Lucifers Hero

Fair enough. Tbh, I haven't read much that concerns me but agree there is always room for improvement. Nonetheless, as Goodwin says: we embrace imperfection; we don't try to play a perfect game. As to what other posters 'concerns' are, I'm in the people 'suffering old-fashioned MFCSS' camp.

May I ask what is there to be concerned about? Genuine question.

Yes, if Langdon is out we have some interesting options for the wing role. For mine a 75% Salem is better than a 90% Baker. If we want speed on the wing we could move Hunt there, he also knows Langdon's running patterns again spent 2021 linking up with him before becoming our lockdown to small forwards. And Salem goes back into defence. Another option is Spargo on Langdon's wing as another player familiar with ball movement. We would miss him in the fwd line but Bedford's defensive work yesterday was excellent. With this option Salem doesn't play. This week's selections will be a bit more interesting than usual unless Langdon is able to play which would be good against his former side.

Thanks. I'll go back and correct post.

In: Viney, Salem. Out: Dunstan, Langdon Yep, Salem. Players with as many pre-seasons and as match hardened as he is often do not come back via the VFL. If Langdon wasn't injured we could give him the luxury of a game at Casey. Also, I reckon Salem is the best replacement for Langdon on the wing. His smarts and kicking i50 will make up for Langdon's speed. He knows Langdon's role really well having spent last year linking up with him for rapid, overlap ball movement.

You might need to watch the last quarter again.

Good chance Bulldogs will be in the 8 next week. Swans (7th) and Tigers (8ty) play each other. If Bulldogs get a good % boost vs the Eagles they will replace one of them. Reckon it will be short lived given their draw. Carlton's top 4 position will be tested in the coming months. After the next two rounds vs Eagles and Ess they play 6 of the top 8 teams. Credit to them for hanging on to beat the other top 8 team: Sydney. Not sure about their ability to do the same vs most of the other top 8. Win next week and we will have a 3-4 game and % lead over 5th. Difficult to see us falling out of the top 4 from there.

I'm surprised to see a negative thread when we are in our most successful streak for two generations. We are winning by 3-8 goals each week. On scoring, the whole team has a very poor G:B ratio. Would Petracca's or anyone else's scoring accuracy make much difference to 10.0 season and a 161%? No player is perfect so not sure why folks are nit picking one of our very best, week in week out, even when playing injured. And look at the big picture. His contribution to TEAM scoring this year: Ranked 1st in Total Inside 50s Ranked 1st in Total Goal Assists Ranked 1st in Total Score Involvements Source: Footy wire. The coaches have shown what they value: last week he kicked 2.4 but received 9 coaches votes! He will be in the votes again this week.

They were booing Parker for his sledging of Shiel last week. Why they would care about an Ess player being sledged is beyond me.

Voss is teaching them the right way and doesn't expect everything to click this year. McKay will be back and if McGovern ever becomes a professional in his preparation and recovery they will be strong additions. They don't have a lot of weaknesses. They were ferocious for the first half last night. They will learn to do that for 4 quarters like we have. They play for each other like we do. Over the pre-season Voss will make some list changes to an already strong list. He will strengthen their all field defensive work. Next year is the year to be concerned about Carlton.

AFL prime time FTA criteria: Win games. Big memberships. Blockbuster games. Bulldogs fail miserably on the first two counts. They have won 4 of 9 games for goodness sake! The AFL is hoping they come good as they have lots of games vs top 8 teams which might be blockbusters. If they don't it will be a big flop; just like all the Friday night games they gave Carlton a few years ago. And the flop that will happen in a few months when Ess have 3 consecutive Friday night games. The Bulldogs will be lucky to make the top 8 as they need to win at least 8 or 9 of the last 13 games and build some %. Just can't see what the Bulldogs attraction is to Ch7! They AFL should have waited to see if the Bulldogs win today before they put their chips all in on them. Lose and top 8 becomes even more unlikely. The AFL should stop making 'captain's calls' on teams they want to promote and reward those that fit their criteria.

