Silence closely resembles stupidity

Finally, after years of losing games in exactly the same fashion, I've been tipped over the edge by a perfectly ordinary defeat. Since mid-2021 I've largely taken finals thrillers, one point losses and near triple figure disasters with good grace and humility, but this of all games really tested last week's outrageous claim that I'm too old and placid to tip the couch over.

No need to go fully postal yet because there could be a lot worse on the horizon, but the big mistake was deluding myself into thinking we'd take care of a side that has lost three games by 70+ points this year. We responded to this challenge by not even scoring 70 and ending the game like a derelict car you're just trying to keep running until the trade-in goes through.

Like most of our losses it wasn't by a huge margin, and there were fleeting moments of playing like a team good enough to exit the finals in straight sets. In this case we also got a bonus 45 minutes of Kysaiah Pickett threatening to celebrate his winning the midweek mega jackpot by playing the greatest game in the history of the sport. In isolation, the performance wasn't all that bad, so why did this generic disappointment irk me so much? Possibly seeing the very obvious frustration of the players who have realised for the second time that they're over this woeful season, probably much more to do with conceding goals after the siren three times, slaughtering our momentum multiple times with multiple acts of petulance, and continuing to treat putting the ball through the middle posts as optional.

On that note (I initially wrote on that 'point', which looked sarcastic), kicking 9.14 looked like dead-eye accuracy compared to the insanity of the St Kilda game, but our attempts to kick goals continue to provide a family-friendly metaphor for conception - millions of attacks are launched, only a handful reach the target before dying. Still, with all the usual "if X happens, then Y doesn't follow" disclaimers, we're 27 goals behind parity and it's hard to see how that's going to get any better. We're on track for a record here, if you look at the 18 team era it's surprisingly rare for a team to kick fewer goals than behinds over a season. In 2022 and 2023, every team in the league did it, but can we bust into this group of wayward maniacs?  

• -45 Fremantle 2021 (-1 off the boot, the rest rushed)
• -41 Gold Coast 2018 (-8)
• -37 Essendon 2016 (+1)
• -37 Footscray 2017 (+20)
• -31 St Kilda 2018 (+8)

We can go for the overall figure or take our -3 off the boot and try to beat that putrid Suns side. Give it another couple of weeks, but this and the Spitebury Plan (more on that later) could be the last matters of any interest we're involved in this year.

Part of the frustration was our forwards being either five metres behind the ball or forced to contemplate trying for Mark of the Century over a nine man pack, while at the other end a guy who only had five kicks in a win last week was helping himself to 7.4. It was a handy demonstration of what it looks like when forwards get space, have the ball accurately delivered to them, they don't drop it, and the set shots more often than not end in goals. We're good enough to win a few more games this year (famous last words), but with the way they're set up and the ball is delivered you'd have brighter career prospects as an Iranian nuclear technician than playing in our forward line.

Lucky I gave up on a Mighty Ducks finish to the season after St Kilda (and please, Fox Sports, burn the tapes of the intro to that game), because otherwise I'd have busted my foot kicking inanimate objects over the last two weeks. At least losing to Collingwood was disappointment at nearly pulling off a Buster Douglas d. Mike Tyson upset, this was like watching two pissheads grapple in a pub carpark before one loses by repeatedly punching himself in the face.

After giving coach and friends the benefit of the doubt after our brief return from the dead, the spirit of late 2024 is back. I don't want to turn on our only living premiership coach but Jesus H Christ how long can we go on doing the same thing over and over again? I'd be shocked if he got the sack, but am convinced that in the years when lowly paid semi-pro coaches still managed factories during the week, Goodwin would choose manufacturing over his legacy for everything other than September 2021 go down the gurgler. 

I can never fully turn because the 2018 and 2021 finals are still 50% of my all-time favourite memories (and you can argue amongst yourself what proportion of this mess goes to down stubborn coaching, shithouse recruiting, or players failing to go on with it) but the window for seeming stable enough to lure half-decent recruits is closing. A few weeks ago it looked like we might finish high enough to make it look like the only way is up, now you're not joining us unless it's for slabs of our cold hard cash that probably don't exist anymore.

There might still be a second second coming. They could spend bye week doing emotional bonding (NB: best to avoid seaside pubs and French restaurants) and/or coming up with some exciting method of kicking goals that inspires a respectable finish but I'm not holding my breath. After some light stirring of the loins after the Sydney game I've psychologically crashed out again. An orderly, polite, hopefully no blackmail required coaching transition doesn't mean success, but even if we reach Round 24 playing like this the only reason people will turn up is to set themselves on fire in their seat.

Reputable analysts can look at the obvious stuff, I'm more interested in enthusiasts-only topics. For example, how do they boot Tholstrup entirely from the side after playing one of his best games to date? Not to mention how he showed an admirable passion for the cause which contrasted nicely to some teammates who look like they're being led to the gallows. Unless he joined in the King's Birthday final siren fun and told somebody senior to GAGF I don't get it. Punishment for going against team orders and kicking that set shot from 50 metres out instead of aiming it at the behind post? He didn't even get a run as the sub here and didn't play for Casey, so what's any of this done for his development? 

It's an even more offensive version of making Laurie play on suburban slop holes for three months before being given a chance, then dropping him after playing one quarter where his teammates didn't turn up. I'll cop picking an out of form van Rooyen over Jefferson because he can play second ruck, but how have we ended up in a situation where he's only the best man for the job because somebody who gets about four kicks a game is suspended? Our recruiting post-flag has been so bad that when Lindsay, Windsor and Langford are off my first thought is not "the poor ducks are young, they must be tired", it's "oh christ, they're being Melbourned".

My turning point may be post-bye selection. Last year I reluctantly went along with picking the same side week after week (NB: but not doing stupid things like making Turner the sub) when the season was obviously shot, but now that finals are a 'full sex with a supermodel' level of fantasy away I'll blow up if they don't demonstrate some interest in the future. I'll compromise by not trying to include Tom Campbell and Forward Sizzle, so if the name Billings is presented instead of Jefferson, Laurie, Tholstrup etc... I'm going to (reluctantly) become a hater.

I thought we might win after showing improved form last week, but was also confident in Port doing something stupid coming off an unexpected win. Now we'll never know how bad it needed to get before Ken Hinkley zipped his big puffy jacket up over the head and stopped watching.

There's always novelty in a Port home game because they've got community singing and the first few rows reserved for people best described as 'units', but this time the gimmick levels were turned up to 11 by them fielding a mid-season draftee with one leg in a compression stocking who we were reminded at regular intervals used to be an air conditioner salesman. Not since James Magner's previous career of building a freeway has a player's unusual work history had such a run. It was a win for fans of obscure 1970s political references, because just as George McGovern wraps things up at West Coast, here's G. Gordon Liddy to take over.

According to Dwayne, GGL is "known as The Leg Sleeve Guy", which is like somebody being known as "The Wheelchair Guy" or "The Hearing Aid Guy". It's also about as likely to be true as Kelli Underwood's unconvincing 2021 claim that "they call him Slick Fritsch". On this call he'd have been "Slick Fritz", because for all of Matt Hill's admirable qualities as a caller, he had the same impairment that always caused people to say 'Trengrove'. I thought somebody might have a word at half time, but it kept going as Fritz (also known in Victoria as Devon) had his most prominent game of the year. After years of their callers blathering on as if possessed by the devil, I'm not surprised at the lack of a producer with the authority to go "oi, you're saying it wrong".

It wasn't just a good week for Port players hoping to get a cheap Fujitsu split system, against all odds we got something in the middle of experienced players having a tiff and another limp defeat. It'll take a while before we find out if Pickett to the AFL's longest contract in exchange for a pile of cash resembling Mt. Everest was a bad idea, so for now let's just treat it as a good thing. In the context of world sport, $12.5 million for nine years isn't much, but it's obviously enough to cure homesickness. 

Now the trick is to go against 130 years of history and successfully keep him upright and exciting for another nine years. Not that we need him to being going full pelt until the final siren of 2034 to make it worthwhile, if we get six years of wild shit that no other Melbourne player will match in our lifetime then I'll be happy to take him on a lucrative three season retirement tour. I'm just going to enjoy the show until his career goes tits up, we start losing other key players due to lack of cap space, or he's forced into retirement after a 'football incident'. Hopefully he doesn't crumble under media-induced pressure to save the joint single-handedly when the veterans start disappearing and Tasmania (maybe) turn up to swipe the best draft picks. 

While we had some decent moments in the first half, the only ones worth committing to memory are those involving Pickett. By the time he'd kicked a third goal while playing more as a midfielder than a forward I was ready to devalue the currency so we could give him an even more impressive sounding $25 mil. I don't know about the second half or the next nine years, but this was definitely worth bulk cash.

Life should be so simple that you can just sacrifice the most electric small forward in the country to the cause of hoovering up centre clearances like a magnet attracting metal, but what you gain in the middle you lose forward. Even if he barely touched the ball in the second half, three goals, all rippers, is a good return at any time but we still need one of him in each third of the ground. Fritsch and Petty (not in this game though) have also done their best work all year pushing up the ground, which is fine except for the question of who's the final kick inside 50 going to? In a repeat of last week, the answer was 'take your pick of three defenders'.

For no good reason, before this game I rewatched the all-time classic Open Mike with Mark Jackson. When not tormenting an obviously stressed Mike Sheahan and calling various people "false alarmers" for unclear reasons, he made a sensible point that is as relevant now as it was in 1981. The job of big forwards is to mark the ball or bring it to ground for smaller forwards. I know intercept marking hadn't been invented yet, but there must be stat involving intercept marks per inside 50 which conclusively proves we're pound-for-pound the most haphazard attacking team of the modern era.

It's a problem that goes all the way back to Adam Oxley's famous Queen's Birthday Kingsley nomination, but defenders are forming an orderly queue to pad their stats when playing us. Harris Andrews must be distraught thinking about what Melksham did to him that day when he sees Howe, Ratugolea etc... pulling down easy marks and dispatching nearby opponents with the greatest of ease. At the other end, Lever's come back without the quality that made him so good and now just looks like any old blah defender. Even as a Sizzle fanatic I thought the angst over dropping him for Lever's return was over the top but if we were miraculously teleported into a Grand Final tomorrow I'd easily pick McDonald. 

I'm not writing Lever off, we've been through spells where other teams rumble him before and it's always turned out alright in the end. Still, there were holes in our defence here that you could steer a battleship through. And that's with Turner, May, and Howes all having decent games. The problem is that one-on-one defence doesn't mean dick when a forward can lead straight up the middle to a kick plonked right into his hands. You may recognise that move from the three or four times a year we successfully pull it off. It's a milestone in our development when I can hang shit on our key positions at both ends. Now watch us find the next great full forward then start conceding 130 points a game.

It was obvious from the start that we weren't going to take advantage of Port like all the good teams, but I was happy for van Rooyen to land a nice set shot from the boundary line, and for Melksham to set up Pickett via a great tap-on for his first goal. That was about as good as it got for Melk, who spent the rest of the game trying everything that worked so well against Brisbane to no avail. We were already showing signs of letting their only good forward do as he liked, but scores were still being kept to the levels that we need to win games these days. At least until Bowey tried to tempt May into another outburst when his kick-in fell short and cost a goal, and after conceding to a 'Miles' we let a 'Darcy' get the next one, and it was like being beaten by the cast of a Jane Austen novel.

Port's players may have posh names, but their fans are still the most likely to stand up and complain about umpiring decisions while nearly frothing at the mouth. They had a point when pinged for insufficient intent, even though one of our players got 99% of the way to the ball then slammed the brakes on and it let it go out of bounds. The usual 'throw shit at wall, see what sticks' forward entry made its way to van Rooyen for a second. He had to play on so it was rushed, but lucky there were no defenders (or teammates) between him and the line because it came off the boot awkwardly and would likely have crashed straight into anyone in the way. 

