The heart beats true

35 minutes and nothing.

Reserved Seats and Visitor tickets are now sold out for the MCC Reserve for the First Semi Final between Melbourne and Carlton on Friday September 15. No additional visitor tickets will be available for this match.

God I hate this.

I agree Kev. I think the AFL is fully aware of how exposed it is to litigation in regards to CTE. It’s no coincidence the new head of football is a former lawyer.

I don’t know about the general public. I think Collingwood people are skewing the media landscape. The Age ran a poll asking people if they thought Maynard had a case to answer and 47% said he did (from over 5k responses). Given the scale of Collingwood’s supporter base, and their level of engagement with current football stories, that tells me that the average punter reckons this is clearly wrong. The landscape for football also needs to shift in order to create growth - both in audiences and participation. More women, more migrants, and more supporters coming from other sports. Those audiences and players want skill and goals, not concussions. The game is changing. The audience is changing. The media response to this is old fashioned, but don’t mistake it for the public consensus.

He’ll be remembered as a Premiership player. I reckon that seems right. I’ll miss yelling out ‘go Pig!’ every week.

Really great performance. Our experience and fitness clearly show out late in quarters. It’ll be a good side that challenges us this year.

Been much stronger around the ball this quarter.

This team makes me love footy. They are super talented, and so good at executing the plan.

Banno’s pace is ridiculous.

Kate Hore is a natural leader.

And, when you called me magnanimous by instant reaction was ‘I’m big boned, and have a glandular problem!’, but then I googled it. 🤣

I sat with some really nice, passionate Melbourne supporters on Thursday night and it gave me good perspective on what football offers us beyond wins and losses. The young Demons fans in front of me wanted it so bad I really felt for them. I walked from the G to Southern Cross after the game because I was so disappointed, but when walking I was thinking about all the stuff I’m grateful for because of the MFC. Demonland is definitely one of them. This year I realised that football always hurts. It hurt when we were terrible, it hurt when we couldn’t get it together, and now it hurts because we are so close. It’s easy to forget on here when emotions run hot, but we all love and want the same thing.

Paxy is a big out, but I loved the last half last week. We looked so dynamic. Excited to see if we can keep that form going.

I’m fairly sure they aren’t allowed to attend the club for a prescribed amount of time as part of the protocol’s. Anyone know if this is correct?

This is very, very interesting.

That, and the behind the goals vision show this really clearly for what it is. Maynard was trying to physically impose himself on the game. To set an example. He stuffed it up terribly, and in my opinion if he gets less than 4 weeks he should consider himself very lucky. If Sam Collins did that to Pendlebury he’d get 6-8 weeks.

Tracc’s new interview on the MFC app sure does make it sound like this is more than a 12 day break for Gus. I can’t believe the media narrative around this incident. Angus is the son in law of a former player who committed suicide from CTE. If this isn’t the case that makes people stop and think then I give up. I’ve never seen this incident happen before. There isn’t another comparable ‘smothering attempt that caused concussion’ from the last 20 years of football, or anything even remotely close to this - that’s over 3800 games of football. I don’t wonder why that is. I know why. It’s because it was incredibly dangerous. Players legitimately trying to smother the ball jump as high as they can, meaning their trajectory is straight up. There’s 30 examples of that a game.

Let’s just see what happens Friday night. We don’t give up, even if we don’t execute we always give amazing effort. I wouldn’t write this team off.

And thus ends my least favourite weekend of football for the year.

Harris Andrews ain’t Steven May. He’s more of an interceptor. He’s been absolutely killed one on one tonight.

Duursma has struggled to be clean in this game and it’s killing his team.

I thought your response wasn’t very kind. I know you and I don’t always see eye to eye, but you add heaps to this community, particularly with your knowledge of junior footballers. I like it when different people engage on here, and making fun of someone trying to start a new conversation seemed counterproductive. 👍

He’s a gun. He’s absolutely massive too. He’s only going to keep getting better.

That wasn’t a football action. Maynard wanted to make a physical statement early, just like he did against Langdon last year. He stuffed it up, and he will be dealt accordingly. He never once watches the ball. If a Melbourne player did that I’d be so disappointed in them, just like I am with JVR’s action this week.