Signs of Life

Note, I've had no time to edit this so I apologise for any crimes against the English language which are contained within of paragraphs which suddenly cut off in the

In a week where a couple of good quarters and a battling win over a team firmly attached next to us at the bottom of football's ocean somehow led people to think we had turned the corner and entered a new era the concern was that the reigning premiers would then mow us down like a protestor trying to stop a tank.

Given that possibility is it wrong that under the circumstances a five goal loss to them actually leaves me delirious with joy? It's a sign of just how high we've hoisted the white flag this season that any sort of loss can be described as positive, but unlike the decoy corner turn against Richmond I don't even feel guilty about having walked from the ground feeling like I had a good time.

It's not the first time in the last couple of years we've put in a respectable losing performance against a legitimate top four contender, but it's rare. Thwarting Geelong's bid for 186 II at Kardinia Park early last year, Queen's Birthday 2012 after quarter time and the first half of the Empty Stadium Match against Freo at Docklands are about it. Otherwise it's two years of having our dignity stripped on a near weekly basis, so take this in your arms and run for your life.

For the purposes of keeping the Neil Craig Feelgood Factor (good name for a band) alive I'm willing to overlook the fact that Sydney botched about 10 easy chances on goal and treated the second half like a glorified training drill. That doesn't matter, I'm sure many other teams intended to have an easy day out against us then when confronted with a team playing like they were under heavy sedation decided to get serious and smash us like a guitar.

This time we recovered from a rubbish start and stayed alive long enough to actually put some realistic pressure on - even if it was at the rate of 1.25 centre clearances a quarter. On the other hand we were more than reasonable in getting clearances around the ground, and our players now actually get possessions and string more than a couple of them together without panicking and booting it towards the boundary line in the admittedly correct but tactically dubious belief that by not having the ball we're less likely to do something stupid with it.

There was even less backwards and sideways kicking this week compared to our last loss. More thrillingly there was also a willingness to take a chance and go back into the middle of the ground if required rather than slavishly going around the boundary every single time. Suddenly MFC footy is half interesting and I'm taking back everything I said around the Gold Coast fiasco about there being no benefit to kicking the coach out during the season - there has been a tremendous benefit to everything other than our crowds.

Strangely enough it was our first loss against the Swans at the MCG since August 2006, but that's got more to do with avoiding playing them for most of that time other a win and a draw which took place firmly in the middle of the Dean Bailey Glory Era (also a good name for a band).

Even with this relatively good recent record against them (ignoring some sort of fiasco that took place at the SCG last year where I believe some sort of award winning mark was taken), and a much improved performance last week before falling face first into a landfill in the last quarter this way still a danger game. For most clubs a 'danger game' is one they might lose, for us it's one we might lose by 20 goals.

At first it looked far more likely that we'd end up being thrashed. Somehow the Neeld trend of holding the stitches in for five minutes before our entrails burst across the field has totally reversed under Craig and now we cop a goal in the first minute every week. Admittedly that's about the only thing that's gone wrong under him so far, but it is concerning. Possibly something to do with being flogged in the centre at every single bounce?

It got better eventually, and if we hadn't completed the circle by conceding a goal right at the end it would have almost been worthy of a West Coast style premature standing ovation. Especially considering that for the first few minutes we were conceding goals via a series of comedy capers.

Not only was the first goal the product of Frawley (otherwise almost flawless pre-injury) handballing to a flat-footed Margaret Terlich, who fair enough got put in a headlock and should have had a free, for a holding the ball free and goal after what AFL Tables tells me was 53 seconds.

Sure we got the 'equaliser' not long after on our first of a precious handful of trips inside 50, but then it turned into a Marx Brothers style 'A Day At The Footy' slapstick extravaganza. First Nicholson with one of his trademark turnovers, then Sylvia forgetting how to bounce and another one indirectly via Trengove packing it and blindly hoofing the ball as far away from the defensive 50 as possible - for about three seconds before it came back over his head for a goal.

From there we probably should have caved in and compliantly taken our thrashing, and quite possibly would have if the Swans hadn't missed two chances in a row. The door was left slightly ajar for Watts - after 20 minutes of the most effort for no reward I've seen in his career - and then Fitzpatrick - about to launch the sort of meteoric rise to cult stardom that may see Kevin Rudd ask him to appear on the ALP Senate ticket - to kick goals and improbably drag the margin back to just eight points. And this was all happening while the Swans were playing properly - from their first 100 handballs they hit the target with 96 of them - and we hadn't won a single clearance out of the middle.

Against all odds we now seem to be able to kick goals when we can get the ball inside 50, it's just that we can't get it there. Dean Bailey must be smashing plates watching this after having had the exact opposite during 2010/11 where our midfield was doing quite nicely but had nobody to kick it to. Dawes certainly helps - old mate Collingwood fan with me was almost about to start a riot seeing him taking strong overhead marks again and again.

Howe and Watts also help, as against all odds, does the born again Puttin' On The Fitz who has now vaulted past both The Spencil and Jamar as a realistic 'resting' forward option. In an ideal world I'd prefer a Gawn/Clark combo with Mitch forward most of the time but for a team who can't get the ball out of the middle we've suddenly got an even more realistic looking collection of ruck options than we had two weeks ago when Spence was creating havoc.

I'm sure it's not as easy as this, but is anyone else now convinced that if we could get the ball down there more than five times a quarter we'd actually be a reasonable chance of kicking winning scores. So much has changed in the last three weeks, the idea that you're going to turn up and see us kick 5.9.39 almost seems silly.

You wonder if Neeld's been game to turn the TV back on yet and what he thinks about it all. I'm sure that for all the disasters which he presided over that he still wants the side and 'his' players to do well (if only to say "I started this!" in future job interviews) but I'd love to get his take on what's different. Is he sitting there thinking "why couldn't they play like this for me?" "oh god, I stuffed it all up" or "Neil Craig, you're doing it all wrong".

Nobody's seen him since my offer via Twitter to host a tell-all interview where he tips the bucket on everyone went sadly unanswered, but I'd like to extend it further into a full-scale co-commentating role where we sit down and watch one of these games live while he provides a 'directors cut' view while also tipping the bucket. I'm assuming he didn't see it on Twitter because he's either a) burnt the password in a fire or b) never wrote it himself to start with so if anyone's in contact (and I know some of you probably are) then feel free to pass the message on.

I'd like to think that the suggestion he was going to Thailand to 'get away from it all' were a classic Edward Snowden to Havana style red herring and that he's actually holed up in a log cabin somewhere in the Adelaide Hills while Dean Bailey runs out the last few weeks of his suspension putting him through therapy sessions that look like this:



It seems highly unlikely given that Neeld spent 18 months publicly and privately potting Bailey's Camp Granada attitude to training before turning the place into the Bangkok Hilton, but in a week where Jack Watts outed Neil Craig as a zen master anything is possible.

In all fairness the expected poleaxing probably should have started in the second quarter, which featured the Swans doing absolutely everything right all around the ground except for kicking straight. 4.10 was a fair result in total scoring shots for their dominance, and the margin did get out to 35 points thanks to - shock horror - a goal in the last couple of minutes but despite this it did feel like we weren't playing all that badly. In patches we were even playing well, and when we went inside 50 we were scoring but it was just that we couldn't string enough of having the ball together without stuffing it up.

Looking back at the score progression now I'm surprised at how far we got ourselves behind and am starting to question why I'm so comfortable with this result. Talk about being sucked in by a few last minute junk-time goals. To be entirely honest without having seen a second of the replay or watched any highlights (just the kind of in-depth analytical service you can only get from Demonblog) I'm not even sure why I thought we were playing well - it really all came down to the defence standing strong under constant attack without going to pieces.

I do remember becoming distinctly aware halfway through the second quarter that we appeared to be back to playing a classic Baileyball 'golden era' style where nobody other than Kent or Dawes were outside the defensive 50 and Watts was back to being a defender. Given the new willingness to accept the coach's tactical moves as genius rather than stupidity I'm willing to believe that Craig deliberately sent Jack down there to prove to him that he was good enough to play either end at the drop of a hat. Either that or it was a panic move to try and stop us from being flogged to death with a run of goals in true MFC fashion - and it could very well have been if Sydney could kick straight.

Thankfully after half-time Sydney had enough of playing like the reigning premiers and decided to play like a team more suited to our level instead. After their 96% handball success rate in the first half it dropped off noticeably when they started to play like the Harlem Globetrotters instead. It didn't hurt their scoring though and by the time

Wacky umpiring didn't hurt either. We got a handful of bizarre decisions in our favour to 'even' up the ledger, and Fitzpatrick was gifted a goal courtesy of the worst free kick in the history of football at the end but the interpretation of the holding the ball rule throughout the second half was insane at best.

It all started with Mike Pyke dropping a drop kick while being tackled and it being ok (but at the same time why hadn't he been thrown across the line by our defenders anyway) and travelled through Fitzpatrick mowing his opponent down with a perfect tackle in a 30 metre chase only for the crackpot in baby blue to wave play on into a variety of disasters during the second half. Sure Fitz probably didn't need to take out his frustrations by openly grabbing the Sydney player by the ankle and pulling him to the ground - and that free was certainly there - but how they didn't pay holding the ball was comical.

Then, just when you think that the laws of the game had been changed at a secret midnight session of the AFL Rules Committee and that you can do whatever you like for however long you like and not cop it out comes Jeremy Howe to take possession of the ball for about four milliseconds at the start of the third quarter and cop a free after being tackled. Then there was Tippett being swung around in circles like he was on a carnival ride only to eventually get ball to boot three hours later and find a spare player right in front. No wonder he was spare when every single human being on the face of the planet was expecting that the umpire was about to pay HTB - except the umpire himself.

The real winner, though, was the Mitch Clisby 'incident' where poor Mitch shat himself at his first kick-in and stuffed it up in remarkable fashion a'la whichever one of S. Buckley or C. Johnson who tried to kick it to himself and fell flat on his face. Problem was that unless I've missed another secret meeting in a carpark at midnight that if you don't bring the ball in properly then it's a bounce in the square - it was an undignified spectacle to see him diving for the line, and in any circumstances I'd have said fair enough on paying it as 'deliberate' but if the umpire hadn't shit himself even more he'd have realised that he couldn't pay it as deliberate in the first place. It's not like he even had a 'moment' and paid advantage on somebody booting it through the goals, he actually stopped, thought through it for a second and then paid a free straight in front. Thanks for that.

At least the putrid decisions weren't all confined to our game, witness some of the baffling calls in the Port/Essendon match. Not that you'd be able to tell what's right and what isn't based on the Bombers crowd bleating every time the other team went near the ball. I can accept some mistakes, and I can accept umpires being caught out of position or with somebody in front of them - but I can't accept them plucking the most random frees out of their arse (the last Fitzpatrick one) while failing to pay blatantly obvious ones that occur right in front of their eyes. You'll never solve the problem entirely but professional umpires would be a good start - at least then they could be held to some reasonable job standards rather than doing whatever they like and then going back to working as a truck driver on Monday morning.

Despite a procession of 'unusual' decisions, and George Michael Bluth getting off the leash a bit once Frawley went off injured (lucky he can't kick straight) we managed to restrict the damage to under 50 points at the last change. Still not sure why I thought we weren't playing all that badly, but maybe it was because they were at least trying to 'take the game on' (CLICHE) instead of trudging around like they'd just been told their favourite pet had died.

The last quarter was like our mini-version of last week. We got goals at the start to make it interesting, they kicked three in a row to kill it, we kicked some more at the end to make it reasonable again. The result was perfectly acceptable football, even though the more I think about it I'm not sure why. Maybe I was blinded by the remarkable scenes of Fitz becoming the biggest fan favourite since Hulk Hogan in front of my eyes. Maybe it was just relief at not being tonked against a good team for once. Either way it's all straight down the toilet if we get turned over in epic fashion next Saturday at Kardinia Park.

