Everything posted by Grapeviney
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The New Look Demonland
Site looks great, but is there any way to change the colours? I'm not a fan of red and blue!
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2025 COACHES VOTES: Round 01
I operate on the assumption that if there is any bias in the voting, it's likely to be toward the opposition team, with coaches more inclined to mark their own players more harshly.
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ChatGPT Predicted Ladder 2025
A while back I asked it to write a match report of the 2021 Grand Final. It said the Bulldogs came back in the last quarter, but it was too little too late. Edit: Just did it again, and to say it's wrong is an understatement. It's a Grand Final played in the Twilight Zone, where the Dogs controlled the game early, we come back in the second quarter, and Goodwin has been at the club since at least 2010 š ----- The 2021 AFL Grand Final saw Melbourne end a 57-year premiership drought, defeating the Western Bulldogs in a dominant display of skill and composure. Played at Optus Stadium in Perth due to COVID-19 restrictions, the Deesā triumph was built on their relentless pressure and relentless attack, which overwhelmed a Bulldogs team that had no answer in the second half. First Half: Bulldogs Start Strong, But Dees Take Control The Western Bulldogs came out with intent, led by their midfield stars Marcus Bontempelli and Jack Macrae, as they controlled the early stages. The Bulldogs' pressure on the ball carriers was evident, and their tackling intensity was impressive, keeping Melbourne's forwards in check. Despite this, Melbourne was clinical when it mattered, with Christian Petracca and Clayton Oliver stepping up with strong performances in the middle. By quarter-time, the Dogs had a narrow lead, but Melbourne began to assert their dominance in the second term. The Deesā midfield, led by Petracca, started to break free, providing excellent delivery into their forward line. Bayley Fritsch, who had a standout match, was dangerous in front of goal, contributing two goals in the second quarter, while Max Gawn, the towering ruckman, played a crucial role both in the air and at ground level. Second Half: Dees Surge to Victory With the margin at just five points in Melbourne's favor at half-time, the game was still up for grabs, but it was all Melbourne after the break. The Bulldogs' midfielders struggled to keep pace as the Dees applied enormous pressure and moved the ball with precision. The gameās tempo increased, and Melbourneās superior fitness began to tell. Petracca continued his superb form, winning contested ball and linking up effectively with teammates. He would go on to be awarded the Norm Smith Medal as the best player on the ground. His outstanding performance included an awe-inspiring goal in the third quarter, where he sidestepped several opponents before slamming the ball home from long range. The Dees' dominance in the second half was punctuated by a blistering third-quarter burst. They kicked six goals to one, stretching their lead and putting the game well beyond the Bulldogsā reach. The pressure applied by Melbourne's forwards, including Ben Brown and the ever-dangerous Fritsch, was relentless, forcing turnovers and creating scoring opportunities. By the time the final siren sounded, Melbourne had built a commanding 74-point lead, a fitting reward for their season of brilliance. Their powerful team performance had overcome the Bulldogsā early fightback, with the likes of Gawn, Petracca, and Oliver all playing pivotal roles in their triumph. Key Players: Christian Petracca: 39 disposals, 2 goals, Norm Smith Medalist. Petracca was the standout performer, leading from the front with a sensational display. His ability to win contested possessions and create scoring opportunities was unmatched. Max Gawn: 17 disposals, 16 hitouts, 1 goal. As captain and ruckman, Gawn was a dominant force around the ground and in the air, providing Melbourne with critical drive out of the middle. Clayton Oliver: 27 disposals, 7 tackles. Oliver was an engine in the midfield, providing great support for Petracca. Bailey Fritsch: 6 goals. The forward was clinical in front of goal, proving to be one of the Bulldogs' biggest headaches all match. Marcus Bontempelli (Bulldogs): 25 disposals, 1 goal. While the Bulldogs were outclassed in the second half, Bontempelli was one of the few players who could hold his head high. Aftermath: The win was a historic moment for Melbourne, securing their first premiership since 1964. It capped off a remarkable season under coach Simon Goodwin, who had been with the club for over a decade. Melbourne had shown resilience all year, but their performance in the Grand Final was the culmination of years of hard work and development.
