goody just because you attend training is borderline delusional.” unless of course you want to split hairs and use the “borderline” escape clause.

And so Cycle #5 begins. As the effects of the new chemo poison, Irinotecan, replacing the devils brew they were pumping into me over the five and a half months in 2023/24, while being less debilitating are still having a cumulative effect that, despite my having more energy and am now able to walk to the local shops (something I could only dream of doing while on the Oxaliplatin), it does leave me feeling wobbly and off balance right up until the end of the cycle. My appetite is still with me, but everything tastes like [censored] thanks to the affect it has on my taste buds. My weight is therefore a lot more stable, having only dropped a bit over half a kilo down from a tad over 92kg (I’m 188cm) to 91.4kg. Over the five and a half months of being poisoned by Oxaliplatin, I lost something in the order of 14kg down to 78kg (not necessarily a bad thing). I am enjoying spending my time in the infusion chair, generating images from my imagination into AI, using an engine known as MidJourney. A substitute for my now reduced ability to draw with my hands, or to get out photographing, although I have arranged to meet and photograph the Japanese band Guitar Wolf this coming Saturday and another Japanese band that I’m happy to call my friends, Buddhadatta, in April (they’re currently touring Australia). Some examples:

With my illness and lack of being able to do much beyond the sofa, I’ve found myself ordering lots of books via Amazon to keep myself amused. Many of these are the Taschen art related books, such as Chinese Propadanda Posters, CCCP architecture, American Adverting Art in the 1940’s 50’s and 60’s, the Bauhaus, some Haruki Murakami short stories in Manga form, the Akira 35th Anniversary set of comics in hard covers, a few Japanese books on Japanese pop art by the likes of Tadanori Yokoo, and Keiichi Tanaami and so on. Now I just need to get stuck into them (it’s a shame the TV is in my line of sight).

It could be argued that you were the one being overly sensitive, with your use of “ok, I’ll leave it up to you experts…” Anyway, putting our petty argument aside (and I include myself in the petty part), yes last year was just a handful of behinds (literally) from us making finals, but to put up a display like we did on Sunday, rings all kinds of alarm bells. I can understand our young players not necessarily being up to AFL speed, but our older heads other than Chandler and Olly, showed little leadership. We were slow, disinterested, still playing up the wings and showing no dash and dare at all.. that was extremely disappointing as all of the talk was of us taking the game on, with what I thought was going to be a new game plan… instead we got the same old, same old. i want to see a big response by our team this week against a much improved Gold Coast, otherwise I’m beginning to fear we will slip further down the ladder, gifting Essendrug a very high first round pick!! (Oh the ignominy!!) Hopefully if May is back, that fills a hole in our defence… I can’t see Windsor being back due to him being on crutches at the game on Sunday; I hope I’m reading that wrong. I’m not sure that Johnson being back will improve us much, despite me liking what he has to offer in terms of sheer effort. go Dees!!