As usual there were some good signs. Toumpas continues to work his way into the game, and while I can see why some people are upset that we picked him over the straight ahead battering ram option of O. Wines I'm reasonably confident he'll be the cherry on top when we start to drag ourselves out of the sewer. Compare his 14 possessions to Nicholson's. Wines might very well end being a better player, but it doesn't matter squat who wins out of two players if they're both good. As usual reference Frawley vs J. Riewoldt, or the way it's going J. Watts vs N. Nat (*ducks*) - if you pay pick 1 and get a player worth pick 2 you've still had a win. Patience.

2013 Allen Jakovich Medal Votes
5 - Dean Terlich
4 - Jack Fitzpatrick
3 - James Frawley
2 - Jeremy Howe
1 - Colin Garland

Apologies to Dawes, Gawn, McDonald and Watts.

Leaderboard
Another week of no votes for Jones (N) or Jones (M) sees challengers to the top two positions sneak closer. Surely nobody's overturning Nathan from here, but it's worth pointing out that the votes are done legitimately every week and there's no AFL Rules Committee style rigging the contest to engineer a thrilling result.

The contenders now end at sixth placed Sylvia (and even he's finished if he doesn't pick up votes on the leader next week). With a maximum of 40 votes on offer from here somebody else could win it but they'd have to put in a last two months of the season worthy of '91 vintage Jakovich himself.

All the immediate action surrounds the Hilton and Seecamp where Terlich is making a bold bid for an unprecedented double with his no-nonsense 80's style back-pocket stylings. In my heart I'd feel it was robbery if Garland didn't win the defenders award, but that's not how it works. If it's any consolation if there was a people's choice award he'd win it.

In the Stynes I'm torn as to whether Fitz should even be eligible considering how much of his time has been spent up forward - but if you DQ'ed the 'second' ruckman for not spending enough time in the middle the award would be even more of a farce than it is now.

30 - Nathan Jones
19 - Matt Jones (LEADER: Jeff Hilton Rising Star Award)
18 - Colin Garland (LEADER: Marcus Seecamp Medal for Defender of the Year), Jeremy Howe
17 - Dean Terlich
14 - Colin Sylvia
11 - Jack Viney
10 - James Frawley
9 - Shannon Byrnes
8 - Jack Watts
6 - Michael Evans
5 - Aaron Davey, Chris Dawes, Lynden Dunn, Max Gawn (LEADER: Jim Stynes Medal for Ruckman of the Year), Jack Grimes, James Magner, Jack Trengove
4 - Jack Fitzpatrick, Tom McDonald
2 - Rohan Bail, Mark Jamar
1 - Mitch Clark, Jordie McKenzie, Jake Spencer, Luke Tapscott
  
Crowd Watch
In a week where footy fans across Melbourne covered themselves in glory by engaging in well-hushed up all-in brawls (North/Richmond) and either stealing a man's wheelchair or engaging in well-hushed up all-in brawls (Geelong/Hawthorn) I nearly joined in the carnival atmosphere by throwing some children down the stairs of the Ponsford Stand.

There were no issues during the first half as I welcomed a guest Collingwood supporter to the anti-social Row LL alliance and opened his eyes up to the glory of not having to sit near footy fans (especially Collingwood ones). At one point when I was sitting there on my own some nuffy started clambering up the stairs, but thankfully turned right and wandered off at about row BB.

Then after respecting the legend at half-time I get back up there find that 20 kids have decided that they'd Occupy LL and run amok. Given that there were about 5000 vacant seats around us we could have moved, but I took the position that they'd tire themselves out eventually and that there was no way I was going to vacate my seat for a bunch of kids who were foetuses the last time we played a final.

Part of the joy of not sitting within 30 rows of anyone is the ability to be able to swear openly, and I saw no reason to modify my behaviour just because some 'responsible adult' had got sick of marshalling the kids who were too stupid to get picked for Auskick and had let them run riot instead.

Sadly being the bunch of juvenile delinquents that they were colourful descriptions of the umpire who paid that holding the ball against Howe at the start of the third quarter only seemed to encourage them. Next thing you knew they were piffing a 600m Coke back and forth in the stairwell as a security guard stood at the bottom looking at us as if we were the responsible adults who were in charge of them.

In a surprise turn when the security guard came up to look as if he was doing something the kids chose not to fight the power and caved in to authority, scrambling over seats everywhere to make it look like they weren't the sort of hooligans who are all going to spend their 16th birthday in a youth detention centre - and for the rest of the game were reasonably well behaved. No responsible adult was ever sighted.

Despite all this I was secretly that finally some sort of Crowd Watch material was taking place at Row LL. Note - this is not an invitation to direct your insane mates or random drunkards from the audience up there next time.

Elsewhere it was good to see a win bringing out more bootleg Reject Shop scarves than usual as rats pour back onto the not now sinking quite as quickly ship. From here on I declare a (non-fatal) jihad on $2 Shop knockoff scarves. If this sounds like you then there's still time to redeem yourself - take your 'scarf' with MELBOURNE written in really narrow letters, throw it in the bin, click this and buy a proper one from the club for $20.

Koaching Korner
Fighting wins over pox clubs, 'let the boys play' factor and rapid tumble back to reality aside Craig has risen in my estimation recently since being sworn in just hours after a mystery assassination. Based on nothing in particular, and ignoring the fact that he was supposed to the one keeping Neeld in line for the last 18 months, the feelgood factor of a single victory and general enjoyment of his casual press conference style has seen him rocket to third on my ARIA Top MFC Coaches chart.

1. Mark Williams
2. Paul Roos
3. Neil Craig
4. Rodney Eade

That'll do, if we're not going to get one of those four we may as well pick from one of the Deep Heat coach, Gary Ayres, this guy, Matthew Knights, Neale Daniher, Mark Harvey, Robert Shaw, Dean Bailey, Paul Feltham, Bob Hammond, Jim Mora, Mark Neeld, Damien Drum, Matthew Primus, Ken Judge or this guy.

Assuming we don't completely toss dignity out the window and offer to pay Paul Roos $2 million a year as well as parading him around the MCG on the back of an elephant before the last game of the season I'd enjoy a bizarre South Australian alliance between Choco and Craig. There was some media suggestion that they wouldn't work together, but while I've got no idea what they think of each other personally the idea of taking a former Adelaide and a former Port coach and putting them together in a bizarre odd couple relationship appeals to me. It would be like the Montagues and the Capulets opening a small business together.

MFC Facebook Comment of the Week
Feature temporarily CANCELLED. Not enough nutbag behaviour due to everyone being like me and getting sucked in by avoiding a thrashing.

Next Week
Let's be honest here, we have no chance of winning. Doesn't mean it has to be a complete waste of time though - at least we can go in confident that we probably won't be on the end of another 186. Imagine feeling that way a few weeks ago? If we'd just scored 6.4.40 and lost by 97 points then next Saturday would look like we were going into the Battle of Stalingrad armed with a pair of kitchen tongs.

This is no time to be lulled into a false sense of security though, Geelong can and will violently dismember us given half the chance. Chris Scott, much like Brad, appears to be the sort who would enjoy that sort of thing.

If we can get through this without the fragile spirit of our players being crushed flat there are actually winnable games on the horizon. There's even one the week after considering Brisbane are all over the shop on any given week - as long as we're not going into the match with confidence re-shattered courtesy of a 134 point defeat.

Even more importantly than a handful of cheap wins to finish the season on a high and win back a few fans, it's important that we keep putting in good performances to sell a reasonable future to prospective trades and free agents.

There's not all that much on offer under free agency (feel free to try and sell me on somebody I've never heard of like Tom Logan), but at least we should - if the Craig trend of not being completely hapless continues - be able to demonstrate to any prospective targets that they're not signing up to be sworn at over the race every second week. If that doesn't work a metric truckload of cash should get the job done.

We've not got all that much to offer via trade (assuming flogging pick 2 or 3 to the highest bidder is totally off the agenda) but I still wouldn't object to using our second pick (around 20 depending on a potential draft penalty for Essendon, free agent compo etc.. etc..) in a trade for an experienced player in the prime of their career.

You're not going to get them to come to us if we turn back into pumpkin soup over the next few weeks though, so it's important we don't completely drop our bundle and start playing Rory Taggert at full-forward just because we can.

The first step is to avoid being carried out of Geelong on a stretcher, and assuming Frawley's ok to go, Blease isn't and they follow the plan for Viney to come back via the VFL I'll go for a simple one-in, one-out:

IN: McKenzie
OUT: Nicholson
LUCKY: Byrnes, Davey, Kent

Jordie's hardly floated my boat this year, but I've not written him off yet. It would have been good for him to play a VFL game before coming back but Casey had the bye, and as the only person on our list other than Tom McDonald (who missed Casey's 120 point losing effort and 186 as a standby for the seniors) to come out of that day at Kardinia Park with any credit I'm picking him under an Australian cricket team style horses-for-courses selection policy. Look how well that worked for them.

Under the same plan I'm happy for Byrnes to play, but time has to be running out on that experiment. How we got roped into giving him a two year contract will forever be a mystery to me (we'll ask Neeld during the Director's Cut if he agrees to it) but if you've missed the whole season don't be fooled by his surprisingly high ranking in the Jakovich because other than a BOG against GWS and second best against Brisbane he's barely touched it.

Davey's dropped off the face of the planet in the last few weeks, and after swinging back to thinking he might go on one more year I'm not so sure now. Hopefully if he doesn't then it's his decision - I'm not all that thrilled by his season but if he's going to work reasonably cheap next year then he deserves to go on if he wants to just for leadership and experience. For whatever sins got him exiled from the leadership group under Neeld I saw at that training session before the St Kilda game that he was still acting like a leader with the younger players, instructing them, giving them encouragement etc.. If he lasts to 2014 I expect that he's got Matthew Bate's record for most times started as sub firmly in his sights.

As the patron saint of MFC lost causes I'd also like to push the Magner case one last time before he's confined to the scrapheap. Once we give up on the fantasy of Clark playing again this year and put him on the LTI list surely a man who can get the ball in the middle of the ground would be an asset? Rodan has been reasonable in the last fortnight but I still think we need a Magner brute force type more. Jack Viney's a fine option, but in the midst of fapping furiously over him it can't be forgotten that he's only a kid and can't be expected to carry the load in the middle like Jones does.

I know Geelong has absolutely no interest in winning centre clearances, but the chances are they're going to get a few by default next week if we're not careful. Maybe allowing them to win the ball out of the middle by default will actually stuff up all their carefully planned tactics and leave it open for us to deliver a win which will see Craig carried back to Melbourne on the shoulders of the fans. Perhaps for that exact reason we should avoid playing into their hands and keep our centre clearance free midfield intact for another week until Viney's right to come back. There's no way at all that can backfire on us.

If Frawley's not ok then I'm struggling to find a replacement who doesn't scare me. Your options are Pedersen, Sellar, Davis, Macdonald or Gillies. Personally I'd have Joel Mac in a last ditch attempt at saving him for 2014.

There's plenty of time for Pedersen to get confidence in the VFL (two and a half years in fact) and with all respect unless Craig gets the job and demands him as part of the salary package Sellar is absolutely gone at the end of the year no matter what so I'm not all that keen on either of them if it can be avoided.

Davis has been playing forward at Casey so surely you can't take a guy and debuted him at Kardinia Park with a week off after not having been in defence for a month. I'm all for him getting a game at some point but let's not completely bury him. The other option is for Tom Gillies and his fantastic villainous moustache to try and win redemption in a surprise hometown comeback.