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Sharing My Ongoing Cancer Experience
Thanks for sharing Tim - sending you every strength for the road ahead.
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MFC Nicknames 2025
They actually call him Trac, not Tracc. If you'd ever played footy, you would know there is not enough time to pronounce both c's in the heat of battle.
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The Legacy Series - Episode 1, Robert Flower
Treasured our occasional trips out to Sportsco as kids, where we'd buy a tracksuit or footy jumper, chat to Robbie, and get an autograph. On Good Friday, he would always be part of the RCH appeal and in the phone-room taking donations - another opportunity to talk with him. As I've posted before, the goal he kicked on the run against Richmond, after spoiling a mark in the centre and sharking the ball over an opponent, is one of the best of all time. It's at the 1.50 mark of this video.
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Training Ground?
I'm actually still in the car park, trying to get home from a match in 1985.
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AFLW 2024 Trade and Draft Dates
Zipporah / Tziporah is a Hebrew name meaning 'bird'. The combination of bird / fish / human would be a potent weapon - make it happen Dees!
- The Devilās Advocates
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The Soccer thread
We've actually got a decent record against them in the Pep era, stretching back to Poch days and including a few good away wins. Losing to Ipswich at home and then thumping City away is the most Spursy thing ever.
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Results of Club Reviews
Leaving the politics out of it, dumping and trying to bury all this stuff at once is the best thing to do after a year of bad headlines. The alternative is that each story receives maximum coverage and drags on for as long as possible .. and then just when the air clears, another stink bomb drops. Much prefer to get it all over and done with at once, rather than trickling out one at a time and prolonging the agony.
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Robbie Flower - 10 years
Football's poet. As I've posted on here numerous times, I will go to my grave arguing that the goal against Richmond at the 1.50 minute mark of this tribute video is up there with the very best of all time. He's out of position in a marking contest in the centre of the ground, effects the spoil and prevents a certain Tigers mark, keeps his feet and is first to the ball, sharks it over an opponent, streams through CHF and dobs it from outside 50m. As Bobby Skilton says in the commentary, it's football at its very best.
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Back-to-back flags for Billy Stretch
Happy days for former Demon Billy Stretch as Glenelg go back-to-back in a classic SANFL Grand Final.
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Christian Petracca
From the Herald Sun's Jon Ralph: Melbourne Demons in the clear over handling of Petracca injury on Kingās Birthday Melbourneās treatment of Christian Petraccaās MCG injury was given a tick of approval by multiple reviews conducted by the AFL and the AFL Doctorsā Association, despite his anger at the clubās treatment of his Kingās Birthday accident. The reviews found that while it was regrettable Petracca had been put back on the ground, the actual processes put in place by Melbourneās doctors had not been flawed. The Demons used the AFLās emergency clinician at the MCG for a second opinion, with the review finding even initial consultation in hospital was unable to diagnose his spleen concern. It comes with confusion among AFL fans about whether players are able to return to the field while carrying rib injuries after the Petracca incident. The Demons champion was so ill upon his return to the ground even Collingwood players asked him if he should be on the field, with the 28-year-old nearly dying with a lacerated spleen and four broken ribs. AFL Doctors Association boss and Gold Coast club doctor Barry Rigby is also an intensive care doctor. He runs the yearly briefing over rib and internal injuries for AFL and AFLW doctors so they can better diagnose broken ribs or internal trauma. He said on Monday it was almost impossible for club doctors to diagnose whether ribs were bruised or broken without a complex CT scan, with even MRI scans or a simple chest X-ray often not detailed enough. Rigby said the AFL was satisfied with the current procedures for caring with patients with rib damage. āThe priority is clinical assessment but it can be quite difficult with blunt force chest trauma. You can have significant pain, but you might not have fractured a rib,ā he said. āChest X-rays are often not that good at picking up chest fractures, and they can miss a small pneumothorax, which is a contusion which causes air to escape from the lungs. āTo do a CT scan, which continues a significant amount of radiation, for every player who has a bump to the chest, isnāt a practical approach to the problem. It gets back to the clinical assessment for club doctors and it can be very difficult. āWe