La Dee-vina Comedia

Or even defiantly. Or, perhaps, not. The thing about "state of the art" is that it's a beautifully undefinable term which can mean different things to different people. The one thing most people will agree upon, though, is that whatever it is, it only remains "state of the art" until the next state of the art facility is built. So, at any one time, there is really only ever one "state of the art" facility.

Didn't Brock McLean complain about travelling to Casey? And plenty of the St Kilda players complained about having to travel to Seaford. Having said that, both McLean and the St Kilda players may have been troubled more by other matters and just used "travel" as an excuse.

I like the optimism implied by your last sentence. It assumes the new base will be developed during the tenure of the current playing list.

Any actuaries or mathematicians on Demonland? Visualising that differential table looks a lot like the classic bell curve seen with a normal distribution to me. In which case, move on...nothing to see here.

I don't know where where our home base will be, and I don't particularly care because I'll probably never go there. What would be good, though, is to have it somewhere where it is most accessible for the club's employees, including players. Given our employees and fans can come from all parts of Melbourne, having the home base somewhere near the geographic centre of Melbourne seems sensible to me. That makes the Caulfield racecourse site an obvious front runner, given Caulfield essentially neighbours Glen Iris which for a number of years has been officially designated as Melbourne's geographic centre. As an added bonus, it has train access and is not far from the Monash Freeway. And it's got lots of available land.

Why stop there? Go back another century when it was Marvellous Melbourne and had the highest living standards in the world.

Is Yze Jr the #46?

Make sure you add this picture to your smile file thread

I guess Hore would be delighted to be considered "young".

I've been trying to work out who the Robert is on our list...and then realised that you probably meant Roo.

I now expect this to be mis-reported in the Herald Sun as "Melbourne culture problems continue as Oliver sidelined for showing resistance to training"

Great work, Werridee. Keep it coming.

If you want to take the glass half full approach, we finished in the second-best position available to the top six (after H&A) after finals. Collingwood finished in the best position because they won the flag. For everyone else, second to sixth is meaningless except for the draft position you end up with. Ergo, if you can't be Premier, be sixth.

Is the auto-censor having a rostered day off? Edit: So on Demonland's original post the word remains in all its glory. When I repost it, the auto-censor is back on the job! If you're wondering what the word is, and if you're experienced with cryptic crosswords, I would say that the word is a bit cheeky.

How do we know it's not an AI generated deep-fake?

Um. Why not? It's an award that recognises performance in a full home and away season for both sexes. It's completely appropriate. I'm sure both captains are disappointed in their teams' performances in their respective finals series, but that doesn't diminish the achievements of each individual home and away game that got them there.

Thanks for doing the podcast. I was a touch underwhelmed...but only because Taylor played his cards so very close to his chest. It's not at all surprising that he thinks all the players he was asked about - which is everyone recruited or traded in in the last three years - have bright futures. What else could or would he say? I'm not sure I really learned anything we didn't already know. Please don't misunderstand me. Taylor's job is to recruit the best available talent, not to be the best spruiker of that talent. I'm more than happy with what he does for his main job. And equally, very happy that he made himself available for the podcast. Well done, Andy.

I don't discount the possibility that the club arranged for Oliver not to be present at the first day of training so as to avoid a media circus.

I'm not sure I remember any of them as Melbourne players once, let alone twice! (Am I right in believing that Chris Aitken is Wilbur Wilde's brother?)

I'm reasonably confident he ate all his crusts when he was growing up.

I really hope you're referring to Peter Patrick Pius Paul Keenan and not having a dig at me with that post!

Add him to the list of Melbourne players who left and subsequently returned some time later. Carl Ditterich and Gary Hardeman are on that list. Who else? (I'm ignoring WW2 which impacted on players like Bluey Truscott and maybe Jack Mueller).

Neville, maybe?

My big thanks to all our trackwatchers. It's so good to have you back. By the way, is Satyricon in attendance? (Saty, if you're reading this, I miss your reports, although I can understand why you may have chosen to withdraw.)

The Collingwood players should enjoy Bairnsdale. It would put them close to their supporter base at the Fulham Correctional Centre.