Demon Dynasty

I agree in terms of post his LTI SN I'm more referring to his body of work prior to that. Which has also been pretty patchy for sure.. Post his return from LTI... mostly bog ordinary. The coach needs to be more ruthless and let players coming back from LTIs or periods of horror form, find it and earn it back, with serious stints at Casey. RUTHLESS is what helped us win the 21 flag

And would probably see us chasing another Rabbit with no doubt many other funding / community hurdles to overcome over many years. And no guarantees even then. No thanks. Most non-demon media hate the MFC so anything to put (or suggest) a further spanner in the works that holds back our potential success. Re Mt Scopus... Truth or just scuttlebutt from Eddie eveywhere? Even if true, surely there's room and scope to have an inclusive development happening here that works for both parties? We seriously need to knock down any closed doors in the next few months and get Caulfield locked away. By the time we wait for their works / development to finish, something else might pop its ugly head up.

Sharp & Spargo vying for a similar role. Sharp is still learning. Spargs you know what you get. Moments of brilliance and solid fierce tackling inside 50. Linking up in other parts of the ground. Mixed in with a fair amount of time where his impact with ball goes missing. I'm not sure the FD even knows where Culley is at and what he can offer yet. He's played almost every posi imaginable at Casey so far on limited games and game time. Hopefully they can settle him in to one or two specific roles there over the next block of games so that he (and the club) can finally assess where his strengths (and weaknesses) are at. His height and athletic build are ready made for AFL. I'm not a betting man but my gut feel from my short time watching is that he'll play seniors before the years out and could be a genuine surprise packet through the middle and/or drifting forward on occasions a la CP5.

Intercept marking improving. Very slow to assess & react in terms of moving the ball on. He'll need to get up to speed with the modern game style or maybe he is but lacking confidence in his ball skills by foot. Maybe a bit of both? Either way he has a bit of work to do me thinks.

Any chance you can get a pair of these to Rick and Maysie next time you see them pls Ghosty? Rick in particular. He probably won't get to as many intercepts but at least he'll never do another ankle...

If wishes were horse... i mean horses

Team & Player Ratings to Rnd 7, 2025 vs H&A Season 2024 Well well well fellow Minions. What do we have here! Team Rating now tracking at 2022 & 2023 levels AND..... up 3.2% on the 2021 Premiership Season Rating *Provided most of this crew stay on the park, we get Lever back mid season and Simon & Co. picks a team roughly within or close to our best 22 from below, i am super confident the Demon worm has turned! Don't book any holidays in for September, cancel any plans you may have in train... *WE ARE FINALS BOUND! * Played less than two full matches < Subbed out at least once or more > Subbed in at least once or more Stats courtesy of footwire.com & wheeloratings.com

Quite a half of footy from our Flag hero Harmes

Hey DZ. Agree, it appears on the surface we are seeing a substantial lift, however hard to gauge against the last two opponents. It might be just what the doctor ordered though. Sometimes you need a bit of a break from the top end oppos for some of your out-of-form players to work their way back to their best. Which then adds more belief and confidence. Confidence being the elusive tonic! One of our big problems of late is getting all our stars playing at or near their highest level. So we've had Tracc & Viney way down on their usual output till about last week. While Clarry was doing ok to very good during that period. Then all of a sudden Viney & Tracc start to find their form, but Clarry then go missing in a few quarters. Consistency across the park amongst almost the entire 22 has been so hard to find since about mid way through 2023. As others have stated, Thurs night was also a diff game than the the Tiges appeared to park the bus almost from the get go by stacking the back half. A different set up to the Dockers. Let's hope the Eagles haven't taken too much note of that next week!

May has also had plenty of sleepless nights during the off season and leading in to matches. He hit the ground running and, aside from twisting his ankle while pirouetting in a contest on the wing vs Lynch on Thurs night, hasn't put a foot wrong so far.