Good way to end the quarter though. That's what you might think if you'd never seen one of our #demontime masterclasses. Instead of comfortably playing out the quarter and breaking even, Gawn was done for an alleged dangerous tackle that ended up being completely ignored by the Match Review Panel. It was some distance out on the boundary line though, so as long as we didn't do something silly like concede a mark in the middle of a massive pack with two seconds left everything would still be ok. And you can guess what happened next.

Mitch Georgiadis was not a Kingsley kandidate, but looked like he was on the way to being the first player to kick 10 against us this century. He got the first of the quarter, and should have added another shortly after Judd McVee tried to get a couple of extra weeks off post-bye by jumping off the ground to bump an opponent in the head. Nice try, but Mr. Match Review wasn't falling for it, even though it was nearly identical to what scored Johnson two weeks off in Alice Springs. The difference was that the St Kilda player had to go off for a concussion test (FO to 'HIA'), but as he passed it I can't see how one got suspended and the other got off scot McVee.

Not long after, the usually reserved Judd McSpree played a part in what may have been the first three goal turnaround in league history. First, Petracca slaughtered a kick to Melksham that cost us a goal, and set up Port to go the other way, then McVee gave away a free kick in the aftermath for whacking somebody in the guts and we were officially on the brink of disarray. He must have compromising photos of league officials, because unlike Pickett in Alice Springs he got away with this as well. 

Meanwhile we've had half a dozen players fined this year for making contact with umpires that nobody saw, and Lindsay had to write a cheque for 'tripping' against Collingwood when he did nothing more severe than hold on for a second too long when his tackle slipped to the ankle. If you need proof that they're just making this shit up as they go, play the bumps and stomach punches side-by-side. Speaking of fines, for the second time this year an opposition player had to pay up after getting away with gratuitously legging one of ours in the square. It's like the good old days of Early Gawn when the umpires had a blind spot for the regular clawing of his face at bounces.

There was briefly a bit of oomph in the game after this, including Petracca nearly having a mark reversed for 'afters', and Petty doing the old fake headbutt towards Aliir to zero reaction. In the middle of all this Pickett had departed after he'd been left face down on the ground looking dead, bringing a screaming halt to a quarter where he'd played like several million bucks. His first goal of the term was an absolute ball-tearer, intercepting and checksiding it through from the boundary line, causing me to leap off the famous couch, slap the floor in excitement and yell "pay him more, pay him more" to the absolute bemusement of family members who barely know who he is, let alone about the big money contract.

He survived the concussion test, came back after half time and barely got another touch. Whether this was down to the collision or Port thinking "geez, this guy is good, maybe we should try to stop him" I don't know but if it was the latter then they were one step ahead of how we treated the guy who ended the half on four goals. To be fair, the last one was a bit shit considering it was May being penalised for putting his hand on the back of a player who was already jumping into a visibly over it Gawn.

This was one of those games where we got a lot more free kicks but still had some cause to whinge about umpiring under the 'it's where you pay them' clause but I'm yet to see a loss this year where we couldn't have overcome the umpiring to win anyway. Still didn't help that they got another goal after the siren, and even before this things had turned to drizzling piss before the three goal turnaround - including the ball bouncing off JVR's chest because he was so shocked that it reached him on the full.

With Port defenders pulling down intercept marks at world record pace, this week's Plan B envelope featured Turner going forward after half time. This made sense, but still didn't really contribute to the key metrics of kicking a winning score or stopping the other side doing the same. What I don't get is how one of their key defenders went off injured at three quarter time and we left both Turner and Petty forward, leaving our attack a congested mess, and further improving the chances of their key forward kicking seven. I freely admit to having NFI how footy tactics work so if there was a good reason for doing it this way please explain.

There was a bit of interest in this in the third quarter, we started with two goals in a row, Gawn went some way to fulfilling my plan for him to play forward and kick 0.14 with a pair of behinds, and our very good friend Mitch charitably sprayed a couple of set shots. It all came to a screaming halt when May was pinched for doing nothing more than winning a test of strength in a marking contest. We countered with another couple of dud set shots, and Oliver failing to make the distance with a snap from 20 metres before wouldn't you know it, Port got a goal after the siren.

Just to prove that the Brisbane comeback was an out of the box fluke, we rose to the challenge of winding back a 15 point lead by kicking one goal, well after the game had achieved junk time status. There were chances - of course there were - but it was back to the final quarters of earlier in the season when everyone looked like they CBF. By the looks of it they could BF a little more than the white flag extravaganza against St Kilda, but the forward line had been in the witness protection scheme since half time and never emerged.

One of the many things that gave me the shits about this game was going back to a Little League style 'team effort' performance where you can't even make yourself feel better by focusing positively on one or two standout performances. Spoiler - everyone in the votes this week is guilty of something. The 5-4-3-2-1 has to go somewhere, don't blame me I'm just following the royal and ancient rules of the competition. If they were held back every time we lacked standout players some years would have been won with single figure scores. We were flatter than your choice of a plateful of piss or a shit carter's hat, and I've run out of premiership related loyalty to players like Rivers and Sparrow, time to explore whatever limited options we've got.

Rivers can't have had much argument about getting the hook, except in comparison with all the forwards who were doing nowt at the same time. JVR's return was a good start by our recent standards, but he barely went near it after the two goals, and a week on from coming around to the idea of Petty as part of the forward line he was flailing here. Took a nice mark to get the final goal, but I'll assume the Port players were already thinking about chasing groupies at the post-match function because they didn't let him get near it when the game was on the line.

The only outstanding matter was for May to do something silly so we could get the "Gawn should yell at him LOL ROFL" content out of the way, and maybe that's what he was thinking about when giving away a pointless 50 to facilitate Georgiadis' 7th goal. Good luck with that, it's like when a team is pinged for deliberate and fans are still screaming for vengeance 17 boundary throw-ins later. He made a dick of himself last week, and we're still waiting for the rozzers to allege that he belted the suitcase out of a random citizen in the off-season, but fark me the way some ungrateful pricks are carrying on you'd think he'd desecrated war graves. He may not be the sort of person you'd be chums with him in real life, but unless you're old enough to remember when Norm Smith was coach, there goes the best and most successful defender of your lifetime so show a bit of respect.

Port had the ball at their end in the dying seconds, sadly not having another shot after the siren that would provide me content for years. It was as flat a finish as you'll get while barely losing the last quarter and avoiding a thrashing. I sympathise with players in the process of realising they're about to play 10 weeks of dead rubbers, but that might be as much of a problem if we'd rotate occasionally instead of picking young and (presumably) hungry players for one week then immediately dumping them. 

I don't think we're going to end the season stripped of dignity, handing over pick two, and with both Richmond and North passing us at speed, but a week after nearly rumbling the premiership favourites I'm back to wanting proof of life. Given the relatively thin margins in the losses it feels like somebody's going to write in and chastise me for being too negative (like after barely holding on to beat North last year, and how well have we gone since?) but it's reached the points where I'll take wins but want them to mean something for the future. Maybe it's time to start planning for a future where Viney and Oliver aren't in the same side? I know we got spooked into handing out long term contracts to all these people (what could possibly go wrong?) but even if we continue to pay them it doesn't mean they're obliged to play every week.

2025 Allen Jakovich Medal votes
5 - Max Gawn
4 - Kysaiah Pickett
3 - Daniel Turner
2 - Bayley Fritsch
1 - Steven May

Apologies to Bowey, Howes, McVee and Petracca, who only didn't deserve votes a little less than those who got them.

Leaderboard
The Gawn walkover continues, but forget what's happening right now, we're on the verge of a major milestone. On the all-time leaderboard he now has 392 votes, within one full game of Oliver on 395. Let balloons drop from the ceiling when he conclusively hits the lead, and what about a run-through banner when Max becomes the first man to crack 400 career votes. If you'd rather think about AFLW I've only just realised that the spreadsheet is missing a season and the leaderboard hasn't been updated since 2022, which goes to show how long I've been in decline for.

44 - Max Gawn (PROVISIONAL WINNER: Jim Stynes Medal for Ruckman of the Year)
23 - Kysaiah Pickett
17 - Jake Bowey (LEADER: Marcus Seecamp Medal for Defender of the Year), Christian Petracca
14 - Clayton Oliver
12 - Daniel Turner
10 - Harvey Langford (LEADER: Rising Star Award), Jake Melksham
9 - Kade Chandler, Ed Langdon, Steven May
8 - Tom McDonald
7 - Xavier Lindsay
6 - Jack Viney
4 - Tom Sparrow
3 - Christian Salem
2 - Bayley Fritsch, Jake Lever, Harrison Petty
1 - Trent Rivers, Harry Sharp

Aaron Davey Medal for Goal of the Year
Regardless of the final result, or the fact that he disappeared off the face of the planet after half-time, the Pickett goal from the boundary line was so exhilarating that I'm vaulting it over the top of Chandler vs West Coast and into the clubhouse lead. There's no truth to the rumours that an extra perk of the new contract is that he has to win this category every year.

Next week

Put your feet up. I watched Casey but the only key discoveries were a) ironically Baldi is a cueball, and b) guest player Kalani White has his dad's leaping DNA and in the spirit of our salary cap rorts when signing Jeff/the CFMEU ads at the ground, we should do whatever it takes to draft him.

The week after that

Gold Coast away in a chance to recapture something from when they pulverised us earlier in the year. Maybe they'll come up with something new in the break, but it's more likely we'll field the exact same lineup except for Lever and Pickett, play the exact same way, and lose by the exact same margin if lucky. Refer to earlier comments about my meltdown when we pick a side that implies they're either trying to keep the damage down for reputational reasons or have delusional visions that we can still get anything out of this season. 

There aren't many kids left, but for god's sake play them and I promise not to do my block until the margin reaches perverse levels. There's nothing for team balance in these suggestions but they'll work something out. Everyone's going to want Johnson to come straight back in off suspension because of his enormous meme potential but I'm not having it. Even if I'm ready to bet my liver against him playing 50 games, Jefferson must get another chance first. I don't want van Rooyen to have to play second ruck forever, but will cop it for another week. 

Other than my proposed inclusions, there's not much to be excited about from those who played at Casey this week. Jed Adams will definitely get a token game before the end of the year, Will Verrall seems to be getting closer, and for god's sake can Kynan Brown please be allowed to start an AFL game at least once in his career. Otherwise - blah. Mentha is miles off, Fullarton, Hore and Kentfield must already be browsing Seek, Woewodin has never gone on with it (possibly due to 13 of his 21 career games involving some type of substitution), I've got scant interest in Henderson and Culley and none at all in Billings. Some of these people will survive next year because you can't massacre all the depth players in one go but if you're looking for inspiration from the Seconds then [insert Lowered Expectations graphic here].

IN: Jefferson, Laurie, Tholstrup
OUT: Petty, Rivers, Sparrow (omit)
LUCKY: Lever, Lindsay, McVee not to be suspended, Oliver, Viney, Windsor
UNLUCKY: Johnson, Sharp, Verrall

The Spitebury Plan

Where we make helpful suggestions on how to reduce the value of the first round pick traded to Essendon. For this bumper first edition, have two rounds for the price of one.

Round 15

Fremantle d. Essendon
North d. Carlton (reverse if you think we're more chance of going down than up)

Sydney d. Port

Collingwood d. St Kilda

Gold Coast d. GWS

Richmond d. Footscray

Geelong/Brisbane irrelevant

Round 16

Port vs Carlton could go either way based on the previous week's results

Footscray d. Sydney

Hawthorn d. North

Collingwood d. West Coast

Adelaide d. Richmond

St Kilda d. Fremantle

Hope you have a spiteful time.

Heritage Round
I didn't mention the epic discovery of the second half of the 1964 Grand Final last week because a) the post was already Unibomber Manifesto length, and b) once I realised we had another week before the bye I wanted to save it for viewing during the break. 

There will be a review post in the next few days, and I'll be interested to fact-check my own book (available at no good retailers) to find out how much of it came from faulty memories from people who were there but had never seen the footage again. Lucky I didn't just assume the footage would be lost forever and go with a first draft that included alien landings and a pitch invasion by the Viet Cong.