Next Year
Right now if you offered me the chance to re-sign all of Gawn, Watts and (from out of nowhere) Fitzpatrick I'd be more than happy to wish Colin Sylvia well in his future endeavours. Don't care that he had 21 touches plus six marks yesterday he hardly had an impact. If he stays good for him, if he doesn't then all the best going to a contender and playing finals again, I'm not willing to bend over backwards and send my life savings to him in the mail to try and convince him to stay.

Speaking of setting somebody free to pursue their dreams of playing in a win more than twice a year it's time to start working out where we can shift Jamar to. Again it's all done in the best possible taste, and we thank him for his service, but between Gawn, Clark, Fitz and the Spencil we're 'ok' - and I'd rather make the move to Maximum as the #1 right now rather than wasting him as a backup throughout 2014 - if we can convince him to stay. We've got cap room out the yin yang, so there's not much to be gained from trading him out for that reason but for the purpose of getting the next generation going there's no reason other than as a ruck coach of sorts to play him in front of Gawn (at a minimum) next season. We swap him to Collingwood for whatever, he replaces Ben Hudson, we get to unleash some combination of Maximum OR Clark/Fitz OR Spencil and everyone wins.

So based as usual on this list my current list of departures is Davis, Gillies, Jetta, Sellar, Taggert (omit), Rodan (retired), Sylvia (free agency), Jamar (trade) and Magner/Couch from the rookie list. Eight off the senior list, two off the rookies - not quite the ruthless cull that everyone called for last year until we realised that it would be impossible to replace them all with decent quality players but enough that we can roll a few more kids and senior players in without going overboard in one direction or the other.

Apart from Clisby (will definitely be retained) and Stark (assume he will be retained), Tynan is the only one out of contract who's a toss up - I suspect they'll give him another year.

As for the survivors Davey to go for one more and Joel Mac to survive purely on my support. Surely we can't pay out any more contracts without the AFL asking for their money back so I can't see Bail or Byrnes getting the chop despite having another year to run - we're just going to have to wear both of those and use them for depth.

Was it worth it?
My word yes, if only to see us put in a relatively good performance in which actual real-life lessons may have been learnt at the same time.

Sadly just when we put in a performance that might actually lure people who have openly given up on the season to come back we now don't play another game at the MCG until August 18 - and that's against Fremantle so nobody will turn up anyway.

Final Thoughts
The future is hardly bright, but it's a lot less bleak than it was a few weeks ago.

Post pending

Real life intervenes again. Check back for a post sometime before Tuesday morning.

Apologies to anybody shafted into viewing this by clicking on the front page of BigFooty where all posts are automatically syndicated. Just for you here's a look back at 2012's MFC Facebook Comment of the Week videos:

Neil Craig: Our Mastermind

The stat is dead. Long live the stat. Goodbye to a fun fact that I have championed like no other in the last few years, one that has been adopted by television, newspapers and even last night's SEN commentary team. I'm not claiming credit for its popularity because you'd have to be Brock McLean's mate Blind Freddy to miss it, but the fact remains that for the first time since Sunday 2 September, 2007 (that's five years, nine months, 28 days and 2128 days) we have beaten a Victorian side other than Essendon or Richmond. Since then we've had four Prime Ministers, four state premiers and I've moved Demonblog Towers three times.

No need to get over excited though, we're still no good. That's one more Victorian club down but there's six others to go. Let's take all the positives out of last night and get to work winning another game at some point against Carlton (2128 days and counting), Collingwood (2211), Geelong (2613), Hawthorn (2599), North (2506) and St Kilda (2487). It's also 6223 days since we've beaten Fitzroy but I won't hold that against anybody.

We might have gone into last night with a losing record against the Bulldogs dating back to the night Ben Holland ran riot in late 2007 (where I clearly showed scant interest in reporting on it), but at least for once you could walk in the door of the MCG thinking that we were half a chance of beating one of the seven Victorian clubs on THE list.

The last time you could honestly think that (with apologies to last week) was the Jim Stynes tribute game against the Dogs, where at least we weren't disgraced but still didn't go near actually taking the points. Tragedy and what were in retrospect very obvious signs of impending disaster aside at least we still had hope in our hearts that night, now there are people who would sell their soul to Satan just to finish outside the bottom four.

A year and a half on and we're both still crap, but somehow Footscray has manage to avoid the same sort of scrutiny that we've had. Possibly because they've never lost by 150 points, backed up losing to Gold Coast by winning two games in a row and haven't sacked every second person in their administration. Still despite them clearly being a better, and more stable, side so far this season and punters everywhere refusing to go near us with somebody else's 10 foot pole it was just the night to go along and either see a win, a narrow loss or some bizarre hybrid of the two where we win despite falling off a cliff for the last 20 minutes.

Not that anybody did bother to turn up, with 21,217 being our worst attendance for an MCG game since Round 7, 2002 against St Kilda (when we were good). The Lions test and the (seemingly) far more interesting match between Geelong and Fremantle wouldn't have helped, but as good as the Fox Footy era is it's removed one of the reasons people go to watch their team when they're shit.

A rubbish crowd for a game between two of the three worst sides in the competition, one plummeting from the dizzy heights of being good and one which is still in 10,000 shattered pieces, is no surprise. These days aren't made for sides like us. Games between the big four will always get huge crowds thanks to bandwagoners and theatre goers on top of their already large constituencies, but actual gate attendance is practically out the window as a measurement of anything now that people can stay home and watch even the grittiest game in the comfort of their own house. Why wouldn't you risk a Dwayne led commentary team when the alternative is carting your family to the ground to pay $4.90 for water to go along with a floppy hot dog purchased from a surly 15-year-old IF you can find any open outlets within three levels of where you're sitting.

The game is still king no matter how many times various people (not the AFL though, who are good people to the last drop these days) try and stuff it up, but for the casual fan who follows a side that are no good the idea that you have to go to the majority of games in person is dead. Especially if you've got kids, with all the crap that they'll pester you into buying one trip to the game is probably equal to your entire Foxtel bill for the month. Why not just stay home and watch it until your team gets good and you can justify jumping back on? As long as you at least buy a membership and spend your time at home ensuring your kids keep following us no matter what then who am I to complain? Hopefully one day we'll put on a product worth leaving the house for.

On the other hand just when you think everyone must have stayed home and watched it on TV the ratings are out and it seems only 94,000 people bothered (though I'm assuming a huge spike in the final term), so maybe it was just a rubbish game between two rancid sides that nobody other than the faithful cared about? Even the Casey VFL match got half that, which at least proves we (or more accurately Jesse Hogan) are good for ratings somewhere.

Queen's Birthday might have marginally improved our position, but one thing we've got going for us is that this year we've got better home game attendances this year than North and the Bulldogs, so at least when the Grim Reaper comes to haul a side off to Tasmania we should be able to throw them in front of the bus first. It's a surprise that we're in front of anybody considering that at least most teams - even the free falling Dogs and mentally nervous Roos - provide the odd reward to their fans for turning up, whereas other than one enchanted evening where Essendon's 2012 implosion began and some token efforts against Franchise sides we've offered precisely fuck all for two years. Given the circumstances I'm reasonably happy with the crowds we get - although now that we've got only home games against Sydney, North (at Docklands) and Fremantle to come as well as the Darwin game I suspect that it's not going to be pretty to look at that table again in 10 weeks. But if we finish last (of Victorian clubs) would it be such a surprise? I'd say it would be a miracle if we didn't.

The best thing to do to get people to show up (note our average attendance in 2010, admittedly before every game was on live) would be to win, and at least if not winning providing an environment less depressing than your granny's funeral. Last night was a great start. People actually appeared to be having fun at the footy again, which is a rarity. At least they were until we did our impression of that scene in Fatal Attraction where Michael Douglas thinks he's finished off the bird with the poodle hair via drowning in the bathtub only for her to rise from the dead and go within three points of killing him. At least it was exciting, even if the tension probably put away another five or six of our older supporters.

That we just held on in the face of the blitzkrieg and won makes all the difference. Had we conceded one more goal everyone would be dressed in black today and trying decide whether to drink Jif or Domestos, but instead everyone's beaming and watching the replay, safe in the knowledge that at least for a week we felt like a normal team again. But oh my christ how it could have been different.

There's a game that has been talked about on here many, many times. The ghosts of Saturday 25 April 1992 against Essendon still haunt me to this day. You know the one, the game that gave us the Chris Sullivan Line (a reminder for new readers - you may only relax and expect victory when the lead hits 49 points in the last quarter) and would have totally ruined my childhood had I not been just 10 years old and had we not still been a finals contender for at least a few more weeks.

If you were born any later than 1988 there's no way you remember that game - and none of Dean Kent, Tom McDonald or Jimmy Toumpas were alive when it happened - and I don't remember much except for the trauma of the comeback but I can assure you that this was almost the modern day equivalent with an extra truckload of unnecessary toxic misery poured over the top of an already depressed group of people.

That 1992 afternoon spent in the middle deck of the Southern Stand was traumatic and has taught me to never be comfortable in a match unless certain criteria have been met, but given the situation we're in at the moment to have lost from that dominant position would have been cruel and unusual in ways that couldn't be explained without breaking down in tears and smashing my head onto the keyboard to leave behind nothing but a trail of "tgyrf5t56yrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr"style gibberish.

At least my adherence to the CSL philosophy meant that I never relaxed and assumed we were going to win, which might have kept me off the ledge of a building if the game had gone another 45 seconds and we'd lost.

There are many reasons why losing last night would have been worse than that day in 1992, and not only because we've been used as a urinal cake by every credible side in the competition for 18 months but because the force of the comeback was so much more severe. This wasn't a long term project spread across an entire quarter or two, we even strung three goals together at one point in the last quarter, it was a rampage of unbelievable proportions against a side who had ran itself into the ground and couldn't put up more than the flimsiest resistance. We probably should have lost in the end. But we didn't, so for a week at least let's turn off Demonblog's patented Shit Team Filter and pretend that everything's ok with the world.

Even Dogs fans would admit their side isn't much chop these days (albeit still better than us), but that was no excuse for letting us build confidence and play like a real league side for most of the first quarter. This is a team that as last week proved can be easily strangled at birth and St Kilda took advantage of it to put us away in the first 30 minutes. The Bulldogs couldn't do it and let us get up a dangerous amount of self-belief.

Sure we conceded the first goal in double quick time, and ok the Footscray midfield were already on the way to flogging the bejesus out of ours but other than that how good did we look early on? Finally there was an air of professionalism about the team, and the only thing that stopped us racking up an even bigger lead was that whenever we kicked a goal the ball had to go back to the middle of the ground. Such was Footscray's inability to get the ball out of their 50 and over the centre if we'd just kicked points instead we'd probably have clocked up the same score and stopped them getting anything after their first one.

Even the man who has come to embody the phrase 'much maligned' David Rodan looked like he was worth a spot in the team. Only the dumbest of players is falling for his shuffling and sidesteps these days, but you can only dance around the person put in front of you. Good luck pulling that off against Sydney, but at least he's had one misery free day with the Dees.

There's definitely a different atmosphere about the place. In the second quarter I even saw a number of perfectly executed kick-ins right in front of me. Why is it that for the second time we have suddenly discovered the ability to bring the ball back into play when a caretaker coach has taken over? It was just tonight either, they did it last week as well. Ludicrous.

The subtle form of tanking that is "letting the boys play" and not really caring about the result (though when you're two wins and percentage away from the next side on the ladder it's actually fun to win), the three decent quarters last week and just having the pressure of not knowing if you should bother listening to a coach who's about to get the arse lifted must be playing some part in it - but my god do our players look more at peace with the world now or what? Maybe Craig just had the good fortune of coming in at the right time, with Neeld axed before two reasonably winnable games just in case he made himself unsackable with victories, but at the moment I'm not complaining.

