Jaded No More

It’s all irrelevant. Melksham is his teammate. You don’t burn your teammate like that. It’s disrespectful and such a poor way to lead as a senior player. Likewise you don’t punch on or resort to violence. Ever. I can’t see how this occurred if both of them were stone cold sober either.

The most disappointing part about all this is how far removed their behavior is from the culture we have worked so hard to build from top to bottom. Inexcusable garbage from two guys who are old enough to know better.

Men are so dumb. I said what I said.

Petty hearing about May and Tmac and getting out the industrial strength sticky tape

And poor Petty has to play yet another week while being held together by sticky tape. Selfish behavior that is costing the team and his teammates.

Which is a big worry and something the club needs to help him with.

That is incredibly sad news. However dealing with grief through alcohol is a bad idea at the best of times. There are a lot better options available.

What if he was at a table with Bowey, Rivers, Jackson, Kosi and I dunno Bedford. How is it their responsibility to tell a player 10 years their senior, who is a leader of the club, to stop drinking? Lets not drag other players into this without actually knowing who was there. I doubt he was sitting between Viney and Lever sinking beers.

What excuse is there for May, who was previously punished for drinking while injured, to be drinking while he was recovering from concussion? He is not 19. He is a leader of our club and he should know better. Doing it in public in front of his teammates is just extra silly. He is a phenomenal footballer who we have missed dearly. The last two weeks he has been out through no fault of his own. This week he has cost the side through his own dumb actions. Really hard to justify for mine. Edit: I completely agree that name calling is uncalled for BTW.

He is a leader of the club. He is 29. He is handsomely paid. He is one of our most important players coming off a concussion as we face 2 losses. There is literally no excuse for his behavior. I love him and I won’t hold it against him, and yes everyone makes mistakes, but the club and the supporters have every right to be furious about it. We can hardly afford to have him out for another week. His action might have cost us 4 points which could be the difference between a home final or a double chance come the end of the year. Big big consequences.

Hard to know who else was at the dinner. I don’t expect Bowey to tell May not to drink. If Melksham was the only other senior player there and told him to stop drinking or not to have more than one beer say, and May took offense than that explains the “altercation”. Either way it’s a bad look for the club and it has cost May and us.

When it rains… I understand why they suspended him but this could very well cost us a win we can’t afford. I need a week off footy I think.

Even weirder was how often we used him to open the play up going inside 50, which is certainly not his forte (I absolutely adore Gus but his kicking is not the best). Salem was back and yet Gus was our main defensive playmaker. A strange move for mine. I think we would be better served with Gus back on the wing, Hibbo or Rivers back into defense and I would strongly consider playing JJ up forward in a defensive role. We have really struggled to keep the ball inside our attacking 50 the last few weeks, and our pressure has been well down forward of the centre all year. What I don't want to see happen however is Gus moving to the wing and JJ going out of the side. I think he has been great on the wing and we need to keep developing both him and Sparrow, who despite having a stinker on Saturday is a very good young kid with a heap of potential.

Weideman plays like a small man in big man's body. At VFL level against ordinary defenders it is easy to get away with. At AFL level, he just can't impact the contest hard enough for long enough, and as a result we lose critical contests. Tom McDonald, for all of his ordinary bouts of form, always gives consistent repeat efforts and is able to cover lots of ground and hardly get out marked. This is what he brings to the side, and this is what we need from whoever comes in to replace him. Mitch Brown has clearly gotten the green light on effort. I thought he tried really hard, but he is a very ordinary footballer and he just isn't big enough to compete with really big bodied defenders either. Weideman has all the 'tools', he just doesn't know how to open the tool box. I would certainly consider giving Tomlinson a go up there. I know he wasn't great as a forward for GWS, but he is capable of running all day, able to compete in the air, and very motivated to stay in the side. Unfortunately for him, all of May, Petty and Lever are and will continue to be ahead of him. So he either makes a go of it up forward where we are clearly lacking, or he continues to cross his fingers that a tall defender is injured come September. As per usual, Smith is injured at a time when opportunities are available. Frustrating for him and for us!

He is the heir apparent to May. Do not rob Peter to pay Paul. Average forwardlines have won flags before. Average backlines have not (recently anyway).

In typical millennial behavior I did not read this post first before saying the exact same thing 😂

So offended. I’m not that old thanks! Actually as one of the OG Demonlanders, I reckon you’d be surprised how many of us are, still, in our 30s. This forum started when forums were just at the start of becoming a really big thing and many of the original “testers” for this site were in their early 20s.

1000% this I still go every week tho.

I just stepped in dog [censored]. That about sums about my week and this game.

At literally no point did I argue that we shouldn’t bring Weideman in. I just don’t think dropping Brown helps our cause at all. It puts greater pressure on everyone else in the forwardline who can’t buy a mark. It speaks volumes that Mitch Brown played today ahead of Weideman. Footy department clearly has no faith in him either.

On the other hand the level of umpiring is so bad I understand why people don’t want to watch games.

When was the last time Weideman wasn’t poor playing senior footy? 2018? Weideman commands 0 respect from the opposition. You drop BB and suddenly Fritta has to play on a FB twice his height.

Sure but May wasn’t an option tonight. So we had to push on and Petty fought on manfully. I think Tomlinson is a poor defender but agree that Petty needs a week off to recover properly from his 240 injuries.

Brown has about 100 good games up on Weideman. Even when out of form Brown still takes away the best defender. He is that much better than Weideman ever has or ever will be. Having said that, Mitch Brown is a bad bandaid and we need to bring Weideman in and let him play the year out with BB because there are no other options.

Neither Rivers nor Hibberd are tall defenders. Petty struggled but he was still our best tall defender even on one leg. I shudder to think how many more goals we would have conceded without him.