Final thoughts
I've nearly reached the important post-premiership milestone of being miserable about footy again. It will never be the same level of misery, but I reckon in a couple of years we'll be scientifically testing people like me to see how close you can come to replicating the empty pre-flag feeling.

Chances are you're about to lose

Until something unprecedented and weird happened in the last minute of this game, I was ready for a post that delivered all the classic hits from 21.5 years as the Chief Football Writer of Demonblog.com. Self-inflicted near misses, imagine if we had a forward line, there goes another season up in smoke, and the evergreen claim that if you want Collingwood to buy into the most one-way rivalry in footy we need to beat them a few times in a row.

It would be nice if that came via a series of savage landslide thrashings, but at the moment I'd be happy to start at one, then aim for a streak. The popular 2004 - 2007 run started before three of the players in Monday's team were born so it's no longer relevant. Unless you're a rusted-on freak who's here until the bitter end, you may only remember winning two thrillers, and a solitary thumping, leaving our aggregate margin in Monarch's Birthday matches only slightly better off than our modern record at Kardinia Park.

On paper, there should be consolation that the margin was 6.5 goals less than I expected, but in a week where we risked ironic "it's the hope that kills you" disaster by flogging these water bottles, honourable losses can go piss up a rope. This wasn't quite as traumatic as our last one point heartbreaker against the Pies, but it died in almost exactly the same part of the ground. Then it was Ricky Petterd narrowly failing to pull in a mark, this time it was Max Gawn's Hail Mary kick coming off the boot like a 10kg bag of shit. 

It's a bit unfair on them to be remembered for these incidents when both were pivotal in having us within range of a mega upset in the first place, but that's how it goes. Wherever Petterd was watching this from (and a spot of light Google stalking suggests the answer is Byron Bay), I bet he wished a teammate took the heat off him by delivering an unfortunately timed, and seemingly inappropriate spray immediately after the ball hit the ground.

I was more annoyed at the final siren of this game than anything since the 2022 Brisbane final, but I'm not going to blame Gawn or the umpires. We battled hard to stay alive all day, before a surprise outbreak of poise helped us get in front during the last quarter. Then we shit ourselves, it all went up in smoke, two of our all-time greats nearly had a punch on, and the prospect of a miracle finals run is deader than Kelsey's nuts. As far as I'm concerned it already was after last week, but if this went two points in the opposite direction the door would have been slightly open, with players going into the bye buzzing off their teet about delivering a shock win via old-school Goodwin football terrorist methods.

It's still baffling to me how we survived in this game long enough to be up to our necks in it until the last minute, but there was an all too brief time where we were a red-hot chance of rising above our putrid forward conversion and umpiring best described as 'unhelpful' to beat the best team in the competition. They'd still spend September playing finals while we were probably imploding off-field again, but it would have been fun at the time.

Morally, the Carlton final was worse because a) it ended the season, and b) we'd had multiple chances to finish it off, but I was still pumped full of premiership anaesthetic then and comforted by the idea that we still had a couple of years to cash in on this generation of players. If I'd known what was coming in 2024/2025 I might have jumped on the tracks at Jolimont Station that night instead of aimlessly driving around for three hours before eating a McFlurry at 3am. As anyone who has watched a team long enough knows, narrowly failing to pull off an incredible win as underdogs is one of the worst feelings you can have as a fan.

Fortunately, I didn't have to put up with any of this live due to squibbing the opportunity to leave the house. The version of me that stomped a pair of sunglasses to dust the final siren of Round 2, 2010 would be disgusted at this attitude, but the 2025 version has nearly ceased to function as part of society so I regret nothing. Except, a bit whenever Neale Daniher was on the screen battling his heart out to be there in the most difficult circumstances, while I'm sitting on the couch sooking about being cold and tired.  

The other big regret was that the TV options once again came down BT vs Dwayne. In what bogan run universe is it better for Jason Bennett to be calling a Sunday slopfest in regional Western Australia than a marquee game? And on the Fox side, unless Anthony Hudson fell down a well on Sunday afternoon I'm offended on his behalf that he comes below Russell on their commentary depth chart. 

Like last week when Gerard Healy accidentally said he spent half time "in the crack lab", choosing the pay-tv call accidentally paid off when Dwayne got mixed up in the early stages and said "Petty went gay", which was quite the revelation. Later, he recycled his own "Fritsch Magnet" gag from five years ago, and the usually sensible Jason Dunstall let the side down by guffawing as if it was improvised genius. Nobody ever asks me why I keep writing this (and it's ok, you don't have to, it's purely for my own amusement and if anyone else is interested that's a bonus), but linking back to offbeat and weird things from 2020 makes it all worthwhile.

We're all guilty of trotting out the classic material (and I generally don't wait five weeks let alone five years), but it was better the first time around when Mark Howard called him out for planning the gag in advance and there was an awkward silence which suggested Dwayne gave him the look from our long-forgotten Media Watch logo.

Anyway, as much as Russell gives me the shits, I'd prefer him calling with Kelli Underwood, Don Scott, and the anti-social dimwit you could hear yelling stupid shit near the effects mic, than Brian Taylor + the same ads over, and over, and over again. Even when we do our best to annoy Channel 7 by making sure there's as few goals as possible on free to air television, the song from the AAMI ad has me on the verge of causing aggravated mayhem.

It's not quite right to say we did everything right last week except kick straight, because there was still the small matter of the Saints rocketing the ball from end-to-end untouched and finding targets 15 metres from goal. We weren't cut up as badly this time, they were still able to extract the ball from the defence and head off towards goal at full speed but we were better at having defenders in place right at the end on the process. 

Not much else obviously changed from last week. van Rooyen came back after reasonable form against unreasonably bad VFL teams for seemingly no better reason than he can play second ruck, which didn't work. More successful was the wildcard move of sending most relaxed man in the game Ed Langdon to do an old school, cynical, scragtastic tag on Nick Daicos. As a one-on-one matchup it worked, but how come this was the week we made Windsor sub when he did his best work on the wing last year?

The most important result of this hopefully one-off use of Langdon is that it's given weirdo MAGA-style receipt-clutching Pies fans something better to be upset at him for than when he said something strange about Collingwood in an interview and they carried on like as if he'd threatened to piss on Jock McHale's grave. The same people who idolised Joffa and thought Strauchnie was peak comedy got a second chance to cash in when May disgraced himself, three years after also daring to be less than 100% complimentary towards them into a microphone.

Back to the topic of having your greatest hits on repeat, our first score came from a missed set shot. For a change it wasn't from 20 metres out directly in front, but for the purposes of balance and fairness I'll note it came from a pretty cheap free kick, setting a standard for the rest of the day. I assumed more standards were being set when Collingwood's first shot on goal came via a player bouncing out of a tackle like he'd jumped into the wall of a bouncy castle, but overall the pressure and effort shit on anything delivered last week. Which one of these players will bolt for a bigger club and make sarcastic Bailey Smith-style references to not playing in Alice Springs? Please don't be anybody who played in the flag because I don't want to lose respect for anyone involved in that blessed event.

Like Petracca cutting through the nonsense and belting running goals through last week, the answer to straight kicking was again somebody just getting the ball 50 metres out and giving it welly. It was made by Chandler spelunking through the middle (and for five minutes in the first quarter I had visions of him winning the BOG trophy before he mostly disappeared), and Sparrow declining a set shot so he get a run-up and just belt it.

As I was still expecting to lose comfortably, jolly old Ed Langdon unleashing his inner villain and openly cheating against Daicos was good fun. Against all odds, this man turned out to be an assassin.

💪💪 pic.twitter.com/u3pOWUtCQR

— Ed Langdon’s Guns (@EdLoveGuns) June 9, 2025

And had we won, it would have been a famous performance. Now it'll be a 'remember when' footnote that seems fun at first, then makes you remember how we lost by a point. Like Jeremy Howe taking Mark of the Year in a game we lost by 110 points. In case you'd forgotten Jeremy will still around we tried tempting him to wind the clock back and stand on someone's head by constantly sending kicks in his direction. The only problem was that there usually wasn't any Melbourne players in the way, so he could just casually reach up and grab the ball instead of risking a mid-air calamity. 

Trying to make something of our forward line from 2011-2015 was arguably even more difficult than it is now, so it's nice that Melbourne players finally decided to deliver passes on a platter for him. Incidentally, if you need proof that the Brownlow is rigged against defenders, he got six votes in 100 games for us playing in dreadful teams, then went to Collingwood, got one in 2016, and none since. But he did win a premiership, and only because we got there first I'm (relatively) happy for him.

Umpires who seemingly wouldn't know a tram was up them unless it rang the bell finally twigged and gave a free after Ed had racked up so many minor crimes that he'd reached the AFL equivalent of five stars on Grand Theft Auto. Once the gropefest had been rumbled I thought that was going to be the end of the fun, and it would turn out like the days we'd hold Judd for most of the game and he'd still end up best on ground, but it worked as well as possible all day. This prediction was wrong...

Very enjoyable scrag from Langdon, even if Daicos will still end up having 38 touches. #scragchat

— Adam 1.0 (@Demonblog) June 9, 2025

... but to be fair I didn't say which Daicos would end up getting a shitload of touches, and the other half of the genetic lottery jackpot was free to hoover up possessions and win the BOG award because obviously defenders aren't legally allowed to collect any awards. In any sensible analysis, Howe or May would surely have gone close, and imagine the scenes if the votes were cast before the end of the game and May got to collect the trophy in front of hostile crowd and teammates.

Who even awards this medal now? It used to be done by a panel, but as the votes aren't publicly released now I assume that all went out the window after the lunatic fringe bullied some random journalist for picking Oliver over Mason Cox in 2022. There's a guy almost certain to be given a token game in the Round 24 rematch and end his career on a high by demolishing us.

The backlines of both sides were very good here, but the difference was ours had to stop legitimate chances rather than just having to get on the end of mad panic kicks towards a forward not even in the same area code as where the ball landed. They held back a bunch of chances, before we accidentally allowed a quick attack when Fritsch narrowly failed to pull down an intercept mark in the middle of the ground. 

Meanwhile we were blundering forward, where van Rooyen was making a bid for Tom Fullarton's "poor old" title by appearing to be thoroughly Melbourned. We need to hire some cult deprogrammers to put him in a room and make him forget everything that's happened since the first half of the second West Coast game last year. I know they didn't pick Jefferson despite more goals against the same pissweak VFL opposition because he'd snap in two trying to play ruck, but JFC for JVR we've massacred this guy. He had 46 scoring shots in 21 games last year, and is currently tracking at seven in seven this time. I don't know if freeing him from rucking will help but they have to do something else.

There's no point trying to save this season, so we may never get the novelty of four club Tom Campbell while Gawn is fit (though feel fit to rest the poor bastard at some point) but as much as I'm for playing the kids if you can't impact a contest inside 50 what's the point? I don't expect him to be pulling down screaming pack marks, but be around to try and stop the other side easily intercepting everything. I'm all for Melksham, but relying on him to do this single-handedly is NQR, and exactly why three different Collingwood players went around chomping down loose kicks like Pac Man yesterday. 

The answer was not Fullarton, and at the moment it's probably not Jefferson, Petty does his intercepting best work 60 metres away from goal, and the coaches would obviously rather drink poison than ever play McDonald forward again, so I'd like to make the really stupid proposal of parking Gawn forward for a couple of weeks and playing Campbell, Verrall or anybody else you want as the ruckman. Who cares if he kicks 0.14, maybe his physical presence will bust the door open for the rest of them to take advantage? The season is dead, I repeat the season is dead, let's not do like last year and hold on to the dream of playing the same team, the same way until it's 100% mathematically impossible to play finals. And if our only reason for continuing to play Max every week without a rest or change in duties is to get him into the All-Australian team again then the whole place has lost the plot. 