Look at Watts - he's like a kid living the dream that his most hated teacher has been sacked and replaced with a kindly substitute. There was no saving this season from the start of the second quarter against Essendon, so sacking Neeld earlier probably wouldn't have helped us much but at the risk of going off too early before two matches we're not going to win under any circumstances it seems that the decision to give him the boot has been a good one so far. We'll never know how he'd have gone the last couple of weeks but I'd love to sit down with him for a couple of games towards the end of the year and get a director's cut style commentary about Craig's coaching and how the players are going.

It's understandable that players might not want to sign on just yet not knowing what freak we're going to hire as coach (hint) but surely, SURELY, Jack stays now. Relatively speaking his value has probably gone through the roof after that performance - and if I were the Dogs I'd be telling him that Clark/Dawes/Hogan means he'd be better off joining them for large amounts of cash via the PSD - but if he's half serious with his comments last week that he wants to stay then bless his heart let's give him a small South American nation if he wants it.

As with everyone else who has impressed in the last fortnight there's a bit of 'now do it against a good team', and you sure don't want to be kicking to him in a physical contest with a big defender but he's got to see that by staying with us it will give him an opportunity to spit in the face of his many critics. I will more than gladly line up to cop my goober in the eyeball from him if he'll just sign. Prediction - nine months after the day they put him and Dawes on the half-forward line kicking to Clark, Hogan and Howe there will be a massive spike in births cross Australia.

Gawn (who doesn't quite deserve a whole country yet, but can have a country town if he likes) is another one that I'm convinced will sign sooner rather than later. Ruckmen who actually want the ball and are reasonable kicks are hard to find, and while Minson played the greatest one-man show since Bill Hicks to take the points this week there would still be a queue of clubs willing to open their wallets to lure Maximum across next year. Maybe he succumbs to the temptation later if we're still no good, but for now he's clearly a heart and soul player, cult figure of actual immense proportions and our future first ruckman.

Suddenly between he, Jamar, the resurgent Spencil, Clark if fit and to a lesser degree Puttin' On The Fitz we've actually got a reasonable ruck division desperately seeking a midfield to hit it to. The way it's going you could almost try and flog The Russian to a side who need a one or two year ruckman then draft a kid or rookie list a more experienced state league ruck as cover. Not sure what you'd get for him, but it would get us out of the last year of his contract and allow Gawn to play as our first ruck next year and get a full season's experience while we're still shit. Where do I apply to replace Tim Harrington? Will work cheap.

It was also good to see Frawley back to his best. Given that before he was injured he played a cracker on Franklin I can't entirely credit the Neeld dismissal with his killer game last night but that was a return to 2010 All-Australian form. If we can't do enough to convince him to stay by this time next year then we don't deserve his immense talents. Some of those marks he was taking across centre half-back. My god, talk about falling in love all over again.

Shit Team Filter™ aside we have seen enough in the last few weeks to prove that with Clark, Grimes and Viney included in this team we aren't far away. Matt Jones has levelled off a bit in the last few weeks, but both he and Terlich have shown plenty this year considering what we paid for them so their recruitment has been one thing you can't fault during the Neeld years.

I'll also credit the previous administration with getting Toumpas, who is hardly dominating at the moment but takes big steps every week and for Dawes who I would like to confess to developing a deep love for. A few weeks back it would have been unfashionable to say that (Demonblog Towers would have been egged), but even though I was happy to get him and always felt we paid a fair price he's put in some quality performances in otherwise shit teams this year. He's exactly what we need across the half-forward line, and giving up Pick 20 for an experienced player is exactly what we should have done that year when we had 17 and 19. We also got pick 58 at the same time, but try as I might I can't actually work out what we did with it, unless somehow Terlich at 70 (good result) is the same pick with a bunch of free agent compensation choices and all that rubbish thrown in.

Surely he looks Ben Holland model robotic, wears unmanly long sleeved jumpers and barely fired a shot when we were being eviscerated by Gold Coast, but other than that I'll back his contribution 100% when fit this season - with more than a few years left in him. Sure we could have spent the money on a midfielder instead but it's not soccer, you can't decide that if you don't like what's on offer in your league you can go and buy somebody from Lithuania instead. It's a limited market and we did well to get what we could.

Amusingly as Collingwood bomb out (though they are still in the eight, if only we had the luxury of bombing out that softly) and Pies fans start to treat Nathan Buckley like their own version of Mark Neeld the same people who chased Dawes out of town with flaming pitchforks are ringing up SEN to whinge that they traded him and got Quentin Lynch instead. Ignoring the fact that a) SEN callers are generally insane and b) they did get a first round pick for him and Lynch for nada I'm glad to see at least some of them missing him.

There's a heartbeat in our side at least. Obviously our depth is criminally poor, confidence doesn't have to drop far for us to completely fall in a hole and fitness will come into question big time after last night but surely even God Almighty Paul Roos himself would have watched the first three quarters last night and thought that he could do something with this list even if he is saddled with some unreasonable contracts which don't finish until the end of next year.

Oddly enough if you took our side and swapped the midfield with Footscray's you'd be left with one good team and one putrid one. Their major (only?) strength is our biggest weakness, which means at least when stupid sums of money are being thrown around at free agents and uncontracted players at the end of the year at least we won't be bidding against each other. Also there's still time for them to 'accidentally' manoeuvre themselves into second last (and doesn't Round 23 become massive on that front? The AFL had better be watching every coaching move and recording every word spoken by their club officials just in case there are tanking shenanigans afoot) and snatch the prized tall forward that they so desperately need. Maybe we could trade them Hogan? For pick 2, 20, Liberatore, Wallis, Griffin, Mission Foods' sponsorship money, their pokies licences and the Western Oval.

It feels stupid to be even slightly optimistic considering what seems to happen every time you get your hopes up a little bit, and to treat a win over another rotten side like it means we're going to storm home to blessed mid-table mediocrity by the end of the year but at least the black cloud has lifted ever so slightly - and for the first time in almost six years you can hang shit on anybody in your office who follows the Dogs.

It wasn't worth getting excited at the end of the first quarter, after all we've played decent opening terms against average teams before being massacred more than once this season - but I'll admit that even in my dark heart there was happiness when Fitzpatrick kicked that improbable banana goal at the start of the second. He looked reasonable as a forward all night but I'm not sure if there's a place for him when we get our proper forward line together - still, no harm in doing his own version of Chris Lamb's 2002 campaign of glory before falling off the face of the planet and winning a few VFL flags.

There were times when we did look very, very good in the second. Watts might have gotten his second goal via the worst kick of all time but at least it went through, but his third was a thing of beauty with N. Jones streaming through the middle and hitting him with a perfect pass on the lead. More of that, for god's sake please more of that. It was so beautiful that it nearly moved me to tears. Two goals to Gia, sadly not left on the bench for three quarters this week, and our continued inability to win the ball out of the middle aside life for oppressed people was starting to look good again.

There was plenty of time to stuff it up in the second half though, and the start of the third quarter was the mirror opposite to the first, with Footscray dominating us everywhere but conceding goals - including the first one to Rodan which marked the biggest good guy turn since Macho Man Randy Savage at Wrestlemania VII. No doubt he took the ball out of bounds and the umpire was going for his whistle at one point, and he really only kicked it in the end because the Bulldogs players didn't tackle him properly but who cares? Take highlights wherever you can get them - and it's not like we weren't going to cop a return screwing from a boundary umpire in almost exactly the same spot approximately 50 minutes later.

It didn't hurt that half their team still hadn't shown up and that the likes of Cooney were missing absolute sitters, but unlike the first quarter we eventually broke the shackles (CLICHE) and took over. They got a few goals here and there, and Jack Watts - as high on life at the moment as any Melbourne player has the right to be - got horny for his fourth and botched a golden chance to make the margin even better but by the end of the quarter we might very well have sealed the whole thing and crossed the magical Chris Sullivan Line if everyone didn't start thinking they were Hawthorn. Howe and Clisby could have stuck the knife in as well, but if a guy who had taken two screamers and a second gamer can't have a ping in the middle of party time then what's this world coming to? Let's work on instinct first and deal with discipline later.

It was left to cult leader Fitzpatrick to bring the house down with his second goal and give us a 39 point "surely we couldn't..." margin at the last change. It would have been our second worst loss from three quarter time after that game and only the third five goal three-quarter time lead we had ever blown. At the time I didn't know how significantly history was on our side, but now that I do I'm feeling ill all over again. I've been at a lot of matches that were memorable for the wrong reasons, but this would have been too much.

But surely they couldn't, and more importantly surely WE couldn't. After success briefly dangled above our eyes you had to consider the prospect of a debacle but realistically on the balance of things conclude that we were probably going to win. Then we nearly didn't. Copping the first goal of the last quarter after about 15 seconds didn't help. We'd been flogged out of the middle all night and with Gawn looking like he was about to topple over dead from exhaustion while Minson was as fresh as a daisy after three million hitouts you could sense a wave of panic go across the ground as every single red and blue buttock in the place clenched as one. They should have had another one straight after if Liberatore hadn't hit the post, then did get one for real and MCG attendants were seen ripping open their emergency spew bag supply ready to start distributing to the crowd.

Then, and for future generations reading, this is where it got really REALLY stupid. Next thing you know we've kicked three goals in a row and are actually better off at the 13 minute mark of the final term than we were at the start of it. This is despite barely having had a possession for the entire term - there was some ludicrous stat on the radio along the lines of us only having had 25 touches for the quarter at the 20 minute mark. If you count six or so of those as being either setting up or kicking a goal that's one of the rudest things you'll ever read in your sporting life

But that didn't matter, because when Howe kicked his second we were home and there was nothing that could be done to take the glory away from us. Somebody even yelled 'percentage', which isn't as stupid as it sounds considering that we're still below GWS on that front. Unfortunately that would have required getting a kick, and all of a sudden our already suspect midfield slowed to a crawl as all the players who had been totally anonymous all night decided to show up at once - hello Dalhaus, hello Cooney, hello Tory f'ing Dickson whoever you are and the carpark turned to chaos as all the Bulldogs fans who had done a runner after Howe's goal tried to turn around and get back in to the ground.

At the 21 minute mark on the clock we'd conceded a goal to bring the margin back to 26 points (no worries) and at the 25 minute mark it was back to 14 (sweet jesus) and a full scale MFC capsize was in the making - the difference being that we usually concede goals at that rate in the first quarter or when we're already losing, not from 40 points in front with 15 minutes to go.

When it all started to go tits up it all became about me. "They can't do this to me" etc.. etc.. I know I've dodged three disasters (Essendon, Hawthorn, Collingwood) in person this season, but I did watch them live or as live so the mental scars from those beatings were still there and to throw away a lead like that might have tipped me over the edge. There's no telling what this page would have looked like and how many references there would have been to Colin Sylvia Plath if we'd stuffed it up. It's one thing to be a Geelong fan and see your team be swallowed up by a rampaging Elliot Yeo led Brisbane but at least you can dry your eyes on a choice of three premiership flags. To us it would have been the equivalent of dropping Anthrax on a city which had already been wiped out by the nuclear bomb.

It didn't help that we got rorted by the boundary umpire who just guessed that the ball had come off Margaret Terlich's leg when it hadn't, but that's still no excuse for the free kick landing in the square and the waters parting for Minson to take a huge grab and kick their eighth goal of the quarter with four minutes left. By now it had become very clear to serial pessimists like me that we were going to lose and that I was probably going to die in the bottom deck of the Olympic Stand, hundreds of metres from my beloved Ponsford. Enter another one of the players who had disgraced the name of football all night as Ayce Cordy turns up to kick a goal to bring it under a goal with 90 seconds left. Spew bags at the ready, this was going to be a big one.

