Lucifers Hero

A lot is made of preseason injuries but we aren't the only ones. Coll, Rich and a few others could claim loss of players in preseason or early season injuries. And, St Kilda had a bad run with preseason/early season outs. McCartin, Hannebery, Carlisle, Stevens, Roberton, Geary. All best 22. Without counting, those 6 have probably missed as many if not more games than our missing best 6. Yet they managed to win 6 games without them in the first half of the season and achieve a reasonable %. And really their list is nowhere near as talented as ours. Yesterday's smashing was because we had no physicality. There was no ferocity, no real effort to tackle or put bodies on the line. Had we done those things we may still have lost but not thrashed. In a word, we were timid. Referring back to preseason surgeries and injuries feeds the 'time will sort things out' narrative and papers over underlying issues.

Fagan: "...Melbourne, they want to get you into that contested ball environment because they believe that's where they play their best footy...that's the most pleasing thing … we were able to beat a fantastic contested ball team at their own game." How many coaches have said similar this year: match them on the inside and we beat them on the outside/around the ground etc. Defeat after defeat they are virtually telling Goodwin his version of a contested ball game plan doesn't work anymore. Just don't understand why Goodwin is not listening. Does he think he knows much better than the likes of Hardwick, Buckley and Fagan? If I hear the 'match them on the inside and we can win' mantra from an opp coach again, I will...I don't know what I'll do but good Lord something needs to change in the coaches box. At what point do players, who hear this from opp when we lose, start losing faith in the game plan...?

Joined up a week ago. Half your posts are in this thread and pot anyone non-positive comments. Similar to your posts in other threads. Are you the alter ego of one of our absent mfc apologists?

The voice of reason. Thank you,

As a dee supporter what choice do we have Dame G: Laugh, cry or drink!! Today has been cry, drink, laugh in that order...

Can highly recommend 2016 Sanguine Estate Projeny Shiraz.

I really needed a really good laugh. Thank you!

Thank you SWYL. I've had a few (too many) Heathcote Shiraz. My sarcasm meter is a bit numb! This club will send anyone to drink!

Anyone know what the 3/4 time spat between May and Frost was about. Commentators made it sound like May went to town on Frost a bit too long.

Sorry, 36 tackles is an appalling effort! No team is competitive let alone win with that sort of non-pressure and let the op have easy ball.

Our midfielders just do not work hard enough when they do not have the ball. Are hand-ball happy when the ball comes their way but that is it. Stats aside, none of Brayshaw, Harmes, Viney or Oliver had much impact today.

Why on earth did ANB go for the mark when it was obviously Fritsch's mark. Selfish play by ANB - just trying to get his own stats up!

Great first quarter by Petracca: Terrific bullet pass to start the chain for the TomMc goal and kicked two himself!

Tigers took a big chance bringing 7 players back many of whom are underdone. So far it has not worked. Saints on fire and making it hard for powers to be to sack Richardson. And, the tigers might end up 9th...how novel! But will be happy to see tigers win - just to help keep essendon out of the finals!

LOL, BBO, we all know your version of 'creepy' would be somewhat affected to entertain. And may I say that the 'fairer' gender would detect it as lighthearted whimsy. For Morris it seems innate. His 'creepiness' is of the 'makes your skin crawl' variety. I know of other females describe him as such. Trust me that type of 'creepy' you wouldn't want to know about.

3 upsets so far: Ess d GWS. Nth d Pies. WBD d Power. Today might make it 4 upsets with a Dees d Lions! Glad we had only one change. Time to settle the team and get some synergy going among fwd, backs, middle and synergy with ball movement end to end. Optimistic that we can click today; if we do we win!

Very happy that WBD beat Pies and North beat Port. Only prob is we are yet to play WBD and North. No longer the 'easy' games they once seemed.

Good on Jesse for calling him out. He leaked so much Demons stuff, it was good that the club sent him packing. Comes across as somewhat sly and from a female viewpoint as 'creepy'.

Was thinking about playing in the coming weeks rather than contracts. Since you asked: Contract renewal order for me would be JKH, ANB, Stretch. For mine, they are all depth players and not regular 22's. But I would play JKH ahead of the 2 in the coming weeks. But Dunkley might get selected ahead of all three. He is more likely a future 22 and it will be a good test to have a few games this year.

Out of interest would you put Jay k-H in the seniors ahead of Alex N-B?

Over the last 5 weeks (when we have played better football) Max has played game time % of: 90, 91, 88, 86 and 94. Max has been BOG or in our best each week. If Max was playing 75-80% game time or not playing consistently well a strong case could be made for Preuss. While we would all like to see Preuss play, its hard to see how to fit him in especially as Tom Mc seems to be improving as a forward.

Yes, but I suspect it won't add to more than a few hundred +/- by end of July. I would guess 500 max taking it to about 52,250. A good result over the 45,300 last year but I would imagine the club will be disappointed it has fizzled out. But hopefully, it is more.

After nearly 4 weeks it is still 51,770. Unsurprisingly memberships dried up after our run of losses. Official cut off date is July 31. Unlikely to add more than a few hundred. So much hope to get to 55,000 but it has fizzled out.

This might interest: Why the AFL is bad for Aussie Rules. It is a long article from 'Roar', (an independent sports website) primarily about how the AFL is damaging aussie rules and its feeder community sport. Selected extracts: What is the AFL? The AFL is certainly not a sport; it’s a competition. The AFL is less an organisation that administers a football competition, more a media organisation that produces football content. None of [the] levers [to develop narratives] are open to scrutiny and decisions made often take precedence over quaint notions of procedural fairness and natural justice. The AFL can silence competing independent football narratives through cancelling the accreditation of journalists, which it sometimes threatens. An emerging perception that the AFL engineers results damages its brand and Australian football. The AFL finds problems and fixes them, only to make bigger problems that need fixing. LOL, so true!! There is a more in the article. No mainstream media outlet is going to print most of the above for fear of reprisals. One has to ask: How is the Commission allowing this, now that the conflicted Fitzpatrick is no longer the Chairman. The AFL treats the football public like gullible dummies knowing that everyone is powerless to do anything. Maybe Gill should be known as Comrade McLaughlin - he certainly acts like a dictator; a Machiavellian one at that.

Has the AFL introduced a new criteria: touched 'beyond reasonable doubt'? Score review Gil: "It was reviewed for 40 seconds, the vision using the Hawkeye system which people saw, and they had to make a decision about was that ball touched beyond reasonable doubt..."That's the standard to overturn the decision. To date I thought the 'standard to overturn' was some evidence of a touch, however slight. At least that is how it seems to have been implemented. A new AFL rule invented to justify the outcome they want: Nothing to see here, walk on... Edit: a bit more from Gil: Gil won't say if decision was right or wrong! "McLachlan said he had seen the vision but refused to give his own opinion on the call...When asked what the AFL interpretation of the legal concept "beyond reasonable doubt" was, McLachlan deflected". Gil has no idea how 'beyond reasonable doubt' is to be applied. Its just more grey; more guesswork; more room for subjective calls! Amateur hour.