Webber

Then say that.

Cos they’re rushing the ball in and swarming the contest, then contesting better at ground level than us with receivers just off the contest. They’re first to the loose ball, and first to any contest, and in possession, their skills are slaughtering us. That’s their brand, and it works when you allow them to dominate the pressure game. We got rattled, started fumbling, kicking to no-one, and giving nothing handballs. Only chance we get back into it is contest harder and blitz the ball forward at every opportunity. Every opportunity. It’s gonna take something special. Go Dees

Absolute rubbish.

How do we stop it. My fear is they now know their pressure game beats ours, because their skills are better. More contributors needed.

Nope. They were much better, and coming harder still.

No Pastis? A bit of Ricard?

*First goal = Kozzie (one of 3 in 1st quarter) *Norm Smith = Christian Salem *Most goals = Kozzie, finishes with 7 *Margin = 41 points.

Perfect @binman. I wanted to post a big pre-game rev-up for all Demonlanders, brethren in nerves and ultimate exultation tonight, but the nerves are beating me. Nervertheless, we’re on, we all can feel it, and as you’ve said, can’t wait to celebrate with you all on the flip side. GO YOU MIGHTY DEES.

That’s extraordinary, Skuit, and your instinct about its non-coincidental nature is worth trusting. Not to get too heavy, but if you follow your thread to ‘brain filter theory’ - based on consciousness being non-physical, and that Alzheimer’s renders his ‘filter’ dysfunctional, who’s to say it wasn’t revealing a consciousness link much like that which animals exhibit and act on naturally. His mania therefore could have been a form of pre-cognition of the earthquake. There’s a whole plethora of ‘non-coincidences’ people have like this, most of which go unreported sadly - due to fear, shame, ridicule, etc. I can already see some here reading this with a WTF dismissal. PM me if you want to chat about it.

Jumping at shadows, dworship. @sugar made a legitimate point about the Tom Wills issue, and the media timing, which will always be designed for maximum exposure/controversy. What better moment for them than Grand Final week. It’s got no more to do with MFC than anyone, even if Wills did co-write the originating ‘Rules of The Melbourne Football Club.’ My hope would be, as I wrote, that it leads to a greater awareness of Tom Wills, his life, times and activities (all of them) than has existed til now. About time too that Greg Healy, a too easily forgotten former captain and loyal servant to the Dees, got some name recognition on Demonland 😎.

Surely not on the ice cream that the lyrics would suggest?

This is an extraordinary historical finding if true, and one that shouldn’t be hidden or run from, but instead given the perspective it deserves. It wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest if Tom Wills was involved in the murderous reprisals for the Cullin-La-Ringo massacre, which, needless to say, was the worst episode of massed indigenous killings in Australia and woefully unknown to the Australian public. Given the lack of attention given to colonising violence however, no surprise there. Tom did come back to find his family murdered (a reprisal itself for unprovoked murders), and a party was then formed to commit more killings. That much is known. It’s a legitimate question as to his involvement, which makes this information discovery incredibly important, valid or otherwise - that’s for historians. None of it however alters the fact of Tom’s sporting legacy, both before and after, the most extraordinary (other than his co-formation of the game of Australian football) being his subsequent coaching of the first Australian cricket team, all indigenous, who toured England, without him (he was left at home due to his alcoholism) and won. Tom Wills undoubtedly had a relationship with indigenous Australians that was wholly unique at the time, including during his childhood in the Western Districts, where he reportedly (by family history) had firm friendships with the locals. If part of his later history saw him involved in violent or murderous acts, so be it. Sanitising so-called heroic figures is one of the most insidious aspects of national and cultural story-telling. Tom Wills died after stabbing himself in the heart 3 times with a pair of scissors, in what has been attributed to a likely alcoholic psychosis (biographer Greg de Moore’s assessment). He was a tragic, complex, extraordinary individual, and his impact on Australian sporting cultural history should be widely known. It isn’t. What we don’t have to do is ‘celebrate’ him blindly as a figure of exceptional virtue, as if he couldn’t be capable of potentially (if not likely) violent misbehaviours. His life and legacy should be examined as rigorously as possible. Truth and context will defeat the worst aspects of both whitewashing and cancel culture. Tom Wills had a formative impact on Australia as we know it today. That is undeniable. We should seek to know everything about him, good and bad, and be honest and mature about their inevitable co-existence. And frankly, none of this has anything to do with the Melbourne Football Club as it exists today.

Looks just like an easily distracted cat to me, SB. The weird thing is that animals are particularly sensitive to impending earthquakes. I remember being amazed at the stat from the 2004 Boxing Day Tsunami that no dead animals were found after the event other than those in ‘captivity’, meaning fenced, penned, caged, etc. It’s apparently well established that animals know it’s coming well ahead of time, so p***-off for high ground. Birds are the first to react, by going noisy nutty, then flying off en masse pre-earthquake. There was another story about a small island off the Indian coast, inhabited by indigenous peoples, which was in the direct path of the wave. All survived because they’d made for high ground well before the Tsunami arrived. Probably by paying attention to the birds!

Interesting…..where are you at?