rufus

Haha yeah I expect I probably will be, but we can always hope. The alternative is to not go at all and I care too much about the future of the club to go down that path.

For all those supporters who, like me, initially couldn't fathom the idea of turning up to watch those guys ply their trade next week, I have a compromise. I'm going to the game this Saturday, and every other game I can this year, but I vow to walk out the first time that either of the following happens:- 1. One of our players squibs it 2. We go through a period of more than 3 minutes where our intensity in terms of chasing/tackling/spreading/contesting are not up to AFL standard. Am I expecting too much? I don't think these are big asks of an AFL club. This leaves my support in the hands of the players and FD. I don't expect a quick fix to the atrocities that are our structures, ball movement or defensive body positioning, but I do expect that these guys can afford us the respect of delivering the simplest aspects of what truly is a simple game at heart. I believe this compromise will assist in keeping my marriage together, ensure my 'about to arrive' child doesn't hate me and also ensure I remain a happier and saner individual.

In 2008 Fremantle were told by their biggest ever star that if Schwab was not removed then he himself was leaving. Must have taken a fair bit for a player to make a threat like that. Our club was told the same thing by many players in 2011 and didn't follow through and act. I was told by a former player at the end of last season that until Schwab leaves nobody wants to play for the club (he conceeded that maybe with less meddling the younger player may not be as disenchanted as the senior ones). My comment to this guy was just how unfair is that...we the supporters are the ones that have to suffer through this division. And at least if we knew for sure that it was all behind us now we could try to reconcile the poor performances knowing there are brighter days ahead. I have no political agenda, and yes, agree that the tail shouldn't wag the dog. It does however seem that there is a common thread with disenchanted players and for the benefit of the club it really shouldn't be ignored. I don't give a flying f%&k how they do it but the club needs to sort this out. If the playing group still has a beef with this guy, and it can't be reconciled, then the resolution is an obvious one.

We have been accepting mediocrity for as long as I can remember. We are still fostering it with Neeld starting to sprout the 'we have the 3rd least experienced group' line. Lack of competitiveness and insipid structures have little to do with the experience of the list. Out coached by a first game coach and most of the players were embarrassed by a first gamer showing more desire and passion than the lot...

I am a little concerned because in some key indicators I did not see any improvement in the latter part of last year. This figures exclude all games against GC and GWS because they are irrelevant as measurements IMO. See below (I had some trouble pasting the data in so hopefully you can make sense of it):- i50+/- Scores from i50 For Scores from i50 Agst Accuracy For Accuracy Agst Last 10 games -9.4 44.2% 54.9% 48.5% 51.5% Last 5 games -8.8 43.3% 57.5% 48.5% 53.9% Last 3 games -9.7 47.7% 60.9% 44.4% 53.1% Season 2012 -15.6 44.6% 53.4% 48.1% 52.1% League Average 49.3% 49.3% 52.8% 52.8% The positive in the above was our ability to bridge the gap in inside 50's in the second half of the season. I believe this trend continued somewhat in the NAB cup games we played. My biggest worry from these numbers is that despite the fact that we seem to be implementing a slow, defensive game plan, our whole season (and worryingly the last 10 games) were terrible in terms of allowing teams to score when they go inside their 50. FYI Sydney won a flag with a season i50 diff of +0.6 and their last 10 games at -3.4. Their ability to stop opponents scoring was their key. Whilst I like Neeld and the fact that he appears to be demanding high standards of commitment to the cause, it does worry me that we are playing in a way that we never capitalise enough in the scoreboard when we have the momentum and clearly don't seem to be able to stop opposition sides when they have momentum. I'll be keeping my eye on these numbers. I predict pain this year (i.e. bottom 2) if we don't see real improvement in our ability to create and stop scores from i50's.

