A sleazy wink from Stringer Bell is where the good news ends for now, because the barbarians are at the gates and if the media show trial is anything to go by the next month can't possibly end well. Caro broke the story, so she's also taken the opportunity to declare that we're guilty as charged - despite not having been charged with anything yet. The media bandwagon is rolling and eventually the Herald Sun will join in too and then, once a paper people actually read gets involved, we'll really be stuffed.
The media never blow a story in one day when they can string it out to three our four, so I don't doubt that there's at least one more day - and one more set of accusations - in this one. By Friday we'll have been accused of having hidden Osama Bin Laden in our secret Pakistani training base - and by Monday the famous Demetriou denial of tanking will have been laughed at by so many people that he'll be absolutely bursting to play his part in fucking us right up. Instead of each our picks at the next two drafts the cameras will cut to him giving one of these:
You can't get done for defaming an organisation, so without properly accusing anyone of being involved she's going as far as possible with outright accusations that we did it, so there's got to be at least something going down because what there is now is a bit too pissweak to be putting her reputation on the line by declaring it a done deal. Mind you according to her other story in yesterday's paper Adelaide will be kicked out of this year's draft. Maybe they will, but it's either a red hot guess or somebody inside the AFL is prejudicing their own enquiries by leaking information to the press before they're actually completed.
So how did she get the details of what allegedly happened at this meeting? Either somebody working on the investigation is leaking details or somebody who is being investigated is - and if you'd spent the last week being waterboarded until you provided the appropriate information to the investigator would you think that turn the investigation into a media frenzy would actually help your cause? If we get done watch and see who of the supposed attendees either mysteriously gets off scot free or appears at another club under a fake name wearing an unconvincing wig and you'll know who cut a deal to lag us out.
That's if there is anything to lag us out on. What you've got right now, pending whatever tomorrow's revelations or secret audio recordings prove, is claims that it the idea of losing to maximise draft picks was discussed in 'a meeting' and a bunch of theories surrounding a few games at the end of the season.
Despite having still never seen the second of the Richmond game (other than the winning goal, and that will do me) I've just always gone along with the list of supposedly dodgy moves we were supposed to have pulled off during that day. In a game that we were winning at the final siren, and a game that - let this not be forgotten in any way - DID NOT IN ANY WAY AFFECT OUR DRAFT POSITION. If McMahon had missed they might have done something dodgy against Fremantle instead of winning by ten goals, but he didn't so we'll never know, and you can do a lot of things in a show trial but you can't take us apart for something that might have happened under different circumstances.
I don't doubt for a minute that the desire of various people within the club late that year was to finish dead on four wins and get the priority pick, but that's my theory and I've not got a shred of proof to prove it. Other than the game which we lost off another player's boot would we have won any of those other games? Probably not. So show me the evidence or go and get stuffed. If the papers don't deliver the smoking gun evidence by the end of the week I'm prepared to believe that it doesn't exist and the whole thing is based on what people reckon they heard in a meeting.
As I said yesterday if they do uncover 'the truth' I'll put my hand up and say that we deserve everything and that there should be a bloodbath, but if the evidence is based on some sort of list management meeting where somebody said "We'll pick $cully with 1 and Trengove with 2 if we get the priority pick for not winning another game" then they can cram it because that was a statement of fact, not a suspicious plot. If a senior or assistant coach who could have made a difference (as much as any coach can) is proven to have agreed that they had to lose then fine, ban everyone involved and wreck us as is necessary but if it was a list manager or CEO and the coaches aren't on record as agreeing then how can they be said to have influenced the result? That's like going into the 2009 Big Footy archives and tabling a bunch of posts where people say we should throw it - because the two have roughly the same amount of influence.
Where does it end? If everything which happened off-field in losses at the end of that year why isn't the on-field activity also in question? Ricky Petterd was nice enough to go on the radio yesterday and make it clear, despite us having just sacked him, that there was no directive to the players to chuck it. But then again he would say that having played a cracking game. Was part of Brock McLean's interview with the investigators a question about why he had 26 touches and two goals in a win in Round 20 and 'only' 16 the next week in a win. How far do you go without proper evidence from people who had the ways and means to make the directions of others come true. I'd love to know what Bailey said, because if he pulls the "I was only following orders" defence and gets away with it I'll chuck shit.
If he, any of the assistants or a player wants to come out, put his hand up and say that he deliberately manipulated the result and cop the subsequent life ban then ok but if you're going to talk about us playing forwards back and backs forward as actual evidence then you might be right about we were up to that day but you're officially putting every late season 'list management' manoeuvre, experimentation or close loss into question until the draft is abolished. Was it ok to do that against Essendon in the middle of this year, but not late in the season if draft position is on the line? They've have to find, unless there's real evidence, that coaches can do whatever they like with their team selections and positional moves or from that date onwards every last month of a season should be a non-stop investigation into what any team outside of finals contention is up to.
Ok, they dumped priority picks but there's still plenty of incentive for teams not to win. Going into Round 21, 2009 against Carlton at Docklands we could still have avoided finishing last with a win, so even if the priority pick was off the table why wouldn't they have played Jamar at full forward (the glorious five goal day) anyway and damn the result? Taking advantage of the system is no defence if it can be proven, but otherwise you're going to have to legislate about what coaches can and can't do - and that would be the pissiest rule change of them all.
You know what the worst thing about all this has been? When our (supposed) own people decide to pile on to get themselves a headline. You hear nothing from Neil Mitchell for about five years and then all of a sudden he's doing editorials about what a disgrace it all is based on what he's read in an article by his fellow 3AW presenter Wilson. Thanks for the help Neil, you wouldn't by any chance be lining yourself up for a crack at the presidency if things really go tits up with this inquest?
Then out rolls Paul f'ing Gardner to stick the boots into the same administration who forced him out of the club because it was stuffed and about to go under. Either you're helping the club or you're not, and there's no doubt that this guy is not helping whenever he opens his mouth and does his 'wounded fan' act. The worst part of his interview with fellow depressed supporter Mitchell (on the link above) is that he talks about a game that he's convinced we tanked in but doesn't make it clear that the game in question took place in 2003 even though he's previously said it. Once again, not helpful but a fine 'fuck you' to the people who helped get rid of him.
No matter where this goes from here brace for the worst and you'll either be right or pleasantly surprised. Just don't be the dickhead who rings up and blasts the poor receptionist or tweets/Facebooks at the club like it's Schwab and McLardy sitting there and reading every message. Win, lose or draw there'll be plenty of time for burning effigies on Brunton Avenue or driving offensive moving billboards past AAMI Park - just make sure you're aiming at the right people.
Also if we get busted for it don't act like you weren't cheering for it at the time, the only thing 90% of our fanbase (sadly including myself) will have any reason to get upset about is that we were shit at cheating because you, me and pretty much everyone wanted them to get those picks at the time and most people would have gone off their nut if we hadn't done it. Now the same people are acting like they've somehow been dudded and hated it all along, what a load of rubbish.
One thing to remember is that the club will go on no matter what happens here. It's bigger than any individual or group of, and as long as our members get behind the club itself and don't try and vote us out of existence again we'll live. There might be pain, and whatever they do to us might put the brakes on the 'revival' but at least that gives us an excuse for being shit for once. It will be painful, it will get bloody but don't throw everything away and walk off because if this goes wrong the club needs you more than ever before.
In honour of the longest month I did the longest post. For once it was thoughtfully split into two instead of being presented as one gigantic slab o' text. Instead enjoy the second mid sized slab.
Chapter Three - Return of the Tankquiry
Thanks to Caroline Wilson for ruining my day. Not only did her article throw everything I wrote below about the draft into even more disarray than it was already in, but now apparently we're going down in spectacular fashion for dubious misdemeanors and suspicious behaviour.
That's what it looks like anyway, but don't pop the cyanide pill and end it all just yet because it's not over yet. It doesn't read well but there's no need to panic right now even though all sorts of investigators are involved - including a former 'tactical intelligence operative for the Victoria Police sexual crimes squad' if you don't mind - and the media are queuing up to beat up on an easy target.
We'll find out the 'true' story soon enough, so save kicking holes in your wall for now. There'll be plenty of time for fear, loathing, rage and hatred towards whoever you like - inside or outside the club - in the event of a future guilty verdict. Don't burn yourself out just yet.
The best case scenario is that the evidence of people who might very well
have a grudge based on the fact that they were sacked or demoted isn't
taken seriously and that nobody else was dumb enough to make or keep
documentary evidence that they were on the shonk (If they were your
honour). In that case how do you prove anything - idle waffle between coaches is one thing, but unless they can show that players were told not to kick goals (like, you know, Paul Roos did) then how can they prove anything beyond reasonable doubt?
Nevertheless let's brace for the worst. They're already in a bad mood because of the Adelaide/Tippett debacle, and Demetriou will be filthy if he's making to look stupid after coming out and saying no such thing as tanking existed so there's every possible chance that they'll try and roll two controversies into one to lessen the media impact and do us over at the same time they get the Crows.
I have no doubt that if we go down in any meaningful way (i.e - if we get offered a plea bargain for pick 88 I'm sure a confession would appear in seconds) that there will be all sorts of legal action and appeals both to the league and in the courts, which would further complicate the situation considering the draft is two weeks away it will presumably be a 'live' case in a court (normal or kangaroo) somewhere by then.
Even if, as the article says, we 'could' be hauled before the AFL
Commission in the next couple of weeks could the draft even take place
with an appeal on the table? What if they take pick four off us and then
we win the case? Either way if it gets to that point it's not going to end well for us. Imagine we got an injunction on the entire draft? That would cause a spectacular amount of chaos, but just like beating the league in the courts you could see us getting the picks back and then being cut off from AFL assistance payments forever and forced to play five home games a year in East Timor.
Let's take a worst case scenario and say strip pick four off us this year, there's a brutal legal battle and we lose it. The club will go on regardless but things will get very nasty off-field and the chances of a boardroom challenge at the AGM rise from unlikely to almost certain. Either way anybody who was involved in an off-field capacity pre-Neeld would be nervously looking on Seek at the moment because the only way most of them are going to survive is if we get an absolutely 100% not guilty verdict - and the way it's looking there's fat chance of that happening.
Even though it would be remarkable for a professional competition to
level draft penalties this season after they've just spent a whole
month encouraging teams to exchange picks I'm not ruling anything out.
We're not working with a democracy here, and if they want to hammer us
(and presumably Adelaide) there's no moral obligation to take everyone
out as well. Everyone knows everyone else did it, but unless we can somehow convince a court to take into account Travis Johnstone running riot in the Kruezer Cup then there's no obligation to investigate any of that if they don't want to. If the league wants to stitch us up (and if they've ever read this page they probably will just to annoy me) they will and there's precious little you or I can do about it.
What we can do is scream bloody murder if we go down based on half-hearted evidence and leave a trail of blood from here to Timbuktu. Ok, if they find secret audio recordings of Bailey, Schwab and Connolly talking tank in a supermarket carpark at 3.30am then I'll cop everything we're given but until then get stuffed, I'm not accepting anything and when the siren went in the Richmond game we were winning.