I'm guessing the crowd would be about 50/50. The AFL would allocate the same number of tickets to each club for members before sales to the general public. We would outnumber them in the MCC stand and they would outnumber us in the AFL stand. Then it depends what the 'neutrals' do. Can't imagine any self respecting Ess, Rich, Coll fan barracking for Carlton🙄. As unpalatable as it would be for them barracking for the dees would be the way to go🙃. Or, they stay home.😐

Yes, not sure what the email means by 'scan' the membership card. The GA tickets for the QB game are already on the mobile membership. There is no bardcode with them. Not sure if GA membership tickets have barcodes on the mobile app. Best to call the club to check the finer details

Players and Coaches don't care: Anytime. Anywhere. Anyone. Sponsors do and Pert may need to explain what the AFL is up to.

@ElDiablo14 Re your QB ticket question in the 'Fixture' thread. Yes, the QB game is a replacement for the Alice game. Yes you can walk up to the G and get in as a GA entry. The club sent an email to members on Monday which said: If you’d like to reserve your seat for a discounted price, you can enter your barcode into the box provided on Ticketek to upgrade. You can also purchase guest tickets and access up to 10 tickets in one transaction. Round 12-15 ticket on sale details below. Members - Tuesday 17th May 2:00pm General Public - Wednesday 18th May 11:00am YOUR BARCODE(S) ...................................... Alternatively, simply scan your membership card like you would at any home game and you will be granted general admission access subject to availability.

We may end up with that as a defacto result as 18 into 10 doesn't go. To avoid diabolically poor games they will have to fixture the 4 new teams and last year's bottom 5 or 6 teams against each other. Last years top 9-10 teams play each other. As I and others have mentioned the result will be that poor teams will play finals at the expense of good teams, like they did when we had 'Conferences'.

Somewhere in South Melbourne?

Coaches have mentioned trying different game tactics in games. Maybe Melksham is to experiment with ball movement into our fwd line. The # of points we kick says our fwd work isn't as good as the rest of our game. And, by now other clubs have done their homework on us and working out tactics to counter our strengths. If we change up our mid to fwd ball movement it helps make their ideas less damaging and give us better scoring accuracy. Good timing to change aspects of our game with Freo, Sydney, Pies and Lions over the next month. Even if Melksham doesn't hold his spot if we are trying something new and it works the selection will be a success. Lets not look at Melksham's stats but at the role he plays.

My first thought was so that Ess leaned on him to get a MSD pick but this from the AFL article dispels that: "The timing of the decision wasn’t related to the Bombers opening up a mid-season draft pick, with Nik Cox’s foot injury already set to allow that to happen". (Altho the latest AFL injury report has Cox listed as TBC rather than season ending). He has been a shining light for the game and how it should be played and a great ambassador for his culture and hopefully for the AFL at some stage.

A good summary of the process, thanks. Can't help but feel that by not considering the quality of games doesn't undermine their goal to get more fans and more money. Its taken 7 years to get to a point where the quality is good from the better teams. So this is the time to go for max crowds but if the quality isn't there or a 10 game season is seen as a joke more and more fans might just lose interest and the whole thing backfires on the AFL.

The abysmal AFL attitude to umpires is highlighted in this article: football-s-forgotten-figures-the-umpiring-crisis-threatening-the-game They have been shunted from reasonable (sort of) training facilities to virtually nothing. It is a blight on the AFL who surely aren't serious about improving the lot of umpires if they continue to treat them as third class stakeholders.

Scarf available at the Demon shop on line again. https://shop.melbournefc.com.au/melbourne-demons-narrm-scarf/

Yes,that is a risk. A report 12 months ago, has his property portfolio at $14m+. dustin-martins-14-million-empire Carr has done steered him well. But as you say what happens when he retires is another matter.

Apparently he has well connected friends, if you know what I mean...

Wasn't it Hardwick who put it out there a few days ago that Dusty might want to live in Sydney but didn't say which team.