Was thinking about the things I really wanted to see from the Demons in 2013...below is my list of the 5 biggest things I want to see... - Our former All-Australian full back to show genuine intent in matches and IMPROVE his football as he approaches his peak years, rather than going backwards. I'm not saying he was our worst last year, but watching him closely at the games I just feel they he could be doing so much more. - Improved ball handling AT SPEED around stoppages. Seriously some of the fumbling in recent seasons has been completely amateur (and it's rumoured that it was suggested we did it deliberately in 2009!), and it costs us massively in terms of being able to move quickly away from stoppages. - More willingness to play through the centre. You can beat teams that are more experienced, stronger and even better than you in the AFL, but I don't believe you can do it without hurting them through the middle. - Jack Watts to show some real individual COMPETITIVENESS. One of the more vivid bits of play that sticks in my mind from 2012 was when Dane Swan out marked Watts in the goal square to pretty much snuff us out in our match vs. Collingwood. After Swan kicked the goal he gave Watts a thumbs up which would have made my blood boil. Obviously Swan is a good player but I would love to see Watts take those situations as a challenge and be desperate to beat these guys. Maybe he is and it's is demeanour to look low key but I'd love to see that amped up a bit. Not everyone that plays football is inherently courageous but you find that players whose intensity and desire is highest often find themselves in contests at high speed where they look courageous and they are actually less likely to get hurt because of the momentum they are carrying. - Similar to my first point, I just want to see our younger players actually IMPROVE this year rather than stagnating or going backwards (which I believe so many have done over the last few years). I hope they take Nathan Jones as an example as his improvement last year was amazing and a credit to how hard I hear he works to get better. What does everyone else want to see from our team in 2013?

I just hope the players don't get too carried away with last night, as great as it was. I hope the win gives them the belief that the way they have been instructed to go about it CAN win matches, but that they understand the kind of intensity and commitment they needed to bring for the full 120 minutes for it to work. I do have faith in the current coaching setup that this way of thinking will be drilled into the playing group (something that I have not necessarily had in previous years).

Credit to Col for his game last night from me. Yeah his numbers probably don't look great but from the stands his running intensity seemed way up on recent times, and he seemed more intent on having a real physical impact around the forward stoppages which should be his real strength. If we can get this from him every week it will make a massive difference to our team. I personally still hope he can be a guy we can throw into the middle to have a real physical impact in those stoppages at important times in matches for years to come. To do that he needs to bring the intensity he brought last night.

I only saw the last quarter and a half unfortunately...so from what I saw we were again very ordinary. Two things stood out for me during this period...inability to hold chest marks by numerous players (how on earth that happens in a professional sport is completely beyond me, doesn't seem to happen as often for other teams either) and a real lack of intelligence in our back half. We spoil into dangerous areas and we position our bodies very poorly in a lot of contests. These are things that can obviously be worked on but I hope it's not too late for some of our defenders who seem to have stagnated so badly over the last couple of seasons. Intensity was ok for the last part of the 3rd and rubbish for the entire 4th.

I think this post is spot on. For mine, the thing that has always lacked at MFC in my 30 years of supporting has been the defensive intent. In my experience in football, I have played in teams that have done well and won premierships, and teams that have been poor and been relegated. Without a doubt the success and failure has been driven by the defensive intent of my teams. In my view defensive structures need to be put in place when the players don't necessarily naturally have a good defensive intent (very common in young AFL players because the elite pathway into the league is more about excelling as an individual than as part of a team IMO). This is what we are trying to do now because our players have not been educated well on their defensive aspects. I don't buy into the notion that we have a poor list or that our players are no good. We may not have as many 'elite' players are other teams but we have guys who can play football at this level. Every AFL team has weaknesses, some teams have educated their players very well to 'play their role' which includes being accountable and competing hard in contests. I like that Neeld has these defensive traits as non-negotiables. This clubs needs to enforce this. I hope the players are smart enough to understand that if you are good defensively as an individual (ala the pressure and accountability demonstrated by each and every Adelaide player last Sunday vs. Carlton), the offensive side of your game naturally feeds off it. All of a sudden you are getting the ball back off players who have been constantly under the pump and it actually creates better chances to run and spread as a result. I think it's amazing that when I think back of watching Melbourne over the years, I can remember only a limited numbers of games where Melbourne brought the kind of defensive pressure that is required for sustained success in the AFL (a few examples include a final against North Melb under Daniher in the late 90's/early 2000's, Queens Birthday draw vs. Collingwood in 2010, and a Friday night vs. Essendon last year). And BTW, the intensity that was brought vs. Essendon last year actually annoyed me a little in hindsight because it came about after the players had been called soft by an opponent during the lead up to the game, and I thought it kind of disappointing that the players clearly showed passion and fight when they had been questioned as individuals but did not bring that approach week in week out when their motivation is to bring passion and fight for the club, the jumper and the supporters. Anyhow, Neeld's approach appears to be wanting strong defensive intent to be the norm and if we have to wear some pain in the mean time then I am ok with it.

I agree to an extent, however I do have an issue with why the media seems to spend so much time and effort on negative stories. The best example of this I have seen this year was during our issues with our former sponsor, the front page of the major newspaper carried a headline of "Self Dee-struct" or something similar, harping on about how the situation at MFC is now dire, yet a very short time later when we secured a new major sponor, you had to go 8 or 10 pages in from the back to read about it. That just doesn't seem balanced to me.

