La Dee-vina Comedia

We really do need a sarcasm font.

pre-season?

Thanks Saty. I've lost track of time. Is Oliver still one of the young players who were all expected back today or has he turned up voluntarily?

What's interesting is that instead of tinkering with the rules to try to improve scoring the AFL appears to have adopted a competely different strategy: rewarding higher scoring teams with more prime time slots. I don't recall that being a strategy used before and I welcome it. I'm not necessarily saying that I think the aim of the game should be more high scoring; rather, that achieving an aim by not playing around with the rules of the game itself seems to be a better approach.

This is where Demonland comes into its own. I suspect I spend more time on here in the period November to March than I do April to September. Thanks, in advance, to all out track watchers.

In the monochrome (blue/white) information sent out by the club, but prepared by the AFL, I had no idea which team the bird represented which turned out to be Hawthorn. Could have been any one of Eagles, Magpies, Crows, or Hawks. Clearly the marketing people at the AFL are idiots. But we already know that.

Should be aiming for 14 wins minimum irrespective of the draw. I hope the club doesn't indulge in Demonland Groupthink (Trademark pending) and start assessing the likelihood of wins and losses on the vagaries of the draw.

Maybe. But we might need one to stop us being one.

If he is able to play again, I hope all clubs agree to let St Kilda redraft him with their last pick in the draft of the relevant year. It would be even better if the AFL made a rule that players who sit out a year (or more) because of concussion can be automatically re-listed. In fact, the rules should change so instead of delisting him, St Kilda should be able to temporarily suspend his listing. The last thing he needs is the pressure of wondering whether he might be drafted by another club should he return and still want to play with the Saints.

I think supporters forget that when players are drafted they are most often still teenagers with the potential to grow. If Stretch had grown a few more centimetres he might have been more successful. Instead, he always seemed undersized and for that reason not strong enough to match it with bigger players. Both Stretch and JKH deserve credit for what they've achieved. I hope that they succeed with whatever they do next, whether it's continuing as AFL footballers or not.

The AFL should never have given the medal to Cotchin and Mitchell in the first place precisely because of the possibility that one day new evidence might have cleared Watson. Note that I am not saying the story today has necssarily done that, but it's a problem entirely avoidable if the AFL had decided when it stripped Watson of the medal to leave the Brownlow unawarded for that year.

I also think Josh Mahoney's media performances neatly find the right balance between telling the truth but not necessarily the whole truth. That's important both for members and supporters to know what's going on but also to enable him to keep his powder dry should other opportunities arise.

I just like the fact that we obviously had a plan for the trade period and have executed it cleanly and (compared with most other clubs) quickly. I assume much of the work was done months ago getting the players interested and negotiating terms, but the deals with the other clubs (ie, Freo and Hawthorn) still had to be done. The club deserves credit for its ability to achieve its desired aims.

Not quite. You've lost two rookie list spots which could have been used on other players

That makes sense. Thanks.

Can anyone explain to me what the blue dots are meant to represent that the colours don't? If the blue dots are meant to be possessions, do they add anything that the colours do not? And, if that's the case, I'm struggling to see why the colours are what they are. There seems to be plenty of inconsistency. Many of the blue dots seems to appear in areas coloured yellow/green (see the area just outside the forward 50m mark or the full back position, for example) which seem to have just as much density as some of the red/orange.

I can't believe that the association of Freddie with the unprintable word "clusterf#ck" hasn't had a mention. I can only assume that when most of this thread was written in 2011 "clusterf#ck" wasn't in common use. Either that or the mods had a busy time cleaning up this thread. Let's be honest, the MFC, both on and off field during the life of this thread, has clearly been a clusterf#ck many times between 2011 and now, so it's not really understandable why the obvious association hasn't been mentioned (and more than once).

I'm not necessarily concerned. Too many coaches may confuse the players. I don't know what the right number is, but I just want us to have the balance right. I got a sense this year that the changes to the coaching panel made during the season suggested that there was something wrong with the coaching group. That's not to say the individuals weren't each appropriately skilled but, rather, they may not have been working smoothly as a group. To paraphrase a cliche, perhaps we had too many cooks.

Not sure I agree. There are a few Demonlanders who are far more negative. Exhibit A:

According to some posters here on Demonland, though, May can't be any good because he's a private school boy.

Is the single word sentence at the end meant to be confirmation of who the right Christian is? Or is this some sort of clue for religious cryptic crossword fans? Or just maybe it's an inadvertent pun. And all from someone with the angelic name of "Seraph". Gets my vote for Demonland post of the year, even if I don't fully understand it.

I agree with your suggestions to assist, but it's not a binary issue. Gold Coast could still get all this assistance as well as the priority picks. In fact, wasn't the move of Mark Evans from AFL HQ to be the CEO of Gold Coast part of that off-field assistance?

Really? I don't think anyone cares two hoots.

It's a bit more generous than I was expecting, but I have no problem with the AFL giving the Gold Coast a hand. What does surprise me is that all of the additional picks appear to be unencumbered. I was expecting the AFL to require at least one of the picks to be traded. That would have given the Gold Coast one or more mature players rather than another 18 year old. Of course, Gold Coast can still trade these additional picks on their own volition.

As are his ears.