Start the defence now. Memorise this list and quote it long and loud. Everyone must know what a farce any penalty would be considering that half the other sides in the competition have done it - and none of them were in front at the final siren. At least you'll have a smug sense of moral superiority when we're starting with pick 124 in a few weeks.
Alternatively they could realise that bringing down any penalty now will throw this year's draft into disarray, do us over for the 2013 draft and we can fill in those boring summer months following a legal battle instead of, say, cricket. It'd make more sense considering that there's been so much turnover since 2009 that it doesn't matter whether the punishment comes now or in five years time it's no longer got any more than a tenuous connection to what happened that year except as an excuse to knife fans who have stuck by a club delivering pretty much nothing for six seasons firmly in the back.
Until we know more my only advice is to everyone involved DENY EVERYTHING. Even if the investigator starts hitting you with the Yellow Pages this is no time to crumble and stuff everything up.
Now after writing that there's no doubt in the world that tomorrow's hot exclusive will be audio tapes dug up personally by Caro from the carpark at Casey Fields - and at that point I'll give up, burn Demonblog Towers a'la New Jack City and merge for good with The Farce Blog.
Chapter Four - Despatches, despatches and despatches
I take it nobody was really floored when the news about the delistings came on Saturday morning, and even if you didn't see the bullet coming for some of them you've got to accept that when the ruthless cull that everyone had been calling for finally occurred there was every possible chance that somebody you liked, or at least could have lived with us keeping, was going to get caught in the crossfire.
The rookie list is shrinking by two from next season (unless you live the AFL's dream and either recruit somebody from the Belgian Congo or lure a professional croquet player), so that's probably what did Jai Sheahan in despite him looking half decent in some Casey games towards the end of the year. He goes along with Kelvin Lawrence, who started delisting season before the actual footy season had finished, and Chris From Camberwell favourite Leigh Williams who showed a bit in the VFL but was severely forced back down the pecking order by the arrival of Dawes and Pedersen.
This article seems to suggest that it's reducing to four, but on matters like this I'm prepared to take the league's official word. Unless they had an unpredictable change of heart and made something up on the spot like the video ref all over again. We had seven, so it's down to five now and with the almost certain Nicholson promotion that will let us pick two this year if we want the new maximum (badminton players from the Canary Islands aside), but maybe they'll just pick one and go with less than the maximum again. I'll freely put my hand up and say I've got no idea how they think when they recruit these guys, so watch this space and see how many they wheel in for pre-season training after the draft as an indication of how much interest there is.
As for the senior list there were three that were written large well before the axe came down. Bate, Cook and most unfortunately The Jurrahcance had been holed up in the Last Chance Hotel for about three months. They held out longer than expected but the MFC List Management SWAT team finally cleaned them up sometime before 12pm Saturday.
If those three were near $1.01 certainties the other two weren't any great surprise either. Everyone liked Ricky Petterd and wanted him to do well (or in my case whined when he didn't get a game) but when it came down to it he offered absolutely nothing this year, and other than a few random bursts of quality in the past he's paid for the price for not playing any role in particular and having a rotten year just when the Howitzer was being rolled into position. He kicked more than a goal a game, but so did Juice Newton and I didn't see a protest march down Bourke Street when he got the boot.
I was surprised by us dropping Bennell only because I thought we'd puss out rather than looking like heartless bastards for delisting a one legged man, but thank god for the new era of ruthlessness. Personally I'd rather we didn't but I could see a case for waiting out the Delisted Free Agent period and then picking him up again in the rookie draft if they have enough selections OR didn't like the kids on offer. Can't see it happening though, there's always more than one kid who misses the main draft that they'd have their eye on over somebody who will miss pre-season at a minimum. Mind you that's how we got Sheahan and look how that's turned out for him.
Out of that five the one that pains me the most is Jurrah, but it's a unique situation that we can't really manage so it's better not admit defeat for once. He doesn't want to be in Melbourne, and he might be doing time halfway through next year so we've got to remember the good times and move on. I know there's some wacky proposal by Port Adelaide to rookie list him just in case he gets off (presumably to kick 500, mostly against us) but you've got to wonder what would have happened if he'd gotten off at the committal hearing a few months ago. Even if he'd put in the request to go back to SA then we'd have at least got some trade action out of him instead of having to do a straight out delisting which leaves us with nada.
I wouldn't object to having him back in 2014 if he sorts out whatever he has to off-field and gets off the charges (or, morality be damned, does a short stint and comes out ok) but here's hoping that as much as we enjoyed his traction engine style foot and big leap that we don't need him anymore due to our sudden acquisition of tall forwards out the yin yang. Still, he would have been handy as a mid-sized forward because we still don't have a great deal of them - even less since Green quit and Cook/Petterd got the boot - and still even less small forwards despite the promise of cameo crumb from Davey, Byrnes and/or Rodan.
No doubt some of this - hopefully the bit about crumb - will be addressed via the various drafts, but as the list stands if you've got a fetish for mid-size forwards you'll be going home empty handed (in all senses of the word) with the Dees in 2013. Cook might have helped, but barring a remarkable turnaround at a new club he's heading straight towards a list of all-time great draft busts. Even Luke Molan can point to breaking his leg at ludicrous angles as to why never played a game, Cook's only got crippling MFC Player Depression (for other examples see Morton. C, and Maric. A) and his future Coleman Medal winning campaign to comfort him.
If I'm a bit glum about the end of the LJ era, and totally unmoved by Cook's demise then I'm firmly down the middle with Bate. Ok, he was slow, he wasn't the best kick (but less kicks aside he still had a better DE% than any of Trengove, Sylvia or Howe) and was well past the point of justifying his relatively high draft position but I still think he still offered something.
At least he knew how to get the ball and where to go to get it - in less games this year he had more marks than Macdonald, Bail, Green, Magner, Sellar, Jones, Blease, McKenzie, Jamar and Moloney. What he also did was provide a big(ish) body in reserve just in case. Not to replace Moloney, but to give some insurance against Jones getting injured or losing form before Viney/Pick 4 are ready to carry a midfield. Bate is no Jones or Trengove, but he's at least in the same postcode as Magner and well ahead of Couch with the added benefit of having played 80-100 more games than either of them.
Notwithstanding the fact that we could have and should have taken pick 40 and ran when Footscray were offering it last year he could have filled a hole on our list. Obviously three years of not being an automatic first choice isn't going to enhance anybody's credentials for a new contract but while we've obviously learnt that you can't play kids everywhere and started flogging most of our draft picks in trades we're not exactly spoilt for choice on midfielders so it would have been nice to have a backup who wasn't 18 or straight out of the state leagues.
Unless of course he's on a promise elsewhere (first rumour says Hawthorn, which is odd) and we're doing the community thing by setting him free. Even if the good sides aren't keen and Footscray have subsequently realised that they're too stuffed to be topping up with mid 20's players I don't see why he wouldn't be a handy pick-up for one of the franchises while they're playing 80% of kids and expecting to get flogged anyway. He's not rake thin and can get a kick, that's good to be good enough for Crazy Sheeds and his half-hearted interest in short time success.
Anyway, not our problem now. As with all ex-MFC players (except $cully) we wish him well in the future. The good news is that if you want to support our old players you've got the choice of the entire league except for Essendon, Footscray, Freo, GWS (because Junior is gone and you wouldn't support the other one), Richmond (vale the Miller/Emo era), St Kilda and Sydney. Hopefully some of them pick up our scraps just to ensure some sort of tenuous MFC connection to the premiership next year.
Chapter Five - The search for a superstar
Back to the wide world of trades, and after four glorious years the SME era is over. The two time reigning Jim Stynes Medallist is taking off to Brisbane to form the New Psychic Friends Connection with Moloney and we're left with two shitbox picks and a hole in our heart as deep as a well.
But, as those 'side splitting' pictures featuring tilted deckchairs that everyone sends out after every pissweak natural disaster say WE WILL REBUILD. And the first step to recovery is to name a replacement to join the likes of Jakovich, Read, Shanahan and, err, Darren Kowal in the long - usually tragic - list of players that I've given support to over the years. And this is where, for the first time in sporting history you the viewing audience can play a part.
While recognising that there's something slightly sinister about grown men having favourite players and wearing numbered jumpers it's nevertheless time to pick one, and this time I don't want the blood on my hands if it all goes horribly wrong so I'm throwing the vote open to Demonblog readers, MFC fans in general and anyone within the football public who gives a toss. No preferences, no proportional representation, no modified D'Hondt or electoral college, just straight out first past the post where the winner - err - wins.
Luckily the Americans have come to the party with an Election Day on Wednesday 7 November our time. So on that day you'll have the chance to cast your ballot via a poll hosted on this page. At 12am on Thursday 8 November one man will become my favourite player elect, and at 12.05am he'll look at the fate of all the others who have held that honour and start planning for his career outside football.
The only house rules are that to ensure some value for my money you can't vote for anybody who will be over 28 by Round 1 (e.g Byrnes, Davey, Rodan). Otherwise go for your life. Run an electoral rort in favour of your chosen candidates, stuff the ballot box, whatever you like. When their career goes tits up it will be partly your fault for participating even if you didn't select the winner.
Note: all results are provisional until approximately 11.20am on Tuesday 11 December when the Rookie Draft will finalise our playing list for 2013. I agree to be bound by the votes of the community except in the unlikely event of us drafting somebody with an outright ludicrous name like Freddie Clutterbuck, Alroy Gilligan or: Chapter Six - Draft
(NB: This was written before Chapter Three and all assumes best case scenario at the show trial)
Now that the last drips have been wrung out of the 2012 season (at least the ones that the wider community may care about) we can concentrate on the draft, and what a thrilling night that promises to be for us. You know the draft, that basket in which we poured near on every single one of our eggs into only to emerge with a handful of shattered shells and footballing dreams.
One day history might show Team Neeld has gone too far in the other direction, but at least we're not balancing our future on banking a thousand picks and getting them all right Flogged off pick 12 last year has been a winner so far, and we'll see in a couple of years if pick three for Hogan/Barry and half of Dawes was equally as good. If it all goes right we get three good players for the price of one, but even if they don't all deliver the goods at least we'd have to be desperately unlucky for all of them to be shit. At least we used pick 20 to try and bring in an experienced player rather than packing it away to use on another toss of the coin kid.
Instead we get pick four (don't be subconsciously biased on the basis of the quick burn and slow fizz of the Morton experiment), Viney Jr as a confirmed bargain, a couple of spins of the draft roulette wheel and a rookie upgrade or two. I believe, without reference to the rulebook - which might be like the rules of professional wrestling and not actually exist - that the inevitable rookie upgrade of Daniel Nicholson counts will count as our last pick, so that means there's going to be a lot of time for putting the kettle on between pick four and 49.
