Demon Dynasty

It's more the recovery aspect of some player's fitness that I was highlighting on their return from injury SW. I would hope the club as a whole and the players themselves have the ability, and appear to have, to get them to a group level of fitness that sees us locking horns with even top rated clubs, at least till the injuries start (where they occur to top liners) and begin to have an impact on our overall performance. Luck obviously playing a factor to a degree vs other clubs like Richmond & Adelaide etc. Many of our top liners came back seemingly under done IMO. Most other clubs seem to be able to get their players up and running close to their best on their return fairly consistently. To me this appeared, on the surface, to be a significant issue for us this year vs other clubs.

I completely forgot about Salem!

We need to get Tracc to similar levels of impact and output as Dusty if we are ever to make finals. And Clarry to go nutz also. We also need to get another class goal sneak up forward to help Jeffy, Hulk & rest of forward line out and bring more pressure inside 50 when ball hits the turf. This off season's trade period will go a long way to determine whether we do or not.

Sub-zero maybe!

Successful ones I hope SW ?

Costello?

Control is the key word LH! I understand neauvous coaching methods prefer not to play man on man 24/7 and why but when the going gets tough you must be able to switch to man on man 'manic / in your face' pressure as part of your repertoire and be able to bring in until you regain some control and respect on the scoreboard and get back in the game. The manic overlap style Geelong used to play (and are still trying to most of the time under Scott) is ok if you have a dominant mid field and silky skilful players sprinkled around the park and can close down your opponent on the counter. But they're a shadow of that former self now obviously. Richmond appear to have turned their season around through manic pressure up forward with the inclusion of more smalls and slightly less manic running/handball as you say / more control of the footy by foot, with some extra periods of slow play / possession footy at times when they feel it's necessary, especially vs recent times.

Maybe change both!

Chris Scott had no answer to the crows slick ball movement and run last night and lost the contest in the middle not playing Danger there from the start. What a blight on his coaching to have no B game to close down the Crows, get up on the mark and in their faces and play slow possession footy to try and shut their run down. Playing man on man for a decent time might have helped also but no, stuck with that putred zone D pretty much all night. I see us as having similar issues to the Cats in terms of our ability (or otherwise) to play slow possession footy and man on man for long periods of time when needed if the opp gets a run on. If we cant master these abilities next year we will all be on here again wondering what the [censored] happened to yet another season, where everything looked like and a shouldve been...finals!

As you know guys i rarely start threads in here but IMHO this club has never really hit any highs of late in terms of being able to match it with middle of the road or better teams for four full quarter efforts on a consistent basis since Misson's arrival. We often go missing in at least one quarter of football in most games. Yes this might be an inexperience / youth factor but we see other youngish teams managing to do this in the majority of their matches with some of them, even making finals at times and upsetting the top ranked clubs on occasions. We were even over run by a very mediocre Collingwood in the last round with everything to play for and again went missing for a good portion of the match. Yes i get we had many injuries this year, which crueled us and the fitness dept from being able to get our better players on the park often enough. However, when we were able to get them back, many of our top liners never reached their peaks from earlier in the year and in many cases seemed to really struggle to acheive a decent level of fitness, appearing to have dropped well away from AFL levels when they returned eg; Watts, Jeffy, Big M and Viney (seemingly returned too early also...poor decision??). Am i clutching at straws here or do others see this as a significant issue going forward? Do we need to rethink the Misson partnership and consider other options or no?

And might be about to get even worse. Imagine an Adelaide v GW$ GF. Will be lucky to get 85k and the ratings, outside of Adelaide, could be the worst in many years. I certainly wont be watching those two play off.

The AFL dont care as long as GWS make the GF. Richmond will have to beat more than GWS next week to get in. Expect a very lop sided free kick count that will see GWS up by 5ish goals at half time. Put the whistle away after that most likely as their job will be done.

Tracc is showing glimpses of becoming a game changer OD but still a way to go yet. And he'll need plenty of support. I'm obviously not telling you something you don't already know OD but even great players are made to look better when surrounded by a very good bunch of team mates.

Maynard looks ok. Outside of that i would agree with you but only Brayshaw. Sorry but i've personally seen nothing that excites me about the Weid so far.

Yes you have a good point on the alignment side. But sometimes it's better to come in with a public appearance of offering an olive branch "alignment" even if everyone knows it's really a "takeover". The Borough are hardly in a position to negotiate their preferred deal. Could work out very well for us....and them.

We have a few too many of those OD. As soon as they are asked to step up to senior (and some should probably never be asked) they more often than not fail badly. Hannan and Maynard were the only two that had some sort of impact in patches this year IMO. Personally I think part of the answer lies with our Casey alignment and the inability to have those at VFL level playing in a team that plays the same game style that Goody is trying to implement at senior level, across the whole 22. When they do get the call up they feel a little lost and not quite understanding of what's required at senior level. Personally I would review this alignment as fixing it might Improve this area. As I have said many times before, Port would appear to be a pretty good fit given they have Melbourne in their name already, colours similar and they already sing the old flag! They would probably appreciate the extra funding as well. Casey is not a good cultural 'MFC/AFL game style" fit IMO.