need to be careful we donāt change the whole landscape which is working pretty well for 99 per cent of the issues. Safety is always our top priority. There is good support from an emergency physician who sits behind the bench if we need assistance,ā he said. Rigby has run his emergency care course on assessing players with potential torso chest or abdominal trauma for over five seasons at AFL level. He says the general rule is that if a doctor suspects a player has broken his rib he will not be allowed to return to the field āWe have looked at Christianās circumstances closely and done a constructive critique on what did or didnāt happen. Hindsight is a wonderful gift in some respects. But there was an adequate assessment done. The decision in retrospect (for him to return to the ground) was the wrong one, but we donāt want to criticise the process,ā he said. āThere was a review done by the AFL and (chief medical officer) Michael Makdissi. The doctors collectively reviewed the whole situation as well. In our professional life we are always reviewing for things we can do better. āAll of those boxes were ticked, the process was followed. The emergency physician was involved. The club doctor and hospital were involved. Even in hospital the (damage) wasnāt clear and obvious in the early stages. So I donāt think changing processes would have got us a different outcome.ā āThere are hundreds of games played every year and the number of people who end up in hospital with rib fractures, you could count on one hand.ā
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Max Gawn AA7
One thing you can say about Max - and it's not true of all premiership captains - is that he truly led us to a flag: * the game-winning goal to secure top spot in the final round * 5 goals in an outrageous Prelim performance * a selfless captain's call late in the 3rd of the GF, a decision which proved pivotal as the game turned. In a career full of achievements, I think his role in leading us to the promised land is his greatest.
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Farewell Alex Neal-Bullen
Where are you getting these stats from? Champion Data?
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Allen Jakovichās 30th Anniversary
Here's the Vic Park game. He gives our current CEO a bath. And yes, Sean Wight kicked the sealer. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6n-BoYQMSNI
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Andy Moniz-Wakefield to Debut
To quote the great Jack Dyer, āhe made a great debut last week and an even better one todayā.
- Our newest member
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Max Gawn.... A giant of a gentleman and bloody good bloke.
I must be the only one with a negative story about Max. Saw him and his wife one night, and asked for a selfie. He looked like he was going to punch me! So I asked again - very politely - and he got even angrier, started yelling and swearing and said he was going to call the cops. I actually felt threatened for my safety at that point, so I left his house. Just a warning to others that he's not as approachable as he seems.
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Training Ground?
Read it and weep - governments have spent $450 million spent on AFL grounds and facilities since 2017. From Peter Ryan in The Age ------------- Marvel Stadium will not be used for AFLW matches in 2024 despite recently being upgraded with $225 million of state government funding, in part for āimproved facilities to support professional womenās sportā. Itās the biggest single publicly funded upgrade to AFL venues and club training bases since 2017 as state and federal governments have poured $450 million into the codeās facilities. In addition, a further $15 million each has been promised for Hawthornās Dingley and Richmondās Punt Road redevelopments. The Marvel Stadium upgrade, complete with a new-look stadium square featuring new bars, coffee spots and improved spectator amenities, was officially launched last month. The occasion shone a light on the amount of Victorian taxpayer funds directed towards the league and AFL clubs to upgrade their stadiums and high-performance centres as other sporting bodies, including Olympic sports that rely heavily on government funding, battle for scarce dollars in a tight fiscal environment. There were no AFLW games played at the AFL-owned Marvel Stadium in 2023 and two sources who attended a recent planning forum, but who were not authorised to speak publicly, confirmed to this masthead that the league would schedule womenās games at boutique stadiums again next season. The AFL defended its decision, saying the changerooms at Marvel Stadium were used for two sold-out Matildas soccer matches in the past year as well as for female performers at concerts held at the venue since the redevelopment. But AFLW commentator Chyloe Kurdas questioned why the AFLās own stadium wasnāt being used to support the growth of the womenās game. āIt doesnāt make sense that the AFLās own stadium, that has been so highly invested in through taxpayer dollars and the community, it doesnāt make sense that women will not be able to access it to play Australian rules football,ā Kurdas said. āThe seating capacity of Marvel offers an opportunity to meet the needs and expectations of the AFLW fan base, particularly in high-value games like the finals, the AFLW finals or the AFLW grand final. It offers a real opportunity to help meet the communityās demand for those big marquee events.