Grapeviney

Kudos to Andy for landing this interview with a much-loved but reclusive Demon, who has shunned the spotlight and turned his back on countless requests from media outlets for more than 20 years. Great get ?

You know it's been a slow trade period when the most exciting business so far has been the Lisa Wilkinson move to channel 10.

Interesting that Optus are running another free trial, the second one is as many months. Must be struggling with subscriptions. And @Macca this might explain the mystery of the TalkSport on/off situation, as it’s definitely been unavailable this weekend, even through the website, presumably to protect the Optus promotion.

Sorry, I don't believe a word of this, especially the bolded part. He was only gone for a day - check the comments section of this Instagram post from that trip where he says he's only in Byron for 24 hours. https://www.instagram.com/p/BWMNC5OjgP_/?hl=en&taken-by=jackwatts4

Nothing’s hit the fan. Those discomfited by the Watts situation should be reassured by the Lever endorsement. At the same time the club is trying to move on a player with questionable standards and preparation, another player with those qualities in spades - one of the competition’s most promising youngsters - has declared he won’t play anywhere but at Melbourne. Far from undermining the culture that Roos started building, Goodwin is strengthening it, and the players are 100 per cent behind him, evidenced by the fact that every single one of them has re-signed in the past 12-18 months.

You’re re-writing history. Watts dropped himself in May 2015. Roos dropped him a few months later, for the final match of the season.

Let's assume we're in the market for someone with Watts' skill set and classy disposal (as we will be soon). Check out the marking attempt at the 2min mark of this clip. Would we want this guy?

In their own special way, yes.

Thread's been purged of the politics and insults - there's a general board for that.

Tom McDonald too. I hope Nev Jetta polls like mad to shove it up the cretins who continue to ignore him. Seriously, how does a guy whose name was in AA discussions all year not get an invite to the Brownlow?

Kouyate’s goal was great (both the ball in and the finish) but yep, too little too late, thought you could / should have played with more intensity and urgency when Aurelier was sent off.

Yeh it tends to be either feast or famine with Spurs, although I thought Dele was probably fractionally off-side on the first one.

@Macca Good news - Talk Sport website is working, Macca, but I’ll be listening to the TV commentary tonight as Peter Drury is one of my favourite callers. Edit: just saw your post, beat me to it

Hmmm I'll try again this weekend too. Perhaps I listened successfully through the computer / website last time and only tried the phone / app on the weekend. I like the radio call too, listened to most Spurs matches last year. As with the TV commentary, the standard puts our own (AFL) callers to shame.

I'm almost certain I listened through Talk Sport a couple of weeks ago Macca, but no such luck last weekend - was definitely blocked with an ad telling Australian listeners to go through EON. Did a little bit of hunting around and noticed others had the same problem (the Talk Sport app review page is full of Australians telling them to unblock it). I (think I) tried the website on the weekend, too, same problem as the app.

EON have gone bust and the British rights holder, TalkSport, have still got Australia on geo block, so there's no way to listen to the broadcast at the moment. Pretty pathetic situation, to be honest, as EON went belly up a few months ago so it really should have been sorted by now. The general standard of coverage here leaves a lot to be desired, especially for the EPL as one of the world's premier sporting leagues. The SBS match-of-the-round is neither the earliest game nor the best fixture, and Foxtel have either lost the rights to the English Championship or are no longer showing it, and we're getting Turkish football instead. Even the La Liga coverage is ordinary, with most games called from the studio rather than live at the ground, and very little atmosphere / crowd noise in the audio feed making for a very dull viewing experience. /end rant PS: Because of the aforementioned EON issue, I ended up following the match in a Spurs forum game-day thread - funny how similar it was to the Demonland game-day, with hysterical posters calling for good players to be banished to the moon on the back of a single mistake, and realists trying to talk them down off the ledge. Think it's time to (reluctantly) fork out for the Optus subscription.

Update: he can fly.

I had the same 3 but in a different order: 1. Oscar McDonald 2. Oscar McDonald 3. Oscar McDonald

It's doubly infuriating now that Essendon won by such a narrow margin - a half-decent finish against the Lions and we would have finished above them regardless of the Eagles game.

Spurs dropping to 6th, what gives @Macca? Not impressed with our swag of summer signings?

For those of you who missed the Demonland podcast last night, Troy Chaplin said Jesse will be doing some contact work on his shoulder at a session tomorrow, and could be back as early as next week. "We're actually looking at doing some contact training with him on Saturday with a view that he may come back next week, depending on how it goes. "His turnaround has been fantastic, he hasn't given up on the year, he really wants to come back and contribute to the team. "We're looking forward to having him back because we know what sort of quality player he is. He's probably learned so much about himself this year, and his resilience, no-one can question that at all, and for a 22-year-old, it's quite unbelievable really."

Stupid North. They're so irrelevant, they should play their matches during the week, like at 11am on a Tuesday - no-one would notice the difference, and the crowd would be the same.

The latest statistics show the forum is ticking along just nicely since the departure of Stuie. The number of reported posts has fallen by 84 per cent. Unnecessary argument escalations have dropped 92 per cent, and unwarranted sarcastic replies are down 89 per cent. Remember when the board used to be filled with exchanges such as this?: Poster: "I'm a big fan of Stretch but he needs to go back to Casey to find a bit of form." Stuie: "So Stretch should be delisted and deported back to SA, should he? Righto...."

Hell yeah!! Welcome back, Jesse - hope you kick a bag!

Kicked 6 in his comeback game! Also celebrated his 40th on the weekend with a few of the boys.