Weird and twisted nights

Well, it's TS for us again I'm afraid. At least this time you can't say you didn't see it coming.

If nothing else it brings to an end, or should do given the absolute stone cold certainty of this defeat, the first "let's kick the Dees to death" trial-by-media week of Mark Neeld's career. Actually scratch that, the magnitude of the loss and the way that blood in the water makes footy journos quiver with excitement will ensure him another run on the treadmill.

The general reaction to our defeat last week was so predictable that you could have sketched it out ten minutes after the final siren last week (or indeed halfway through the third quarter). The media sense the chance go to town, our fans drop their bundle and start trying to have half the senior list crucified outside AAMI Park and the players are trotted out for a series of cliches about doing better, trying harder, learning the lessons etc.. etc.. All well and good except for the fact that all the pledges about improvement were going to have to be backed up against a team that could very well win the premiership - and you remember very well what happened the last time we travelled out of Melbourne to play a genuine premiership contender.

Of course when you're the inaugural leaders of the 2012 Laughing Stock League it opens the door for every man and their dog to have a pot shot and for people to actually taken them seriously. Usually this is the round where you can absolutely lock in some kind of novelty comment about being crucified by the umpires as a special Easter treat but this week the entire world decided to join in. Everyone got to hammer a nail and we're still waiting patiently for the rock to roll away and reveal that the MFC has risen and done a runner. Keep waiting, it'll be a while.

In any other climate would the footy world not have fallen about laughing at Leigh Matthews' suggestion that Ben Hudson would have been a more valuable recruit for us than Mitch Clark? Forget the money for a second, but never forget it was there to spend anyway, Ben Hudson is 33-years-old. There is no further discussion required. We all know Leigh hates the Demons with a passion and spent much of the 1980's attempting to cripple our players with behind the play cheapshots (Stephen Smith, Peter Giles and Neil McMullin for starters, the third of which was playing in his second game) but I choose to believe in this scenario that he's been horribly misquoted and was only talking about Saturday. Even then it's a bloody stupid thing to say. Who would have thought he'd run a distant runner-up in "stupid MFC comment of the week"?

Speaking of multiple premiership winning coaches Mick Malthouse was next to swing for the fences. Now, Mick is not known for his long history of attempted murder on our players so we can only presume he was serious when he blamed the significant role the players had at Jim Stynes' funeral with mentally draining them before the match and that they shouldn't have formed the guard of honour as the funeral procession left. Absolute cobblers. I'm on the record as saying I'm into the 'by any means necessary' theory of winning a premiership (up to and including driving nuns off a cliff or having the players collectively off their faces on the gear a'la [club deleted - legal department]) but I will tell you this, if we have the choice between our players paying the appropriate respect to one of the greatest men ever to play or lead this club or winning one dinky football match of 22 I'll take the loss.

But that was all just ex-coaches trying to pretend they're still relevant and helping to fill the non-stop footy media cycle. Then it got really ugly. Newly irrelevant Mick might be but Grant Thomas, shooting from the zero premiership cheap seats, has been practically useless since Nathan Carroll got him the sack by crippling Fraser Gehrig in 2006 and he decided to keep his name in the press by taking the nuclear option on us.

I must admit I'd started to like Thomo over the last few months due to the fact that a) he hates the Demetriou administration even more than I do and b) he will write back to any old rubbish on Twitter but maintains a policy of following absolutely nobody, but to put it as midly as is humanely possible he stuffed up royally this week. Luckily for him the administration he hates so much is a complete farce and his mate didn't get the sack after Thomo dropped him in the shit up to his neck.

You know the story by now, he writes a post on his NineMSN blog suggestion that Neeld "may very well be the first coach to lose his players before he started" and that his hatchet job on the leadership group of old was badly handled. The first indication that he was going hammer and tongs just to get a story happening was the use of the word 'may', but then he decided to piff in a world class hand grenade vaguely accusing Neeld of racism towards indigenous players. Obviously he received a stern phone call because it disappeared not long afterwards, not quick enough that every man and their dog had seen it.