Presumably they're going to subject the 50 of us who bother to watch the draft to their ludicrous count back from ten gimmick again - even though GWS hold the first three and have no fans to care - so instead of skipping through the top two who everyone will know a month before (but some idiot from the Giants will still come out and announce they "don't know which one they'll pick first". Which would be offensive if we hadn't done exactly the same thing with Trengove and some shitbag) and seeing who we're left with at pick four we'll go through the teeth clenching spectacle of picks 10, 9, 8, 7, 6 and 5 being paraded on stage like they're on sale in a Bangkok nightclub before we ruin some poor kid's career and then try and work out if we got a good deal or not five minutes later when GWS make their 'first' pick. Which is actually their third pick. Is there anybody in the world who thinks this is a good idea and is not employed by the AFL?
Our picks are 4, 27 (Viney) 49, 53, 70, 73, 74 and 88. So chances are we'll use up to 53, promote Nicholson with 70 and pass on the rest. If they really wanted to cut enough space on the list they could also promote Magner if they think he'd provide more value on the senior list than somebody else and want to clear another space on the rookie list.
To be honest I'm not entirely sure that a second rookie upgrade is even legal, but if Terry Wallace can rebrand himself as "The List Manager" and pretend that he know what he's on about then so can I.
Suffice to say they would want to deliver on pick four this time. You can be sure whoever it is that he's going to be a midfielder, but if the fate of Morton/Gysberts is anything to go by then he won't have a big floppy haircut. Safe in the knowledge that anybody pretending they know what they're doing can probably get at least the top four right I turned to the Big Footy Phantom Drafts board and pulled the following names out for special attention on the night.- Grundy (ruckman, but Jamar can't go on forever), O'Rourke (is his first name really spelt Jonothan? I don't think I can support that), Wines and Toumpas so if it's not one of those you can take it up with Big Footy.
When it comes down to it I don't give a monkeys as long as they can play. It's all well and good to spend hours trying to decide who'll be left by pick four and who they should take but the fact of the matter is that anyone we draft will either come down with Carpal Tunnel Syndrome or Ricketts and the whole exercise will end in a massive outbreak of terminal Melbourne Supporter Depression Syndrome.
Part Seven - Waiting for the great leap forward
Training will obviously take place very soon, but once we've got the full list confirmed come midday 11 December then we can really concentrate on getting through the summer and into the pre-season proper.
From there all sorts of time honoured traditions will be followed. The modern day John Meesen will train the house down, we'll have a mass outpouring of grief over somebody doing their knee in training, everyone who said they were going to roll up to the AGM and lose the plot will squib it (unless the Tankquiry rolls us, then it will be a massacre), a surprise win against a good team playing their thirds in the NAB Cup will cause an outbreak of moistness among the entire supporter base then the expected massive win against Port in Round 1 will be derailed by The Jurrahcane doing a run in and kicking eight goals as any pre-season togetherness and comradeship will disolve into furious online brawls about who we should sack first.
Pending a total implosion of the club and civil war based on the aforementioned enquiry I'm looking forward to it.
As the investigation into dubious behaviours in AFL matches gathers steam (if you believe this), never be caught short in a discussion about teams which should be hauled over the coals for their non-commitment to winning without reference to this handy list.
1999 - Round 22, Fremantle quite happily lose at Kardinia Park and pocket Paul Haselby
2004 - Round 22, Richmond lead at quarter time before losing and therefore securing last place
2004
- Round 22, Western Bulldogs win in Round 21 then drop five goal hero
Matthew Croft, lose the last game and get a priority pick
2005 - Round 22, Carlton lead at quarter time and lose to finish last.
2005 - Collingwood get to five wins in Round 14, then lose the rest of their matches and get a priority pick
2007
- Richmond have the chance to win and jump over Carlton into second
last - then blow a three quarter time lead, lose and finish last
2007
- Carlton get their fourth win in Round 11, pack away Fev and lose the
next 11 including R22 when they didn't both to tag anyone.
2008 -
Paul Roos tells Jarrad McVeigh "go forward, just don't kick a goal" in a
NAB Cup thriller and gets away with it because he said it was a joke.
2010 - Fremantle rest 11 players and lose to Hawthorn by 116 points
2012 - GWS openly rest players before they play Gold Coast, going on to lose and take bottom place on the ladder.
Spread that list far and wide friends. And there's probably heaps more that hasn't even been considered, so add that too if needs be. My favourite bit from the article is:
It is believed that recently a handful of club personnel have
corroborated versions of discussions that took place leading up to some
of Melbourne's strange losses that year - culminating in the Richmond
loss, which saw Melbourne fans cheering when Tiger Jordan McMahon goaled
after the siren.
If the Richmond game was the 'culmination' of 'strange losses' then can somebody explain to me how winning two games in the preceding month fits in? Two losses then came at the hands of Geelong at Kardinia Park (no change of policy there) and a Sydney side fighting for a spot in the eight.
Journos, if you're going to try and bury us just to sell a few papers at least get together in the AFL Media Association Hot Tub and get your story straight first.
Though it may have seemed like it lasted longer than the war in Afghanistan (all of them combined), you may be surprised to find out that there were only 27 days between Sunday 30 September and last Friday's finish to the end of the AFL Trade/Free Agent/Wacky Drafts/Franchise Club Rorts and Compo Period.
Would you like a review of the off-season so far in tiny, bite-sized pieces? Well you've come to the wrong place because in true Demonblog tradition there's so much waffle I've had to split this over two posts - the next one will turn up sometime tomorrow night.
Chapter 1 - Wearing tinfoil hats and going through the recycling at AFL House
You can blame the league for the first edition of what they'd like you to believe is a 'brave new era' going at least one week, if not two, longer than was absolutely necessary. Not that they'll admit it mind you, and if their own media department has already declared it a success on their website, so that's nice because you can always accept the word of a journalist dangled off the Bolte Bridge with A. League Executive holding his ankles until he agreed to write fulsome praise about the league's remarkable vision and foresight.
Nobody's really that concerned though, because stretching the off-season past credibility doesn't smash the fabric of the game and confuse buggery out of players, umpires and fans alike as much as - say - changing the rules of the bloody game every year. Not that anybody really does anything about the constant rule changes either, but that's because 'stakeholders' and 'consultation' are the only management speak phrases that the AFL haven't printed out in six foot high letters and stuck up on their office wall.
Having said that you can be sure that even if there was a groundswell of anger from the last few people left who think the league isn't a total dictatorship and voices were raised about another round of pointless changes that the people who implement them will do what they always do when they want to justify introducing something shonky to the game and drag out stats massaged to prove their point and justify another year of enormous salaries just for encouraging a captive audience to turn up or watch on TV.
Any explanations they do come up with will be exposed as utter cobblers, because every person with half an interest in sport in Australia knows they were trying to smash soccer, cricket, horse racing and all the other minority sports and keep them out of the papers for as long as possible.
The month of trades (which actually worked out to about three days in real time) tactic worked for a while, but there's only so far you can drag something out which used to take place relatively comfortably within a week or nine days before everyone realises what you're up to. By the middle of the third week you didn't even have to be the sort of person who will believe any conspiracy theory about the league (i.e me) to realise what they were up to. Even the 'mainstream media', who would usually kill each other for the chance to slurp the AFL's royal plums were calling them on it and started to risk being kicked out of the press box next year by reporting on other sports.
Safe in the knowledge that they couldn't string second rate player trades out for a month and keep it interesting they also had a few other crackers on hand to fill the dull times (i.e week three and most of week four). There was drip-fed 'hints' about next year's fixture, and of course some rule changes because we couldn't possibly go one full season leaving the sport to do what it does best without tinkering to try and engineer the game based on decisions made in boardrooms.
The worst bit about this year's rule changes isn't what they put in (i.e ruck changes invented so that shoehorning Nic Nat into the All Australian Team every season for the next decade won't look so obviously cynical) but what they left out. Does anyone really believe that the 'refusal' of the league to implement 2/2 interchange as recommended by the Rules Committee for this year isn't just a softener so that we're 'used to it' when they cave in and agree to 2/2 in 2014?
Kevin Bartlett and Adrian Anderson can pretend they're unhappy with each other about it all they like, but their 'feud' had acting that would be laughed out of a pro wrestling ring. No doubt they'll have a tearful reunion in the centre of the ring next year - telling us that they've got spreadsheets with stats to prove why the 'continuing trial' in the NAB Cup has been such a spectacular success, and that from 2014 onwards we'll be forced to watch a product where the players run themselves into the ground with fatigue while two teammates ponce about the boundary line in fluro vests. It will be shit, but if you want to keep following your club you'll have to bend over and cop it.
They've got us by the collective grapefruits (incorporating the lady grapefruits) and until the fans from all sides mob up and do something about it we'll keep getting treated with contempt. Anyway, enough of violent sporting revolution and a people's storming of AFL HQ. Let's get back to MFC related issues.
Chapter Two - [Sponsor Name] Trade Period
Wait, I haven't quite finished on the league's cavalcade of scumbag moves just yet. Is here anything they haven't or won't sell the naming rights to? Next thing Kurt Tippett and the Adelaide Crows will be appearing at the Slater & Gordon League Tribunal and he'll be deregistered for six Red Rooster weeks before he makes a triumphant comeback (presumably playing for GWS against his will) by driving down the race in a new Toyota Hilux.
I'm all for rampant capitalism and the making of money, but taking any interest in footy is starting to become like listening to a match on SEN where everything they can get their hands on has some kind of sponsor. You think the sums aren't being done on how much more they'll get for selling the rights to the substitutions when there are four a match instead of two? SEN has an excuse for putting a sponsor's name on anything they can get their hands on, they're a struggling radio station making its money from some of the worst sponsors going around. The AFL, on the other hand, is worth billions and paying its executives million dollar plus salaries - do we really need to flog the naming rights to a minority interest part of the season just to get a few thousands bucks extra? If you can prove to me it's going directly the clubs I'll shut up. Otherwise cram it.
Ok, I promise no more conspiracy theories from now on... Back to the Malev Hungarian Airlines Trade Period which seemed like it started about six months ago, and for us it pretty much did thanks to Moloney and his agent using the Herald Sun to brag about how he was going to 'explore free agency' (which is second only to 'make a play for' in the list of hot new footy cliches). Forget there still being half a season to go, it was off to the races from that point on.
Despite his heroics in 2011 nobody really seemed that concerned if Beamer left, including the football department it seems, so despite his half-hearted "Oh yes, of course I want to stay" interview about five weeks later we all moved on to other hot topics, including whether we'd get away with picking Jack Viney in Round 2 (We did. Hoorah!) and whether or not we'd pay zillions to sign Travis Cloke as a free agent (We didn't. Hoorah I think, but am not entirely sure).
With pretty much everyone coming to the same conclusion about it being better for Moloney to be anywhere but Melbourne with Neeld in charge the Cloke saga was the one that really fired up 'the fans' and threatened to end in somebody getting punched in the face.
It was a wild ride for a few weeks when we were being spoken about as top contenders for his services. As it turns out given what we paid for his chum Dawes both in draft picks and financially we might as well have taken the main event for nothing and paid him a fortune instead, but it wasn't to happen and we all hope that we'll be better off for it. As for Cloke we had already declared ourselves out of the race (though whose choice that was is up for debate) by the time he held the Pies ransom long enough to rort them out of big money to do whatever else it was that he does (take marks, miss sitters) then we were looking elsewhere anyway.