Quite frankly I've never been so terrified at a footy match in my life. We've had close wins and losses out the yin yang over the years, even a handful of draws, but I can honestly say that when Cordy kicked that goal I was nearly on the floor in panic and threatening to bring up my dinner in David Parkin fashion. Thank god I wasn't sitting next to a Footscray fan or I'd probably have unfairly throttled them out of nerves. We'd tried dinking the ball around to run down the clock but that had backfired in spectacular fashion, there was now only one way to win and it was for Footscray to stuff up their opportunities.

With Gawn and Nicholson, who had done a surprisingly reasonable job on Griffin all night, nearly dead and Liberatore playing a blinder of a quarter amongst the corpses you knew at this point we were going to lose. Some old lady behind me was convinced that we were fine because the siren was 'going to go any minute', but she was clearly just saying that to make herself feel better considering there was plenty of time for the Dogs to kick another three.

When they got the ball out of the middle and went forward I probably went as close as ever before to having a massive heart attack and dropping dead, but there - ironically saving the day in defence - was Jack Watts. Where everyone else had clutched at marks during the last quarter, and on a night where despite being one of our best and kicking four he could easily be accused of dropping some sitters, up he rose above the pack in majestic fashion and grabbed it. What a man, I never had any doubts *furiously edits old posts*.

From there we could have sealed it, but ironically Sylvia's running long shot at goal which rolled through for a point probably did more harm than good. I'm not suggesting in the circumstances he should have been thinking about trying to land the ball perfectly a foot out from the boundary line as if he were playing lawn bowls but if he had shanked it to that degree - or at least had it sit on the goal-line for a few seconds before being rushed it would have been much better for us that letting them get a kick-in as 3/4 of our team were on the sidelines taking oxygen from a tank.

Somehow, SOMEHOW we held on, more because time ran out for the Bulldogs than anything else mind you. I'm not going to start calling into question our allegedly elite fitness, trips to Darwin etc.. just yet, because it was as much the fact that half of the Footscray side only decided to turn up in the last quarter as half of ours being out on their feet. Max Gawn was blown to shreds in the first quarter and still had to ruck 80% of the rest of the game, I don't blame him for not being able to move at the end.

In all the excitement, and with about 1% left on my battery I attempted to tweet the phrase "get rooted". When I got home and checked my feed (which had gone off like a New Year's Eve on which we won some kind of war) it wasn't there. Instant horror and panic ensued thinking I'd sent it to "a work account". Doesn't look like I did because there aren't 500 retweets and journalists ringing up. God knows where it went though, probably the same place most of our team did at three quarter time.

There were plenty of people saying the Dogs 'didn't deserve to win it', which is horseshit of the highest order. If we were going to blow that sort of lead we certainly deserved to lose it, and if you only turn up for one quarter and it's a winning one then you're doing better than most of what we've served up over the years. But they didn't and now they've got to work out what went wrong up until that point. Not our issue until they show up and wreak terrible revenge on us in the last round.

It seems they're in almost the same situation as us but without as many farcical losses and without having summarily executed all the veterans on their list. Also they've got a midfield that we'd kill for, and is there any doubt now that's the key to having any chance of being successful? At the moment I'd back the Dogs to rebuild much quicker than we did, they'll have big money to spend on free agents at the end of the year, and if they can avoid ruining draftees at a record rate they've got plenty to build on.

Sadly for both sets of fans right now we're all in the same leaky boat. Let's reconvene at (presumably) 4.40pm on the Sunday of Round 23 and do it all again.

2013 Allen Jakovich Medal Votes
5 - Jack Watts
4 - Dean Terlich
3 - James Frawley
2 - Jeremy Howe
1 - Nathan Jones

Major apologies to Dawes, Fitzpatrick, Gawn, McDonald, Nicholson, Rodan, Sylvia (second half only) and Trengove. Minor apologies to most others. No apologies to barely anyone.

Leaderboard
The clock's ticking on the Jakovich, and both M. Jones and Garland are starting to look over the shoulder nervously in their awards. All three of the leaders should still win though - it's not like anything MFC affiliated to blow a massive lead in the last few minutes.

30 - Nathan Jones
19 - Matt Jones (LEADER: Jeff Hilton Rising Star Award)
17 - Colin Garland (LEADER: Marcus Seecamp Medal for Defender of the Year)
16 - Jeremy Howe
14 - Colin Sylvia
12 - Dean Terlich
11 - Jack Viney
9 - Shannon Byrnes
8 - Jack Watts
7 - James Frawley
6 - Michael Evans
5 - Aaron Davey, Chris Dawes, Lynden Dunn, Max Gawn (LEADER: Jim Stynes Medal for Ruckman of the Year), Jack Grimes, James Magner, Jack Trengove
4 - Tom McDonald
2 - Rohan Bail, Mark Jamar
1 - Mitch Clark, Jordie McKenzie, Jake Spencer, Luke Tapscott

Curtain Raiser Corner
I did intend to drop in and check out the women's game but was sidetracked and didn't make it. If you saw any of it and want to write a report please let me know via email or Twitter. Fun fact - unless I'm missing something (and not counting lukewarm three-way NAB Cup games) it's the first time two MFC teams have won on the same day since Round 13 1999.

All I know is that we won, for once a #1 draft pick delivered the goods without years of waiting and that walking towards the ground at 6.50pm there were plenty of people who had paid to get in but weren't bothering to stay around for the alleged main event.

Who knows where the concept goes from here. Odds are the next time there's a Melbourne FC team playing a women's match it won't be the same team will all be different, but I'm glad that it's something we involved ourselves in. The good news is that not only did they score a win, but they've earned their own Demonwiki page as well.

The idea of an AFL women's competition is a noble one, but not sure it will ever get up due to financial concerns and interstate travel. Maybe a Victorian only one with some representative games? Even then it won't get a bar of coverage if it's played alongside the regular AFL season. The VFL couldn't get its ladder into the Herald Sun and The Age last Monday, so good luck getting the sort of proper coverage that even top level women's sports like netball can't manage if you go head to head with the Home and Away season. It would have been a good start if Fox Sports had broadcast today's game - even as a red button option on Fox Sports Plus.

How about this as an idea. I've long been an advocate of some sort of summer footy league - with games played for television at night only, possibly only in one or two locations. Apart from the obvious issue of not many grounds having suitable lighting and many that do having commitments to cricket during summer the one thing I've never been able to get my head around is how you'd fill the teams with reasonable players given that they would have just played a full season of local/state football and are about to start another. So why not run the women's league in summer?

It's hardly going to give people footy overload considering the ones who'll watch it are probably the same people who pay interest to Morningside vs Yackandandah in the Foxtel Cup on Tuesday nights, but with actual proper club teams playing at least it will give us something to pay an interest in during summer. Given how badly the AFL wants to screw soccer over it would also at least muddy the waters during the middle of the A-League season even if it can't compete directly for crowds and TV audience. It would also give Fox Footy something else to show during summer other than endless repeats of the season over, and over, and over again.

If our new proprietor Mr. Demetriou is reading I would be happy to discuss further and if required act as commissioner to this league.

Crowd Watch
For the first time since the original Carnival of Hate I found myself sitting on the ground level in the 'red seats', and as a result probably didn't see half of what I would have a million miles back in the Ponsford. However I did become acutely aware just how obvious it is when some lone nutter is sat up there in the rafters, so feel free to wave in that general direction the next time you see a shadowy figure perched up there.

In the end a rare game being surrounded by Melbourne fans probably helped in the last few minutes. You may recall my inability to walk down the stairs after the Essendon triumph last season for a good 20 minutes due to my legs ceasing to operate, and had I been up there tonight I'd probably have to have been carried out by St John's Ambulance.

Whisper it quietly but I even.. enjoyed.. being amongst the faithful. Maybe I should go back to my actual reserved area in the Southern Stand, or maybe it was only an occasion to be social because I was in a group, we weren't playing shithouse football and there was the thrilling aspect of being illegally in the seat despite not having the required membership. Maybe not the last one considering you could show a video store membership card and the MCG guards would wave you through at matches like this.

Actual antics were light on. The Footscray cheersquad threw their floggers over the fence in disgust at full time and the guys behind us kept calling Fitzpatrick 'Fisty', which I thought might have breached my exclusive agreement to own all MFC related fisting gags but I wasn't able to get through to my lawyer due a flat phone battery so whatever.

Light hearted shenanigans amongst the audience aside it was a game worth being at. Shame then that as predicted in this space last week nobody was. No doubt plenty of our fans chose the Lions test or any other opportunity to avoid it but I'm not taking the blame single handedly for this one - the amount of Bulldogs fans was the equivalent of what we have turn up for a game at Docklands. Even when the comeback was in full swing in the last quarter there was one lot behind the goals and not much else. No need to take the moral high ground here, we've got a home game at Docklands (booooooo) where we'll be lucky to take 5000 people who have the right to show up for free but won't want to because the place is a shithouse. Maybe Dogs fans feel the same about the MCG? Maybe they just couldn't face the prospect of losing to the world's greatest laughing stock?

The upside was that as everyone knows when a side has the vast majority of supporters in the stadium they've got carte blanche to act like complete arseholes (see Football Park and Subiaco), and that we did. There was even arrogance, ARROGANCE, outside the ground after the game. Melbourne fans who obviously also dabble in soccer during the off-season were delivering all sorts of offensive chanting at Footscray fans. Which considering the way we fell over the line and how they're only moderately less rubbish than us is like a blind man hanging shit on a deaf one but right now I'll take it. It's not like there were any Footscray fans around to hear it, so if a tree falls in the woods etc..

Also there was a dead mouse under the seat in front of me (no really there was, don't click the link if you're antsy about that sort of stuff) which was quite the metaphor for following Melbourne.

Media Watch
Congratulations to David Schwarz for the most shamelessly one eyed radio call of all time. It was like our version of the Eddie McGuire Collingwood channel, except that all supporters who turned into SEN were subjected to it. If I was a Bulldogs fan I'd have flung my radio onto the ground but for purely biased reasons I enjoyed it. He also managed to avoid screaming abuse at Mark Neeld over the airwaves.

MFC Facebook Comment of the Week

We've just had a win, surely they can't be upset about that? Excluding all the 'amusing' 'original' posts about the women's match and how we should swap teams etc.. etc.. which would take up about 12 hours of my time putting together the vibe is not surprisingly overwhelmingly positive. So for once we'll try something different and hold an opposition fan troll special.

Sadly for these people only Melbourne fans, no matter how insane they are, get the courtesy of having their names blanked out.







Actually not sure if the one above is an opposition fan or not, but whatever.



But here's the winner, with just a sample of his work below considering he spent half the night trashing us on various threads. Serves people right for engaging with him, but it kicked up a gear when he failed the first rule of Troll School and left his profile wide open so people started bagging him for all the things that have gone wrong in his life. He's also a fan of a page dedicated to women's asses, porn stars by the dozen and lists BDSM as one of his 'likes'.



Terry also appear to be a North fan, which explains why he's into self-abuse.

Koaching Korner

Congratulations to Neil Craig on becoming the oldest man ever to coach the Dees to a win. Certainly something to tell the grandkids about - on the phone tomorrow. He even looked sprightly in jogging off the ground at three-quarter time (maybe he knew what was coming and was getting the hell out of there), and while I'm certainly not suggesting he's high on my list of wanted senior coaches for 2014 (mind you assuming Clarkson can't be extracted my list falls off a cliff after Choco, Roos and Eade so he's probably still in the top five) I hope he stays around next year in some capacity.

Maybe I'm just partial to him because he was a top bloke when I met him last year. Sure we were trapped in AAMI Park corridor together and he had to make conversation, but he asked about why we followed Melbourne, what we expected from the team etc.. and seemed genuinely interested in the answer/tales of woe. It's not hard to win me over, just show half an interest in my over the top emotional investment in the club.

