La Dee-vina Comedia

Hunt has played forward before and looked completely lost. I'd rather persist with him in the backline. Against Richmond he showed plenty of dash and courage but lacked touch and polish. I think that will follow if he is allowed to stay where we know and he knows he plays best.

Why not? As I stated earlier, if we don't, that allows Hooker to play forward or (which I didn't say earlier) frees Hurley up. I'm not necessarily yet convinced we should play three tall forwards, but I certainly think it's something to consider.

It bears repeating, but if Essendon is wearing black shorts and we're wearing white shorts, why do we even need a clash jumper? (Rhetorical question. We all know the answer which is "Because. The AFL says so, even though there isn't a good reason.")

There's a shortage of pigs in Estonia?

Only slightly tangential, as it relates to how best to tackle Martin, but Richmond appear to be the best in the competition at the moment of doing two actions which umpires appear to believe are not breaking any rules. Firstly, they appear to deliberately drop the ball when tackled; secondly they are the best at disguising throws as handpasses. With respect to the first point, it's as if the umpires have decided that each time the ball is dropped it has been knocked out in a tackle. I'm not even sure if that's an exception to the incorrect disposal rule. But if it is, that exception should be removed. Why shouldn't a tackler be rewarded if the ball is knocked free in a tackle? I'm not being flippant, but the best way to stop Martin from being effective is to stop him getting the ball in the first place. I know it's not easy, but once he's got it, whether he uses the fend-off or not, it's even harder to find a way to prevent him from influencing the game.

I'm thinking it might be worth replacing Kent with Pedersen. If we only play two tall forwards (ie, Hogan and Weiderman), that will allow Essendon to play Hooker forward. And then we'll have a problem with Essendon having three marking tall forwards (Daniher, Hooker, Stewart) and us having only two genuine tall defenders. The alternative is to pick Frost to add height to the backline. If Essendon only play two tall forwards, Frost could play on a smaller player (Stringer, perhaps?) but that's always fraught. In short, I actually have no idea, but I'm not advocating picking a side without actually contemplating who we are playing against.

1. Hunt has his speed back (but he needs to be more polished when charging in at players or when he is disposing of the ball. I expect that to follow) 2. We were still in the game early into the last quarter with no meaningful contributions for most of the game from Garlett, Kent (because of injury), Harmes, ANB or Stretch 3. Gawn's tackling (not ignoring the rest of his play, but I thought the big man having 8 tackles, equal most for the team, was worthy of specific recognition.)

It seems to be only Demonland members who are seeing half-empty glasses. A couple of Richmond supporters I know thought we played well and were nervous until halfway through the last quarter. One of the so-called footy experts on radio yesterday (can't remember who) said he thought Melbourne would have between 12 or 13 other teams with the way we played against Richmond. And, conversely, most commentators were saying yesterday that Richmond is by far the best team in the competition at the moment. And I agree with that - in fact, in my view they're better now than they were at any time last year. So, I'll look at my half-full glass and say we can beat anyone bar Richmond, but only if we play the way we have been coached to play and at a consistent level for whole games.

I haven't seen Michael Christian's MRO report for this game, but did you cop a week for this excellent backhanded compliment?

6. Gawn 5. Hogan 4. Jones 3. Oliver 2. O McDonald 1. Lever

Irrespective of who's who, that's a lot of people in the coach's box. I'm not sure if I was senior coach I'd want that many people all trying to advise me. If, however, half or even two-thirds of them are just there to watch and can keep their mouths shut, I could live with that.

Someone will come on here and agree with you if you mean draft selections in 2009.

Bugger. Light rain is forecast apparently due to start around 4 pm. May impact (1) the crowd size, (2) the pre-game ceremony, (3) quality of the game, (4) the result...all negatively (for us). Official forecast: Partly cloudy. Slight (30%) chance of a shower late this afternoon and evening and the chance of a thunderstorm tonight. Winds northerly 20 to 30 km/h becoming light in the late afternoon then tending southwest to southerly tonight.

Or the veteran players such as Vince or Jetta. But I agree regarding the rest.

BUMP I saw an ad in one of the newspapers on the weekend promoting the "new" programming on 3AW's sister station in Melbourne. It's a new all-sport channel on frequency 1278 and includes David Schwartz and Mark Allen in the drive-time slot Monday to Friday. I wasn't a listener of their program on SEN, but I'm pleased for them to see they are back on the airwaves. The ad also mentioned that weekday breakfast will be hosted by Tony Leonard with Jimmy Bartel and Tony Shaw. I don't know whether the 1278 station (sorry, I don't know its name) will be calling football or what other sports coverage it has.

I agree with your comment about AFL's lack of consistency on this (or almost any) issue. But I disagree that Richmond should wear a clash jumper. That's because I don't believe clash jumpers are ever necessary.

I noticed Hawthorn played Frawley in the forward line against us in the second half. And were Hawthorn accused of tanking? Of course not.

I'm going to read something into this story that I probably shouldn't. If JW is going to be a proud sponsor of both the Friday night TV broadcast and of the MFC, does this mean the AFL has given the club and the sponsor an in principle commitment for more Friday night games in 2019?

...fully expect us to lose to the worst performing team out of Essendon, St Kilda, Gold Coast and Carlton in the games following and be 6-3 after 9 games.

Thankyou, Sir Humphrey.

I have no idea what this means.

Some useless trivia: Demonwiki's list of players for Melbourne includes a George Walker (who played between 1914 and 1921) and, of course, Max Walker. But no John Walker, Johnnie Walker or, indeed, any other Walker.

One wonders why you keep reading and posting in it, then. For anyone who cares to look more closely, you might find there's possibly a trend which might be useful for the coaches to consider. I appreciate that the opening post is subjective in determining what a "shocker" might be, but I find it interesting that there's a consistent theme of "shockers" occurring every 4 or 5 games. This may be due to a number of different things, such as injuries, weather conditions, travel and consecutive short breaks...but proper analysis should be able to account for those which might tell us that perhaps the players have been getting ahead of themselves too often. Coaching is not just about gameplan, fitness and player's physical development. It's also about understanding how your players are thinking and why.

In the second half of the Hawthorn game it looked like Gawn was mounting a one-man protest. He seemed to be doing things that were not consistent with what the rest of the team was doing, such as tapping the ball to no-one or trying to roost the ball when he kicked it with no apparent method. Given the poor performance of the team, though, it was difficult to tell whether his message was for the players trying to get them more involved or whether it was to the coach to fix something structurally.

Hilarious non-story from SEN about Tom McDonald including this gem: "According to SEN news breaker Sam McClure, the 25-year-old’s rehab is going according to plan..." Wow. That's breaking news?