So it was left to Moloney and Rivers to provide "where will they go?" drama, and at least in Riv's case the slighest hint of "will he go at all?" By the time Beamer was subbed out of the St Kilda game at three-quarter time most people assumed he was off anyway, so it was no surprise when he confirmed that he was off about ten minutes after the season finished.
No hard feelings from me I must say. His speech about McLean at the Best and Fairest that year was from a different era, and personally I'd rather somebody go than hang around when unhappy - or not fully committed - just to live up to an off the cuff comment made to a partisan audience. But at the same time while I wish him nothing but the best in Brisbane his quest to find a new home had the stench of desperation hanging around by the end. When his famous manager came out to tell us he'd been in talks with ALL 17 CLUBS it might have been true, but "in talks" obviously didn't mean the other parties were showing a great deal of interest. Does leaving a voicemail and sitting by the phone waiting for somebody to call count as 'in talks' in the brave new era?
It seemed that bombing out from being the best player in a mediocre team to a mile off the pace in a rancid one, then whoring yourself halfway through the year out to the entire competition via the pages of a popular daily newspaper surprisingly didn't cause those 17 clubs to fall over themselves in a bidding war to sign him. Just as it looked like he might have to come crawling back to Neeld with flowers and chocolates his dreams were saved by Crazy Vossy - the man with a fetish for mature age players second to none (though Neeld is rapidly catching up to him it must be said) and a strike rate with them almost opposite to the Swans - who signed him as a last desperate attempt to avoid starting 2013 as the red hot favourite to be first coach sacked.
Not withstanding the fact that if you're over 15 years old you should never boo a player when you've got the chance to verbally abuse him I can't see myself joining in any anti-Moloney sentiment when he plays against us. $cully has set the bar has been set so high for treachery that even if he does a Woewodin and gives one to the crowd after kicking a goal against us or grabs the MCG mic and calls us all SOBs I don't think I'd be all that concerned.
So farewell then to the 2011 Allen Jakovich Medallist. We had some good times 2005-2011 when he wasn't injured, I'm not going to let his stunt with the Herald Sun, apparent disinterest in his last few matches and fallout with the coach taint the good memories. We'll always have the Psychic Friends Connection's day of days against the Crows when our Neil Craig didn't bother to realise that we were beating his side to the bejesus belt and that he should do something to stop them. Sadly their finest hour was also the beginning of the end. Russian got hurt, but even before the extent of his injury became apparent they had done such a comprehensive demolition job on Adelaide that other clubs couldn't fail to notice. It was never the same for them again.
Far more personally distressing was the loss of Rivers to Geelong. I don't pretend to know what the guy was thinking when the two offers were on the table but surely the fact that it took so long for him to decide to leave us means he was wavering on whether to go or not? In the end it seems that he decided he's only got two or three years left and that he's more chance of at least playing finals with Geelong if not winning flags and that's what made his decision.
He's right too, on paper and by any objective measure he is far more likely to be a winner at Kardinia Park than he is staying with us, and if we don't fire up and stop being shithouse soon this won't be the last time this will happen to us. I think we're ok next year with Sylvia and Davey as potential UFAs (also Bartram if he signs a one year contract extension) but the fear that grips me in the night is that if we're no better in a couple of years that we're going to lose Frawley for practically nothing, and with our luck probably in the year they abolish compensation picks.
That's the reason you'll probably never see another 'strategy' like we had in the Baileyball era of bombing out deliberately and hoarding 500 draft picks just to select kids, because clubs will recognise that they don't have the power to emotionally blackmail their 'stars' into staying anymore or force them to take their chances in the draft. Loyalty isn't dead yet but the paramedics are thumping furiously on its chest.
With the exception of Gold Coast and GWS who have a few years before they have anybody free agent eligible, every team right down to 18th will at least need to be 'competitive' when this brave new era of player movements gets going. If you're a team like we are now, or like the Bulldogs are threatening to become, you'll have two ways to convince your 'stars' to stay when they can go wherever they like absolutely gratis. One will be to lean heavily on loyalty, one will be to pay ridiculous sums of money on lengthy contracts that they probably don't deserve - then when the player suddenly hits the wall halfway into a four year deal you're stuck with them.
That's why maybe, deeply held cynicism aside, this could turn out to be a good thing. Forget Moloney, let's look at Rivers. If we'd convinced him to stay by throwing a shitload of cash around (even though we can afford it now) and next year it turns out that he'd gone as far as he possibly could and plunges straight off the cliff we'd have been forced to keep playing him at least semi-regularly for the next two or three years to justify it. Now that he's gone the spot opens for a kid who wouldn't have had the opportunity otherwise. Whether said kid is good enough or not is another matter, but at least they'll get a chance now and it's up to the experienced players to cover for them until they either get it right or are proven to be rubbish, at which point we'll chop them and start against for the 50th time.
So if it turns out to be a blessing in disguise I'll be even more keen to welcome Riv back as an all-round nice guy who gave us 150 games of good service, but either way he'll get nothing but good will from me. Anybody who has served in our backline for the vast majority of the last six years deserves a bloody medal and a ceremony, not to be booed by dickheads.
Still, at the same time with all the love in the world it would obviously be better for the common good if he became this decade's Nathan Brown (the Footscray/Richmond one - and don't panic I'm not talking about his injury here so cancel the obscene emails) and did the big swap to play finals only to find that his new team has become shithouse overnight while the old one goes on to play finals by the truckload.
Coming back the other way from Geelong was Shannon Byrnes, who we're assured is good even though he couldn't get a game for them this year and has only played 13+ games in a season three times out of nine. I'll take their word for it because a) he's free and b) clearly they're trying to add players who have come from clubs with decent cultures. I'm a bit concerned that he's 28 and we're banking on his speed, but even if that goes by Round 1 and he plays three games what have we lost? It's a free hit, we're presumably not paying all that much and if he knows when to put his hand up and step aside for a younger man in a couple of years he'll have done his job.
Of far more long term interest are (most of) our trade selections. I know this is where people start getting clammy hands and sweat begins running down the forehead as they think about what we've done, but let's start with the ones that were fairly popular before moving into those that have caused angst and consternation.
I'm tying the Jack Viney coup into the trading section, because it was the franchise vs franchise 'mini-draft' deal which took Gold Coast out of the running for pick 2 and allowed us to get him for the same price that has previously been paid for huge names like Sam Kerridge, Kieran Harper, Callum Bartlett and Sam Wright. And thank god for that too, because it opened the door do using pick three to all but lock away Hogan who would have ALLEGEDLY been a top pick next year, as well as Barry who was SUPPOSEDLY worth a second rounder this year and Pick 20 which would come in handy later.
Are any of these players good? Well I'm buggered if I know, but no doubt that even if both Hogan and our #4 pick are both 'good' that #3 will be the greatest player in the history of the game. That's just the way we do things around here. I'm happy with the idea of locking Hogan away now though, especially considering that for the first and last time this year it was us who got the cherry on top, because at least he can go to Casey and do whatever he has to do as part of the real club rather than playing against juniors for another year then having to start his development from scratch.
After that triumphant day everything went quiet for a while. We were supposed to be getting the much maligned Chris Dawes (worrying described to me more than once as "Collingwood's Brad Miller") and the not maligned but seemingly unwanted Cameron Pedersen from North. While the Pedersen deal dragged on for about ten years, to the point where I was starting to get sick of him even before he belonged to us, the Dawes swap was the only moment of any interest for the whole third week of this wretched shambles.
There's plenty of people who are nervous about this one, and I don't blame them, but let's take what he's being paid personally off the table when discussing whether the whole thing is a good idea or not. Fact of the matter is that the total amount of the salary cap that you have to pay is at least 95% (and I can't find the source but I'm sure it's going even higher), Rivers and Moloney would have been on very good money and who else do you think really deserves an enormous pay rise after the year you've just seen? So they pay Dawes enormously above what he's worth this year - and maybe next year - to help with that, it all balances out in the end to paying over but not enormously so and hopefully exactly like Mitch Clark we're back here in a year praising it as a great deal.
If he continues on like he did at Collingwood this year we might be in some trouble, but it's not like we've given up all that much in the draft to get him anyway. No doubt pick 20 is good and all, but once you get to that point anything could happen - AND you have to wait a couple of years to find out if you've stuffed up. This is intended to take the heat off Clark - who otherwise everyone would have known we were kicking at EVERY TIME, with a semi-experienced player who already knows Neeld and has come out of a place where they put a premium on professionalism. He's also got something to prove, which admittedly could go either way.
So generally I'm ok with that one. It's a gamble, but how many trades aren't? Mitch Clark for pick 12 outright was three times the gamble this was, so if he turns out to be Melbourne's Brad Miller Pt. 2 we'll live. Comparing draft picks in different years is really stupid and pointless but let's do it anyway - Pick 20 = Tony Notte (no), Tom Swift (no, but good hairdo), Nat Fyfe (yes), Jayden Pitt (who?) and Hayden Crozier (Is this some sort of WA zone selection pick?) so by applying Footy Maths again you've got a one in five chances of landing a top shelf player (and a 100% chance of getting a Western Australian). I'm well prepared to take the chance.
If pick 20 for Dawes with some minor sweeteners represented a mid-range gamble then pick 88 for David Rodan was as close to a freebie as you could have gotten without waiting for the delisted free agent period.. Supposedly did the throwaway pick deal to Port because somebody else wanted him as well, which seems odd but hell why not. To the naked eye it seems bizarre but Neeld is all about average games experience, and with Green/Moloney/Rivers (526 games) out of the 'best 22' he's got to find somebody to at least plug some of that drain.
My early prediction is that he's footy's first pinch hitter who starts as sub every single week. You can't apply the same theory about coming from a super-professional outfit to somebody out of Port as opposed to Geelong or Collingwood, but they must have something in prospect for a guy who has never had more than 30 disposals in a game or kicked more than 28 goals in a season and has a knee held together by polyester fibres. Again, if it doesn't work what have we lost?
Whether it turns out to be a worthwhile surprise mature player pickup (J. Shanahan) or not (C. Turley) I'm just thankful they've realised the "He won't be in our next premiership team" theory is absolute bollocks. What we need to realise from the pre-Neeld era is that hoarding draft picks by the thousands and picking kids, kids and more kids is fine but it all goes tits up ten minutes later when they play in a million losses. They're not picking him to hang around for two years playing mediocre games and keeping a kid out of the side, he would know full well that if some draftee or rookie bursts onto the scene in a similar role that he might get the boot for a few weeks at a time - and I suspect having just been saved from unemployment that he won't be too concerned about that.
Here's where it started to get a little bit controversial. Having had three weeks of the Club X Trade Period to finish everything off, or the option to do a Carlton and just put the feet up from the start, we managed to go into the last five hours with three unresolved storylines.
