robbiefrom13

learned deliberations about patent lying. What a farce. The guy is a thug, said he'd do it in the week before, and they end up blaming Gus. Splitting the second and pontificating clearly drivel assertions. And oh, retire to deliberate! This is just pretence. A bit of AFL theatre, for ratings. Nothing to do with sport, or proper skills, or duty of care, or any other valuable possibility.. A lifetime of caring; and MFC has worked and worked to build culture, to develop players, all this - and all our believing - and it doesn't mean jacksheeyit when the Grand Final build-up threatens to displease the biggest stakeholders. What utter trash this all is. Is anything going to matter, from here? The price of entry is pretending the Emperor looks fine.

The AFL needs to make some strongly-worded statement about the utter bull****t dishonesty of Maynard's replies, and hand down a more severe penalty, because of the insult to the intelligence of everyone connected with the game. Otherwise, my prediction is that intelligent people will walk away in their droves. AFL will be reduced - thanks Braydon and Collingwood's cynical bull****t-spinning lawyers - to the irrelevant and artless nonsense of the old TV wrestling. Want Collingwood to be on the TV, whatever it takes? Ok, but unless we are as stupid as they suggest (when they dish up this drivel with a straight face), we won't give a rats. I won't be back, for one. Enough is enough. Thugs picnic, and a TV rating extravaganza? Is that what we are passionate about? Psss off.

There has always been an element of legitimising violence, in football. "Contact sport" and "let him earn it!", they would crow. I remember at school, you had mates who would flatten you in the contest, and laugh down at you as you picked yourself up off the ground, "left yourself wide open for that, didn't you?" Everyone laughs. Maynard lined him up, and mate or not, that is part of the culture of football. Always has been. Societal values are changing. Not long before he died my father conceded, "I s'pose I might've given you a few clips round the ears..." When I was a boy he belted the schitt out of me daily, with his belt, the bread-knife, a lump of wood, whatever. Went for the head with his fists. Thought it was all good, along with cold showers and Man magazine. Treated my mother with disdain, while throwing her the odd endearment. Died thinking all of that was par for the course. Times are changing, and domestic violence, child abuse, teachers using the cane, racism against our indigenous people and so much more, all of it is being challenged. The rearguard don't want to lose the licence to continue their bullying and disregard of anyone's comfort and freedom other than their own. And ordinary people elect Tony Abbott's and Donald Trump's. People at the football bay for blood, and cheer the Maynard's. And after the game, make children cry. The AFL has made some half-hearted and compromised efforts to reduce thuggery - but probably only out of fear of the litigation that is beginning. With Angus unconscious on the ground the commentators all discussed Maynard's well-being, and Collingwood supporters behaved as described in this thread. Is there really any understanding of how ugly and unacceptable ritualised tribal violence is? Do we football supporters really want things to change? Or are we packing the Colosseum with the same underlying mindset as the Romans did? I wonder if I am kidding myself, following AFL. Maynard did what people have always done. He is unlucky as much as Angus is - caught out when the game (as it is played and always has been) delivered an outcome that must seem to him to have ambushed him. Maybe the game itself, and its total culture, and the primal nastiness in all of us that has failed forever to define where the line is - maybe that's the real fault. I'm not sure I am equal to the spectacle of what we have been made to look at, here. I don't like violence. How can I follow "contact sport"?

It's a very public test case of all the AFL's sanctimonious rhetoric over the past year or so. And the concussion issue isn't going away. But like a politician, Gil and his accountants will be in comfortable retirement by the time the final verdict on this is handed down.

Gawn to full forward and Grundy to the ruck. Turner or Tomlinson in, to free up Lever. And another mid so Petracca can go forward. Pace, for preference - maybe Woewodin. Oliver's steadily getting back to his normal excellence. With Max clunking a few marks, we'd've won comfortably. Spook up the arrogant defenders. And Grundy can do the tap work well enough. Yes, we'd miss Max saving the day in the backline, but with another tall, we'd hold. We kept a rampant Collingwood to 60 points, so we can afford to slightly loosen our defensive stocks if that's what it takes to get some bite in the forward line. I don't think Salem's travelling well. Not convinced that in the overall we should have Hibberd as an essential, either. Kosi needs to play with strict instructions of what not to do - stay where you can crumb, and go nuts doing that. Apart from a run through the middle now and then, just for the pace and the chaos. At least, what we bring will not be predictable, now.

Guarding grass. Free use of the ball. Dumb.

I totally love this that you can get in footy - the improbable, and off-the-show best ever. Robbie Flower. Liam Jurrah. Max Gawn. Football has this capacity for amazing us. I don't know if other clubs have this, but following Melbourne is full of stuff that stretches the tiny imagination and lifts us right out of ourselves and our plod. i love it. The fact of Max makes everything about life better, he's a total legend. His marking, his outrageous goals, his never getting upset by the un-umpired abuse he has to take week in week out - all because he's just too good for the opposition.. His genial unstoppable personality. He is the continuation of everything Jimmy Stynes was for our club. He makes us smile and laugh, and be overwhelmingly proud of our club. Explaining to the grandchildren what Max was like will be as impossible as describing what was so special about Robbie Flower, for those who never saw him. We are so blessed! We love you, Max!