It felt like Round 57 of "it we had a forward line we'd be good", and that there was no way we'd score enough to compensate for Collingwood kicking the goals that naturally come when you're a top of the table team who may very well win the flag. For instance, here's Jamie Elliott standing 10 metres on his own after several weeks kicking goals left, right and centre.

Held back a bunch of chances before Fritsch narrowly failing to pull in an intercept opened the door for them to go the other way. Another case of if we had a forward line we'd be good. Eventually we let Jamie Elliot stand 10 metres on his own in front of goal, nevermind that he's been in red hot form. He was otherwise kept very quiet, as were most of their forwards. They only had one player kick multiple goals, we had two get three each, but fat lot of good that did us.

Until Houston set this up I forgot he was playing for Collingwood. Remember when he was linked to us last year, before doing the old Homer Simpson style disappear backwards into a hedge when we started to die in the arse on and off-field? If you believe there's any life in this team, and I did at the start of the year, Houston would have probably been a handy player for us, but god knows what it would've cost us so even if Lindsay and Langford didn't do much here it's probably better to have both of them than three or four years of this guy regretting his life decisions as we sink like a stone.

What a sport this is, change a couple of things at the end of the game and this post would be full of glee, now I'm ready to pull the shutters down and issue an unconditional surrender. There was some hope when Tholstrup and his extreme static electricity hair won a free 50m out and became our first player to convert a set shot from further than the top of the goal square in about two combined hours of play. I enjoyed his big celebration, and a pretty good performance considering he didn't come in off the back of any blockbuster VFL form. Can we just keep playing him now? He won't get dropped after this, but I'll blow up if his trajectory over the next few weeks is ordinary game > one quarter as a sub > Casey Fields. 

Down the other end the era of umpires just making shit up began when Howes was held in a marking contest but penalised because he wasn't the player facing goal. We got away with it when Gawn cannoned towards the line to touch it through 1mm, after Bobby Hill had already shhhed the crowd. It didn't work for him here, but I'm all for this new trend of taking the piss out of the crowd and your opponents. For one, the more ill-feeling and villainry in this game the better, but most importantly a player is eventually going to make an absolute dick of themselves in a way that will be seen on more replays than Helen D'Amico's norgs. It almost happened the other night when Jack Ginnivan held the ball aloft on his way into goal then nearly kicked it at right angles from a metre out.

Unless you were selling ads on Channel 7, or a Collingwood fan expecting yet another easy win in this fixture, the first quarter was a big success. We didn't look capable of kicking a winning score or sludging the game up enough to win with a shit score, but I was content with staying in it as long as possible and hoping for something unusual to happen. Like the mad Pickett goal where he fumbled the ball forward while trying to gather, then lashed a boot out and the ball kindly bounced along the correct path. 

In lieu of expertly crafted goals I was prepared to take them plucked from the arse in this fashion, but after we'd dominated the centre bounces all day this was reversed a few seconds later when Scott Pendlebury romped through the middle unchallenged in his 414th game. See also former Name of the Year winner Steele Sidebottom, a youngster in comparison after just 343 games. They've been teammates 315 times, while we've only had two players reach 300 games since 1897, and both were dragged over the line half dead. 

If you can get over your animosity towards Collingwood for being a big club and having fans who think they're god's chosen people simply for choosing to follow the biggest team around, they've got a lot of admirable qualities. It probably helps to have more money than the Reserve Bank, decent training facilities, and more good father son players produced by a single man's plums than we've had in total after Ron Barassi, but that's their good fortune. It'll still be funny if all the old players simultaneously expire halfway through the last quarter of the Grand Final though.

Petty nearly countered their counter but treated his set shot in the traditional manner. Now that Turner is re-establishing himself as a shit hot defender I don't suppose we're ever going see him forward again any time soon, so I guess we're just going with Petty as a forward for the rest of the year. He's been a lot better at it than last year, but this is another case where parachuting one genuinely good full forward into our side would make a world of difference. I don't want to rely on Petty kicking goals, but he is very good up the ground so find me the big bastard he can play off inside 50 and aim at from outside then he can be a forward forever. If he kicks 20 goals a year but it helps set the table for somebody else to kick 60, and for Fritsch, Pickett etc... to get into more space then job done. The problem is now we've got several players who might kick 20 each, but none often enough to make us better than a mid-table side.

So there we were pounding away at the forward line for no reward, before Lindsay became the latest Melbourne player to try and fail to escape the mark and reach 'outside five' status, leaving him dancing around like Nigel Smart on hot coals while the umpire was telling him to stand. Cue 50, goal, and some reasonably brutal feedback from morale coordinator Steven May. It's not just because we keep breaking it, but the stand rule became an even bigger farce with the outside five loophole. Umpires often judge a kick hasn't gone far enough when it's barely left the boot, do we trust them to accurately judge distance here? Either make the player stand and bad luck if they get run around, or go back to letting them do star jumps on the mark and I bet nobody spots a drop in the quality of the game.

After Pickett embraced his status as the only player we've got who can pluck a goal from thin air, we nearly got to half time just two points down. That was until a stupid fumble in the final seconds cost us a goal, but this wouldn't have happened if an umpire hadn't invented a reason to pay a free against Melksham at the other end after he was violently mounted in a contest. This was rubbish, but unless the shitbox umpiring comes deep in the last quarter of a thriller it can still be overcome. You can't confidently say we'd have scored even if Melksham got the free, so the reality was we'd just kicked 4.6 in a half, and how are you going to win consistently doing that?  

The sense that our resistance was about to go tits up was helped by conceding a goal right at the start of the third quarter, especially when it was laid out perfectly for a leading forward. It's offensive how badly we've necked ourselves with a substandard attack. It's alleged that Petracca was rotating through the forward line but not for any great benefit. I suppose we should just be happy that he didn't end up in intensive care this year, but this was a game crying out for somebody to single-handedly change everything like he did against Carlton last year. This time with the added benefit of not starting the comeback from seven goals down. He was otherwise perfectly fine, but like almost everyone who's ever kicked goals for us, his attacking life force has been sucked out at industrial vacuum strength. What about when Langford did better contested marks against Hawthorn than our actual forwards, any chance of throwing him down there just in case it makes a difference?

In a taste of things to come, the next goal started with Gawn trying too hard to be the saviour by blowing a risky kick into the middle of the ground. If anyone has the right to make a couple of shit decisions it's the guy who is still several hundred karma points to the good after a decade of saving us from dire situations. I can somewhat understand a teammate not being happy in the heat in the moment, but for those of us who have been watching and enjoying him all this time, just zip up and accept that not everything goes right all the time. How about getting to the point where we don't rely on him to pop up in random places taking saving marks?

We weren't going to sludge our way out of a 20 point deficit, but this is where it got interesting for a bit. Melksham got a goal from the next bounce but even if he missed his next chance, Melk did all the work to create the space for Fritsch, who got a bonus 50 that made sure of the goal. Tholstrup showed a level of joy at his opponent's misfortune which suggests he'll be a key generator of niggle in the future.

That goal lasted a couple of minutes before Lindsay had a tackle unfortunately slip down to the point where it looked like he was trying to apply a Kurt Angle style anklelock. No arguments over that free (though it's a bit harsh that he got fined for tripping, it may have ended in a trip but it's not like he stuck a hand out to grab somebody running past), but when we got one at the other end there was no more Melbourne outcome than Petty missing from right in front. Surprisingly he opted to aim it between the middle posts (not by much), and christ on a pedal powered conveyance the margin was back to seven points at the last change. In the dying seconds there was more commentary gold when Mark Howard said a player "looks at the cock". Combine that with Dwayne's earlier blunder and forget calling games from the studio, I think they were doing it from the Ram Lounge.

If, like me, you were patiently waiting for us to blow the game by wasting a bunch of inside 50s, you'd have enjoyed Petty kicking OOF, getting a free for a push in the process, then putting that OOF as well. Oof indeed. It was a rotten angle that I wouldn't expect him to convert from, but that's the kind of unexpected goal that we don't get enough of. Like, for instance, Fritsch booting the next one from a crazy angle on the boundary line. 

We continued the party by getting first hands on the ball at the next bounce, but when Pickett was caught holding the ball he gave away a stupid 50 for putting the ball on the ground and Fritsch's goal was rendered irrelevant. This was Fritsch's best quarter of the season but he had a big cock-up in the same fashion as Pickett against Sydney, marking at point blank range and trying to play on without realising that there was an opposition player standing right to him. It tied the scores but what a massive waste. He did set up the next one, but Pickett's finish and the sheer good luck of a forward handball bouncing perfectly for him gets more credit.

Just when people were already ready to do a Fitzroy fans and graffiti AFL House in protest about umpiring, there was a karma disaster for Langdon when his fingernail down the back of Daicos caused Nick to fling forward like he'd be shot from a cannon. Sure he'd gotten away with about 100 crimes before this, but it was the undercard to the 'Wrong place, Wrong time' main event which broke out a couple of minutes later.

Tholstrup had another kick to put us in front, and thanks to some idiot directly zooming in excessively it looked like it was going right through the middle until the last second when you realised it was just falling short. That cut the gap to a point and the Pies started winding the clock down with two minutes left, which is usually way too early to try and protect a lead like that, but not a bad idea when the opposition leaves free players everywhere and you can casually boot the ball back and forth and waste time. We finally had a go at manning up and won a stoppage, but blew our load x2 going forward, including Oliver kicking out on the full when he might have been setting up a chance to at least pinch a draw.

And that was the end of us, as more time was drained via training drill kicks before they tried to land the killer blow with one final forward entry. Bit risky in theory, but what are the chances that even if they'd kicked a point we'd have been able to go coast-to-coast and kick a goal on demand? Instead they landed it in the hands of Gawn with 45 seconds left, which under normal circumstances might have opened them up to a lightning counter-attack but without looking at behind the goal footage I'm sure that a wall of Collingwood players were set up in the middle of the ground and we'd have needed everything to go right and/or the ball to miraculously bounce out the back of a pack and in our favour. 

We'll never know because he was called to play on, and had to force the kick due to the close proximity of a defender, causing it to shank horrendously sideways and into the arms of a player on his own 40 metres out for game over. Sensibly, instead of having the shot they dinked it around until time ran out, adding psychological weight to the result by keeping the margin at one point.

I don't blame him for trying something that came off badly, but it was still a notorious way for a game to end. But if that wasn't weird enough, the aftermath featured Turner trying to console his captain before May made a surprise appearance and said something that provoked the usually umflappable and gimmick loving Gawn to shove him away in disgust and say words to the effect of "get fucked". 

Given that this is the same guy who told Max "it doesn't matter what happens, I still love you" before that kick in Geelong, I was hoping he'd just vigorously tried to reassure Gawn of his legend status and it wasn't what Max wanted to hear at the time. From the "I'm thinking about killing somebody" tone of Gawn's post-match interview, this was sadly not the case.

I've got sympathy for May finally snapping after playing yet another great game then standing at the other end while the forwards lose it by playing like escaped mental patients, but this could be the most misplaced spray at a teammate in history. Gawn's kick was a dud and everyone knows it, but considering how many times he's saved us over the years, May's reaction was like kicking Nelson Mandela in the dick on national television. 

There's always somebody who wants to be contrary but not many people will side with him in this debate. And for all the people carrying on like he'd practically spat in Gawn's face, May would know he stuffed up badly here. He's the Kysaiah Pickett of human emotions, if you love the benefits of him playing with raging White Line Fever you've got to accept it'll go wrong sometimes.

I'm sure they'll get over it - and it'll be a good story for the Gawn biography - but Max looked like he wanted to kill on the way off the ground and in the rooms. How much of it was embarrasment at the clanger vs trying not to deck May in French restaurant style we'll never know, but the post-match chat would've been spicy.

This was an all-time great PR disaster but he's still the best Melbourne defender I've ever seen and played a Grand Final with his hamstring hanging on by a thread so apologies for not joining the lynch mob. Other than Pies fans and journos who were handed days of free content, the only people who got anything out of this was the players whose blown chances at the other end were instantly forgotten in all the chaos.