The first was the long delayed Pedersen deal. Obviously we wanted the guy, we'd spent the entire month reading about it after all, but the idea of a straight swap for a pick in the 30's after we got our compensation for Rivers/Moloney was squashed after the AFL's Random Number Generator spat out #49 instead. Obviously there's not a great deal of poker face work going on at the Dees, because somehow instead of a mid-range draft pick we ended up not only giving them two-time rising star nominee and former #12 pick Jordan Gysberts BUT also ended up giving THEM the cherry on top by handing over pick 63 for 74.
Why in god's name we needed to add a sweetner to swapping a kid who played some belting games early in his career but was unlucky with injury for a 25-year-old who has played 16 games and barely played seniors all year is a mystery to me but there you go. Somebody obviously walked into the meeting with a rampant horn and all the North representatives spotted it, turned to each other and nodded knowingly.
In the grand scheme of things losing pick 63 (Guy O'Keefe! Luke Lowden! Tom Derickx!) isn't anything to panic about, but let's try to not look like horny teenagers on the verge of getting the leg over when we're publicly pursuing players in the future shall we?
As for Pedersen his form outside the AFL stacks up, but when it comes down to it what does that really mean? We've seen the likes of Bate, Newton and this year Couch dominate the VFL and not be able to translate it to the big leagues. Also not entirely sure what is role is going to be with Clark and Dawes up forward - is he the new second ruckman? North fans assure me that even though they think they've ripped us off blind by getting Gysberts AND a pick upgrade that he's still a good player. That's still to be decided, but one thing we can be sure of is that he's bringing a quality nickname to the table.
Gysberts is a strange case. Apparently Team Neeld had little interest in keeping him but were prepared to wait it out if no suitable offers came, which is probably why he got thrown into this deal at the last minute just to seal the deal and ensure we didn't get a case of trade period droop by missing out on Pedersen after the frantic month long chase. No doubt he can play, as his stats indicate, and as late as Round 11 last year he was racking up 30 touches and two Brownlow votes as we beat Essendon. This year he got injured, came back, got injured again, came back again, played a stinker against the Gold Coast and got dropped never to be seen again.
You do not get dropped after one game back from injury in a win unless there's something seriously wrong behind the scenes so let's see how he goes at North before deciding we've been totally ripped off. I suspect Brad Scott is no less insane/intense than Neeld, so if the Gys suddenly finds himself wallowing in one of North's reserves teams next year then you'll know it was him not us. Either that or he'll win the Brownlow and it'll be proven that we can't/couldn't develop players for shit.
Speaking of fast starts which eventually petered out to nothing our second last deal involved the people's favourite Cale Morton. The first trade exclusive ever to be broken on Twitter from inside Wagamama spread like wildfire into the mainstream and by Thursday morning we were supposedly off-loading him to the Eagles for pick 61. Again, we know the guy can play but it would have been precious for anybody to start crying about a net loss of 57 picks on him considering we've all spent the last three years whipping him to death every time he touched the ball.
Still, I couldn't help but feel moderately cheated when the paperwork went through and we'd flogged him for our own original pick 88 which the Eagles had got from Port in their own chump change deal. Again somebody must have walked into the meeting with a raging boner which was quickly spotted by the other side who ducked out into the corridor to alter their deal accordingly.
Again it's not the picks that I have an issue with (61 = James Craig, Jarryd Lyons, Alex Brown etc.. etc..) but the way that we were so eager to get rid of these players that we allowed other people to get good deals on us. Are they trying to lull everyone into thinking we're easybeats so we can come out of nowhere and trade pick 45 for Pendlebury next year? Newsflash - nobody else is falling for it.
Now watch him turn out to be good in Perth. It's not like he was never any good for us, but like Gysberts all the major action came in a burst at the start of his career and it was all downhill from there. Unlike Gysberts he got 70+ games to try and recapture the magic but from his last really good game, when he had 36 touches against St Kilda on the last day of 2009 when we were supposedly tanking furiously, is was 32 straight mediocre performances and out. Not for the first time we thought we were about to unleash a superstar, then he hurt his knee in a pre-season match at Princes Park, didn't play until R9 2010 and that was it. We can't be accused of not trying though.
This is a guy who has taken 17 and 16 marks in a game - ironically both against West Coast, which may have helped them to decide to give him a chance - and there's every possible chance that his mid-career mental turn may cure instantly when surrounded by quality players. For him I hope it does, but for the sake of not adding yet another embarrassing chapter to our dark ages let's hope he's nothing more than a good ordinary player for them. Will probably sneak his way into a flag now. If Mitch can do it etc.. etc.. Sadly for him nobody will remember the 17 mark or 36 disposal games, but they will remember this. I'll remember Queen's Birthday 2011 when he didn't go up for a mark in the backline and Joel Macdonald gave him a fearsome spray.
Finally, with just 50 minutes to go, we off-loaded the Stefan Martin Experience to Brisbane for two slop basically throwaway picks. Out went a mobile ruckman who can kick goals or play in defence for Pick 53 (formerly occupied by Tom McDonald, which at least seems to have worked out) and 73 (PASS, Matt Spangher and rookie promotions). Apparently we wanted pick 33, which the Lions scoffed out and offered 53 instead. After days of heavy negotiations, and with the clock obviously ticking towards the last few moments, we caved in and if you ask me (who is obviously well biased) the Lions got a cracking deal. They stared us down, threw in a dinky pick that we might use on a rookie promotion and got a decent player out of it. I mourned, but more on that later. At least he was proven to be worth heaps more than Morton, which was something for the thousands of SME fans out there.
And after a month of trying to wring some interest out of nothing happening for days in a row it thankfully ended shortly after the end of the SME era. Do you think the sponsor secretly wished that trade period had been rammed into five days of helter-skelter trade drama finishing with Heath Black missing out because nobody could work the fax machine at 1.59pm on the Friday? By the third week the only people acknowledging the sponsor were the AFL, and the rest of the country had given up to the point where the only people who still cared were Kurt Tippett and Koby Stevens. And despite all of this to nobody's surprise not a solitary shit was given in New South Wales about any of it.
Now, live from TSP Towers in Truth Or Consequences, New Mexico it's the 7th annual Demonblog End of Year review. Let's get ready for light entertainment...
Good evening ladies and gentlemen, my name is Supermercado and as we come to the end of another year together it means that it's time to tie another #farceshambles together and look back at where it all went horribly wrong yet again.
We also gather to speculate whether there's any chance that we'll see a premiership before the seas rise far enough for the 2040 AFL Home and Away season to be played atop Mount Kilamanjaro.
To present our first award of the evening please welcome the retrospective winner of the 1976 Pelaco VFL Best Dressed Coach award, the one and only Mr. Bob Skilton.
2012 Jim Stynes Medal for Ruckman of the Year
In a way this marks the most difficult award to present because in such a small field a handful of decent performances in otherwise terrible games can leap a man up the leaderboard in a way that may cause some to spit their drink and/or throw their monitor/phone/generic tablet device from an upstairs window.
This year we honour a man who did just that, playing only seven games but providing so much more than light comic relief in ther ruck. A man who if rumours are to be believed will be off to find fame and fortune elsewhere before long. Fresh from finishing 30th in the Best and Fairest, the coaching staff may not like him but we do, for the second year in a row I give you the thinking man's Nic Naitanui - THE Stefan Martin Experience.
Final votes 16 - Stefan Martin 3 - Mark Jamar 0 - Jake Spencer DQ - Jack Fitzpatrick DNP - Max Gawn
After starting as second favourite, Stef becomes the third man to win the award twice. Will he be around to go for three in a row in 2013? Can Jamar play another full season and get the job done, or will we all come around to accepting the power and mystery of The Spencil?
Your previous winners in full:
2005 - Jeff White 2006 - Jeff White (2) 2007 - Jeff White (3) 2008 - Paul Johnson 2009 - Mark Jamar ($3) 2010 - Mark Jamar (2) ($1.50 fav) 2011 - Stefan Martin ($30) 2012 - Stefan Martin (2) ($9)
For the next award of the evening we're pleased to welcome back one of the very popular former winners of the award. Please give a big hand for [REVOKED]
2012 Jeff Hilton Rising Star Award
"Wowee, it's good to be here. This is the best reception I've had from Melbourne fans yet.
You know, being judged the best young player by your coaches, peers or some fat bastard off the internet is a real honour. What made it even more special for me was knowing that I was already on a promise to the pay day of a life time at another club. So, as I present this award I encourage all the nominees to take the easy way out and run off for a huge pay day instead of accepting the responsibility of helping drag a proud club back to its feet."
Your winner, the first man to triumph courtesy of the "debut in the last month of previous season" rule, mixed key defensive jobs with spectacular clangers and we loved him for it. James Magner made the early running, he stormed back to level the scores and finally broke the deadlock with a decent showing in an indecent team against Fremantle.
Nobody else bothered to show up, so a big hand please for the only player ever to follow @demonblog on Twitter it's the man who has already made Melbourne fans forget the Tom McNamara era, it's Mr. Tom McDonald.
Final votes 15 - Tom McDonald 13 - James Magner 0 - Tom Couch, Jack Fitzpatrick, Josh Tynan DNP - Lucas Cook, Troy Davis, Kelvin Lawrence, Rory Taggert, Jai Sheahan and Leigh Williams.
Previous winners: 2005 - No players eligible. 2006 - Matthew Bate 2007 - Michael Newton 2008 - Cale Morton 2009 - Jack Grimes ($4 fav) 2010 - [REVOKED] ($5) 2011 - Jeremy Howe ($30) 2012 - Tom McDonald ($8)
NB: The award was the Jeff Hilton Rookie of the Year from 2005-2011.
Thanks to [REVOKED] for taking time out of his busy schedule throwing hundred dollar bills in the air and trying to find somebody who has any respect for him to return to the club and present the award which made him such a rich, rich man. Buy us a house you crunt.
Now, let's cross to Mean Gene Okerlund in the Demonblog Control Centre for the first half of our look back at the year. Stay strong, there's only two parts to it. But they're both 11 games long so you might want to have a drink first.
That was the season that was - Part One
Pre-season preview - in which we thought it was being needlessly downcast and negative to predict a 13th placed finish.
NAB Cup Round 1 vs Brisbane and Gold Coast Lukewarm three way action In which we struggled to beat Gold Coast and everyone went "hold on, we might actually still be as shit as we were during 186"
NAB Cup match 2 vs Collingwood Let's go fundamental But that only lasted a week, because soon enough we were beating up on a Collingwood side featuring two Irishmen and an American and everyone thought it actually meant something. It didn't. The Herald Sun even went so far as to say Neeld "took the Demons' rebirth to a new level" before whoever wrote it went back later in the year and changed it to say STAFF WRITER when things went tits up.
NAB Cup match 3 vs Hawthorn THUD And here's where it started going tits up. Even the most deeply cynical of all of us got a little a bit excited after the Collingwood game, buying in to the media hype (thanks very much you Herald Sun BASTARDS) and thinking that just maybe we could give the finals a shake. Then David Hale kicked six, the half-strength Hawks made us look stupid and it became fairly clearly that we were still both flotsam and/or jetsam.