ā The league said it had been clear in its desire to grow AFLW sustainably and hoped Marvel Stadium would become a marquee venue for the competition in the future. āWe anticipate there will be a time in the future where Marvel Stadium will be used for AFLW marquee events, such as a grand final. Ultimately, we would all love the competition to be so big that we have no choice but to host more matches on the regular at the venue, but we must continue to sustainably grow the competition,ā an AFL spokesperson said. In January, the AFL also went into partnership with Development Victoria, the governmentās property development arm, to discuss the potential redevelopment of the western side of the AFL-owned stadium that is a centrepiece of Docklands. Athletes or stadiums? Respected sports administrator John Wylie, who was the chair of the Australian Sports Commission for eight years, said much of the upgrading of facilities for womenās sport was necessary. But he said the boom came at the expense of Olympic and community sports and widened the gap between sportās haves and have-nots. āThere is increasingly a sense of winner takes all, or winner takes most, economically in sports, and the AFL and the NRL are gapping a lot of other sports,ā Wylie said. āThe Olympic sports are really facing a challenging future because they depend overwhelmingly on government funding, so it would be nice to see a greater focus on public investment on the sports that actually need the money. āYou would hope the public investment in sport wouldnāt reinforce what is increasingly a winner-takes-all economic situation that is emerging.ā Wylie was concerned that dominant sports attracted funding because of their blanket coverage, while organisations such as the Victorian Institute of Sport, which provides elite programs for potential Olympians, must fight for funding in this yearās state budget. āIt would be nice to see a greater sense of priority of investment towards investing in athletes and participation in sport rather than what seems to be a very strong focus towards investing in stadiums,ā Wylie told this masthead. He worries that people are being attracted to elite sport stadiums to consume āburgers and beersā rather than participate. āAs a country, we have a health and obesity crisis, and yet the public investment in sport seems to be really focused on the consumption of sport as spectators and as entertainment as opposed to playing and being active.ā āThe bigger sports get biggerā AFL clubs seem to be winning the hearts of politicians. In Geelong, $142 million was contributed to stage five of the Kardinia Park redevelopment, while about $70 million of state government funds were invested via other mechanisms in a high-performance centre ā and now completed ā upgrades at Essendonās Hangar, the Bulldogsā Whitten Oval and North Melbourneās Arden Street. A source with knowledge of the process, who wanted to remain anonymous in order to speak freely about how funding decisions are reached, said Geelongās stadium build should be regarded differently to the other projects as they enjoyed the benefits of being in a marginal and regional seat. Richmond and Hawthorn have also been promised $15 million each from the state government. The Tigers will upgrade Punt Road Oval and facilities supporting the Korin Gamadji Instituteās programs for Indigenous youth, while the Hawks will develop a high-performance centre at Dingley. Collingwood completed an upgrade to their training base, including a sports medicine centre, in 2023 using a federal government grant of $15 million. Its completion so soon after the club withdrew its team from the Super Netball competition caused controversy on social media, but the club said the redevelopment met the fundingās objectives. A feasibility study is also under way to determine whether Caulfield Racecourse is a suitable location for Melbourne to create a high-performance centre. Sports historian Greg Blood, who worked before retirement at the Australian Institute of Sport, said big professional sports have sophisticated lobbying mechanisms that assist them to make their case. He first compiled a list of government funding of big sport in 2019 before updating it in 2024 to keep an eye on how public funding is impacting sport. āThe bigger sports get bigger and then the smaller sports are left behind, and they are totally reliant on government funding,ā Blood said. However, former Geelong president Colin Carter, who was a key architect of the AFLās ground rationalisation policy, which resulted in more than 90 AFL games plus finals being played at the MCG and Marvel Stadium each season, takes a different tack. āI have a big belief in stadiums. That is where people gather [and] whether you like it or not, footy plays an enormously important role in society and [itās] mostly good. It brings people together,ā Carter said. āIf you want to make the argument that a hospital wing or an infant health centre is more important then you would never build a museum, art gallery or a concert hall. At the end of the day, you have to say, āwhat are the things that add value to a community sense of excitement and belonging?