The ump just told Daniher after he staged for a push out in a marking contest and threw his arms up "No Joe, stand up mate!" Go ump (whoever you were!) ?? ?? ???

My happiest year following the Demons other than beating Hawthorn in a final later on (a can't recall the exact year and couldn't be bothered looking it up). I even had my Tigers mate with me in the southern stand for the Hawks final (roof removed for Reno I seem to recall!) who was barracking for the Demons all the way. It's a shame that this five your hiatus under Northery, then 93 / 94 under Balme, were our only really decent consecutive years of being up since 64 down at Demonland. I recall going to training one night after work at the Junction early in 1995 and one of the trainers told me that the whole club felt they had missed a golden opportunity the previous year to win the big one. Not saying I agree with that view just repeating what was passed on to me from someone involved with the FD at the time.

There was a very obvious reason he didn't get a look in WJD.... There was just too much class in front of him (see JKH, Stretch) ?

Chook they are probably trying to emulate Goody's game style which sees 2 players start off the back of the square every centre bounce, as per the seniors. Gifting the mid field advantage, and hence early momentum / extra i50s and scoring opportunities to the opposition. Works a treat, provided you are one of the opposition's mid fielders / forwards!

Maynard will replace / push out Tyson in 2018.

It is something that has plagued this club, with a few exceptional stand outs, for decades RM.

Goody's plus 2 defence ensures we are always trying to bring up a rear guard action after a centre square bounce and starting from behind. Reason being we give our opponents, who are more often than not weaker in the mid field, a leg up in the mid field, by starting two players off the back of the square instead of on the outside (wings). Allows the Op to have at least one or two FREE outliers adjacent to the bounce and effectively free to run the ball into our forward line if they win the middle contest and spread (share) the ball a split second quicker to those outliers than our plus 2s are able to effect that contest, which they do roughly 50 percent of the time (approx). Change this game style and we might win some more games we are expected to win against weaker or ordinary opponents and win much bigger as well, running away with games more often towards the end as we won't be chasing tails after a poor first quarter or so and trailing at half time. We have a top 6 mid when Viney, Jones and Maxy are in the team and all on. But we shoot ourselves in the foot with a very ordinary plus 2 strategy that should only be used when protecting a reasonable lead late in a quarter or a potential winning lead late in the match. Change this game style (taking back our advantage in the mid field over most clubs) and trade well in the off season and we play finals in 2018. Ignore it and continue in blind faith, and we won't.

I disagree with the list part. The list is a big reason why we didn't break into finals as our bottom 6 in many matches were just too far off the pace at AFL level. But it's also the way we went about our set ups and game style all year with much of that blame falling on Goody. He never got the mix right at the selection table consistently enough either and gave too many chances to players who had shown they added no value whatsoever in previous attempts in particular JKH, Weids and Wags who showed they had done nothing to warrant repeat entries into the seniors. In addition Goody was beaten at the selection table again by Buckley in the last and most critical round, when Buckley chose to go extra tall in the last match and we brought in Salem instead of Frost. We also needed another tall forward and were sadly lacking once Hulk went down. As to who that extra tall should have been well maybe we lack that option and hence Goody was beaten by a strategy that he couldn't counter completely, again due to list limitations. We (and Goody) were also crueled by injuries (again!) throughout the year which no one could help and the fact that two of those critical injuries to Maxy and Watts resulted in them having little impact once they did make it back. They both need to look in the mirror on that one. I personally would have dropped big Maxy at about the 3 game (back from injury) mark once It was obvious he was only going at about 70% and brought Spencil in. Goody had too much faith here in my Op and needed to send a huge message and give an opportunity to Spencil to see what he might offer instead. Goody also persists with his rediculous plus 2 in defence which IMO gives the Op a leg up in the middle, taking away our biggest strength, resulting in us losing too many first halves and having to chase from behind far too often which is too difficult in today's fast paced game style. This method might hold up if could find one or two extra super quick players off half back who used the ball more effectively than the likes of the Macs, Vince and Wags (when being played) but certainly doesn't work when you lack the extra class, speed and a bit of height down back. In other words it might work in future but is completely useless with the current list (defensively) AND we also lose our advantage in the middle where we are a top 6 team when both Viney & Jones are in the team and Maxy is firing. In addition we lack an extra tall or two who can take contested grabs around the ground more often, especially with long kicks down the line where we are so often beaten in the air. One of the reasons I would have happily kept Howe over Garland if there was that option. And last but not least we still lack a consistent, potential game breaking, superstar. We might still find one though (or maybe two) out of Clarry and/or Tracc. So all is not lost there but I'll believe it when I see it year after year. Hopefully Goody has learned some serious lessons from this year. IF he comes out with a steady as she goes game style strategy next year and doesn't look to replace our weakest 6 to 8 players then personally I think we will just tread water again next year (ie, no finals ...again!)

We have many parts that are still faulty RP. Had they not been, including the way the team plays via Goody's method / style, we would have made finals comfortably. Instead we didn't even get in. We are further off finals than we probably think if we maintain the current game style and some on the current list, including Too Slow.