Demon Dynasty

A dropped mark against Rance paid lol

Anyone see that play with Fostin tackled well after he lost the pill? Semi sling tackle. No free. Rance pushed in back while on ground then someone sat on his back and rolled over him then he was clocked in the head by Kennedy. 3 frees on the one player. NOTHING! Watch as the Umps put the whistle away on the Tiges to get Weagles up by four or five by the main break. So predictable.

Great news. Need to leave no stone unturned with his development. A Carey lead finishing school will do wonders. It will also help towards a "lock" at the negotiation table. Some decent wins between now and then also needed though. Go boys go! Just go and dont look back!

Frost was lost down back last week and looked at least a little at home up forward. Still a long way off this level at the moment. Roosey looking for the extra tall forward option with Dawes still out. We are a tall short

That's how you do it Vagg!! Come and get me when we have it. Hunters when we dont!

One of the worst AFL (so called) journalists ever to grace the pages/screens. What a lightweight. Great at making "Drivel" and hearsay sound like it's news worthy ground breaking fact!

It's all about mind set guys. Every player has to come out like they did in the 2nd quarter last week (but this time the 1st) and bring the intensity expected and play to their fullest potential just as trained as well as sticking to the overall game plan/s. All the little things add up. Can't afford to have 2 or 3 slacking off or the whole thing unravels. Play like Demons and our chances increase substantially. Play like flowers and we will make the Pies look like a premiership team.

That's correct Ox. And for me it all starts at the opening bounce. The Pies will come out all guns blazing in that first 15 minutes. So we have to make sure we match their intensity. This would be against recent past history where we just don't launch well. The bongers match a classic example. Always on the back foot. But not only be fierce at the contest, we need clean use with hands working extremely hard on the spread when we get first use with some decent short passing to leads i50 as well as deep to the hot spot. The mid field control and clearance will be crucial as it almost always is, especially during the heat of that first 10 or 15 min in order to get the ball into our forward half early and try and lock it in or score. We have beaten them here in the last 2 encounters so lets hope we can bring this effort, intensity and clean ball use this time around. Lets not underestimate Buckley and his team. They would have scoured over last week's game with a super fine tooth comb looking for areas of our game to exploit. And there's a number of those. Whether they have the personnel is another matter but on the day any team is capable of beating another in this comp as we know. No doubt they'll be looking to get a stack of ball in early and lock it in also. We need to work super hard if they do. Especially by hand and foot off HB (run and carry when possible/occasional switch when it's obvious we have a fat side opening to go to) to exploit their lumbering forward line that was fully exposed last week in the Saints match. In addition we have to mix it up coming out of defence. Our defence and mids will need to work harder than last week in this regard, and lead lead lead into space (on the angles just as the Hawks do)/spreading the field, allowing multiple decent options to hit up and maintaining possession on our way up the field (until we are well out of the ugly turnover areas) as a variation to the run and gun option. If we don't we will be kicking it up the line to a potential turnover and/or kicking to a man under pressure for another potential turnover. We can choose to work our bums off and achieve some success with the former (good spreading/leads....allowing decent short options up the field) or we can be lazy sods like the early part of the 1st quarter last week and not provide these outlets, increasing the Pies chances of intercept turnovers or turnovers in the worst possible places for us but the ideal places they are working towards in order to punish us on the scoreboard. On the other side I'm not concerned about our forward press/zone too much. Think it's working quite well. However, i have my fingers crossed that Jeffy is fit and ready as we will need his closing and escape speed to create a little mayhem up forward, crumb and also worry the opposition in our forward half. He adds that degree of uncertainty to a back line that means a player is never quite sure if he is truly free. This "perceived" or real pressure in many cases is exactly what our press and zone will thrive off provided we structure and set up well. Would love to see one more decent tall who can play either end for us as well if needed. Kind of a Podsiadly type (ie., someone who isn't super tall but plays tall/takes contested marks and very versatile plus decent goal kicker...not asking for much am i) Reckon this would be the icing on the cake for us. Surely there has to be an almost ready made player like this somewhere in one of the Magoo leagues that we can aim to trade for next year?? Or a recently retired gun from a champion team who might have changed his mind (provided there's at least a 2 season contribution potential). We will need work our asses off to secure this one and fight it right out to the very finish! Put the foot on the throat if we get a decent lead for Lucifer's sake Demons! Don't let em back of the Crowd/Umps will win it for em (like last week!).

