Webber

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?

And the winner is……

Yep. Not sure if the ‘Cat-reaction’ scale is a thing, but mine almost got off the bed!

The question - “Are you nervous?” Only one reply - “it’s been 57 years, so wadda YOU reckon?” FMD!

I made the same point on the Brownlow thread, and I’m gonna do it here. It’s fascinating that ‘people’ place any kind of meaning in utterly irrelevant stats like this. I know it’s an MFCSS thing to need to find reasons for failure, a desperate search for some kind of self-fulfilling doomsday narrative, but please, this is just silly. Maybe just find another meaningless stat to balance it out, cos I guarantee there’ll be a squillion of them.

And how. I just love these meaningless stats, and how some people attach meaning to them. We’ve been the no. 1 team this year, and so it will go on Saturday.

Not this year.

And yet the coaches have him a perfect 10. But what would they know…..

Well done Ollie Wines, even if it is a fantastically silly little award. Echuca’s had a big night! We presume you’re backing your best mate Jack Viney this weekend. Well done also to Marcus Bontempelli for winning the AFLPA MVP. And the best player in the AFL, as voted by those whose opinions matter most - objectively and analytically - well done to Clayton Oliver for winning the AFL Coaches Award, an honour made even more significant by winning a 2021 Premiership Medal, and the Norm Smith Medal. oops….meant to save this for Sunday morn….

Nope. Boak polled very well.

The Brownlow has become more and more predictably visibility and stats-based. It really is a shame the coaches award doesn’t have this profile instead.

I’m loving the look of it. We’ll have the most team votes by end……perfect.

Where are you in SW France, FD?

Naughton is a fascinating player. Extraordinary talent, X-factor and scary in that his athleticism and hands make him almost unmatchable in many one-on-ones. But he hasn’t shown yet that he can work past an organised, unrelenting effort to limit his space. He doesn’t have any alternative ways to impact the game, and goes ‘off the boil’ as it were. I think our defensive set-up, including limiting cleanly directed ball coming in goes a long way to disempowering him. As to Josh Bruce, he really completed the picture for the Dogs (don’t forget his goal tally was bumped by a 10 goal haul v Roos). He’s a big loss, maybe bigger than Stewart was for Cats, albeit different reasons of course. What also fascinates me is that our own forward potency goes largely un-discussed compared to the fawning over Naughton/Weightman. Brown, Tmac, Fritsch (more productive and skilfully potent than Naughton, just differently) and Kozzie. Add in Jackson, and I’m not sure how the Dogs stop us, particularly with added midfield scoring/score assist work from Tracc, and of course Gawn, who they’ll be ****-scared of, now more than ever. It’s easy to forget that they just scraped in against the Lions, who aren’t the Dees by a long long way. Heat up the contested ball, which we’ll do, in fact that’s what we do, and I can’t help but feel bullish.

Which he’d do well, yet I like the idea of Petty’s competitiveness and under the radar strength and athleticism one-on-one against Naughton. Kid’s a gun, we haven’t seen his full potential yet.

To be fair, Ross Lyon, for reasons unknown, has a wholly transparent dislike of MFC. I remember a game a few years ago when we beat Freo comfortably in the NT, and his presser was comical - quietly seething, almost like he was embarrassed to have lost to the Dees, blamed injuries, couldn’t bring himself to give us a drip of credit. Never said a positive word about us.

Didn’t he say earlier in the year that the Dees needed to win it this year, because the Dogs list/age profile has it wrapped up for the next few years? He’s a week to week, change-with-the-wind twirp. If the media commentariat were serious about quality analysis, he wouldn’t even be on our screens. Can’t watch him anymore.

Agree. He’ll poll more than Clarry, just because Umpires.

Perfect summation. I will, in fact I’d suggest no Melbourne supporter will ever look at the No. 2 on a guernsey again and not be immediately reminded, from their own memories or recollections of their elders, of Nathan Jones - just as it has been for Robert Flower. Nothing better than a number on a jumper can memorialise what Jonesy means and has meant to this club.