Beating up on a side only marginally better than us for three quarters then almost throwing it all away is hardly one for the CV but I'm a Melbourne fan, you're (probably) a Melbourne fan. Let's take it and run for the hills. I'm assuming the 'freedom' that they're playing with is as much the result of a release of pressure, a devil may care attitude to the rest of the season and two soft games in a row as much as anything but forget the next fortnight of horror he's got a few games to try and rewrite history in a way which at least partially excludes him from the nightmares of the Neeld era.

Also I notice that after variable results with PETER ROHDE: OUR MASTERMIND and RODNEY EADE: OUR MASTERMIND the Bulldogs cheersquad has now settled for something along the lines of MACCA: OUR TASKMASTER. Good for them, we've never praised a coach on a banner and look where it's got us.

Next Week
Let's not pretend that this was the vanguard of a new era, Sydney are going to belt us next week and Geelong will do even worse the week after. But who cares about that for now? At least there's some remote danger that we'll put in two competitive performances. I'm not even thinking 187 in Geelong anymore.

As much as I'd like to break with the habit of a lifetime and simply write NO CHANGE it appears that Blease has continued to be cursed by my patronage and has injured himself. Also apparently N. Jones is in trouble for decking Griffin which is just what we need for our midfield. So on that note:

IN: Tapscott (with no confidence - almost tempted to throw in Dom Barry well before he's ready just to see what happens)
OUT: Blease (inj).

I didn't watch the Casey game but even though I'm reliably informed he couldn't hit the side of a barn in it I'll have Magner if Jones gets rubbed out. McKenzie unlucky on reputation but not on form, he was ordinary before injury so happy for him to come back via the VFL.

Speaking of Casey given how many of the players that we've got no interest in are amongst their best every week we would be the worst humans since Pol Pot to rip them off in the finals and withdraw all our players again. Fair enough if Fitzpatrick spends the rest of the year in the 1's he shouldn't be expected to play an elimination final against Frankston but just let Barry, Couch, Davis, Magner, Taggert etc.. play this time instead of stuffing the Scorpions up in the finals yet again.

Was it worth it?
At three quarter time I said we're either in for a win or a screwjob that we'd never forgot. I'm still not sure I'll be able to scrub the memory of that last 10 minutes (excluding the final 10 seconds when it was clear we'd win) from my mind without adopting a drinking habit or becoming addicted to ice BUT in the end I was left one of the great feelings - winner's nausea- so yes, yes it was.

Final Thoughts
I'm not the kind of person to try and convince others that they're completely wrong and that AFL is the greatest game of all - but for all the other sports that I like and admire show me a competition that would have a game like that just a week after the Brisbane/Geelong comeback bonanza. Watch whatever sport you damn well please but nothing, NOTHING, has more variables and more ways for your team to either prosper or be molested in a very uncomfortable place than Australian Rules Football. And for that reason (but mainly just because we won) I love it.

Return of the Human Centipede

You've only got yourself to blame if you're upset and irate about losing that game. It's your own fault for getting excited in the first place. St Kilda might have only won a single game more than us (though they haven't lost many by 90 either) and there may have been a minor realignment of the stars during the week as our +5% new coach bounce met their -5% week of scandal modifier but it should have been obvious that there was still a huge gap between us at the first bounce.

For an oppressed people the idea that we might win a game (any game) must have appealed, but the torture porn saga that is the Melbourne Football Club doesn't let up for a minute. As soon as one hapless victim was wheeled out on a stretcher after a period of savage torture and unnecessary mutilation a new victim was wheeled in to start going through a condensed 11 week version of the same thing.

Before I start on this week's half-hearted investigation of our ongoing scene-by-scene recreation of Salo, if you've got a full three hours to devote to your Demonblog reading and haven't yet seen it you might want to start with the mid-season review to get all the reaction to Neeld's axing as well as a variety of different bemoanings about how terrible we've got it. Warning - includes a surprising level of support for the AFL doing the footy equivalent of the US invading Grenada.

Secretly I was a little bit excited about what could happen in this game. COULD being the operative word, because the chances are we were still going to get beaten - but at least you could be fairly sure that it wasn't going to be by our rolling three week average of 89.33 points by virtue of St Kilda being not all that good anymore. Still better than us though, so no need to go over the top and start doing strange things like getting my hopes up or having a positive view of footy again.

So I suppose if my aim was just to see us avoid getting thrashed then the night should be described as a roaring success, but there's still an emotional black hole about it all. I love going to games and will probably do so until carted out in a pine box but the dark cloud that hovers over us makes getting through the rest of this season a bit of a chore. Even kicking goals doesn't bring me that much joy at the moment, because by the time we do start kicking them we're usually 30 points down or are going to cop one straight away down the other end. I've reached the same confidence rock bottom as our players, but at least I can hide in the stands quaffing hot dogs and am not expected to do anything to help the club get back on its feet.

Rusted on mentalists like me aren't the ones the club needs to worry about, but it's no wonder casuals have steadily cleared out over the last couple of years. They've still got a long way to go to beat the bandwagoners who piled off at an astounding rate in early 2007, but I'd hate to the person who has to come up with the membership slogan next year. May I suggest "WE'RE NOT DEAD YET MOTHERFUCKERS"? Not sure how it would go as a hashtag though. Whatever it is I'll miss #firstandforever just because it'll also mean the retirement of my beloved #fistedforever.

The night started off well enough, with what I assume to be a hastily re-recorded crowd behaviour plea by Ahmed Saad after St Kilda's original spokesman became 'unavailable' during the week and went downhill from there.

Shame it wasn't played at Docklands so we could at least have an excuse for turning up and getting stuffed in the first quarter. For while under the late Mark Neeld, surely watching via some dodgy pirated live stream in an internet cafe on Koh Samui and hurling abuse at the screen to the astonishment of confused Swedish backpackers, we would tease being a proper side at the start of matches only to quickly roll over like a diseased animal. In the first showing under Neil Craig we did the almost exact opposite, getting stuffed early before recovering to be respectable across the next three quarters. End result still the same as it has been 10 times this year.

Incidentally congratulations to Craig on avoiding the dreaded 0/1 goal quarter with only our second multiple goal opening term in the last six weeks, but now that Neeld's gone we can make a comparison between he and Bailey and see exactly who this brand of futile quarter really deserves to be named after. In 83 games Mean Dean saw it happen to his side 24 times (28.91%), while in an ill-fated 33 matches at the helm Neeld's sides did it 14 times (42.42%). I can't decide who has more right to the name, the man with the raw numbers or the guy with the average. My heart says stick with Bailey, we'll have enough other bad memories of 2012/13 and while John Coleman's got a better goalkicking average than Tony Lockett it doesn't stop him being ranked below Fraser Gehrig and Stephen Milne on the all-time table.

Either way it probably won't end up being labelled as a Craig Quarter unless he can somehow manage to do it at least five times out of the remaining 10 games, and even then I wouldn't expect anything else from a caretaker handed one of the most unpalatable shit sandwiches in recent memories - one that makes the oozing bread allegedly handed to Neeld look fragrant and edible in comparison. Looking back now it probably was - if we'd had the right man to balance getting tough with keeping the prima donnas happy and not having a Gillard-esque habit of making publicity blunders.

What Craig's inherited (and let's be fair he's had a fair hand in it so let's not cut him too much slack) is a side who can't string together five minutes of convincing play at a time, features a number of players who are either physically or mentally shot and has suffered a brutal run of injuries to the exact players that it didn't need to be getting injured. Lucky him. Did he end up as coach because he was the only assistant not young and spritely enough to out run Peter Jackson down the halls of AAMI Park?

That he's been coerced into taking control of a shipwreck doesn't make the first quarter any less frustrating. I haven't been bothered to watch the press conference but did anybody ask what he did to try and stem St Kilda's total dominance of the middle in the first quarter? I know that with McKenzie injured and Magner unavailable through nobody at the club having any interest in him our defensive midfielder stocks were paper thin, but his first big mistake was playing the defensively disinterested Rodan on Jack Steven to start with and then not making the change until quarter time, but which point Steven had single handedly molested us for 30 minutes.

Another one for the press conference (can somebody please get me a press accreditation - even if it's for Horse & Hound magazine - so I can go in and ask these questions?), and I'll go on about this until the Fijian embassy sends a cease and desist letter, but could somebody please explain the wisdom of playing Rodan instead of Magner? Again, and I can't say it enough, I respect whatever benefits Rodan's having behind the scenes but he's not going to be there next year unless the rest of our list are lost at sea so the on-field benefits have to outweight the alternative.

On the balance of it he'll have a far superior career overall, and if he's interested in coaching do what the Dogs are doing with Gia and use him as a bench coach who plays a quarter a game, but Magner's possibly got five years in him and can get plenty of possessions but crucially can also defend and tag if required. It's a bit cynical to use stats to make a point given that Rodan's been sub a couple of times and Magner's only played two games but guess which one of them has averaged 20.5 touches this year and which has averaged 13.6. Before tonight Magner had more clearances in his two games than Rodan had in five. How is he not at least a more realistic long term option if not a flat out better one at the moment?

Is it because Grimes' time on the LTI list is ticking away and he won't be able to play at the end of the season? Let's be fair we're about three days away from Mitch Clark officially being put out to pasture for the year so he'll have his chances later in the year, there's no need to worry about Round 23 now. I'd rather look forward to 2014 if it's all the same, and I can't for the life of me understand how this isn't clear to the coaches. Maybe they dislike him for posting pictures of food on Instagram and owning shares in a hipster bicycle company but it's no reason to maroon him at Casey while we're crying out for midfielders who are play with desperation.

As the game went on Rodan got better, and in the end had more contested possessions than anyone else on our side for what that's worth, but the damage was already done in the first quarter when he couldn't get near Steven. Not his fault the coaches left him there but to say Matt Jones did a better job from the second quarter onwards would be an understatement like saying Geelong are a better footy side than us.

We might have been flogged in the midfield but I steadfastly refuse to blame Jake Spencer for it. The only thing I've got against his performance tonight is that he ruined what would have been one of the great zero kick games late by getting one. The Spencil is hardly a good luck charm, 'improving' his career record to 2-17 tonight, and isn't threatening to become Dean Cox anytime soon but if you could put his enthusiasm into the rest of our side we'd be better off. He chases with surprising speed, he shepherds, he marks, he cares. Unfortunately in the midst of all this boundless enthusiasm he accidentally took Ben McEvoy's head off and will be lucky to get off with a reprimand. If he challenges it at the tribunal I'll organise a FREE SPENCIL protest outside on his behalf.

But other than his accidental decapitation it was the definition of a whole-hearted performance and while I'm not sure how long Jamar is out for right now (he wasn't even on the Tuesday injury list) I would very much like for Spencer and Gawn to play as our ruck duo for a few weeks at least. At this moment the only thing Jamar's got over Spence is that he can play relatively convincingly up forward (not really required in this team) and that when he gets the ball there's at least some mystery about whether he'll kick it or handball but otherwise it's Spencil all the way at the moment.

As for Gawn I stand by cracking the sads that Spence was picked over him on Thursday night only for the fact that he should be playing when fit, if for nothing else to convince him to hang around next year and not go somewhere that he might be better appreciated. With respect to Fitzpatrick who tries hard and is more likely to kick goals than Spencer that's the duo I want to see for the rest of the year - and if Jamar has to play he can go forward and stay there. Stay tuned right to the end Spencil family and friends, I've got a surprise for you.