Cue the shambolic scenes where after an investigation proved that an AFL employee passed information on that was either wrong, mistunderstood or completely fictional we get Australia's least popular politician (including Anna Bligh) Demetriou defending his man to the hilt and trying to take the heat off his organisation by implying that Neeld should let loose the lawyers on Thomas. Somewhere Matt Rendell was kicking his television screen through in frustration at the injustice of it all.

The fact that Mifsud all but gave away during the press conference that the alleged concerns had been passed to him by a 'senior indigenous player' (of which we have... one) didn't help defuse the situation, kicking off a witch-hunt intended to out Aaron Davey as the source of the information. Of course even if he did actually say it, and there's no evidence that he did, he was hardly going to stand in front of a camera and go "oh yes, it was me. I invented a bald faced lie about my new coach" so it seemed somewhat unnecessary to stick him on the front page of the Herald Sun and chase him around AAMI Park sticking cameras in his face trying to get him to say something they could twist into another day's story but such is the life of a journo.

Credit went to Mitch Clark who attempted a shephard on the media crews but unfortunately in true Melbourne fashion none of Davey's long term teammates were anywhere near to help fly the flag and they still managed some more classic journalistic harassment. Good on him for having a go, he would have shot to instant fan favouritism if he'd torn the fluffy hand mic out of the journo's hand, thrown it across the turf and told them to rack off. Lucky he didn't, afterall that would have just kept us in the news and.. ahh forget it.

I was impressed with the way Neeld handled all of this, and I love his philosophy that when he speaks he's speaking to Melbourne members, supporters and sponsors (as they were at that point) but you can tell the media absolutely hate it because he keeps calling them out for asking stupid questions. Nobody ever had a cry when Mick Malthouse told them to get stuffed because he's won premierships, but when a coach walks in after his first game, stares them down with the psycho twitchy eye thing and says "do you really think that was how we expected them to play?" they think "we're the media, we'll put this bloke in his place". Because generally they're arseholes.

See for instance the introduction to the Channel 9 news story about his press conference - let us not forget a press conference about absolutely false allegations - according to the introduction he "fumbled" his way through a "defensive" press conference. No, what he did was tell the truth and not lie down and let his reputation be kicked around before he'd had half a chance to build one.

Some had a problem with his appearance on On The Couch, complaining that he looked uncomfortable and was too aggressive in his replies. Utter bollocks. When you go on a show and the second question is from the allegedly godlike Mike Sheahan who asks "surely you've got to reconsider playing Mitch Clark in the forward line?" after four quarters when he was our top goalkicker in the pre-season I'm impressed that he didn't just stand up, say "you're kidding" and walk out. "No I don't, it's been one game" he replied, almost incredulously, and rightly so too. Now that we've swung from 'crisis' to CRISIS I hope he tells Fox Footy et al to piss off when they call him next time.

What an eventful first week as a senior coach. Can anyone top it for drama? Nobody cared when Bailey lost his first two matches by 200 points total and now this guy is expected to pick up the pieces and get it right immediately. You can jam that avenue of thinking, because he's inherited just as rotten a basketcase as Bailey did.

I could not give a flying rat's clackbag if he's a polished media performer of not. If you go back in the Demonblog archives to the dying days of the Daniher regime and the Mark Riley holding pattern months  you'll see that I was calling out for a coach who was intense to the point of scariness. Now we've got one and whatever he needs to do over the next two or three years to get it right is ok with me. If the players don't like it the players can go elsewhere, and if the supporters don't like it then just give up like the rest of the yellow cowards who tuned out nine weeks through 2007 and have shown token interest since.

The way it's going for us there's every possible chance of some ugly scenes over the next few weeks, months and god forbid years but stay strong. At least get through Round 13 and unleash every piece of frustration and tension that you've got on the overpaid turd who started our run of off-field problems in the first place.