And that's enough of that. As usual we did 80% right and the other 20% was fatal. In the end the only big upset for the day was that instead of being kept awake all night thinking about how we cocked this game up I had my best unmedicated night's sleep in about eight months. Like a lot of things involving Melbourne it makes no sense but go with it.

2025 Allen Jakovich Medal votes
5 - Steven May (there will be no penalty points for making a kent of himself at the end) 
4 - Max Gawn
3 - Daniel Turner
2 - Clayton Oliver
1 - Ed Langdon

Apologies to Bowey, Fritsch, Petracca, Pickett, and Salem.

Leaderboard
The gap at the top is now 4x BOG with 10 games left so fat chance anyone's catching Gawn from here. He's also the only player currently qualified for the Stynes so you wouldn't think somebody's going to score 40 and average more than 10 hitouts a game. No change in the other awards, but May and Turner (deemed still eligible by the selection committee) are both closing on Bowey in the Seecamp. 

39 - Max Gawn (PROVISIONAL WINNER: Jim Stynes Medal for Ruckman of the Year)
19 - Kysaiah Pickett
17 - Jake Bowey (LEADER: Marcus Seecamp Medal for Defender of the Year), Christian Petracca
15 - Clayton Oliver
10 - Harvey Langford (LEADER: Rising Star Award), Jake Melksham
9 - Kade Chandler, Ed Langdon
8 - Steven May, Daniel Turner
7 - Xavier Lindsay, Tom McDonald
6 - Jack Viney
4 - Tom Sparrow
3 - Christian Salem
2 - Jake Lever, Harrison Petty
1 - Trent Rivers, Harry Sharp

Aaron Davey Medal for Goal of the Year
I liked the Fritsch one from the boundary, and it may have been in the mix for the top award if the game had ended differently. It shouldn't matter whether the goal was kicked in a win or not, but in this case I can't possibly elevate it about Chandler against West Coast.

Next Week
Until now I thought we had the bye, but turns out we're playing Port on Sunday. So instead it's bye to any leftover good feelings from our revival if we lose to the only team in the league nearly as flaky as us. With two unpredictable teams this could go anywhere, but the question is whether this near miss is taken as 'near enough is good enough', or if they try something different. 

What that difference would be is anyone's guess, unless it involves a surprise debut or another Langdon-esque shock role change. I half arse watched the first half of the Casey game on Saturday night and even though they were playing decent opposition again there wasn't much to get excited about. Jack Billings got a lot of touches, but with respect no thanks. I don't care about filling individual needs and team balance, if he gets a game before Tom McDonald I'll spew up. Obviously everyone in the Casey side was trying to get in the senior side or impress the AFL scouts because they kicked 7.15, but at least it was in a win.

Neither Jefferson or Sharp played so you can't judge their claims, and it doesn't make any sense to me to hold Culley or Sestan (scratch that one, he was just injured) out then debut them after a week off immediately before a bye but that implies our selection can be judged by normal human logic. I'm going for the wild, never to happen Gawn goes forward shock theory. Lindsay has had a good start to his career but he can have the "nothing is guaranteed" busting down to sub. And for christ's sake just give Laurie a full game, he might not take advantage of it and is quite possibily stuck in the 'too good for the VFL, not good enough for the AFL' death strip but it's insanity that they made him wait 12 rounds for a game, then booted him out after one quarter when he had 21 teammates who didn't give a rat's arse. Compare to van Rooyen, who had a full game here and didn't get near it.

Here's to the Wheel of Misfortune spinning against Port and giving us some reward for an improved but premiership pointless performance this week.

IN: Campbell, Laurie
OUT: van Rooyen, Windsor (omit), Lindsay (to sub)
LUCKY: Nil
UNLUCKY: Billings, Jefferson, Sharp, McDonald.

Final thoughts
In case my family reads these posts after I cark it, thanks to the four-year-old kid who had NFI what was going on and started cheering me up with random gimmicks within minutes of the final siren. This was a shit result and I hated it, but I'm officially too past it and broken down to tip the couch over in despair. This, I think, is a good thing.

Evil Angles

After rescuing our season from death row, there was always a surprise loss as favourites lurking somewhere in the future. Even with my vivid imagination for disaster and 35+ years of historical precedent for Melbourne blowing games in strange ways, I didn't expect it to come via one of the great self-sabotages. We kicked 7.21, had set shots from 20 metres out that didn't score, let the opposition go five goals up before getting serious, and the one in our second half 1.10 came from a distance even our players couldn't miss from. If Pakistan lost a cricket match in equivalent circumstances you'd call the regulators.

This wasn't the first step towards a partnership with Western United, it was just another edition of us not being able to hit the side of a barn with a nuclear warhead. It only just missed our all-time worst list accuracy list because players of the early 1900s were more worried about dying of Tuberculosis than aiming straight. Yet somehow, despite kicking like (choose from these previous used descriptions of wonkiness) ice addicts on a three day bender/the deranged/drunks/old people/Heather Mills-McCartney/Pegleg Pete the Pirate we were still in the game early in the final quarter. 

There was no landslide finish a'la the Gabba, and after a day of spurning chances then letting St Kilda transfer the ball from defence to attack faster than the space shuttle there's no doubt the right team won. It ended with our players thinking about whether they were supposed to put the bins out on Sunday night and running out the clock in the most contractually obligated fashion possible. The way their day was going they'd have left it in front of the wrong house, if not the middle of the road.

In an alternative universe we may have done enough to scare the Saints into choking and allowing a thieving win, or come flying back from five goals to piss it in like Alice 2017 but the price was paid for choosing slapstick. By the end it was so silly that I couldn't even get angry, and was just left irritated at a return to thinking 'imagine if we had a forward line?' 

You've got to do something righ to kick 21 points, but there's a big difference between regularly going back to the middle after goals, and piling them up in an uncouth heap while the opposition tries their best to facilitate a 7, 8, 9, or more point play. Eventually they'd get sick of pissfarting around and bounce down the other end in three or four kicks, where inevitably somebody would be either standing on their own or taking advantage of a mismatch because there was no chance for the big defenders to get in position when the ball transitioned so quickly. 

Saints fans should be happy to win, but temper your expectations for the future a bit because you're not going to be handed premiership points in a giftwrapped box like this every week. But they got them and we just got renewed self-doubt, so congratulations to Ross Lyon for finally regaining the joy of tormenting us, and to his next door neighbour in the coaches' box Jared Rivers who I'd like to think is the real brains behind the operation.  

If you're into omens and mysticism, the pre-match hype video was an early sign of things going tits up. It was 99.9% about our resurgence and foolishly raised the prospect of a Brisbane-esque run to the flag. Steady on. The opposition finally got a mention with an off-hand "and they'll be playing St Kilda" at the end. This didn't make a difference to the final result, but I hope the people who could impact the result treated the Saints more seriously than Fox Footy. Despite going all-in, somebody on one of their many throwaway filler shows (including the famous TikTok ladder update) will undoubtedly say something like "Melbourne got ahead of themselves" with absolutely no sense of irony.

This was a pox result, but I don't think it was a case of excess bathwater consumption. After falling in that massive hole in the first quarter the game was pretty similar to last week, only without the killer instinct that made sinking the boot into the Swans such fun. Quoth Love Theme From Finey's Final Siren, sometimes you kick, sometimes you get kicked. And sometimes you look like total wankers by kicking seven goals from about 35 shots.

I wasted far too much time scrolling AFL Tables to work out the last time we kicked 21 behinds and lost, and the answer was Round 11, 2000 when we brought an extra level of stink to Football Park with 8.22. Extra goal aside, I'd say that's worse because the forward line had Farmer, Neitz, Robertson and Schwarz. Our most behinds with fewer than 10 goals was 8.25 against Hawthorn in 1979, but I assume nobody minded because it was better than losing by 190 points a fortnight earlier. The reigning champion is Round 14, 1976 as we rewarded fans for carting themselves to Waverley with 6.22. And on the other side of the ledger, because this up is more enjoyable than talking about our most recent game, spare a posthumous thought for the Round 16, 1913 team who scored a very sensible 4.2 but lost to Geelong's 4.23.

That's all the distracting content I've got, so unfortunately it's back to the present day. We'd recently pulled ahead of the Saints in the all-important, and surprisingly competitive, race to avoid being Victoria's worst team, and hadn't lost to them since a fed-up woman offered crucial post-goal feedback to Nick Hind, but they're a team of wild mood swings so who could definitively rule out an upset win here? Sure, they suffered a tragic loss to a putrid West Coast side but who hasn't done that recently? (Answer - everyone else except us and North).  

You're nuts to ever expect a Melbourne win, but on the balance of things I thought we'd get through this before suffering a violent reality check on King's Birthday. As we've failed to reach par all golf references are cancelled, except to say that there was a noticeably savage dip in the ground at the left corner of the centre square that made it look like a mini golf course. Surprisingly, nobody got injured stumbling up or down the hill, much to the disappointment of everyone who wants to immediately tear up our contract with the Northern Territory.

I'd rather not play there either, but next time we hit rock bottom fans will be leaping over the side like passengers on the Titanic so we'd better not give up several hundred thousand dollars until making sure tin ratting's not required. If they started a 'stay at home fund' to make up the difference I'd bang an extra $50 on my membership every year to help (and why not, I'm already wasting money on reserved seats that never get used, and a guaranteed Grand Final ticket that has been relevant once for somebody else), but assuming we'd simply have played better at the MCG because it's the MCG is optimistic when we've done 6.15, 7.14 and 8.14 there in the last two years. 

If you're good enough you'll win anywhere. The travel certainly didn't seem to get in the way of St Kilda's plans. There's an argument that the opposition sides fly in like any regular interstate team while we're there all week and the players probably just want to go home, but that didn't do us much harm the day we poleaxed Adelaide and sent Don Pyke bonkers.   

After two weeks of renewed Kingsley activity, I knew we were vulnerable to being fixed up by a novelty player, but the only problem was picking which one because I had even less idea who their fringe players were than Sydney. With players like H. Boxshall and I. Keeler, the rest of their list may as well have looked like this: 

They sure had the last laugh, and by the time it was over we certainly knew who Keeler was. As for Boxshall, I found it odd that his name was apparently pronounced Bok-Shall like Bok Choi, and not Box-hall like Box Hill. Maybe it was a Dwayne Russell thing, who I only endured because the alternative was Brian Taylor waffling on about why you can't commentate from a studio while simultaneously proving that some people can't do it from anywhere.

By the time Dwayne's Big Book O'Corny Gags hda delivered Turner having "the springs in Alice Springs" and a goal (obviously not to us) being described as "dead centre in the red centre" I was tempted by the commercial and Chopper Read options. Lucky I stuck with Foxtel or I'd have missed Gerard Healy saying he spent half time in "The Crack Lab", which is apparently a reference to another program and not a New Jack City theme room in their offices. Would explain some of the commentary. 

There were more portents of evil in the pre-match ceremonies, with Russell Robertson (he of a 3.3 contribution to that 2000 game) cheerfully making announcements with no idea that the microphone was broken. It sparked into life for a couple of seconds, then died again as players were shown wondering if a surprise minutes' silence had been declared. I once did the reverse of this at a local soccer game, loudly mocking the tape that was supposed to play the national anthem for breaking down only to find out that somebody prominent had died. Insert Curb Your Enthusiam music. 

As they panned across the players looking baffled, somebody snuck in a replacement microphone and the rest of the festivities went off as expected. If it was a true representation of what was about to happen the backup mic would have started blaring out Shoop Shoop Diddy Wop Cumma Cumma Wang Dang at ear-splitting volume with nobody knowing how to turn it off. 