ā Footy stadiums are up there.ā Carter said people needed to realise that funding for stadiums comes from a different bucket of money to the one allocated to education and health. Grassroots funding The Victorian government is cognisant of the importance of participation in local sport. As part of the 2018 deal to keep the AFL grand final at the MCG, the government committed $241.6 million to āupgrade facilities at suburban grounds, local clubs and high-performance centres across the stateā. Of that pool, $65 million went into the state netball and hockey centre, as well as $10 million to build the Melbourne Victory Football Academy and $12 million towards a rugby league hub that will house the proposed Melbourne Storm womenās team. That left about $110 million for suburban grounds and local clubs around Victoria, with $15 million of that dedicated to building female-friendly facilities. The Victorian government also launched the community sports infrastructure loans scheme in that package, which provided eligible organisations access to low-interest rate loans of between $500,000 and $10 million to help build community sport and recreation infrastructure. āWe are supporting high-quality, accessible community sport infrastructure by investing more than $1.9 billion since 2014 to develop and upgrade facilities right across the state,ā a Victorian government spokesperson said in a statement. The AFL is also adamant that increasing participation is key to its plans. The commission has locked in funding for community sport as a percentage of revenue for the next 10 years. āWe provide 10 per cent of the AFL revenues to community [football], which is an estimated $1 billion invested over the next decade,ā Dillon said at the SportNXT conference held in Melbourne earlier this month. Two AFL sources, who wanted to remain anonymous as they were not authorised to speak publicly on the issue, defended the leagueās approach, arguing the AFL puts broadcast revenue into community football, rather than seeking levies from participants to fund facilities. They also argue that the AFL leverages its influence to build partnerships at all levels of government with the Australian Football Facilities Fund. ā[AFL clubs] understand the power they have in the community, and there is no better way to leverage this by utilising their training facilities for community groups. Each club has a different arrangement, but we have seen in more recent times those facilities being hubs for local community and at times other sports engagement. With all 18 clubs now having both AFL and AFLW programs, the facilities need to best reflect the amenities required for everyone to have the best experience possible,ā a league spokesperson said. Victorians are now waiting to see whether the big AFL build translates into a better sporting environment for all or a chance, as Wylie says, for more burgers and beers to be consumed. āThe Marvel Stadium redevelopment is delivering a first-class experience for sporting fans, concert-goers, function space users, and the athletes, both men and women who have used the facility over the last 12 months,ā the AFL said. But as the debate around government funding for the Tasmania Devils continues, the wait for AFLW games to be played at Marvel Stadium ā which will host 43 AFL games in 2024 ā continues.
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Neale Daniher meets up with former Demons
https://www.heraldsun.com.au/entertainment/confidential/exdemons-attend-reunion-instigated-by-neale-daniher/news-story/66a1ba13f5fef4d94b9d5d37ad31fe2f Footy great and motor neurone disease (MND) campaigner Neale Daniher has instigated a reunion of some of his beloved players. Daniher, who coached Melbourne from 1998-2007, caught up with stars from his beloved 1998-2000 team including David Neitz, Brad Green, Russell Robertson and Rod Grinter. They had a lunch at Lamaroās in South Melbourne. āNeale actually planned the lunch, weāre in a group and he calls it ODD ā the old dilapidated Demons,āā Green said. āIt was great. Heās still walking around and speaks through a computer generated system. āI canāt remember the last time we all caught up like that with 16 or 17 guys there. Lot of laughs and old stories being told.ā Daniher was diagnosed with MND in 2013 and continues to inspire the nation with his determination and Fight MND campaigning.
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Moves the Club Should Make in 2024
Show them Rocky IV. The way he beat Drago in Russia is inspirational.
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How did you become a Demon?
I don't barrack for the Dees either. I'm a professional moderator and this is the only job I could get. But I'm learning lots about Aussie Rules and it seems like a really great game!
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New to the Demonland Podcast - Who are the Presenters?