The issue we have with ruckmen is that if you consider kicks to be a valuable commodity then we're always effectively a player down. Gawn averages 3.5 a game, Spencer 2.9, Jamar 2.6. These are the current hitout leaders from all the other clubs in the competition and their career averages: Dean Cox 8.9, Jonathan Giles 8.6, Sam Jacobs 6.0, Matthew Leuenberger 5.8, Will Minson 5.8, Matthew Kreuzer 5.7, Todd Goldstein 5.5, Zac Smith 5.4, Tom Bellchambers 5.3, Darren Jolly 5.2, Jonathon Griffin 5.1, Ben McEvoy 4.8, Matthew Lobbe 4.7, Trent West 4.6, Ivan Maric 4.5, Max Bailey 4.3 and Myke Pyke 3.2.

So across their entire careers the only guy our three are beating is the international import from another sport, and I know that one or two kicks more a game by a ruckman isn't going to solve any of our issues but at least it's one or two more times that we might hit a running target - and another one or two times that, presumably, the ruckman has made himself a target for one of his teammates. Based on limited appearances so far I'm convinced Gawn can do this effectively, and god help me I'm starting to think Spencer wants to do it enough that if eventually he can kick with confidence and work on being useful when resting forward he's got a place in this side. If not let's aim to get a ruckman who can at least get kicks as well as doing the traditional ruckmanly things- we're not scared of a mature aged recruit these days, there's got to be another Jonathan Giles out there somewhere.

Our inability to get a kick didn't help the Neil Craig Feelgood Factor from coming to an abrupt halt, by the time St Kilda had two goals we hadn't had one yet, but nor was his cause helped by ever so much calamitous defending. From Toumpas totally misjudging a high ball for the first goal (though he did bounce back for easily his best game yet, with enough good signs to make you think it's a near certainty that he'll do his knee at training during the week) to somebody else gifting them a second goal a minute later there was plenty more to come.

Down the other end they were doing their best to reinforce the stereotypes about 2-9 sides by gifting Angry Dean Kent a goal, but anything they could do we could do better. In an ideal world Kent's theft and goal might have steadied us, calming the nerves and resetting for the chance to chip away at their two goal lead. Good luck with that. Even Trent Dennis-Lane was kicking goals, surely only to acknowledge the fact that he has the most Melbourne FC name since long time Demonblog favourite Rochford Devenish-Meares.

For the second time we were given a life when Blease proved exactly why you play him inside 50 by kicking a cracker of a goal on the run (he would spend the rest of the game further proving this by delivering a cavalcade of clangers in other parts of the ground) but then one of footy's all-time marquee matchups sprung into life. Pedersen had already let Kosi kick one goal, and looked absolutely terrified every time he got the ball before giving away (an admittedly shithouse) free on the St Kilda 'star' as he tried everything he possibly could to stuff up running into an open goal.

If I may recycle something from during the week I found myself at a loose end on Wednesday and foolishly decided to go to training for the first time in my life. There I not only saw Neil Craig in lovely long socks yell "Don't just fuckin' waddle into it" to Jack Fitzpatrick after a contest drill, but also Pedersen dropping one of the easiest marks you'll ever see in your life right in front of goal during match simulation only for the ever helpful Jade Rawlings to offer him the sage advice to "use your eyes". Three days later this is the guy we're entrusting to do a job in an important match? Dicks. I know it was 'only Kosi', which is the same attitude that most coaches have to 95% of our list, but he looks woefully out of touch at the moment.

Obviously I'd prefer Frawley over either of them, but if that's not possible right now I'd rather Sellar. This is flying in the face of everything I said about two seconds ago in regards to playing the guy who might be there next year over the one who'll almost certainly be delisted, but Sellar's performances down back this year have all shat on Pedo's - and right now I know if he have to have one of them for another 2.5 seasons I know which one I'd rather.

Despite these fiascos when Watts got our only cheap free kick inside 50 all night and goaled we had been given yet another life. So what do we do but give up on a ball rolling out bounds only for it to stay in and be turned into a goal with seconds left in the quarter. So typically Melbourne it could almost make you spew.

Admittedly the second quarter was quite good for us in every aspect other than the scoreboard. It was no good for football itself, but who cares about that right now. We might have conceded the first goal thanks to another assist by the umpires with a cheap 50 on Dawes, but we dominated the next 10 minutes. Sadly that all came to nowt because nobody had watched that NAB ad with Joel Selwood, the annoying children and a taxi driver to learn that you get six points for putting it between the big sticks and if you miss it you're only gonna score one and they kept kicking points.

It also came to nowt because the moment the ball went down the other end Riewoldt threw his arms up in the air, asked for a free kick and was paid one. Three goals from cheap frees/50s, and before St Kilda fans helpfully point out that we actually won the free kick count that's because by the time they started giving us pissweak ones to square it up they were generally on the half-back flank not the edge of the goalsquare. It was a shame considering McDonald had absolutely smashed Riewoldt to that point - sure he was getting kicks a million miles out but wasn't doing anything inside 50. Nick could become to him what Jack is to Frawley - a guaranteed victim every single time.

We did get a goal from a free kick not long afterwards, but considering Watts had already marked it when the free was paid you'd be insane to claim that it was a gift from the umpires. Unlike the other three that went against us. It seems rude to complain about umpiring when we set out to neck ourselves in about 5000 different ways every week, but while bullshit decisions around the ground usually balance themselves out over the game or don't have a massive affect there's not much you can do when they're costing you goals. Not that it would have helped us in the end, but still.. At least the sense of injustice should give us a leg-up next week, where once again both sets of fans will swear black and blue that their team was rorted and that umpires/commentators/the media are out to get them.

We only lost the quarter by three points, which for us is like a win, but considering how badly we'd stuffed ourselves up in the first quarter and how we'd outplayed them for great periods of the term it wasn't exactly a heartening result. Still, we weren't doing too badly considering that players who would be considered on our top line like Davey, Dawes, Howe and Trengove were doing nothing. I couldn't blame Dawes considering he was getting shit service, but apparently he was 'ill' last night and certainly looked out of sorts. Still did a few nice things though, and I suspect he's the sort of guy who would refuse to be a late change (probably because there's nobody to replace him) for something as frivolous as having the squirts but we sure didn't make it easy for him. It also didn't help when some cockhead punched him in the head on half time. Were any umpires watching? No, of course they weren't - because it happened right in front of our goal.

No such excuses for Howe (as far as I know) who has hit the wall big time in the last couple of games. After being such a valuable player around the ground in the first part of this season - as recently as being BOG against Freo - he was only really useful against Hawthorn up front and could barely get near it against Collingwood or this week until he went forward. Time to leave him down there with Watts (and Blease too if they're taking requests) to get some touch back before using him around the ground again. What a luxury to have a player who is perfectly good at a second role when his first one isn't working out - good times have a bunch of players like that, we have one.

Despite all that it was near enough at half time if we were good enough. Which we weren't, but it didn't help that they got gifted a fourth goal at the start of the third quarter for something or other. It involved Lynden Dunn so I'll assume he was guilty of whatever the umpire was accusing him of, but that was 4.0.24 to 1.0.6 in the rorts scoring count.

One of the things everyone's getting excited about is that we weren't flogged in the possession count for once. Which is all well and good, but surely that's because we spent so much time kicking it back and forth 20m to each other because there were no good options up the field. Can Champion Data remove backwards and sideways kicks from that and see how we fared? As much as (spoiler alert) Colin Garland was our best he must have had seven or eight touches from plays which went forward/back/forward/back/forward/back before somebody (not Garland) finally kicked it straight to a St Kilda player. This is not progress, this is plugging a gigantic gushing hole with a bathroom sink plug.

We did win the inside 50's, which was more surprising, but other than Watts playing his best four quarters for the season (he did some silly things, but who didn't? Call it a confidence builder. Now sign this piece of paper and let's get on with planning for the future) we didn't have anything down there to trouble the Saints. They could tell we were going to hoof it long, all their defenders got back, no dramas. It looked different once Howe got down there, so let's hope they stick with that next week, and if Dawes hasn't been damaging the Doulton all night next week he should be back to providing a target across half-forward but we've got to find more options. You can't just blindly whack the ball from the midfield to the forward line in the hope that somebody's going to be there without giving it away most of the time.

I don't even know if half-forward flank exists as a position any more but it seems to be the place where a lot of our attacks break down - because the ball goes straight over the top of it. Other sides seem to go ok with launching their attacks from there. Hoofing the ball inside 50 is far more dangerous when you're doing it from 52 instead of the wing, and when there's players in or around the square for marks, crumb or rorting the umpires into paying them a free you're (obviously) more chance of scoring. Not sure what we've got in the 2's to help us with this, but strangely enough like our defenders I feel like we could almost put forth a reasonable case with the players we've got if used correctly - Kent could be the Krumber if his steal in the first quarter is anything to go by. Just need to get it to them with some more system instead of wild thumping of ball onto boot and hoping for the best.

We made the scoreline relatively reasonable in the last few minutes (second only to the Richmond game that was supposed to herald a new era of Neeldness) but despite that the last 15 minutes was a chore. How I wished to be the sort of person who could leave a game early. I've got a high tolerance for landfill football (you'd have to be to still turn up after all these years) but that was something else. With apologies to the Bleaseathon last year we're forever cursed by that 2006 Elimination Final to never play another interesting game against the Saints ever again.

Mitch Clisby was another positive on debut - in the first quarter he was easily our best player, and when St Kilda realised it he slowed down but definitely worthy of a game over the next few weeks. In reverse Sylvia was good after quarter time but all over the shop when the game was slipping away early on.

Also against all odds Nicholson was good when he came on, looked like he did in 2012 again - which is a good thing - and Dunn wasn't awful. Surely neither of them would get a game in a half decent side though.

On the other hand Trengove went back to not getting anywhere near it (possibly in protest at the ground announcer, like every other living being, calling him Trengrove), Shannon Byrnes is in almost exactly the same situation as Rodan except he was no good for the entire game instead of just parts of it, Davey couldn't get near it and apart from his goal and a nice short pass Blease's kicking was almost criminal.

According to afl.com.au's stats section Blease has the 592nd 'best' disposal efficiency in the competition - which is admittedly in front of Matthew Pavlich and Majak Daw - but another way of looking at that is that he's got the 17th worst. The good news is Tom Gillies is even lower, but if you take out all the 1 and 2 game players only five players have worse than his 52.1%. He's an incredible player waiting to happen, and we all loved when he took on an opponent and ran down the wing before surely you knew as well as I did that he was going to kick it out on the full.

Terlich goes into the middle of the two, most of what he does is great but like McDonald (and indeed Macdonald) he's got a propensity to undo it all with an error which costs us a goal.

The fact that we kept it under 40 points is a minor win, but realistically we've played better matches against significantly better Saints sides over the last few years so I don't know what to take from it. Not being poleaxed makes for a change, but to still be struggling grimly just to get to 10 goals is disheartening. At least it provides some sort of platform to build on, and just in time to play against the only Victorian side we're any chance of beating. I'm not even expecting a win next week, but watch out for my proposed changes if we don't get within three goals going into matches against Sydney and Geelong - every available seconds player will be getting a game.

Don't forget, every week of this gets you one closer to the a new coach, more draft picks, major delistings and the 2014 season.

2013 Allen Jakovich Medal Votes
5 - Colin Garland
4 - Tom McDonald
3 - Jack Watts
2 - Colin Sylvia
1 - Jake Spencer (AT LAST!)

Apologies to Clisby, M. Jones, N. Jones, Terlich (high profile blunders not withstanding) and Toumpas.

Leaderboard
Despite not polling tonight Matt Jones has made a mockery of his 50-1 starting price in the Rookie of the Year battle to hold an eight vote lead over favourite Jack Viney, and 11 over Margaret Terlich. I'm not ruling Viney out just yet, but if the former electrician can get votes in the next couple of weeks before Jack returns from injury he could find his name etched on the Demonblog honour board.

