Red and Bluebeard

All too true. Maybe next season is the time for that?

OD, I remember a time years ago when we were both complaining about getting flogged by 15 goals regularly. I think we said something like 'When we are good, we will look back at this time and laugh about how crap we were'. Well, I guess that time is now ...

Personally I want to see 5 in a row, to eclipse the 1927-1930 'cakewalk' years for the black-and-white crew, and of course the best possible revenge for the 1958 Grand Final loss preventing our 6 in a row from 1955 to 1960. Greedy? Hell yes! 😁 😆

I like the idea of debating who to take with our first pick at number 18 ... 😆

How about we write a new second verse (or a third one if you like). My suggestion is below. Feel free to edit/alter/use to wrap fish ... Oh, the cup we won, in the year 'twenty-one, When the big dance was held in the west, And we gave them hell 'til the final bell, To show that the Demons are best! Every heart beats true for the red and the blue, As we sing this song to you, (what do we sing?) Should auld acquaintance be forgot, Keep your eye on the red and the blue!

So what on earth do we do now? What is this feeling? Who are these footy players? And who has a good recipe for banana bread?

In May 1965, my family (Mum & Dad and my sister Bev) moved from Bendigo to Melbourne. A question that was asked of anyone in Melbourne in those days was 'Who do you barrack for?'. This of course meant identifying with one of 12 clubs in what was then the Victorian Football League. In Bendigo, like many residents of country Victoria, Dad had been a keen follower of his local club, which in our case was South Bendigo, who wore the same colours as South Melbourne (now the Sydney Swans). This meant Dad almost choose South Melbourne as his team. However, they were not a particular successful club back then, and he ended up choosing to follow the team who had most recently won the premiership, which was Melbourne. At the time, this probably seemed like an obvious choice; the Demons had won 6 of the past 11 premierships, and been runners-up in 2 more (with losses in 1954 to the Bulldogs and in 1958 to Collingwood). They had a famous coach, Norm Smith, who had not only coached them to premiership success, but had also been a star player and captain for the club, playing in four previous premierships. They had won a closely contested Grand final in 1964 over Collingwood, and had made a flying start to the 1965 season, winning the first 8 games (out of a season of 18 games). This was despite the tumultuous loss that year of Ron Barassi, favourite son and revered captain, who had parted ways with the club after the 1964 season to become the playing coach of Carlton. Then came the infamous mid-season sacking of Norm Smith, only to be reinstated a week later. But despite Smith remaining as coach until 1967, the Demons were never the same, beginning what is now known among us Demon tragics as The Curse of Norm Smith. This was a long period of lack of success, both on and off the field, with the glory years of the 1950's and early 1960's morphing into distant memories amongst a thinning pool of old diehards. Perhaps ironically from Dad's perspective, Norm Smith finished his coaching career as coach of South Melbourne. So I grew up knowing Melbourne the city as my home, and Melbourne as my footy team, as that was Dad's team. He took me to many Melbourne games as a kid, which were all in the Melbourne area (apart from away games against Geelong), so we got used to travelling to a variety of suburban grounds, as well as the MCG, our home ground, and the bizarre but neutral territory of VFL Park in Waverley. Back then, victories were rare, and to be fully savoured when they came. We supposedly had a rivalry with Collingwood, often epitomised in regular matches on the Queen's Birthday holiday; my memory of these is that this rivalry was more based on the result of the 1964 Grand Final than any more recent matches, as Collingwood seem to win most of the encounters that I witnessed, and, unlike us Demons, would often feature in finals. I remember a lot of good-natured banter between Dad and a friendly neighbour over the road from us who was an ex-Collingwood footballer and later part of the Magpies' off-field team, most of which from my perspective was "Yes, but wait until next week/time/year/... ". I also remember talking about football with my great-aunt Olive, who was a staunch Carlton supporter. Given the relative fortunes of Carlton and Melbourne at the time, the conversations were fairly predictable, and usually unfavourable to the Demons. The irony of Barassi being the chief architect of Carlton's success was not lost on Dad. There were occasional beacons of hope in those years, such as the amazing skills of Robert Flower (nobody's idea of a footballer to look at, but absolute magic in motion), both comings of Carl Ditterich, the second one as playing coach, and of course the return of Ron Barassi himself as coach in 1981. I remember going to Barassi's first game in charge, which was at the MCG against Hawthorn, and the standing ovation he received just before the game when he walked (as coaches did in those days) from the player's race up to the coach's box in the Members Stand. Like many such instances in that era, it was a false dawn; the Demons were well beaten that day, and won only a single game that year (by one point over the Bulldogs, ironically enough). So, despite the return of the fabled coach, the Demons were only saved from a winless season by a last-minute pack mark in the goal square and subsequent major by none other than Robert Flower. That seemed oh-so-Melbourne. By the time Melbourne again appeared in the finals in 1987, my wife and I were living in Edinburgh, and so were very much removed from the near success and ultimate tragedy of the preliminary final loss that year. Dad, of course, kept us well-informed from home, regularly sending us reports on Demons games cut out from newspapers, which would often arrive up to a week after the game itself. In 1988, when we made the Grand Final, Mum & Dad happened to be visiting us in the UK at the time. In the pre-Internet era it was hard to find timely news of the big game; ultimately a phone call home from a public phone box at a carefully selected moment brought the news of the disastrous result. Somehow it seemed easier to move on from that being physically and culturally a long way removed from the game. After we returned home in 1989, the Demons were regularly in the finals, but never seemed close the ultimate success. It was certainly a change from the days when I was a child, and the weekly lunches with Dad would be peppered with optimism, but there was still the nagging feeling that we hadn't finished the job yet. Dad passed away rather suddenly in 1995, having never seen anything like the on-field success he would have expected when he started barracking for Melbourne in 1965. As any Demon fan can attest, the story since 1995 has been largely a tragic opera built more on hope and disaster than achievement -- the merger talk of 1996; the coming of Neale Daniher; the 2000 Grand Final (thrashed by Essendon who only lost one game that year, to the Bulldogs); the yo-yo years of the early 2000's; the black years of 2007-2013; the impact and loss of Jim Stynes as president; the Paul Roos era, which finished with a 100-point loss at Geelong. The tale of the era of Simon Goodwin as coach is yet to be written, and has already had a few twists. I don't really know what Dad would have made of all that, but he would have noted the irony of Paul Roos being the coach who broke South Melbourne's premiership drought, and then later coaching Melbourne when they were at a low point being almost the historic reversal of the coaching career of Norm Smith. So whatever outcome today may bring, it is a time for me to reflect, and think about the influence of Dad on my life, how I make choices, and what effects these may have had, particularly on my own children. All four are now fully grown, but as kids were subjected to the usual parent-to-child football bribes (attendance at games, junior memberships, Demons paraphenalia, etc) with varying effects. Earlier this season, when we could attend games, I went to a handful with two of my children and my brother-in-law; it was easy to feel that Dad was there in spirit with us. Here's to you, Dad. Go Dees.