Also Dennis Commetti wrote an article sledging us for drafting a bunch of fancyboys over the years and.. well that's one article that I'm not going to argue with. At least Neeld has already started to address that - even if it did mean us not getting the fancifully named Clutterbuck in the Rookie Draft. Ok, pinpointed our plight without being stupid about it but how many more times are we going to have to hear about how badly we've mucked up over the last few years? I know we stuffed it up, you know we stuffed it up, indigenous people of the Amazon region who have never had contact with western civilisation know we stuffed it up - it doesn't change anything, and no matter how much you hurled abuse at your TV while Jack Darling did as he pleased today he never will and we have to work with what we've got.

Anyway, so far so shithouse a week. Dean Bailey was the master of trial-by-media but even he never had to go out and defend himself against falsified racial allegations. At least Neeld could sit there in his 'defensive' press conference and say that he considered it over, charitably announcing that he wouldn't sue Grant Thomas or the AFL for nearly ruining his reputation. You could have been forgiven for thinking we were going to get on with the business of being thrashed on the weekend and that all the scandals had ended. Until the next morning.

So, just when you think after the Jurrah debacle, Jim's passing, a rubbish Round 1 performance and false allegations about the character of our coach would just about do for our run of bad luck you wake up the next morning to find out that the man who is/was effectively our sole major sponsor is an classless, gutter trash clown who filled his Facebook with racist filth and defended himself by saying he couldn't possibly be racist because he had an Asian cleaner. Champion bloke. Spin it however you like, we all know you're an arsehole - although I'm not sure the cleaner defence really counts as spin.

Come midday Thursday we'd thrown away $2m worth of sponsorships from Energy Watch and Freedom SEO (ironically one Mr Ben Polis will have to do some incredible SEO work to recover from this one), winding up in the extremely rare, if not unprecedented in the modern era, situation of going into a premiership match without a fee paying sponsor on our jumper.

A disaster if you're the Chief Financial Officer but morally the right decision. It's a ridiculous amount of money to say no to but we'd be selling our soul to take this guy's cash any longer. To their credit the Melbourne Victory and Rebels both did the same, but Energy Watch wasn't their main sponsor - we're the only ones to voluntarily strip ourselves of our biggest sponsorship deal. Apparently he wasn't exactly timely with his payments anyway so the whole thing would probably have gone under eventually but it would have been nice to make it a month through the season before having to switch sponsors to Coles Home Brand Electrical Tape.

Sadly Polis is not even the biggest loser in this saga. He gets out of paying the rest of his commitment after six months of naming rights 'glory' and his company has just had more publicity than they'd get in five years of sponsoring three Melbourne based sports clubs. Maybe he set this up to try and get him out of deals he was no longer interested in? Either that or he's just a terrible human, the sort who deserve to be put in a rubber dinghy and pushed out on the tide.

You'd think that in any sensible environment his company would be bankrupt by Wednesday and he'd be eating out of a dumpster by Thursday but he won't be, the company will just change its name and keep doing what it already does. He's already "stepped down" as CEO which means absolutely nothing, they just need to ride out the scandal for a few weeks

With respect to the people who work at the company, and whoever writes their racist ads, I hope I'm wrong and the adminstrators are seen carrying out cardboard boxes as soon as possible just for stuffing us around but a lot of people will eagerly ignore the murky history of a company when there's a chance to money. How many of us have whined about being given rubbish service by a budget airline only to see a cheap fare the next time and get roped in all over again? Congratulations on being a big part of one of our worst weeks and for costing us a fortune. We will never forget, change the name of your shitbox company to whatever you like - we'll find you.

Then, just when you think that surely we're out of the woods and a public holiday would see us to 4.45pm Saturday unscathed then it turns out Gysberts has injured himself and is out for six weeks, presumably stuffing his season. Then Daniel Nicholson gets suspended for drinking while in rehab, which is not the best move for your future career when you're on the rookie list - and pure career suicide when you're playing for a coach who is going to want to beat the suitcase out of somebody over the next few weeks.