In defence Terlich My Plums is also close but so far away in second, but with Garland now seven in front and the second half of the season underway his chances are ebbing away. I'm not willing to call it yet considering that with the ball down there every ten seconds either Frawley or the King of Sizzle could put in a late run - not to mention Grimes - but if his lead hits 10 in the next couple of weeks serious thought will have to be given to pulling down the shutters and asking the man who once got suspended for biffing his best mate then went on a fishing trip with him to name him the interim winner. And if I'm wrong? Well, it wouldn't be the first time.

N. Jones is also almost home, with only Howe and Sylvia even moderately realistic chances of catching him from outside of the top three now. As you'll see to the right (well, if you scroll up anyway - I expect to the right of this there's either white space or an ad for DATE THAI WOMEN) you can now click an easy link under the reference section to see all the previous award winners - and that will show you that after his unprecedented second Jakovich last year he's about to go one better and open up a huge lead with a third. He also needs just four more votes to pass Brad Green as the all-time #1 vote getter. This is after scoring all of one (1!) vote in the glory era 2010 season. Prepare to all hail, but the trophy remains under lock and key in the garage of Demonblog Towers until at least after the Sydney game.

29 - Nathan Jones
19 - Matt Jones (LEADER: Jeff Hilton Rising Star Award)
17 - Colin Garland (LEADER: Marcus Seecamp Medal for Defender of the Year)
14 - Jeremy Howe, Colin Sylvia
11 - Jack Viney
9 - Shannon Byrnes
8 - Dean Terlich
6 - Michael Evans
5 - Aaron Davey, Chris Dawes, Lynden Dunn, Max Gawn (LEADER: Jim Stynes Medal for Ruckman of the Year), Jack Grimes, James Magner, Jack Trengove
4 - James Frawley, Tom McDonald
3 - Jack Watts
2 - Rohan Bail, Mark Jamar
1 - Mitch Clark, Jordie McKenzie, Jake Spencer, Luke Tapscott

Stat My Bitch Up
The only older man to ever coach the Demons before today was Checker Hughes when he was wheeled out of a lengthy retirement on short notice to coach at 71-years-old after Norm Smith was sacked in 1965 (additional 'fun' fact - it was the only VFL game we ever played at Coburg Oval).

Hopefully in 15 years he breaks the record once and for all, called upon to take the reigns as eight time Premiership coach Choco Williams is sidelined with burst blood vessels in the forehead.

Fashion Week

It feels like I write this every time we're forced to play in the homebrand white away jumper, but can we get serious about campaigning to bring back the 70's/80's disco jumper as a clash kit? What's electric blue going to clash with? Not that it really matters considering tonight we wore all white against a team who also wear white.

I know it's hard to find any sort of away strip that people will be happy with when you play in one dark colour and apparently red's not 'neutral' enough to the clowns misunderstood geniuses who run the league (adjusted to represent their position as our new owners) so why not at least pay tribute to a small part of our past? Even if we were no bloody good while wearing it.

If other clubs can get away with just reversing their colours and not fooling anybody I don't see why this would be against the rules. Also even though a surprising amount of people wear the white jumpers I'm sure it would sell more. I'd buy one.

The shiny nature of modern jumpers makes it even bluer, for anybody who's worried about that, so let's not get hung up on the fact that we blew a six game winning streak and that it was the first of 19 straight defeats outside of Victoria or that Brad Green got suspended for headbutting - here's a shot of us wearing it against Fremantle in Heritage Round 2006 and quite frankly it looks as magnificent as the sight of Matthew Whelan jostling with some oaf.



Let us drink to the many MFC identities who read this page leading the Disco Blue in 2014 campaign so that I don't have to.



Crowd Watch
After a month away from footy fans the last thing I wanted was to have to hear some lunatic babbling in my ear, so in a desperate attempt to relive the good times of that day Blease kicked five (all effective) I relocated to my new favourite spot at the very back of the Ponsford Stand. Going all that way back was a bit pointless considering there was nobody for 25 rows in front of me, but I was insistent that in no way should anybody be able to choose the seat behind me from the 5000 empty ones around them.

It does nothing for this feature, but the calm, zen like atmosphere that having nobody within a mile can't be beaten. Also you can see everything that's going on all around the ground, which is more than can be said for sitting on level 1 and having to rely on the scoreboard when the ball's more than 50m away.

The only issue is that all sorts of weird people who aren't really that interested in the game treat it like climbing Mt Everest and walk up there while the match is on. The solution for the committed anti-social weirdo is to sit right in the middle of the row instead of on the ends, but it still didn't help me from having to put up with five minutes of some pissheads coming up and sitting right in front of me (possibly deliberately) during the second quarter.

Also late in the game I noticed that a middle aged couple had appeared in the next section over, conveniently located behind one of the poles that hold the roof on. This piqued my interest as I was hoping for a repeat of that famous footage of the couple having one of these ones in the top tiers of the Sydney Football Stadium. Sadly the only thing perverse about them was their choice of seating and nothing was going on. But I kept looking over just in case.

Finally, to the guy who greeted me pre-match like an old friend and suggested we sing the song after the game "just like last time" I apologise but I had absolutely no idea who you were, and by the time I realised that I'd over-committed to the conversation and couldn't pull out.

MFC Facebook Comment of the Week

Which faction will win out, the "better performance" crowd, the "it's a new coach, give him time" group or the "KILL EVERYONE WITH FIRE, I EXPECTED A 99 POINT VICTORY" alliance? Well, it's Facebook so obviously the third one.



Amongst a surprising amount of people slaughtering Jack Watts - because when times are tough kick the shit out of him, then start a personal Carnival of Hate when he leaves - here are some highlights. Sadly it's another week without a contribution by John Fidge.

- a welcome return from this segment's version of Tony Lockett
- two people confusing the number four with three
- a creepy comment about Chris Dawes from somebody I hope knows him
- a woman threatening to scab on us if #chokeyourselfwithatie gets up - which I naturally hope she does.

Remember, when you're posting on the MFC page after a game, if your comments haven't appeared in this feature yet you're not trying to hard enough. Also, don't waste your best work on any mid-week posts because I wouldn't read the comments on those if you paid me to.

Next Week
If Brisbane can lose to Geelong by enough to go below the Bulldogs (every possible chance) we'll get 16th vs 17th for the second week in a row, and for the Gas Chamber Challenge to get even half the interest this did amongst neutrals the AFL would have to find a way to get Michael Jordan to play for us and tag Footscray's Don Bradman.

It won't help that the Wallabies test is happening down the road at the same time (if you're into that sort of thing), but if tonight struggled to a deeply suspicious 28,700 then we'll be lucky to get 25k against that as fans of both teams suddenly discover a deep love of rucking and mauling to give them an excuse to not be there.

That's bad enough, but at least a few fans of both sides might make an effort to turn up in the belief that their side is going to win. Whatever the worst TV audience for a match between two Victorian sides is I'd say it was in trouble considering not only will the Wallabies game be on but for people who don't give a toss about Israel Folau any more than they did for the last two seasons the other AFL match will be the extremely palatable Geelong vs Fremantle clash. I know which one I'd be watching if I were a neutral.

We might as use whatever means necessary to win this one. Biff, outright cheating, getting sick kids in to address the players etc.. because if we don't you'll be starved for entertainment over the next fortnight as we're ripped apart wild horses style by both Sydney and Geelong. Then we don't play a winnable game in Victoria until we meet the Dogs again in the last round, that should really bring the punters through the gate. Apparently when we play North in a 'home' game at Etihad they're shutting the top deck, so to make having to play games there even worse now you have to 'enjoy' an enforced crap view from level 1 with opposition fans right up your clacker no matter which way you turn. Can't for the life of me see why our fans hate that putrid venue.

Footscray put in a respectable performance - as far as 10 goal losses go - against Richmond, but then again we did that too and look where it's gotten us? I refuse to believe that we're a chance, but will be happy to be proven wrong. More likely we're back here next week with pick 1 or 2 firmly locked away and more shame heaped upon the club.

IN: Frawley, Gawn, Magner
OUT: Fitzpatrick, Pedersen, Rodan
LUCKY: Byrnes

If the Match Review Panel wheel of fortune puts The Spencil out and Jamar's not fit then Fitz can survive to have another go.

Surely if Frawley's not right then either Troy Davis or Tom Gillies are worth a go to replace Pedersen and see if either of them are worthy of persisting with next year. Pedo's got another 2.5 years to cement his spot (for the love of all that is holy...) a few weeks at Casey will be better for his confidence than being thumped all over the park by the only sides even remotely in our universe. Besides, Gillies' dashing new moustache is worthy of a public airing.

Others who are a chance are McKenzie (I only want him if he's tagging) and Macdonald (Can't really find a spot for him but yes please, stuff public opinion). Nobody else seems to be doing great things in the 2nd's (none who are eligible anyway). Also you never know what novelty untried player they might wheel in next, who saw Mitch Clisby coming?

Coaches Corner
I'm not just saying this because a Mark Williams led MFC is second only to the return of Allen Jakovich to the club in any capacity amongst my off-field footy fantasies, but is it really all that wise to cajole Paul Roos into doing the job if he's not 100% into it? I'm not saying he'd do a Malcolm Blight and rack off halfway through the year with a trail of destruction behind him (like a cyclone blowing West Sydney how would we be able to tell the difference?) but this is not a job for somebody who isn't going to be around for a few years. Choco will die with a set of headphones on, Roos looks very comfortable sitting on couches next to Gerard Healy. I just hope if he does it he does it because he has a plan not because Demetriou won't stop calling him.

On the other hand look at the great man going wild on the sidelines for Richmond. Look at the mischievious look in eyes and evil chewing gum grin when some Channel 7 goose bailed him up in the Punt Road carpark and asked if he was keen. From now on I'm not even going to pretend that I only want him if Roos pulls out. This isn't a very sane and rational way to look at things, but I'm not a sane and rational individual if you haven't noticed.

Apparently one of the worst things he did at Port was appoint his sister as the club psychologist. Not the most sensible move ever, but at least he appointed a psychologist to ensure his players weren't all turning into mental cases.

I'm in 100% behind whoever we get, but having had my #chokeyourselfwithatie campaign shamefully marginalised the last time we were looking for a new coach I'm too emotionally invested in getting him up this time.

In other news apparently two clubs have already expressed an interest in Neeld as an assistant. Best of luck to him wherever he goes, but my god I hope it's Brisbane just to annoy Moloney.

Next Season
In trying to give the new coach a leg up I was trying to find a clause in the AFL Player Rules to answer my question of whether you could rort the minimum salary cap figure by delisting players who are in contract and including their salary in the next year's Total Player Payments. At some point I'll read the full 200 pages (because I'm a TREMENDOUS LOSER and this sort of thing interests me), but in the meantime if you can be bothered feel free to see if you can find that information.

UPDATE - One copy of Hotter Than Hell '98 signed by Craig Smoker to @lcrowth15 who spotted clause 10.21

Which means if you don't like the players we've got contracted for next year then it's not a total loss, because if there's any room we could knife them before close of play in 2013 and use our available cap room.

Now that I've gone through and read the whole thing (so closely that I initially missed the exact clause that I was looking for) I feel like ringing up SEN every ten minutes and pretending I know how everything works.

Was it worth it?
As long as you didn't expect us to be good and didn't pay for your ticket it was. Also worthwhile if you're OCD about being at every possible match like I am.

Final Thoughts
There's certainly something to work with here (especially if you add Clark, Frawley, Grimes and Viney) but whoever's in charge next year is going to have to work out how to inject confidence again. Like a kid growing up there's a lot of things we're going to have to try and fail at in the next couple of years before we start to get it right - we'll blow leads and we'll lose close games but at the moment I'd take it just to have leads and be involved in close games.