There was nothing for fans of Monte Video and the Cassettes, but 'Melbourne Dominate Early For Little Reward' fanatics were in heaven. Last year we looked unstoppable in this game for the first 10 minutes then nearly lost by a hundred so I wasn't falling for any early good signs, but the setup for the first goal was yet another in a long list of 2025 false alarms. Petracca dragged the ball in on the ground in a way that usually ends in holding the ball, but he stood up and powered out of the congestion, allowing Oliver to find Fritsch in his preferred miles of space. Fritsch mastered the wind to convert the set shot, temporarily putting us one goal ahead of points before we started to treat shots on goal like kicking into the wake vortex of a jumbo jet.

If you're kidnapped by militants and forced to watch the replay at gunpoint this is the bit where you should give up and ask them to get it over with quickly. There's no point seeing us threaten more goals for no reward. Melksham recovered from seemingly blowing his shoulder to bits to kicking a point 10 seconds later, before Johnson did perhaps the worst around-the-corner set shot ever to leave us 1.1 + an OOF from three shots. It never got much better, and like the early stages last week what's the bloody point dominating if you don't convert? That got fixed in time to go home happy, albeit with the help of woeful opposition. 

Another key difference between this and the Sydney game was that Ross The Boss And Friends realised that you can't just sit back and enjoy Pickett running riot in all parts of the ground. They sent our old friend Marcus Windjammer to tag him, and though Pickett still had more centre clearances than anyone else on our side that says more about the rest of them than him. He didn't take the tagging particularly well, eventually biffing Windjammer in the guts at a stoppage directly in front of goal. 

Maybe it wouldn't have descended into gut punch mayhem if he'd just booted the cover off a set shot from 20 metres out instead of trying to delicately nine iron (oi, no golf chat - editor) it through. Unlike most of the shots that followed it was going right through the middle, but he failed to account for the St Kilda player standing on the line and marking it. Even worse, his teammates had already marked it down as a behind at the very least and started to rotate, which allowed St Kilda to fang down the other end untouched for a two goal turnaround.

When you've got a player who does crazy things for a living you've got to accept that it will occasionally go wrong, and this was the kind of off-chops manoeuvre that made his performance last week so thrilling but by the time the Saints were kicking their fifth goal in a row and we were still waiting for the second it seemed a lot worse than his unnecessary full speed play-on from 20 metres out against Sydney. I expected him to balance the ledger with some zany over the head goal from the pocket later (spoiler - nope), but it went from a momentum killer to a momentum slaughterer.

By the time I. Keeler got his second he was on the verge of becoming I. Kingsley, and we might have been rorted out of a free in the build-up, but good luck to teams that create loose ball contests in front of goal. We were back to panic thumping the ball inside 50 and watching it come straight back. The farce level went into overdrive when Petracca was given the ball running into an open goal, but aimed like he was trying to land his kick in that truck parked behind the goal.

Our much-anticipated second goal finally arrived about 15 minutes late, when one-armed man Melksham converted a free against the backdrop of the siren operator leaning on the button as if he'd dropped dead on it. That reduced the margin to a gettable 24 points, leaving it feeling a little less like a replay of the Fremantle debacle. Not much changed after quarter time, and Melk's goal had to survive a couple of early St Kilda shots. 

Evil Nathan Jones missed another set shot, even if I still vehemently dispute that Johnson is a serious part of our future I'm warming to the cult figure potential of his unbridled enthusiasm. If you're only going to have four kicks a game they may as well be 75% on goal. He also brings a lot of contests that won't be reflected in the stats. There was also the clobbering of the opposition's most influential player, but we can't condone that. Any chance of genetically splicing his attack on the ball with van Rooyen's natural talents?

It didn't take long to concede again, even if McVee desperately tried to claim he'd marked a ball that went half a metre over the line. I'll assume the video review system was in play, because it would be ridiculous if not available at every ground in the country, but they didn't bother to humour him by watching it again. I'd be suspicious that the TV didn't show a replay but Channel 7 probably won't give them access to show it.

After those hot opening minutes we were back to early season impotency inside forward 50. The cause wasn't helped by giving away frees in front of goal, before Petracca made up for his first quarter howler with a set shot. For everyone who thinks we'd have magically kicked straight at the MCG I bet he'd have kicked this into the behind post there.

Things were briefly going our way, with four umpires missing Johnson leaping off the deck to whack Wanganeen-Milera in the head, and Chandler making a game of it again by cutting the margin to 17. Johnson almost got the third toepoke goal out of three for his career, then that might have become a seven point play when a defender stuck the ball down Chandler's throat. He hit the post, but we had the Saints rattled again instead of letting them carrying on like the 1989 Victorian State of Origin team. It got all the way to a three point play after Gawn's miss, before shock horror, this failure to convert ended in St Kilda kicking a goal from the square. So a minus three point play then. I'd have got the shits if there hadn't already been a total evacuation during the first quarter. 

After we conceded another slingshot goal from close range I couldn't even blame Pickett's set shit for beginning the rot because we'd done so many stupid things since. Petracca kept it interesting by lobbing one from distance through almost straight after, but we were second best in this contest by some distance. Sharp might have chipped a bit more off the lead but his snap hit almost as high up the post as it's possible to go. It still felt like we might get a run on, and when Johnson got away with a good old fashioned shove to the back and finally kicked a set shot we were back to a more respectable 13 points behind.

I had some faith that everything would turn out alright if we got to half time without doing anything insane. Like, for instance, Gawn's dinky kick in defence with seconds left being cut off by the returning Keeler. We only survived conceding a goal in the final seconds when Jack Higgins' headfirst human cannonball dive into a pack somehow didn't end in his head being partially ripped off.   

It was back to the good old days of getting the ball forward a lot but not looking like regularly breaking through. Once Pickett was removed as a factor there was nobody else who could conjure goals out of nothing, and turns out we weren't going to win it through the traditional method of converting shots. The Saints did their best to keep us alive with a pair of colossal fuckups while walking into open goals on the break. Petty hadn't done much, but he did set up a chance for Chandler. The only problem was that the last kick drifted unnecessarily towards the boundary, forcing him to kick from a ridiculous angle. 

The nominal visitors weren't going to need many chances to kick a score we'd be unable to cover, and we contributed by a) not turning possession into regular scoring opportunities, b) missing the ones we did create, then c) allowing them to chip the ball around to unattended players before setting up the type of set shot we'd have converted about once every 10 tries. After yet another end-to-end move they nuked a third golden chance for the quarter, but guess what happened when we had the chance to make them pay for it? 

Our tally was now 6.12, only a point worse than the inaccurate point last week. After missing his first chance at #7, Petty got the second after tackling a player who was not taking us at all seriously while holding the ball in front of goal. He got a handball off at the last minute but was still pinged, which was better than earlier in the quarter when Johnson got away with holding the ball as much as it's possible for one man to do. None of this helped, but there was a moment right after Petty's goal when Lindsay legged it inside 50 but sprayed a chance to make the margin one straight kick. Alternatively, in our case, six not straight kicks. 

For a moment it looked like we were about to take off, including another forward pelting that was only broken up by a leaping interception of Sharp's handball. Then we found out why other clubs are mad for Wanganeen-Milera, who avoided concussion in the Johnson 'collision' and returned to take the piss out of us without anyone legally trying to stop him. He set up a shot with a wonderful kick, only for Jack Higgins to randomly kick the ball straight up in the air. We reacted to this spot of good luck by conceding anyway, and on the occasion of Dan Butler's fourth goal it was OUT: Kingsley, IN: The Brent Harvey Society For One More Great Game Before I Go.* 

(* I didn't check his age before writing this, and bullshit he's only 28) 

We had a last chance to bring the margin into single figures and give the opposition something to think about at the last break. For once this didn't die with a missed shot, and we got nothing at all when Sparrow tried to pull his kick at the last minute to somebody who wasn't just not on the same page, but not reading in the same language. I respect that Sparrow isn't getting a lot of stats because he's doing defensive jobs, but whatever his defensive job was here it didn't stop the Saints from teleporting the ball from one end to the other so unless you can convince me otherwise I'd like to try something else.

After a couple of decent four quarters in a row, this was going to require another. The problem is that we could do everything right and just not score enough. It was back to the Essendon/Geelong experience of going behind, and threatening a comeback for a few minutes before going back to having no idea how to smash through brute force goals. We gave Johnson the hook and swapped Turner for Petty, trying the same reasonable gamble that went badly wrong against Hawthorn. Respectfully, St Kilda is no Hawthorn so it didn't go as badly. 

When he marked the first kick out of the middle in the last quarter it looked like the move could make a difference. Naturally he missed, as did Melksham from a much more gettable set shot straight after. . Readers from the future, you will not be surprised to find out that St Kilda went down the other end where a guy was standing on his own 20 metres out. He uncharitably opted to kick straight instead of spraying it wildly and I was pretty sure we wouldn't score another 22 points (in any combination). But I didn't expect to get a run on against Brisbane either.

Alas there was no exciting finish this time, and we just ebbed away to a half-arsed, low intensity death. The commentators got morally outaged about whatever their stupid pressure gauge was saying, but it looked as half-arsed as the rest of the game to me. By the last couple of minutes I didn't want to ruin things by kicking another goal and was hoping the point count would climb to even more ridiculous levels. We stood on 21, which was a putrid 25% conversion rate. Don't factor in the ones that missed or you'll end up in state care.

It was shite, but that's where we're at. We'll pull out some crazy wins and lose random games. This is officially what mid-table mediocrity looks like. Better than being 0-5.

2025 Allen Jakovich Medal votes
5 - Daniel Turner
4 - Christian Petracca
3 - Steven May
2 - Max Gawn
1 - Kade Chandler

Apologies to McVee and Johnson just for being a madman.

Leaderboard
Petracca slices a couple from Max's lead, but still trails by 3.5 BOGs. Still more than half a season to go so it's not over yet, but you'd want to get a run on soon. No change in the minor awards, but Turner and May are now on the board in the Seecamp.

35 - Max Gawn (PROVISIONAL WINNER: Jim Stynes Medal for Ruckman of the Year)
19 - Kysaiah Pickett
17 - Jake Bowey (LEADER: Marcus Seecamp Medal for Defender of the Year), Christian Petracca
13 - Clayton Oliver
10 - Harvey Langford (LEADER: Rising Star Award), Jake Melksham
9 - Kade Chandler
8 - Ed Langdon
7 - Xavier Lindsay, Tom McDonald
6 - Jack Viney
5 - Daniel Turner
4 - Tom Sparrow
3 - Steven May, Christian Salem
2 - Jake Lever, Harrison Petty
1 - Trent Rivers, Harry Sharp

Aaron Davey Medal for Goal of the Year
This feels like the most sarcastic awarding since those AFLW games where we only kicked one. It should go to somebody who converted a set shot just to encourage the rest of them but Petracca from distance gets the nod. Chandler vs West Coast still leads. 

Next Week
This took a lot of the air out of the King's Birthday balloon, which may be a good resetting of expectations before what I assume will be an unpleasant result. We'll never know if the result of this week's game would change if played at the 'G, but if we could rip out a great performance next week I'd be pleased to retrospectively pretend it would've changed. 

You never know what sort of weird stuff will happen in a game, but I'm so scarred by disappointments in this fixture over the years that I find it easier to visualise fights in the crowd than any situation where we win. Would be nice, but more likely Mason Cox becomes the first triple-Kingsley inductee and I get epic cultural cringe when the same minor league fans who were probably did a standing ovation in front of the TV when Liam Jurrah was shown carry on about Brayden Maynard like he's a war criminal.

For the second week in a row, I can't take VFL form seriously because we thrashed witches' hat opposition. This time it was an AFL Reserves side, but the 1-7 Sydney didn't offer much more resistance than Preston. Incidentally, the quality of our goalkicking against the Bullants was slightly diminished this week when they let a Southport player kick 13. Unlike last week, when Casey did all the hard work in the first three quarters then put the feet up, this time they only led by three goals at the last change before piling on 11 to nil.

Assuming Viney is ready I'm having him because anti-social behaviour may be required, which just leaves the big question of who replaces Johnson.The form choice is Jefferson, the long-term choice is van Rooyen, the Demonblog choice is McDonald, the Do It For The Lols choice is Campbell, and it's not going to be Fullarton or Verrell. 

