Pates

23 minutes ago, 3KZ is Football said:

St.Kilda have always been on the edge of oblivion, apart from the Alan Jeans years

I mean why would you re employ Ross Lyon after he completely shafted the Club 10 years ago.

Only the Saints would consider that option.

I would love to see Jack Steele win the B&F if his form continues

I will never understand this, nor will I understand the club and fans welcoming him back like he was some kind of messiah. He left the club high and dry to chase success from an established list, then proceeded to waste that talent with them getting to a Grand Final but totally #### the bed.

Getting Ross back is going to set their club further back, and the spending on B+ players at A+ to star players prices is going to set them back further again with Tassie coming in.

2 minutes ago, Deesprate said:

Beast

5 hours ago, At the break of Gawn said:

His lack of awareness to get caught HTB before was pretty awful. Will need a fair bit of time I think.

This is the thing, he's had a lot of time out of the game. Realistically let's give him a good block of games and consistent performance before he breaks into the 23. Something that is definitely not helped by the ludicrous fixturing.

5 hours ago, KC from Casey said:

Monster efforts from skipper Riley Bonner and big ruckman Max Heath have enabled the Casey Demons to their first win for the season and earned them another week’s break 😊

Are you serious? We are starting the season with a match, then a bye, then our second match, and another bye????

This needs to be put on the agenda asap, it's a deadset joke and it compromises development and competition integrity.

18 minutes ago, Longsufferingnomore said:

Apparently just a hiccup for GC and they will be back to their best next week. Is it because none of the media gave us any chance and now they all look stupid.

Let them, I'm happy for us to go under the radar. We're playing good footy, that's all that matters.

Saying goodbye to Clarry was hard, but when we got Steele for essentially the same deal I was absolutely rapped. The saints are 100% going to regret this decision, they've not only lost a fantastic footballer but a brilliant leader.

What I'm enjoying over the course of our three wins is that there isn't a reliance on one forward to do the damage. Round one it was Roo and Checkers, Round 3 Fritta bobbed up, today it was Melksham.

While I would love to see JVR take a step towards consistency, having a combination of dangerous forwards makes life hard for the opposition defence.

Shout out to all the Dees fans at the G today. Watching from the UK I could hear how loud and proud you all were, even the commentators were saying the level of noise was amazing. Particularly some of the dodgy frees/non-frees by the umps, Ben King being HTB cold but they called play on. You guys made sure they knew it was a wrong call!

I think it was the Herald Sun that did a poll of which team will go unbeaten for longer, Suns or Dogs. Put that one to bed!

This has to be the time we make amends for losing to this mob regularly at Gather Round.

I'll caveat this by saying I haven't been able to watch the first half yet: would that be the closest thing to a 4 quarter effort we've seen for a while?

I know we were down at quarter time and gave up 3 of the first 4 goals, but it appears to me we were right in the game just not finishing good work and in the end broke close to even for the quarter.

6 minutes ago, Cale Morton said:

The Tom Sparrow haters have been very quiet these past two weeks. Hope they are becoming extinct

I wasn't happy with Spaz's output for the first couple of games and had him on my list of players to watch. I'm so happy to see him turning it around, he's got it in him to be a very good footballer and our next gen of the Viney/Steele's of this world. If we can see consistent output from him this season it will go a long way towards us having a dip in the finals/wildcard race.

20 hours ago, Cranky Franky said:

Michaell Christian should have been sacked several years ago.

100%. In fact they should make it a maximum period they can serve in the role, but he is deadset terrible.

I'm really stoked that both of them are sharing this moment with each other. I know there are some that might feel it would be more special for them to have the moment alone but they have been warriors together and they've both had unique journey's with their own challenges. It somehow feels more fitting for that to be celebrated together.

TMac really should have celebrated this last season but for reasons beyond me he wasn't getting a look by the selection committee, but here he is and he gets to do it with Big Max.

It terms of moments for these guys TMac's obvious one is the winning goal vs West Coast. I didn't give us a hope in hell that night and TMac showed his versatility and ability to take the moment on himself. One of my favourite recent Dees moments.

For Max, where do you start?! But I have to go to him kicking the goal after the siren for us to beat the cats and win the minor premiership. I feel like that gets lost from memories because it was in front of an empty stadium and because a few weeks later Max put in the greatest performance by a ruckman in a final. But thinking about that goal after the siren, i can't don't think we win the premiership without it. Max has had his demons with goal kicking, and not least against the cats a few years back. To slot that goal, when no Melbourne player had done it before, it epitomises Max as a MFC great.

Thanks to both of them, and I hope the boys find a nother level for them to celebrate them in style. They deserve it.

On 23/03/2026 at 05:31, Cranky Franky said:

Nothing hindsight about it. It was dumb at the time.