Melbourne were not garbage in the first quarter - Carlton were on fire and pouring the ball into their forward line - and they ended up with !.3. Either they were garbage, or our defending was off the chart superb. And defence is equally part of the game. Wins premierships. Momentum came our way eventually, due to our unfazed excellence despite extreme pressure and spending most of the game on the back foot, and despite a couple of very-much-debated umpiring gaffes (Van Royen's free kick is surely inarguable), our team held firm and eventually got on top and ought to have won. Yes, Salem let us down with an uncharacteristic poor kick, and van Royen's accuracy deserted him - but we were the equal of Carlton. A lot of talk about Carlton - well, let them talk. It was a pretty impressive effort from Melbourne. We'll get better - Carlton aren't likely to play much better than that - it was pressure, not superstars, that got them the points. I reckon we'd be up for a return match any time!

saying to the morning sun...

I think you put forward a fact that resulted in a veil of suspicion coming over people we all want to really rate. Challenged on this, of course you couldn't elaborate. It wasn't your intention to cause any of the angst I'm sure, and yet with hindsight the reactions are not all that surprising. It matters so much to so many on here... Water under the bridge now? I for one really enjoy your posts and the positivity characterising your whole persona on here. There are all sorts of people on Demonland, and some prominent posters are not my cup of tea. So we're all different - and you will probably get roughed up once in a while - I have been. But where else do we have such a passionate disparate collection of fellow-travellers? You enrich the site no end. Please, stick around.

Robbie Flower did not wear glasses in his debut match. I sat in my usual spot - on the upstairs fence on the wing, Great Southern Stand, and he was right below me. When the teams were announced, Melbourne brought in two players on the two wings - Flower and Fitzsimmons - and Alves was moved to the half back flank. On the Saturday this still seemed outrageous to many of the Melbourne supporters who were naturally very happy having Alves on the wing. It took some time in the game for them to stop heckling about it. Not only was Robbie's surname a bit hippie-ish sounding, but Fitzsimmons had the full afro. It seemed like the club had gone very left field, and in those days the expression "flower-power" had a definite San Francisco whiff about it. By half time we were utterly mesmerised - as were the Geelong players - nobody could get the ball off him. Stan Alves would be proud today, I reckon, that he gave up his wing for the great Robbie Flower to get a start. I sat right behind the goal that he kicked - late in the game from the forward flank, by which time it seemed only right that he should get into the scorebook as well. My most memorable day ever, at the football, and that includes the 100-to-7 rampage in Perth. There will never be such an improbable-looking start turn out so quickly to be the best thing you have ever seen. In the rooms afterwards, the ten pounds award went straight to the skinny seventeen-year-old. Thuggery and brute force, stand aside. I was teaching poetry for a living at that time...

I know I'm being a smart-erse, but I love that "fragrantly". "Fragrantly breaking protocol" - somehow this slides all over the place and makes me think of someone pharting at training. Which actually I still remember doing myself, in about 1965. Ok, I've been drinking. I think I might retire for a few months. Sorry all - I love reading Demonland. You are great guys..

The free kicks awarded/denied in the early part of the game contribute to momentum. Taking Fritsch's kick off him is a cruel blow, worth more than just one kick. The umpires do appear to have a script to assist, as they can - and they often tidy that up statistically late in the game when the damage has been done. Last night was too one-sided to be just the run of the green or whatever. It was loaded in favour of the Tigers until later, when credibility dictated evening up the frees as far as could be harmlessly done. Crying shame this happens, and without regulation. Why, for example, has there never been an inquiry into how West Coast does so much better at home compared to interstate, etc etc? Last night was a tough game, fought hard, except for the one-sided interventions of the part-timers.

Sixty years ago we played Geelong at Kardinia Park and it was Barassi for us and Polly Farmer for them. They won the flag that year and we won it the next - it was two teams stacked with stars. Farmer won every hit-out, so it seemed to me - and he marked everything and crouched down to fire out his handballs - he was a colossus. And Barassi was if anything only better. It seemed he sharked every hit-out, and his power around the ground was something i don't think i have ever seen anyone match. Those two guys were like gods among mortals, that day. Barassi was like nothing you've ever seen - like Ablett senior, or Robbie Flower - in a category all to himself. The airborne shot of him kicking is what he was like, if you are not old enough to have seen him - it captures absolutely indelibly what he was like as a player. Hard to figure it, that he left, because nobody ever was such an indefatigable "force of Nature" in lifting his side over the line, time after time. My daughter met the great man in Hobart three or four years ago. A charming and courteous and very soft-spoken elderly gent. Who actually ten years ago (aged 77) was thinking about how nutritional requirements change as we go - primary age kids compared to secondary age kids, and then what AFL footballers at different stages of their maturing might need. Brushed aside as a geriatric, apparently, when he tried to talk about this. To his chagrin. Always, a creative thinker. Anyway, a giant of his time. We are so fortunate to be able to call him one of ours.

Flag. No question. Enough depth to say it without qualification. It will be wonderful watching this group with their passion and work ethic. For mine, May is the key.