Practice match vs Port Adelaide Nervous sweating and adjustment of the upper collar If the Hawthorn match could have been written off as the natural product of a top four side tonking one that wasn't very good at all, our predicament became clear as we glued ourselves to the radio on a Friday night and listened to some toothless South Australian simpletons delivering the worst call in the history of football as we sunk without a trace and Colin Sylvia suffered a broken back. Still, it was only a practice match right?
Round 1 vs Brisbane You've got to laugh (again) Sure we got tonked by Hawthorn, and sure we lost to Port convincingly but we never beat good teams or win in Adelaide so surely it was all going to be ok wasn't it? Well it was alright for the first half before the steaming shit sandwich was delivered and the downward spiral of death began. Mitch Clark struggled, Neeld told the truth in the press conference and got slaughtered for it and we all died a little bit inside.
Round 2 vs West Coast Weird and twisted nights Any suggestion that the Round 1 debacle was a one-off was put to bed when the team went west and left their ability to play football in the east. Other than Mitch Clark who thankfully turned out to be quite good while all around him crumbled like a collapsing building. It was at this point that the public mood began to tilt towards mass panic.
Round 3 vs Richmond A clear choice between vulgarity and obscenity A chance for redemption against one of the handful of sides we could be relied upon to consistently win against during the dark era (except the last time we played them) and once again we stuck with them for a half before being blown into a million pieces of stringy skin and detonated limbs. Nine goals to one in the third quarter and you could officially shelve any sick fantasies you had about making the eight.
Round 4 vs Footscray Rock Bottom Redux Another chance at getting things back on track against a side almost as bad as us, and the only non-franchise in the competition with a forward line more in need of a dose of Viagra than us. Sadly as we paid tribute to Jim, Mitch Clark almost ended his career by falling on his head and we never put in any more than token resistance as our status as a potential bottom three team was confirmed.
Round 5 vs St Kilda The tide hastens for no man In which despite the loss of Clark and Frawley we pushed the still half-decent Saints right into the middle of the last quarter before they kicked away - assisted neatly by us failing to score for the entire term. Which was nice.
Round 6 vs Geelong I'm a country member Where, after I'd pussied out of going to a game in Victoria when free for the first time in nearly a decade, we didn't do at all badly considering that the spectre of 186 hung over us. Still lost though.
Round 7 vs Hawthorn Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit sniffing glue Buoyed by a half decent performance in Geelong, but still wary of a number of kickings we'd received from the Hawks in recent years we went into our one contractually obligated, ratings killing Friday night appearance of the year and put in the old token first quarter before running up the white flag and being thrashed to buggery. You were officially free to do as you please with Friday nights for the next four months.
Round 8 vs Sydney Death by a thousand cuts At this point any early season optimism had completely been replaced by serious mental illness and we started acting like this guy.
There might have been some positives - Watts and Blease playing wildcard cracking games - and the return of The Jurrahcane we were all still left screaming "WE CRAWL ON OUR KNEES TOWARDS OUR DOOM!" at the end of the match by the time we'd had our biggest loss ever in Round 8 and Jurrah had done his ankle never - as it turns out - to be seen again. "What's for breakfast mother, maggots on toast?"
Round 9 vs Carlton Hashtag surrender Well it was better than the Sydney game at least. Were we ever going to win a match...
Round 10 vs Essendon Reunited (and it feels so good) ...INDEED WE WERE! Off the back of our forward line being makeshift and Essendon's putting in one of the most remarkably inept performances in the history of football we somehow managed to pull off the greatest upset EVER based on ladder positions. Which doesn't mean much considering it wouldn't have been possible before last year. Garland kicked the winner, I almost went the vom. It was a great night out.
Round 11 vs Collingwood Squashed by the reality bus Where we came in on a high, with an even more makeshift forward line than the week before, and got spifflicated early in the piece before making it respectable late on then getting thrashed anyway. All of this while I sat there listening to some drunken slurry Pies fan yell out random shit all day before (allegedly) taking on all comers on Brunton Avenue afterwards.
Intermission
We'll be back with part two of the season in review (it gets marginally better) soon, but for now - back from their tour of the Baltic states by popular demand it's the Demonblog Solid Brown Dancers.
And now, please welcome to the stage to present our next award one of the great defenders of our time. Mr Phil Gilbert.
2012 Marcus Seecamp Medal for Defender Of The Year
This award pays tribute to the men who, with some notable exceptions, have kept the wolves at bay during some of the darkest times in the history of this club. Men who have withstood barrages for years and come out with the battle scars and thousand yard stares to prove their dedication to the cause. Men who sadly don't wear twirly moustaches anymore. These are your defenders.
And this year the award goes for the first time to a man who walked the precipice between defence and midfield, threatening at times to find himself disqualified for spending too much time out of contention. Despite this the Seecamp Committee endorsed his nomination and as such we are very pleased for the very first time to honour this man for both his defensive efforts and remaining one year injury free. Please put your hands together for the co-captain of the Melbourne Football Club Mr. Jack Grimes.
Final votes 29 - Jack Grimes 15 - Tom McDonald 11 - James Frawley 8 - Joel Macdonald 2 - Colin Garland 0 - Troy Davis, James Strauss DQ - Jamie Bennell, Stefan Martin, Jared Rivers, James Sellar
The honour board: 2005 - Nathan Carroll and Ryan Ferguson (shared) 2006 - Jared Rivers 2007 - Paul Wheatley 2008 - Matthew Whelan 2009 - James Frawley ($22) 2010 - James Frawley (2) ($3.50) 2011 - James Frawley (3) ($4) 2012 - Jack Grimes ($7)
MFC Facebook Comment of the Year
First a compilation of introduction videos - look out for the never seen before 0-11 one at the end which, thankfully, was shelved before it was required.
5th place goes to a non-malicious post that nevertheless managed to deliver some grand slam player name spelling errors. Shame Pettard, Maloney and McClean weren't involved that week.
4th place goes to the last person in Australia who doesn't understand the concept of a delayed telecast
3rd place goes to somebody who confused the best atmosphere at a Melbourne game in years with apathy while simultaneously applauding the efforts of a bunch of cockheads in orange wigs
2nd place goes to the guy who thinks that we should trade Morton and/or Moloney from the reserves for Ablett or Judd.
But of course 1st place couldn't go to anybody else, as family loyalty trumps common sense yet somehow finds more than one person willing to put their name to liking it.
Bonus - Twitter comment of the year What?
Now, back to the Control Centre for the second part of our season in review. And here's your host, fresh from declaring that the dressage team had 'put some horseshoe on it' in London - it's #shootdwayne!
That was the season that was - part two
Round 12 vs Nobody We all had a well earned break and plotted ways to abuse $cully
Round 13 vs Greater Western Sydney Fear and Loathing in the Olympic Stand Where we abused $cully and eventually ran away to a decent win despite a) being pox in the first quarter and b) being not much better than pox in the last. Also dear Mitch suffered a season ending injury. At least we didn't lose to the $2m Turd.
Round 14 vs Brisbane Taking The Clunge Where without Clark and with Rivers and Garland proving why they were makeshift forwards at best we had more inside 50's and still managed to lose by ten goals.
Round 15 vs Richmond Trading while insolvent The week where everybody, including the players, started to desperately look for the finish line.
Round 16 vs Fremantle 50 Shades of Brown The traditional Empty Stadium Match at Docklands where nobody saw us take an early lead and then slowly suffocate (via a strange detour to being good again in the third quarter) before being whipped in the last quarter and playing Freo into form at the right time of the year.
Round 17 vs Port Adelaide Begone vile creatures Where the financially necessary but soul destroying trip to Darwin saw another solid first quarter performance quickly transform into mass pumpkinage. Match forgotten by absolutely everyone ten minutes later, including the Port Adelaide board who were frantically trying to sack the coach.
Round 18 vs North Melbourne NO CARRIER A match that only existed to get us through to what seemed like a guaranteed win the next week.
Round 19 vs Gold Coast You take it where you can get it And a guaranteed win it was thank god. After racking up the biggest first quarter lead in many a year dreams turned to a massive, morale boosting victory but four quarter efforts are far too much to ask for and we were then pretty much outplayed for the rest of the day.
Round 20 vs St Kilda Landfill football Where St Kilda first rampaged to a match winning third quarter, then gave up in the last and let us make it interesting. Also popular interplanetary visitor Sam Blease booted five, cementing his position as the next big post-Jurrah cult figure.
Round 21 vs Greater Western Sydney Everything looks better in slow motion Where we travelled to the nation's capital, nobody turned up and we were only marginally less terrible than they were.
Round 22 vs Adelaide I've grown accustomed to your farce Token efforts early became the usual slopfest as talk in the stands turned to the guy in the Crows cheersquad who was engaging security guards in conversation with a glove puppet.
Round 23 vs Fremantle One day in September Where we achieved a token September appearance and then struggled to kick five goals in a perfect send of for a year that nobody will want to remember in a hurry.
And now, it's that time of the night where we pay tribute to the one man who rose above the grim, no glory duty of playing for the Melbourne Football Club and
To present the award, please welcome the man himself. Back from the fishing trawler, the copper mine, the remote island prison or wherever else he's supposed to have been for the last year. Please rise to your feet for the one, the only Allen Jakovich.
2012 Allen Jakovich Medal
"Thanks for inviting me to this glorious occassion again. As the man who should have won this award with a flying finish in 1991 - if anybody had known what blogs were at the time - it always gives me a thrill to return from exile once a year and bestow the honour of receiving this important award on one player.
This year we present a repeat winner for the first time in the award's history. A man who dominated in his early years before sinking into the MFC quagmire to the point whether we all wondered if he was just a 'good ordinary' who would be eclipsed by a star studded list of newly drafted midfield sensations. Well either he wasn't or they were all just rubbish (or a bit of both) but this year nobody deserved this award more than the man who started as favourite led from the front all season, capturing the lead in this award a month into the year and never letting go.
Friends and sympathisers please remain upstanding for the winner of the 2012 Allen Jakovich Medal - with a record vote tally - Nathan Jones".
Leaderboard 56 - Nathan Jones 29 - Jack Grimes 27 - Jeremy Howe 20 - Jack Watts 17 - Mitch Clark 16 - Stefan Martin, Colin Sylvia 15 - Tom McDonald, Jordie McKenzie 13 - James Magner, Daniel Nicholson 12 - Jared Rivers 11 - James Frawley 10 - Sam Blease 9 - Brent Moloney 8 - Matthew Bate, Joel Macdonald 6 - Lynden Dunn 5 - Clint Bartram, Brad Green 4 - Neville Jetta, Jack Trengove 3 - Mark Jamar, Luke Tapscott 2 - Rohan Bail, Colin Garland 1 - James Sellar 0 - Jamie Bennell, Lucas Cook, Tom Couch, Aaron Davey, Troy Davis, Michael Evans, Jack Fitzpatrick, Max Gawn, Jordan Gysberts, Liam Jurrah, Kelvin Lawrence, Ricky Petterd, Jai Sheahan, Jake Spencer, James Strauss, Rory Taggert, Josh Tynan, Leigh Williams
Your past champions in full (year-by-year votes): 2005 - Travis Johnstone 2006 - Brock McLean 2007 - Nathan Jones 2008 - Cameron Bruce 2009 - Aaron Davey ($8) 2010 - Brad Green ($4) 2011 - Brent Moloney ($9) 2012 - Nathan Jones [2] ($3.50)
Thanks Jako, we're almost done here. There's just the small matter of our last set of MFC Power Rankings for the Year. With the slate wiped clean for the start of 2012, the Best and Fairest giving us some indication of who fits where and some already having departed, where will your favourites rank?