List management is about trading players to improve the list not make it worse.

Trading in Hibberd, Melksham & May improves your list but trading in Schache, Hunter, McAdam & Billings does not.

It wasn't just the money, it was the game time. Those players you listed that left more than a few of them left because they weren't getting opportunities to crack into the seniors despite putting in regular good games at Casey.

Our list management following the premiership was an absolute blunder.

Something I'm going to be interested to see with King is whether he goes down the path of picking his idea of the best 23 or whether he will go for more horses for courses style, to match up against other teams. Something I felt we didn't do enough of last season (and previous years) was picking players who could play specific roles vs other teams. I genuine feel like that could be a scenario this week with Freo's tall list. Heath has had a solid pre-season, would be good to see him get some games early.

Sparrow would be the only one I'd probably take out at this point.

I'm mindful that I don't want to get too carried away with him but something that I found really frustrating about fans potting him last year is that they forget his age! This is his 5th year in the system and 4th year of AFL, bearing in mind that he has also been played as a second ruck for a most of his time sicne breaking into the seniors. The vitriol that was being levelled at him by Dees fans was completely unfair, and while I don't want this to be yet another Goody bashing post, there can't be much doubt that they were doing his development no favours following his first full year in the seniors.

One great game doesn't mean much if it can't be replicated on a semi-regular basis, but the early indications are that he feels far more comfortable in his skin, and the addition of Checkers is going to allow him the space to grow which he simply hasn't had. I hope we don't see him at any centre bounces for the entire year.

3 hours ago, biggestred said:

You know what? 400 games and no charge and I'm actually ok with 1 get out of jail free card.

But if he does similar this week and onwards I expect him to cop it and not claim a clean record.

Totally agree. He's cashed in his "good guy" chips, if it happens again he can have a week off.

1 hour ago, jnrmac said:

Langford had a very quiet game. Watched him closely on the replay and he was cruising.

hmmm. Young player but I hope the coaches have a word

He'll be fine, in his second year and there were plenty performing. Sometimes it's just how it works that the team overall does well and some find it difficult to impact.

Love Latrelle's energy, and when he starts to get some composure to finish his work that is going to be seriously scary for defenders. I was so worried he'd ran himself into trouble with his goal, and on the telly I thought it had hit the post, but when everyone got around him a had a huge grin on my face!

Yeah I'll back up a few other comments, on the weekend's performance Sparrow would go out for Jack.

Saints have Flying Ryan, we have Jumping Jai!

1 hour ago, Deeko2 said:

From the infamous 'Betsy' article that recently came out, I'm wondering if the MRC were expecting more benefits of the deal. The comment around the tunnel is one thing - that really could be mitigated if need be however the unwillingness to share the administration facility is interesting.

Maybe they thought they were getting some new free gym area/office space/canteen/commercial kitchen bar usage via the Demons new HQ but we've told them that will 100% be ours.

"There are many issues that threaten to scupper the deal – the main being the football club’s insistence a tunnel is built underneath the racetrack [which would shut racing down for at least a year], not to mention an unwillingness to share an administration facility."

Nothing worse than an additional rooster in the hen house. If this is the case, I hope we hold firm.

If we have facilities (ie a 360 degree bar) that overlooks both our training ground and a part of the racetrack I have no issue with it being used on race days for events. With the provision that we get a cut of the days bar/food purchases (which I would think is fair), they can have all profits from the ticketing and any other side parts to it.

I would think they would want to remain in the main racecourse area for admin purposes.

2 minutes ago, beelzebub said:

He will be very much the 'quieter' achiever ... but am sure he gets that.

A very astute acquisition

Roos first mark and goal was created by him putting the intelligent block on. We haven't had someone like him (except maybe Melk) in the forward line to help Roo in his development.

We've gone from bringing zero players in through trade of value in the previous 3-4 years (though Sharpe might come good under a new coach), to getting three in one hit.

6 hours ago, harveylangfordisthegoat said:

i remember petty winning a big 1 v 3 in stkildas goalsquare at the ponsford end. anybody know what quarter / time that was so i can watch it back? thanks

nevermind found it! 2 minutes left in second

Loved that moment but I think it's a little sobering reminder about how the Saints were not clinical at all on Sunday. They repeatedly burned players in better positions and in situations like that (a 3v1) they didn't work through it in a way to make sure theres a shot on goal.

Against better teams (Brisbane, GC, Geelong etc) we will be punished. And I want to say, that's ok. We are still developing who we are as a team and we are playing a more attacking style, this will lead to more scenarios like this.

That said, Petty was enormous in that moment, it's one thing to be let in to be able to stop it, but to be able to beat those three men was as good as a goal.