Jefferson has consecutive five goals hauls against questionable opposition but I haven't got a cracker of faith in him doing it against the premiership favourites in front of 80,000 people and he can't convincingly play second ruck. Maybe Petty could do that bit, but how many compromises do you make to get somebody into the side when their goals may as well have come against cardboard cutouts. I'm happy for him to play again later in the year but don't think it's worth forcing it now. If it can't be McDonald, and it won't be, I'll go for van Rooyen and fingers crossed he gets the horn for the big occasion and grasps his chance. 

And it feels like a pisstake by making Laurie wait half a season to get a game then making him sub, but it would be even more ridiculous doing that and then booting him out after playing one quarter.

IN: van Rooyen, Viney
OUT: Johnson (susp), Sparrow (omit)
LUCKY: Petty, Sharp, Windsor
UNLUCKY: Campbell, Howes, Jefferson, McDonald

Final thoughts
I was almost roped into the prospect of a wild ride into the finals before this, but am back to lying int he middle of the road waiting to be crushed by the Reality Bus. There may be a period with competing Spitebury and Bradbury plans but I will dead-set cease to exist if we can avoid doing silly stuff long enough to challenge the top eight from here. It'll be easier on your emotions to go back to thinking about ways we can disadvantage Essendon. 

Bright lights, bigger city

Even though Sydney's doing one of their occasional teases of going down the drain, who wasn't a little bit concerned about violently falling to earth after our heroics last week? Me for one, but only due to being extremely concerned instead. I didn't get used to being confident when we were a top side, it's not going to happen on the road back to mid-table mediocrity.

You could make a case for either team winning here so it wasn't a Richmond or West Coast style banana peel game where Me-LOL-bourne could appear at any minute. The Swans look ordinary but they did play in a Grand Final 12 games ago. Sure, they may as well have no shown up that day but on the whole their September campaign was a lot better than us having a proxy was Christian Petracca's family through the media.

I wasted about 25 minutes going for Sydney that day because I wanted James Jordon to be on the ground in a flag (+ a bit of residual bitterness against various Brisbane players) but wasn't invested enough to know exactly who else was playing for them. Surely not a large chunk of the randoms involved here, including somebody called Riley Bice who sounds like a fake names from an unlicensed video game. Keep the GTA: Bice City headline on ice in case he's ever caught cavorting with hookers.

Obviously these things go both ways, but other than perhaps Aidan Johnson and Harry Sharp it feels like our lineup should be familiar to people with only a minor interest in opposition clubs. For the first time this year our side featured the very recognisible duo of Lever and May after they passed each other at the emergency department earlier in the season. This came at the expense of Tom McDonald, causing a bit of excessive shit cracking on selection night. Good to see people firing up about the changes again instead of just taking whatever slurry they're offered, but even as a long-time Sizzle fanatic it wasn't worth losing your rag over - or in some cases implying that Lever is no good anymore so we should just leave him to pull pud in the VFL until someone gets injured. It also made sense when we found out Sydney's forward line consisted of a ruckman, a defender, and thin air.

It might have been more polite to list him as 'managed' rather than 'omitted', but it was obviously the former because they didn't make him play in the waste of everyone's time VFL mismatch on Saturday. It doesn't hurt to give players a rest late in their career (take note when Gawn expires from overuse), but to reignite the Send Sizzle Forward campaign for a second week in a row, I contend he would be better at doing the second ruck/forward thing than Johnson. The idea is that Evil Nathan Jones has more years left in him so we may as well give him the experience, but if you mysteriously teleported us into a final tomorrow I know which one I'd prefer. Unless there's a teleporting detour to pick up Luke Jackson on the way, in which case all the alternatives are out of a job.

If you believe Jackson really does want to come back, how are we supposed to pull it off without losing the biggest generator of electricity on the eastern seaboard by sending Pickett the other way? Especially after he's just played the most bonkers forward game in recent memory, kicking five, and missing several others by a variety of exciting methods. Kysaiah is not somebody to be judged on a simplistic category like disposal efficiency, but how often do you see a performance that exciting when 56% of a player's disposals missed the mark? He woke up on Sunday morning and decided to try and kick spectacular goals at every opportunity, while also turning up at the odd centre bounce and carrying on like he was Gary Ablett. Refer previous comments about the course of history changing if he hadn't run into a sliding Darcy Moore during the deadest of rubbers.

On the subject of people who have been involved in important collisions with Collingwood's captain, this was Christian Petracca's 200th game, a milestone that may not have happened for reasons up to and including being dead. After an off-season of unpleasantness and his public sense of helplessness as we sucked pond water early in the year, this was a good opportunity to reacquaint yourself with all the fantastic stuff he's done over the years. Obviously the highlight was a BOG performance in a Grand Final, including the all-important goal that kicked off the Mad Minute, but he has generally been a safe, sensible, and highly effective player for a decade and I love him for it. 

I remember the feeling of a Human Centipede-level stitch-up when Petracca did a knee in his first pre-season. We'd only had one tentatively 'not awful' four win season under Paul Roos so losing the #2 player in the draft to a season-long injury was like a surprise kick in the dick just when you thought things were getting better. 

At the time you didn't know it was (so far, not my fault if it happens again) or he had previously undiagnosed shit genetics that risked an ACL blowout every time he changed direction. There was extra fear when he turned up and was obviously quite good, but in lieu of further knee trouble he's gone through a series of novelty injuries ranging from comical to extremely serious. First he hurt his ankle playing basketball, then got bitten by a dog, and had to be fished out of a pool after a training session disaster. Then after a few years of just generally being fantastic, the King's Birthday debacle blew everything up. 

With all that going on you've got to be good at footy to be remembered more for your playing career than bad luck. Challenge accepted and he was one of the best players in the competition between going ballistic at about the same time as COVID 19 and his injury last year. He's still one of our most important players, and I might be setting myself up for heartbreak but I feel like he's warming to the idea of going out as a one club legend instead of doing a 'life begins at 30' tour elsewhere. I know players of his calibre probably look at some of the fringe players experiencing games like Anzac Day while they've got to play in front of 6000 people and a tree in Alice Springs, but this is home, don't risk going unappreciated elsewhere. What about when Oliver ran in for a manly snog during the post-match interview? Nature is healing, even if our salary cap isn't.

Also coming good, our win loss record. Previously a misery-inducing 0-5, now 5-6 with even the loss coming after three quarters of matching a toppish team. I could see us winning here, but didn't expect it to be courtesy of a joyous rampage. To be a bit ungrateful in advance, we did concede more goals than usual, but I suppose it balances out when you also kick a (relative) shitload the other end. All this still without a forward line you'd trust to score over a hundred points to save your life.

It started with another throwback to 2020 when Frtisch found space to mark on the lead but at a difficult angle on the absolute end of his range. He didn't need to horrendously shank it OOF, but it did eventually set up the first goal, where Gawn politely dismissed former understudy Grundy at a ball-up, snatched the ball, and spun around for a towering, high-altitude snap. That's the way to do it when you're down to about a 6.2% chance of kicking a set shot. This ended up being our biggest score since Grundy met Schache and we should've beaten North by the ton. Which makes sense after being as boring as bat shit for much of the last two years. 

I don't expect us to score like this again any time soon, but a few swashbuckling attacking displays would be good for our reputation. Maybe Channel 7 will welcome us back to prime time? Previously that would be a double-edged sword because you could avoid the ads but still had to put up with the shouting of drivel, but thanks to the Foxtel commentary option you can see your side in the national spotlight and have a choice of which call you find less offensive.

In Sunday's case, Channel 7 had Brian Taylor so the obvious choice was to listen to anything else, including somebody reading out your death sentence. The margin between options was a lot bigger than it would've been if we'd got the early game call team of Dwayne Russell and Kelli Underwood, but I'd still pick them as a matter of principle. I've seen a clip of Big Turd having a big old Broadcast Wars style sook about Fox doing their commentary from a studio, which is not ideal but they can call from the moon if it means not listening to some blockhead going on about Dr. Gary Zimmerman.

At this point Channel 7's News Director would have had the feet up, thinking there was no way the game was going to breach 6pm and create schedule havoc. Unless there was a spate of major injuries requiring players to be carted off, a random outbreak of lightning, or the scoreboard catching fire, nothing was going to make this game run long. It didn't seem not a surprise outburst of goals, because our doing all the attacking for no reward is the second longest-running storyline in Australia behind Home and Away. 

Melksham had a chance to continue the party from last week, but from the same spot where he snapped a crucial goal at the Gabba the thrice back from the dead great man did a weird, power-free snap that landed in the square. He wasn't as dominant as last week but still kicked three so job very much done. The good news is that his first miss wasn't a sign that his footy life gauge has run out, because he hammered one through from further out right at the end. Sadly he is probably due a managing soon, especially now that King's Birthday has become a live contest again after looking like it was going to be a ritual sacrifice earlier in the season. We haven't got anyone on the list close to a replacement (in some ways Pickett comes closest, but Melk could still be there longer than him), and when he retires this is exactly the type of experienced role player we need to pluck from elsewhere.

We didn't look like kicking a decent score, but I didn't fancy Sydney to fare much better. They were awfully slow, and their first decent chance died when a kick to a leading player in space landed at his feet, about 2cm from the boundary line. The Richmond/North game had some outrageous number of stoppages, and in the early stages this was headed the same way. Enter Kysaiah Pickett to crack things open, giving a taste of what was to come by declining to take a set shot from the boundary, choosing to run around the man on the mark while he was looking down and kicking grass, before booting it through with a satisfying level of power.

Sadly, after several minutes where they looked half a chance to finish on 0.0, this prompted the visitors to turn up and Peter Ladhams seemingly time travelled straight from a 1985 pub brawl to kick their opener. This was responded to straight out of the middle by Melksham, somebody who actually has recent experience of fighting in a licensed venue, who used wily veteran magic to flap his arms around and make sure the umpire saw a jumper hold. 

As usual we were doing everything right except taking advantage of dominance, and when Ladhams (Father Ted fans, can you ever hear his name without thinking about this?) got his second Kingsley Manor issued a watch and act alert. We usually do alright in holding big name key forwards, so why not let somebody unexpected run riot two weeks in a row? Stand down Kent, he may not have had another kick for the rest of the game.

An eight point quarter time lead didn't feel like value for effort but I'd still rather be in front than chasing. In the end we got away with wasting chances, but with the game still in the balance every failed assault on the 50 or missed shot felt like tempting fate. Like when we opened the second quarter by caning through the middle, only for Salem to flub the last kick inside 50. This didn't work, and he had another couple of rocky moments, but after being suss about Salem this year I thought this was his best game by miles. Nice to see him and Rivers getting more of a run through the midfield as well. The more players who can go through there the merrier, and as much as I cherish Viney his absence cracks open a spot behind Oliver, Petracca, and Pickett for experimentation.     

That near miss led to the Swans going straight down the other end for a goal from the guy who jumps on Petracca in that god awful toothpaste ad. But the Colgate marketing department must have flogged themselves senseless when Petracca got the next, thumping one through to the left side of the screen, from 50 metres out in a manner that was pretty much identical to the first goal on 25/09/2021. Then he continued to play the hits by missing a set shot, then setting Sparrow up for our next goal.  

Speaking of greatest hits packages, we then let an emergency forward who looked less comfortable than any of Jared Rivers, Colin Garland or James Frawley kick his third goal in 100 games. The only consolation was that all three have come this season, after going nine years without kicking any score. Is that the record (where behind figures are available) for most games without kicking anything? Even Jamie Shanahan got a point in game 83. Our record seems to be Oscar McDonald, who went without for his first 72 games. On a related note, I looked at the Freo injury list to see if he was hurt again (answer - no) and they have a player called 'Odin Jones', continuing a tradition of silly names that involved Tim Ruffles and the time they doubled down on the nautical themes by playing Shipp and Gale.