Round 7, 2025 MCG - Demons vs Tigers Well this was either an outlier against a pretty poor oppo or we may have lift off. Maybe a bit of both? Our best Team Rating for two years. Last bested in Rnd 7, 2023 vs North with a whopping Team Rating of 78.8 Tracc also hitting very good form with a Rating up 20%+ on his excellent 2024 Rating prior to his stint on the sidelines. The Capt way out in front and easily BOG with an outstanding No.1 rating of 6.55 Welcome back Knuckles McVee, finishing well within the top 10. McVee's 4.01 Rating this week was well ahead of who he replaced. That being Howes' with a Rating of 2.80 from last week. Not a bad performance from Howes even so but not in the league of McVee. Our top 6 rated players a whopping 37% in front of the top 6 average from 2024 The bottom 6 rating on the other hand, quite disappointing, down 31% on 2024. The worst of those being Kolt -27% on his 2024 Rating and Spargo a worrying-36% vs his 2023 Rating. And although he does not have a comparative Rating, Fullarton holding up the ladder with the worst Rating for us on the night (not counting the Sub). Lifting that bottom 6 a few rungs would be super handy. Question is who have we got in the McGoos that could make a significant difference at this point? The main one at present is Bonner who's cutting it up but he's also not on our list. Given we are trying to get back our pressure mojo inside 50, AJ might be one option to consider for Fullarton. While he may not set the world on fire he does attack in the air and pretty competitive / fierce at ground level also. He can chop out in the ruck to a minor degree. Better than nothing. Had a pretty reasonable match at Casey on Thurs morning. Worth re-considering? Melksham might also be due back. Possibly for Spargo? *AFL average % in50s Goal is 23% Demons < Subbed out TOG % > Subbed in TOG % Tigers Combined Player Ratings Stats courtesy of footywire.com and wheeloratings.com

If my memory serves me correct, this is one of the main areas that apparently all teams strive to be rated at or near the top of the tree and a key trait required for Premiership contention. Lasted only one match unfortunately with the Tiges beating us from this zone last night yes? Our best Team Pressure Rating for the year. We've even won the last quarter although it wasn't at AFL average (185) which might partially explain why the Tigers won the quarter. Max off with roughly 8 minutes to go obviously another big factor

I didn't see much of Fritta without the ball in this one Daz. In a team where we're trying to bring back 2021 type pressure in the F50 is Fritta going to change his early / recent ways in terms of clamping down and bringing serious heat on the oppo when they have possession ? Vs the Tigers (a bottom 4 rated team) Tackles 0 One Percenters 2 Pressure Acts 4 That's one less than Fullo and the worst result of all forwards. Also bottom three for the team. To put that into more perspective, Sharp as the sub had the same number of pressure acts in one third of the time on the ground vs Fritta. While i'm certainly not saying Fritta should solely be judged on what he does / doesn't do without the ball, these numbers aren't exactly awe inspiring. Also disappointing given he was coming back from a stint at Casey after potentially working on stuff (without the ball?). There is also his role in the team which we have no idea what is being asked. Maybe the Coach / coaches are more than happy and obviously have much more info / intel to go on. However i can't see that they'd be in any way satisfied with what he brought without the ball last night. Let's see what he brings in the next few weeks eh. Hopefully he turns this part of his game around significantly.

Bombres trainers handing these out in the rooms post match apparently ...

Sidebottom a meter+ over the mark against Goldstein there. Umps say nothing. Imagine our blokes doing that "50!" which would end up becoming 70 meters and an easy shot at goal

Hobbs 🤮

DeGoey playing like a spud

Might have to eat my words here. Peptides have found a spark

Duursma get ball to ground wtf

2 x Howlers from Howes = 1 Turnover Goal 👏

Could be super embarrassing for the Peptides here. They should thank their very few stars that it's raining or they'd be looking down the barrel of 100 plus defeat imv

Campbell or AJ? Even Turner might be an option once he's recovered. Absolutely....i get the feeling he is also being ignored on the lead at times. Take a look at the Lingers mad angled kick to Kolt in the third. Fritta was leading straight up at him, with oodles of space on his opponent. Hitting Fritta directly in front with a 15 meter kick or so was by far the easiest of the two options. There's no way Lingers could have missed him but instead chose to deliberately hack the ball at right angles, about 25 meters across traffic for a tricky mark to Kolt. That's just one example. There was another from last week as well. Fritta then burns Spargo in the last AND misses the goal also. Strange days indeed. Most peculiar mama

Any chance we could score more than 1 goal in this final quarter?

Kane is spot on. Time to rest the big boy and ruck fullo