Good night friends, thanks for your support over another tough season. Demonblog will be back in 2013 for more keyboard mashing and arguably defamatory comments about opposition players. Roll these over the credits.
Power Rankings - season finale
(1) 1. Nathan Jones (4) 2. Jack Grimes (17) 3. Mitch Clark (2) 4. James Frawley (5) 5. Tom McDonald (7) 6. Jordie McKenzie (6) 7. Colin Garland (12) 8. Jack Trengove (8) 9. Jared Rivers (3) 10. Colin Sylvia (9) 11. Jeremy Howe (13) 12. Mark Jamar (20) 13. Lynden Dunn (10) 14. Jack Watts (19) 15. Sam Blease (21) 16. Rohan Bail (14) 17. Daniel Nicholson (24) 18. Clint Bartram (15) 19. Joel Macdonald (30) 20. James Sellar (11) 21. Stefan Martin (26) 22. James Strauss (23) 23. Aaron Davey (22) 24. James Magner (28) 25. Luke Tapscott (34) 26. Jake Spencer (25) 27. Cale Morton (39) 28. Max Gawn (35) 29. Neville Jetta (27) 30. Matthew Bate (36) 31. Jack Fitzpatrick (32) 32. Tom Couch (31) 33. Ricky Petterd (29) 34. Jordan Gysberts (41) 35. Josh Tynan (40) 36. Jamie Bennell (44) 37. Jai Sheahan (38) 38. Troy Davis (37) 39. Lucas Cook (43) 40. Leigh Williams (42) 41. Michael Evans (45) 42. Rory Taggert (16) 43. Brad Green (18) 44. Brent Moloney (33) 45. Liam Jurrah (46) 46. Kelvin Lawrence
I'd love to say this post is fantastically late because I was out on the piss for Mad Monday with Nathan Carroll and we'd only just been released from police custody, but it was just a case of having too many better things to do than piece together strands of a post written on two different computers, a phone - and at one point when something came to me in a train - pieces of crumpled paper.
Shouldn't have bothered in the end I'm sure you'll agree, but as Bill Hicks said...
It would have taken a brave pundit to publicly claim that this game was going to be anything less than a steaming pile of toxic turd. When the main storyline of the week was Leigh Matthews advising the Dockers to openly point shave against a team they couldn't lose to in a million years in order to ensure a home final that should have been the cue for all but the most tragic supporters to find something better to do on Saturday night.
And indeed they did, with just 81,000 bothering to tune in. It wasn't quite the tax write-off that our match against GWS was (57k) but still when Fox Sports tally up where they've had value for money in the first year of the broadcast rights there won't be many of our games featuring in the top 100.
For those of us who a) had nothing better to do, b) have a track record for severe Bob Flanagan grade masochism or both there was the chance to see one last limp performance as everyone on and off-field desperately stretched for the finish line after having spent the whole year crashing into every hurdle imaginable.
Those of us who did subject ourselves to a going away farceshambles before the year ended at least saw the Melbourne Football Club strike a vital blow for the integrity of the competition. Yes, that Melbourne Football Club. Table this at the Tankquiry - with Freo provided the opportunity to manipulate the result in order to finish lower and get a 'home' final by default we took a stand and said no. They needed to beat us by no more than seven (if we scored 40, but how shit would you have to be to.. oh, I see) and we opened the game by gifting the two goals before 21 of 22 players (though I'll excuse designed council worker vestee Josh Tynan) had managed a single possession. NO CASE TO ANSWER YOUR HONOUR.
In the sworn testimony in front of the Grand Jury we might not mention that losing benefited our draft position, but let's be fair there are a lot of MFC players who have gone through their entire career not winning in Perth despite having a red hot go so why should this have been any different? Even with our best 22 out there we'd still have ended up being squished like a bug, so the question was just how bad it was going to go get and how much fight would be shown as we were inevitably put to the sword.
When a team has had a bottom-of-the-harbour scheme style season they're supposed to field a team full of kids and roll over and die in the last round, and we did our bit for both stereotypes by putting on the Fitz and bringing Tynan back then getting belted - but does it always have to be like that? We can't all be so lucky to play mental teams like Melbourne or Richmond in the last round but how do Port climb off the canvas two years in a row after nightmare years to put in a respectable performance in the last game with a team full of nobodies? Beating us in the last round of 2011 didn't help Port much, but at least it gave their fans a few months of belief rather than a creeping dread about being shit yet again next season.
Then there's GWS who had an even better excuse to run around in front of an empty stadium and take their deserved beating against North. They'll all barely out of primary school, have been waffled almost every week for six months and are being forced to play Israel Folau just because. Yet somehow they manage to trouble North to the point where the Roos put in a stinker and 'only' win by five goals, all but forfeiting their chance to stay in Melbourne in the first week of the finals and putting Freo in an almost unmanageable position to massage the result and stay in Perth for week one.
Sure they COULD have put the handbrake on in spectacular fashion and either lost to us (highly unlikely), let us get close enough to manipulate percentage appropriately OR they could just belt us as you'd expect and enjoy the experience no matter what the implications are for having to travel to an Elimination Final.
In the end they had a bit each way before realising we'd declined the written invitation to have a go and from halfway through the second quarter decided they'd might as well put on a training drill with some white clad traffic cones instead. Sadly for Roscoe the margin in the North game had left his in an almost unrortable position, and so we got kicked to buggery.
Not that I'm suggesting he ever considered pulling off any shenanigans, I'm in the Andrew Demetriou camp where I firmly believe tanking and the manipulation of results does not exist. So let's shut down the Tankquiry and give us some extra picks to say thanks for keeping Freo honest.
But who gives a shit about Ross Lyon, Freo or North right now? Let's concentrate on our own self-loathing and anguish at the end of what was the worst season since 1981 (messiah failure), 1997 (statistical fiasco) or 2007 (shock explosion) depending on how old you are.
Just when you thought you'd had two fingers waved in your general direction by this club enough times in 2012 it was a classic last minute FU to go out kicking just five goals. At least usually even when things turn out badly you might get seven or eight goals minimum - maybe something memorable to send us off into the post-season? Nah, bugger it we'll have three Bailey Quarters in one game instead. It wasn't our lowest score of the season (no really), and we didn't lose by a hundred but it was certainly an apt way to shut the door on a year which gargled some of the sweatiest plums in all of the known universe.
It's a surprise we didn't lose by more considering how much Freo dominated and how our players lost the ability to hit a target via handball from two metres away, but they did clock off en masse for the first half of the second quarter. The unkind would say the only reason we dominated for ten minutes was because Freo were trying to measure the lengths they'd have to go to in order to get the 'dream' result, but how about we give our side some credit for once and say they actually had a good stretch. It was just that we had a forward line consisting of Fitz and nobody else so of course we weren't going to capitalise.
If Freo were playing normally with no thought to the end result it wasn't for want of encouragement to open up on the rorts from the Fox Footy commentary team, and more specifically Dermott Brereton. It started when they interviewed Lyon before the game and he had to stand there being diplomatic as this clown stands there openly asking him if he's going to match fix. Then for the first three quarters every piece of stream-of-consciousness bollocks that came out of his mouth was related to how they were going to go about fixing the score. Freo's lawyers must have knocked on the door of the Fox Sports commentary booth at 3/4 time because he finally gave up rather than wasting our last quarter of footy for the year guffawing about how difficult it would be for Freo to blow a 50 point lead.
I rank Derm one level above Dwayne Russell, Tony Shaw and Brian Taylor. As long as we're not involved I can watch a game where he's calling and deal with some rambling bollocks, but when we're involved it makes me want to kick the TV in.
The commentary team cheerleading for one side to roll over for the other was distracting enough, but in a game where the opposition get 108 more disposals and we kick bugger all goals how am I supposed to remember any more than a handful of interesting moments?
I certainly remember Joel Macdonald becoming the latest player to suffer from my stamp of approval and take more than a quarter to get a kick before promptly shanking it straight out of bounds. I remember Watts hitting a target every time he got the ball but spending the rest of the time running around looking like he wanted to be anywhere else. I remember a LOT of ineffective disposals. One thing I don't remember was Blease doing anything other than kicking a ripper of a goal, because he didn't do anything else.
Yet again the midfield rested almost entirely on Jones' shoulders (despite a tag) with some token late season help from Sylvia and cameo appearances by McKenzie and Trengove - both of whom tried the hearts out but can't kick to save themselves. All that and Sandilands treating Jamar with disrespect at bounces before wandering forward and outmarking everyone because he's a bloody giraffe. Hitouts are as big a myth as inside 50's, but if you're going to lose them then get ready to win clearances or get ready to be beaten up.
Yet again the backline were forced to prop us up and block total disaster. Frawley looked far better than he has for the last few weeks and but for a couple of wonky kicks McDonald continued to be solid. Also Grimes - how good has his end of the year been? If Jones has been our best player from Round 1 and will win the Best and Fairest by 2000 votes I suspect Grimetime might run a close second in the latter part of the year. Here's to his first injury free season not being his last a'la the perennially crocked Jamar.
Nicholson was good too, and for once I'm willing to look past atrocious disposal to give votes to somebody who didn't hit targets because most of the time he was panic kicking due to lack of targets after going and getting the ball with hard work. Possibly not getting a game in a finals bound team, but we're not going to be one any time soon so welcome to the senior list. At least if it all goes wrong he's got an excuse for playing like he came from the amateurs.
The Dockers were kind enough not to totally kill us in the last quarter but even if they hadn't scored we'd have had to go another four quarters to even get close to the magic score. Fitz tried hard and I'm glad he got two goals but he's got a lot of work to do in the off-season. Obviously they're not even considering him as a ruckman in the future because he didn't get a token run against Sandi in the middle so the second/third tall forward job is his to have a proper go at. The only downside was that between the televised Casey game the previous Saturday and the start of this one was that he'd shaved off the beard combined with his straggly hair to make him look like a cult leader. Cult leader = cult figure so get the David Koresh look back in by the start of pre-season training.
Other than a few token nice moments from us and their self-preservation/attempts to spoon feed Pavlich the Coleman Medal (which would have ultimately been useless anyway) there wasn't much else to recommend the rest of the game. If there was nobody watching it at the start of the night god knows how many hadn't either flicked to Collingwood/Essendon or White Wife, Black Gentleman's Sausage #9 by the time the siren thankfully came and marked the end of a horrible, horrible year.
My first instinct is that I no longer care who they sack, trade or lose to free agency anymore but that's not entirely true. I really don't want Jared Rivers to go. Other than that there's a few I'd make a case for if I had to defend them in Delisting Court but nothing that should get in the way of the hand-grenade lobbing. I'm firmly in the 'wait and see' camp but Neeld's honeymoon has just ended, time to start rebuilding the rebuild.