If this is true it worries me more than anything else about our current situation. We badly need the Coaches and players united (right now and in the future). If there are members of the leadership group that the coach has 'lost' (and who are openly telling people about it), then this is our biggest problem at the moment and needs to be addressed. From the outside I completely felt the club needed a hard line approach from the new coach, and fully support that having happened, but if players who have been nominated as leaders aren't all buying into the message (or perhaps more the way it is being delivered) then I hope to hell it's being addressed right now and they can all get on the same page again. If not it's going to be another stinker of a 3 year period for all of us supporters.

will do mate!

I am doing something similar to what I did for my cricket game (antcricket.com)...got sick of all the commercial games which concentrate on aesthetics too much instead of old fashioned fun game play...the footy game is in a similar vein in that I have the whole ground displayed in one screen...as I state on the cricket game website I am not a professional programmer so there are many areas that need improvement (particularly around the stability of the deployment and the fact that I have used VB6 as the programming language, which is far from ideal but the only language I know well enough at this stage). Have to say I have found the footy game much much harder to program. Coding AI for 36 different people at once, and particularly trying to chase bugs when they occur has been interesting. It's resulted in me stripping it back in a lot of ways to a pretty simply engine (i.e. the keys to playing well and winning matches in my game will be your disposal efficiency and the timing of you marking/spoiling attempts moreso than the more technical footy things like your tackling pressure). One of my main goals was to make a game which is sufficiently challenging so you have to play well in those areas to consistently win (in my current season I have lead the Dees to a 1 and 10 record so I feel that at this stage the game-play challenege is coming along quite nicely!). Anyway in the next few months i hope to have a copy available to anyone who's interested in trying it out and giving their feedback...

I am in the process of (slowly) making am Aussie rules computer game (kind of my vision of a slightly updated NES Aussie Rules Footy)...and I needed a way to automatically create a fixture at the end of each season and I had actually come up with pretty much the same theory for my fixture, except that I have taken the ladder finishing positions as the basis for the 3 groups. I.e. the top 6 from the previous season will all play each other twice the next season, teams 7 to 12 will play each other twice, teams 13 to 18 will all play each other twice, and each team will also play the teams from outside their group once each. I think it works pretty fairly and assists the teams that finished lower to make their way up the ladder and means that the teams at the top need to cotinue to perform well to stay there... from a real world point of view I understand the AFL would never like it in terms of their "blockbusters", although it does encourage more big games because the top teams go each other twice.... Even with dviding the teams into "groups" to work out the fixture I still keep the normal ladder and final 8 system...

Hi all. Long team reader, first time poster! I love jumping on Demonland and having a read of the views of fellow Demons supporters...particularly when it's constructive and about how our team is going and how we all reckon it can improve going forward. I reckon it's awesome that there are so many people out there that seem to have a great passion for the MFC just like I have done for all of my life! I've been compelled to join up and post for the first time because lately I've been really disappointed reading some of the negative comments that are getting thrown towards our players. In the case of Scully, for the life of me I can't understand why people would be so negative towards the guy. From where I've been sitting, he puts his heart and soul into every performance for the MFC. I feel like people here are marking him really hard because they've heard from the "reliable sources" in the media that he may not be with the MFC next year. So what. For now he plays for the MFC. When addressing the situation he said how much he loves his job and playing for the MFC and he wanted to re-pay the faith that the club had shown in him by selecting him with their number 1 draft pick. I believe what he said. Everything else we've heard about the situation has been passed on by a bunch of people looking for controversy. Worst case I'm being naive, but I would rather be naive in supporting the word of a bloke who is pulling on the red and blue each week than a bloke sitting behind a desk making up stories. About all that we can control as supporters of the club is to contribute to the vibe of making the MFC a tight knit unit whose supporters get behind their players through thick and thin. I believe that supporters of other successful clubs are better at this than we are. I've felt that he's likely to stay because (from the outside) he seems like the sort of bloke who is likely to be motivated by the idea that he, along with the other youngsters at the club, could drive a new culture of success into the fabric of our club. If it makes you feel better to give the bloke a spray IF and when he announces that he is moving on, then so be it. But as long as is playing for the MFC why don't we get behind him and support him and maybe we can contribute in a tiny way to making blokes like Scully feel like this is a club that he wants to help drag out of the position it has found itself in for so long.