Our (belated) reply was one for people who get angry about switching play. I'm happy for them to do it, just scared that it will fall apart with an unpleasant helicopter pass being chopped off in the middle of the ground. In this case we dinked around and ended up in the same spot where it had started, but that was enough to lay down the path for a long kick to our advantage inside 50, where Petty gathered, realised he'd probably kick it into Row Z if he tried a shot from there, and sensibly handballing to the passing Pickett instead. He overcame the obstacle of heading towards the boundary line at speed with a ripper finish, before extracting from the centre bounce and landing a kick with Chandler. I'm not saying he was necessarily aiming for him, but when it missed everyone else Kade just happened to be in the right place at the right time. 

Chandler's set shot went off sideways like bootleg fireworks, but don't let that detract from the wonderful move that set it up. You sensed that Sydney only needed the slightest breeze to fall over, and by this point Pickett was playing with a raging horn, narrowly missed a pair of snaps, and everything was going right except we'd kicked 3.7 for the quarter. After all that there was nothing surer than Sydney reacting to minutes of pressure by going down the other end and scoring, which was only avoided by a) Bowey's smother, and b) a shizen handball to a player who was about to pelt inside 50 for a shot. 

Dean Cox comes across as somebody who will eventually snap and cause Clarko-esque destruction in the coaches' box, but he had to appreciate our efforts to keep his side in the game. He'd have been less thrilled by Melksham diving into a tackle for a late free, but normal service continued with another poster. I wasn't arguing a near four goal lead at half time, but the World Wildlife Fund hasn't done to preserve real-life swans as we did to keep the footy version in this game. All indicators pointed to a win but we've lost games in 10 minutes of terror before, so the safest course of action was to rip the life support system plug from the wall ASAP.

Our prospects further improved by Pickett opening the third term by finally landing a snap from general play, only to quickly give it back as Fritsch tried desperately not to be on the mark and missed being told to stand. And aren't these the administrative, nit-picky rules that we all watch the game for? Then there was more Pickett action, as he tried a torp that went so badly that it went at near right angles from 50 metres out and still just landed in the field of play. It was one of the worst set shots ever, and the game was still somewhat in the balance, but he's earned the right to try some offbeat shenanigans. Kysaiah later revealed that it was an attempted tribute to Uncle Byron, and I'd prefer he did his bit for family tradition by kicking an optimistic set shot like a bag of cement than going through opponents like a freight train (complete with Rex Hunt doing an unexpected Kevin Bloody Wilson reference).

By the time he was kicking another point, which came after Gawn doing likewise, the actual gap was 24 but the 'feels like' margin was about 10 goals. Unfortunately that means nothing, and after Salem turned the ball over, then gave away a 50, Sydney got their fifth goal straight from set shots and the door was hanging invitingly open if they had any extra gears to go into. They did not, and just as I was reaching for the brown undies that man Pickett walloped through a shot from the boundary to give us some breathing room. Next thing Fritsch is marking at the top of the square and my blood pressure was retreating from fatal levels. 

Then Salem made up for his earlier clanger with another that worked in his favour, technically setting up his own goal by booting it straight at a defender, who shat himself and ended up letting Salem kick a goal. He did some unusual stuff during this game, but it was far outweighed by the good. Just a few minutes after the Swans were presented with a warm invitation to get back in the game we ended the quarter hovering around the famous Chris Sullivan Line. 

Pickett's off-chops insanity continued when he did brilliantly to dispose of an opponent and mark 20 metres out, before the extreme rush of blood made him try to play on and miss. He got one just after that with a low percentage play-on after Spargo got clobbered, and he should've been subject to post-match testing for Viagra. It didn't always work but it was thrilling stuff, and his attempts to turn any half chance into a goal left us as close to a top box office team as we've been for two years. 

We were a goal from (perceived) three quarter time safety before conceding and keeping it ever so slightly interesting. Neutrals thought it was over, but I wasn't ready for anything beyond quiet confidence. Until they kicked a goal a minute into the last quarter and I was ready to soil myself again. Thanks then to the Sydney defender who vigorously groped at Petty's jumper from the next forward 50, which you won't be surprised to find out was created by Pickett getting first hands on the ball after the bounce. Pay everybody he knows to move to Victoria if that's what it will take the keep him. Build them their own Elon Musk-style compound, leave no stone unturned. He then tried to roll what would've been his sixth goal through along the ground, it hit the post, and Sydney went down the other end for a goal. I wasn't mad, it was all part of one of the wildest, loosest in the best possible way, forward performances we've ever seen.

Obviously, the game was already long sealed, but Oliver made it safe for panic merchants like me by celebrating his freedom from tagging duties with a set shot from distance. There was genuine party atmosphere by the time Sparrow barged past a couple of hapless defenders to kick his first. Sharp came on for Spargo, who was ordered off by the umpires for concussion testing but instantly subbed before the results came through, and joined in with a top shelf comedy goal. He gathered and was about to run straight into a defender, but fumbled the ball under the opponent's outstretched arm, then saw it bounce perfectly back to him for a goal and this was officially a rooting.

I wish we'd been able to feed Pickett another couple of opportunities to do something truly insane but he got the superstar treatment of sitting on the bench for the last few minutes alongside Gawn. Not that it meant anything, but conceding the last two goals was a bit of a let down. Until the Swans were subject to an epic pisstake at the end of a disappointing day, when in a great moment in the history of teams being kicked while they were down, the final goal was taken off them after an uncalled for video review.

For no other reason than there being 13 goals and a video review, the last quarter went over 39 minutes and well beyond 6pm. By the time it ended anyone interested in the news was probably already watching the opposition, so no doubt every stooge on the Channel 7 payroll will be getting a memo to start waffling on about shortening games this week. Could've got back 6.5 minutes here by halving the breaks after goals, or here's an idea you super geniuses - start the coverage at 3pm so you're either insured against a long-running game or can spend a few minutes on post-match atmosphere instead of barrelling straight from heart-stopping one point wins at 6.02pm to whatever miserable story about people getting blown up is at the top of the news.

Here's the real top story, Melbourne goes back-to-back against reigning grand finalists. Even I'm not enough of a history wanker to know the last time, if ever, we've done that. I'd feel better if we didn't also hold a pair of consecutive 10 goal losses in the same season (including one to a side that's won about five games in five years) but after a nightmare start to a year that's still probably not going anywhere we have at least climbed out of the grave and are back on two feet. Let's just try to avoid being pushed straight back into it, then we can think about miracles happening. All I know is that we might have to launch simultaneous Bradbury and Spitebury plans after the bye.   

2025 Allen Jakovich Medal votes
5 - Kysaiah Pickett
4 - Christian Petracca
3 - Clayton Oliver
2 - Max Gawn
1 - Christian Salem

Apologies to Bowey, Langdon, Melksham, McVee, Rivers and Turner.

Leaderboard
Gawn still leads by just under 3+ BOGs, but beneath him the top of the leaderboard is starting to get a more familiar feeling. Bowey is still hanging about on the podium and already six votes ahead of his previous best season in 2023, but the big hitters like Oliver and Petracca are coming in search of medals. And when they're regularly polling good things are probably happening.

33 - Max Gawn (PROVISIONAL WINNER: Jim Stynes Medal for Ruckman of the Year)
19 - Kysaiah Pickett
17 - Jake Bowey (LEADER: Marcus Seecamp Medal for Defender of the Year)
13 - Clayton Oliver, Christian Petracca
10 - Harvey Langford (LEADER: Rising Star Award), Jake Melksham
8 - Kade Chandler, Ed Langdon
7 - Xavier Lindsay, Tom McDonald
6 - Jack Viney
4 - Tom Sparrow
3 - Christian Salem
2 - Jake Lever, Harrison Petty
1 - Trent Rivers, Harry Sharp

Aaron Davey Medal for Goal of the Year
So many options, many involving Pickett. With respect to Petracca's Perth '21 cover version, and Sharp accidentally doing a Harlem Globetrotters move on his opponent, it's got to be Kysaiah's first when he took advantage of the opponent losing focus to run around and curl one through. He'll almost certainly win this award in the end, but for now Chandler in West Coast retains the lead.

Next Week
Outrageously we're one win from being 6-6, but it will require avoiding a 666 style Satanic performance against the sudden crisis side St. Kilda. They've lost three in a row, including to West Coast, and have taken our place as the league's most tediously boring club. So on paper we should win, but I think Ross Lyon's loins throb at the memory of when he'd treat us with utter contempt while coaching Freo. Nothing will be taken for granted here, just because we've kicked a few goals recently it doesn't mean he won't summon up one last act of football terrorism and hold us to 2.10.22.

It's not easy suggesting changes when a) we played our best game of the season, and b) you can't take VFL form seriously when Casey held a 21st (!) placed team to one goal in three quarters, then let them kick six consolations in the final quarter. At a ground with a massage parlour in the background. Incidentally, I looked up the reviews for this particular business and 66.6% of them are people complaining that the massage professional lost interest once they declined the offer of unnamed 'extra' services. Use that information as you like, but if there's a game on it's best to fire up the live stream and duck in quickly while the ball is down the other end.

I've got a radical Eddie McGuire style plan for the competition. Add Tasmania, find two other ring-in sides (Adelaide and Port?), and make it two divisions of 12. The low-budget standalone sides play each other twice a year, and AFL fans won't give a rat's if their reserve side is in the second division. Yes, it would mean a second game each year against hapless sides like Preston but maybe they'll attract better players if they're not nearly guaranteed to be royally humped every week. Coburg and Frankston are doing alright, so wouldn't it be more interesting if there were relegation/promotion implications than teams trying to qualify for a top 10?

As the VFL is not a serious competition and we don't need to make bulk panic changes I doubt the selectors will be putting too much stock in a gentle training run against traffic cone opposition. Jefferson kicked five but I'm not interested until he does it against AFL listed defenders, and van Rooyen took a lot of marks but it felt like they were all just taking the piss out of overmatched opposition for three quarters before pulling at stumps in the last and wondering if the massage joint offers group rates. I don't expect Bailey Laurie to be a long term player but he'd probably feel aggrieved not to get a token run at some point, and am starting to worry that Kynan Brown is going to be left stranded on about 10 minutes of AFL game time.

It won't happen, but now that we're outrageously back in the mix (not that I'm saying it will last, and we're still only a 11% chance to make the eight but at least it's double digits), I'm promoting the contentious McDonald as second ruck plan. Johnson is full of effort and somehow registered two goal assists from six disposals, but you can't go around having one kick a game. Give us McDonald, when that doesn't work gives us van Rooyen, then Campbell, then go back to Johnson, then Verrall, then anyone who can jump high enough to contest a stoppage. This all assumes Lever's late discomfort was just a symptom of having been away so long and his foot wasn't falling apart, because in that case McDonald returns directly to defence and you can do as you please with the fill-in rucks.

In other news, I don't know where Viney fits with a resurgent Oliver and well-received midfield cameos from Pickett, Rivers, Salem etc... but if he'll come in handy if it turns into a classic Ross The Boss slopfest. I'd really like to reward Sharp for one of the better sub performances, even if he did have the good fortune to turn up just as things were tilting violently in our favour, but he gets to continue his assault on Taj Woewodin's record of starting 10 games as sub. Spargo escaped without concussion but he had four touches in 51% of game time, so like a fancier version of Johnson I don't doubt the effort but think we can get more out of somebody else.

After thinking we'd win and not being proven horribly wrong I'm going for it twice in a row. The game is in Alice Springs, but as long as the players don't dwell on Freo kicking the shit out of us there last year it shouldn't make too much of a difference. Here's to making it back to par after being [insert golf metaphor here], and officially regaining our dignity in 2025.

IN: McDonald, Viney

OUT: Johnson, Spargo (omit)
LUCKY: Nil
UNLUCKY: Howes, Laurie, Sharp (to still be sub)

Final thoughts
I concur with the views of Mrs. Petracca

Christian Petracca's mum enjoyed his 200th: "That was a f**** great win"
byu/FlairUp835 inAFL