For some the honeymoon was over about two minutes after he was announced as the coach, and the bandwagon has approached about 20% Scully (the new measurement for measuring the intensity of footy hatred) by the end of Round 23 but I'm going to stick with relentless optimism until next year. God knows if he can coach or if the assistants around him are any good, but as vile as this season has been he's got to have time to put his stamp on the list. He was good enough not to turn up and shoot everyone at the end of last year, but now the proverbial 'ruthless cull' is in the air and here's hoping Plan B is more successful.
The potential massacre presents an issue in itself. Nobody wants to be rubbish again, and I suspect there will be very polite MFC style rivers of blood if we are, but at the same time if we've come to the point where we're going to admit that the Bailey era list isn't going to cut it then there's got to be a reasonable look at the longer term but if they dump 10 players and don't add any blockbuster free agents from the rapidly thinning pool available then are we all going to be back here next year wailing that we've got a bunch of kids who are running around like headless chickens? Of course we will be.
There's a few 'kids' going into their third of fourth years that should (SHOULD) keep getting better - as well the enigmas like Watts and Morton. But we had all of three first year players in 2012 and only one of them was under 21 so unless we're going to be treated to Lucas Cook flying in like Batman and belatedly proving why we drafted him over the romper then there's not going to be much scope for natural improvement amongst the kids who are already there.
I'm not writing off 2013 in advance, but unless something drastic occurs then I don't see any reason why we'll finish any better than 13th (ironically exactly where I picked us to wind up this season). Is that going to be enough to keep people from throwing themselves out of windows? I doubt it. Miracles happen but if your mental health is resting on us challenging for the finals next year I suggest you spend the season at a health retreat because chances are you'll be very disappointed. What it's going to be about for me is doing the reverse to this year and getting a shitload of debutants onto the field. Maybe a couple of experienced players from other clubs help shore up the ship a bit, but in the end it's going to be pretty much the same model as this year so feel free to go wild on whatever voodoo style rituals you're keen on.
At least next year you don't know what's going to happen. That's something. There's the small window of hope where you wonder 'what if' before it's cruelly shut down halfway through Round 1. Chances are whatever happens that you won't remember it like you do this one. It's been horrendeous, and much of it has been painful but at least we've still got a club and the sun keeps rising. Tomorrow is another day etc..
2012 Allen Jakovich Medal votes 5 - Jack Grimes 4 - Daniel Nicholson 3 - Colin Sylvia 2 - Tom McDonald 1 - Nathan Jones
Apologies to Fitzpatrick, Frawley and nobody else.
Final standings The Nathan Jonestown Massacre is complete, and even after being tagged to buggery and playing one of his most ordinary games all season he still managed to get a vote due to being surrounded by garbage. Good luck to anybody who has designs on beating this score in the future.
Also congratulations to Tom McDonald who pushed ahead of Magner at the last minute (legitimate vote too, not just there to break to tie - good luck to him that nobody else was any good) to take home the Hilton. In honour of him being the first man to ever win it under the 'debuting in the last month of the previous season' rule it's officially renamed the Jeff Hilton Rising Star Medal from now on.
56 - Nathan Jones (RAMPANT WINNER: Allen Jakovich Medal for Player of the Year) 29 - Jack Grimes (WINNER: Marcus Seecamp Medal for Defender of the Year) 27 - Jeremy Howe 20 - Jack Watts 17 - Mitch Clark 16 - Stefan Martin (DEFAULT WINNER: Jim Stynes Medal for Ruckman of the Year), Colin Sylvia 15 - Tom McDonald (WINNER: Jeff Hilton Rising Star Medal), Jordie McKenzie 13 - James Magner, Daniel Nicholson 12 - Jared Rivers 11 - James Frawley 10 - Sam Blease 9 - Brent Moloney 8 - Matthew Bate, Joel Macdonald 6 - Lynden Dunn 5 - Clint Bartram, Brad Green 4 - Neville Jetta, Jack Trengove 3 - Mark Jamar, Luke Tapscott 2 - Rohan Bail, Colin Garland 1 - James Sellar
Congratulations to everyone who scored a vote, and especially to those who join the hallowed list of players who have done so over the years. To the rest of you, try to do better next time.
Stat My Bitch Up To wrap up some of the statistical categories that we've been following this season...
Total score (22 game seasons) Feel like you didn't see many goals kicked this season? Well you'd be right. Thank god for Mitch Clark.
Percentage (all time) After a rocky mid-season point where we touched the bottom five we 'recovered' to 'just' the 9th worst season in history with 67.49%. It was even better than '08's 62.61%. What an era to live in.
Crowd Watch Allegedly Freo fans are less feral than their fellow secessionists. Having never been there I can't comment, and apparently there was a cracking brawl in the stands, but they're clearly no less obsessed with booing anything and everything when it doesn't go their way.
I know when any jig that was in action was up they may as well have enjoyed the experience of watching us painfully striving to score, but early in the piece when it was delicately balanced at 20 points did they really need to boo every free kick and shot on goal? Feel free to sit back and enjoy a guaranteed win for once instead of playing up to stereotypes and acting like you're at the Nuremburg Rallies.
Next Week If you're into cheap but cheerful versions of the MFC who have a chance of winning a minor league championship there's always the Casey Scorpions but otherwise you can put your feet up safe in the knowledge that the year is over and you can pay half an interest in the 8 team exhibition series which starts next Friday night. I'm going for Sydney just because I want Mike Pyke and Mitch Morton to win the Exhibition Cup Final.
At some point before Grand Final day the annual Demonblog End Of Year Spectacular will be on here. Just waiting for Don Lane to return my calls about hosting.
Next Year Now here's where it starts to get ugly and both kids and adults alike have to shelve jumpers when their favourite players get the arse. Let's cross to international waters and see what's happening at the MFC List Management Academy. Look out for the cameo appearance by Max Gawn at the end.
The high likelihood that Casey are going to go out in straight sets again next weekend means that the inevitable raft of cuts might not be as delayed as you might have thought before they kicked three goals on the weekend but it's still highly unlikely that you've seen the last at upwards of five senior MFC players and a couple of rookies.
Nev Jetta and Joel Mac picked a really bad time to play a rubbish game (two in a row to be honest), because when Neeld and Co are rounding up people to put them on the bus to Miller's Crossing those two might find themselves sitting on the roof rack after Saturday night.
Dunn was no good either, and giving away the first goal on a stupid 50 won't have helped, but how much experience can you dump in one go? With Green and Moloney absolutely gone and Rivers every possible chance of joining them to have a crack at winning something before his time is up how are we supposed to make that up? You put too many kids in and you end up like GWS or Gold Coast without the benefit of them all being out of the top ten.
On that note I'll have a go at MFC Delisting Lotto. Hoping Rivers stays and that the rumours about Gysberts and the SME being on the trade block are false and deceptive, this is my betting slip:
Nicholson goes to the senior list, Magner and Couch stay as rookies. If Rivers walks Macdonald survives.
Since I started writing this post it's sad to say I've had to add Jurrah to that list of delisted senior players after he apparently announced that he'd be off to Adelaide next year. Club statement seems to indicate that he doesn't want to play anywhere but we'll see what happens over the next few days.
Port released a statement saying suggesting they'd be open to looking at home but no way do they actually go and sign him up knowing that after March he could be in pokey for months if not years. So unless something extraordinary happens his AFL career is finished until at least 2014. Which is a shame for us, and for him, but at least we'll always have 36 games (32 of which he kicked at least one goal in) full of highlights to remember him by - and the greatest video of all time.
Yeah he played less games than Andrew Lamprill, Jeff Hilton and Ted Fidge but let's not get all revisionist and pretend that picking him in the 2008 Pre-Season draft was somehow a mistake. We might have had Tom Rockliff, and that might have turned out to be a longer term victory, but it's a bit fanciful now for people to act like him relocating and putting his career on hold was the inevitable conclusion of drafting somebody from a remote community. I didn't see anybody doing a 'countdown to disaster' before he smashed his wrist against Gold Coast last year.
Still, if they were being in any way reckless in picking him (they weren't) it's a shame that old school MFC style conservatism came back into vogue just in time to pass on Jack Darling just because he enjoyed a sex romp or 10.
I'd much rather have LJ than not, but if he's never seen again then we still got more than our money's worth for a PSD pick. If he'd turned around and said he didn't fancy it after two games fair enough, but we got good value before he was rolled by a set of circumstances so bizarre that even if you were setting out to deliberately do lazy stereotyping of indigenous players you probably wouldn't have thought up.
I hope we don't cut him loose completely. Assuming the Adelaide clubs don't want to risk him, and realistically why would you, we should send him off to the SANFL with our best wishes and an open invite to return whenever the situation permits. As long as that's not in five years etc.. etc.. May he kick 150 for Glenelg, get off on a technicality and come back into our welcoming arms next year when still young enough to do some real damage.
While on one hand it's disappointing and sad, on the other it instantly solves one enormous list management (CLICHE) headache. If we had any forwards who were 50/50 they might have just won a reprieve from the Nathan Carroll Memorial Shark Tank. Usually we're lucky just to have forwards so nobody readily springs to mind other than Petterd who would surely have seen the writing on the wall and decided to go elsewhere. Other than that The Fitz is obviously not going anywhere (unless he's being dragged by the leg rope) and despite showing absolutely nothing for two years Cook surely isn't going to get the boot (unless there's behind the scenes shenanigans afoot) but if there was any doubt this has probably saved him.
Other than them for god's sake find us a forward of some age and size immediately or we'll be one exploding Mitch foot or form slump away from 5.10.40 every week. At this point I'll even take Cloke on a billion dollars a year or Tippett and his egg-shell skull. Even Quentin bloody Lynch is an unrestricted free agent who can at least take a mark. Otherwise R1 2013 you're going to have some combo of Sellar, Puttin' on the Fitz and the SME as our other talls. All fine citizens, not 30 goal a year forwards.
If we can't get forwards what about we take the piss and assemble a Harlem Globetrotters style team of old men (most younger than me to be fair) from the remaining available free agents. Roll on Simon Black, Paul Chapman, Dustin Fletcher and David Wojcinski. Also Mark Nicoski, not because he's old but just because I love his gigantic owl style eyes.
On a personal note my near-flawless record of having seen pretty much every minute of every game from 2010-2012 is coming to an end at some point next season, so set yourself to be called upon for a guest writing stint. If the fixture somehow avoids the two weddings that I'll be at during the year then the two weeks I'll be overseas will absolutely end it. I've got a plan though - I'm going to tape all our games when I'm away, not read any papers or check anything online and watch them all as if new when I get home. Good luck with that.
Final Thoughts And err... that's it. I won't say it's been entirely pleasant to watch, but thanks for forgoing self-harm long enough to show an interest.
Good evening ladies and gentlemen, my name is Supermercado and as we come to the end of another year together it means that it's time to tie another #farceshambles together and look back at where it all went horribly wrong yet again. 
Round 11 vs Collingwood