Chip La Grand says "Hi"

Must have been late 70s. I recall our cheer squad being pretty big In very early 70s. Bro and me (too a lessor degree as a little tacka) were even In a small unofficial one In the 2nd tier of the southern stand. Small banners, floggers etc.

When Satty tells me so!

Had a good look through the Champion Data stats today courtesy of the Herald Sun. Not happy we lost but some super positive results (umpiring excluded). We pretty much won every stat count including ..... yards gained; contested; clearances (pretty sure we won uncontested but don't hold me to it...if we lost that it was only by a very small margin); Hit outs to advantage (of course); Think our tackle count was about 10 or so down on theirs. Marks i50. Tackles inside 50! The only areas i think Norf had it over us were, like i said, total tackle count and intercepts (in general play and marking where they won quite well). This suggests we have a few areas to improve in but in most cases we are right on track vs most teams outside of the top 4 or so. And no i'm not saying we are a top 4 challenger blah blah but i can see a solid mid field starting to build here. Get the back 6 settled and on track. Get our forward game plan and entry sorted. As everyone plays more games together, with the right leadership on a number of lines, we are on the cusp of becoming more consistent. In order to avoid so many intercepts and rebounds we will need to work harder on aspects of our game such as ..... Switching off backline. Ie., when to switch and doing it effectively (hitting targets). Having the awareness of NOT switching even if you commenced one! ; Keep working heavily on kicking efficiency both long and short. Emphasis on short as this will help reduce intercept marks/turnovers and resulting rebound scores; and Transitional running off HB and through the middle. Again to reduce the number of turnovers in dangerous areas of the ground. The other aspect is to lift our tackle work rate when we dont have it a little higher. If we can improve on these aspects of our game i think we will start seeing consecutive wins, including some wins against teams considered top 5 to 8 prospective finalists.

I think he is. Can't see him being as damaging but in many ways this might work out ok for both parties. Gus has to perform to keep his spot the following week. He has to really go for it so we get to see where he really sits right at this moment form/fitness wise and we as a club should benefit on match day as well.

Well after rigorous regression testing using the highest quality "In game" data available I was able to show a strong correlation between the rankings and ... a truckload of bulldust! Of course nothing as robust as that. Just a very simple weighted average of a select group of fairly unworthy publicly available stats. Just what I felt were possibly the best of the worst public data. This Is the 3rd season now and I think I've managed to tweak it a little and shine a small light on who's going ok (comparatively) each game and In the aggregate for the season once there's enough sample data In there. Did a bit of reverse engineering (qualitatively through reviewing about 6 game replays from front to back as well as at the ground on a few of those games also) to arrive at a similar result to what some considered their top 5 etc as well as my own view of who were in the best to ensure it was going some way towards achieving "like" outcomes each week. But like all statistical analysis (not that i would call this true analysis...rubbish in rubbish out and an amateur putting it together lol) it has many holes. Two glaring ones are backmen getting a bit too much leg up at times, via effective disposals (some extra cheap ones dinking It around the back) and doesn't cater very well for ruckman as there's no "hitting to advantage" available. A good example of that is the weekend's game with Gawn coming in a very average 13th when most had him in their top few players. It's also very tedious drawn out work putting the aggregate averages together after about 5 rounds via excel formulas. Have to make sure each player's references are on the money. I only took it to Rnd 18 last year but it did match the Bluey to a point with Vince at 1 and 5 others in the top 10 Bluey rank (the other 5 weren't the same rank) and just missed Dunny at No.10. Had him ranked 11 up to Rnd 18. Happy to supply the spreadsheet. You can then fiddle with the weightings/stat mix if you wanted to have a bit of fun (or extremely bored!!). Feel free to share what you're up to also if you wish as I'm interested to hear what others might be doing as well.