It's repeat time?

So who came the raw prawn? 😝

We still have another week to go ---time for an entire operatic cycle of fortune ....

Well done loyal Jonesy. You didn't quite do the Allan Border thing and lead the club to glory, but you have left an indelible image on the Demons. When times are tough, it will become a Demon saying to say "remember Chunk" as a means of pulling through. There was to be no fairytale finish to a career that was always about loyalty, determination and making the right choices. But doing the right thing is its own reward. Enjoy your retirement.

Basically nuts, as with most media "analysis". It seems having no game on the weekends before and after preliminary final is supposed to be a disadvantage. So we plan to have a serious practice match a week beforehand (ie right where a match would normally be), and suddenly we are 'risking injury'? Bah! A pox on all their houses!

It is often said that a person's true character is revealed when the chips are down, not when times are good. This finals campaign is clearly bittersweet for Chunk, who would love as an individual to be part of the 22, but who also embodies the 'team first' mantra. Faced with a difficult decision like this, he has decided to be with his family, despite that meaning it will snuff out any (admittedly small) chance of playing in a Grand Final (and unlike our last two attempts, starting as favourite). True to what is right until the end, no matter what the individual cost --- which is nothing other than exactly what we have come to expect from him. If this is the end, then it is true to the red-and-blue heart beat that he has always shown. Take a bow, Nathan Jones.

The curse is over. Our time is now.

I like it! If we break the curse, then the curse is real (and broken). If we don't, then it is not real anyway ... :-)

Well, blow me down. How did we get here? Am I going to wake up and think this is all a dream? Does the activity on this thread take a big dive when we win big games? And what is the current price of bananas?

Tingly was misleading as well. Chunk has clearly played the most games in guernsey 2, but that is not the number that put Tingay in the team ...

6 Oliver 5 Harmes 4 Petracca 3 Gawn 2 Jackson 1 Petty -100 Lightning

I like it. So we should have a memorial walk lined with tulips from AAMI stadium to Gosch's paddock named the Flower Walk?

Like Hawthorn in 1990? Then they were the reigning two-time premiers. We won both matches.

My memory is that it was around for a long time before that, at least back to the 1950s. I recall going to the game in the 1970s, and at some point moved away from the QB date (no doubt mirroring our fortunes as a club), probably in the late 70s or 80s. Reviving it sporadically in the 1990s, as above, seems consistent with my memories.

Things really are going to pot!

Much water has passed under various bridges in the past few years. But you know thing are really getting surreal when we play the filth on QB at the SCG. We can write off last year as a weird aberration on all sort of fronts, but in a vaguely normal year like this one, this coming match will always feel like an asterisk in the historical record. Banana smoothie, anyone?

It is an old cliche that a team of champions will never beat a champion team. I think we are seeing the truth of that this season. We do have some absolute champion players out there, but the system and roles we have in place make the process just work whatever the opposition may do. Who would have thought we would have outrun Brisbane without our best runner (Langdon?) Or had Ben Brown in the VFL at the halfway mark of the season? This is simply the best TEAM we have seen, ie having well-defined roles, system and structures. It is almost a thing of beauty to watch the opposite switch sides of the ground and see how well organised our defence is. Getting that all happening together takes a combination of star players, maturity, fitness, and a spread of player types, but it won't come together without the right understand of what makes a team.

Very sorry to hear this. My condolences to you and your family. Lovely story about the ladder, which I am sure is one of many treasured memories. RIP.