6. Oliver (5.05) - the first score of any MFC player above 5 this year on my system with a score of 5.05 in only his 3rd game. Vince went close last week with 4.98. Well done son!! 5. Viney (4.45) 4. Hogan (4.43) 3. Tyson (3.95) 2. Vince (3.93) 1. Dunn! (3.75) - welcome back Dunny! *Have only seen the most of the 3rd Quarter plus highlights. Normally wouldn't but basing this week's votes mostly on my comparative ranking system in order to meet the deadline. Yep it's a pretty tacky method but hey some of us can't afford Foxtel or a trip to Tassie! P.S. Last week we only had five players get a score of 3 or more. This week we had 12. Harmes lead the tackle count with 10! Viney the most inside 50s with 8. Vince & Viney both with 10 clearances. Oliver & Gawn next with 7 a piece. Apologies to Gawn - no hit outs to advantage stats in that mix.

Admins you know what to do!

Nah, game was won and lost in the 3rd by No.15 Would have been 3 to 4 goals up going into the last with a whole lot less pressure and a fairly cruisy finish. Our boys came back and came back hard. Matches are won and lost in tight quarters. The 3rd was a great arm wrestle by us and we would have won this match under "normal" match conditions without the blatant bias of the umpires (in this case mostly one umpire's influence). The MFC needs to ask and demand answers from the AFL on that 3rd quarter. It was an unacceptable game changing/determining performance. Time to earn your $$ PJ!!!

* Umpire & pre-determined result brought to you courtesy of the AFL

Demons have to make a big deal of that 3rd quarter! Is 15 on the take?

Nothing new. First free kick last week at the 12 sec mark to the bombers wasn't there either. Was a ball up every other match (except ours).

I'm thinking which poor option choices are we going to make and how many passes we will miss by foot

any feed from demonology today? appears not

While the article is spot on (in terms of our woeful history since 2006 on consecutive wins) it doesn't really add any light as to the "why". How about interviewing the Captain, the Coach, the club's psychologist!?? (Do any clubs still have one of those!? Regardless, we need one!!). We deserved the spotlight after last week but Lloydy could have done better. Anyone bagging Lloydy as a footballer (other than his staging which I couldn't stand myself) is probably just J that we didn't have him at our club. Guy was a dead eye dick and a super hard worker on all his patterns/leads In order to get the break on his opponent. If the Hulk gets his work rate up anywhere near this his performance/output will go through the roof (if we can get enough ball in effectively!) ...."I was taught very early on in my time at Essendon that respect isn't given, it has to be earned over a sustained period of time and excellence." ....

That will depend on how quickly and effectively we deliver the ball i50 PG. Need quick thinkers/ball movers. Hope we don't start Clarry in middle like last week. Go with your 3 guns to start almost every time (Vince, Jones, Viney) until the heat is off a little. Then switch your 2 gamer in for the rotations. Game will be won and lost predominantly through the middle and whoever does the "all team" defence/attack things better than the other. We will need to set up our defensive zone and press super quick as Nth love to sling shot in the blink of an eye via Harvey whenever possible. I sure hope The teams don't line up as listed. Salem has nice silky skills and moves well but I have no confidence in his defensive side at this point to go with Boomer. Pretty sure that's part of the reason Grimes is back. Our forward line looks too short to trouble anyone at this point. We need Dawes back and fully fit to give Hulk a nice chop out, take the heat off him, provide a desperately needed 2nd tall option and play higher to create more space for Hulk (& Jeffy when back) to do their work in behind. Hulk needs to work higher as a starting position also. Sitting in the square with the way we deliver (or don't) to the hot spot just isn't going to work. Our mids and HBs are almost always coming in under a high degree of pressure also which means many kicks will be hitting the 30 to 50 meter zone rather than 30 & less. This is where Hulk will need to work on his game, regardless of who he is playing for. Also Hulk's kicking accuracy outside 40 meters drops significantly (accuracy is always going to drop the further out you are ...I'm speaking of his drop in accuracy vs the league average drop). This could be related to his kicking method. Working fine (i think it's above league ave) at about 40 or less but no so good outside 40. To have confidence playing higher he may need to rectify this at some stage with the help of a kicking expert (internally if we have one or an outside ex sharp shooter....FEV!!!?) Good luck to the boys. Hope we are competitive and it doesn't blow out but preparing for the worst.

Only on planet D'land Moon