Nicholson's crime is dinky compared to what Jurrah's accused of doing when on the booze in the Northern Territory, but still why not add another fiasco to the big fuck off black cloud hovering over the club at the moment? I hope nobody in Perth this weekend eats a Cherry Ripe out of the mini-bar and fails to declare it or they'll dedicate an entire episode of On The Couch to jamming the knife into us a few more times. I think we're pretty clear from here but for god's sake can somebody ensure that Colin Sylvia is staying at home and not going for any 5am driving excursions?
 

Unfortunately at this point, having finally exhausted all the off-field scandals, I feel obliged to discuss the football match which we semi-participated in. What happens on field around this club isn't even remotely interesting compared to what happens off it these days but it's not the Abuse EnergyWatch blog so let's give footy a go instead.

Was I the only one to think that we were half a chance of keeping it respectable early on? To nobody's surprise we were being belted out of the centre but at least the backline were holding firm and we were getting it forward. Even if we weren't going to score at least we were stopping them from doing it - and I'd rather lose 30-100 than whatever we actually did lose by.

It's an understatement to say it couldn't last, because the gulf in class between the sides was utterly rude. I'm willing to give Neeld plenty of time to torch this shattered wreck of a club and rebuild it in his own image, assuming already that this year is shot, but I'm still concerned with the way we're playing. The around the boundary line thing might be done with the best intentions but do they have to do it every time? It might have worked a treat with the Pies but the last time they were a truly awful club (with the exception of their one off rubbish year) Neeld was coaching Ocean Grove. Despite drafting midfielders continuously for years we're still rubbish out of the centre, so any luxuries that he had at the Pies are not present now.

See also the bombing it long to Clark one out - I loved his one man display of crumb, more in two weeks than we did for most of 2011, but christ on a bike how about some other options? I know we're not swimming with forwards but what's Jeremy Howe doing playing the Baileyball Jack Watts role? Is it because only a man who can take screamers from anywhere is well positioned to save us from disaster when all the down the line kicks are horribly shanked? If so we're in even more trouble than first feared.

Kicking the thing long is ok as a tactic, but from my perspective it requires a combination of the following things to have any chance of creating scores. 1) A beastly full-forward who can kill his opponents in one-on-one contests, 2) multiple targets to aim at, and 3) some variety of crumbers. What we got today was no, no and Clark crumbing his own after bringing it to ground when he couldn't mark. How many of his snaps did he have a teammate anywhere near him at? It was a very Bailey-esque performance but with fumbling and shambling around the wings instead of just booting it to the opposition in the middle of the ground.

The umpiring - in the first half especially - will get a fair run, and why wouldn't it when you get one free in a half against 21, but when you lose by 18 goals in the end then it's a bit comical to go on about it as if it had some effect on the final result. Poor Will Schofield will get dropped for giving away that one free in the first half and booting one out of bounds on the full. Sadly in the early going much of it wasn't actually that bad, usually given away by one of our players (R. Bail) putting somebody in a headlock or Brad Green decapitating somebody with a lariat that Stan Hansen would rise to applaud.

Also when calling SEN to scream bloody murder in Chris From Camberwell helium style tones please remove the Frawley holding the ball from your calculations. Despite the pleas of noted commentary gumby Tony Shaw he ran about 200 metres right in front of goal and was deservedly pinched. Played a terrible first half too did Chip. Luckily Rivers was on a relative stunner early on, and that Tom McDonald was trying his guts out after coming in late for the Stef Martin Experience.


The one that really got me was when Ashton Hams (comedy name) was already feigning being tackled high before he had an arm put near him at the same time Grimes was being cleaned up by a shirtfront well behind where the ball was. Result, obviously, a West Coast free and goal. Surprise, surprise the first goal of the third quarter came from a free too. I think there is some scope to bring the standard Easter crucifixion reference into talk about the game too.

At least the Eagles were smart enough to take advantage of the shit umpiring, ducking into contests and staging at every possible opportunity. I knew we've been waffling on about integrity all week but where are our cheats? Why can't we find a lost member of the Selwood family who doesn't care if his spine is eventually shattered by leading with his head every time? And for god's sake now that we've semi-addressed the need for big bodies in the draft what about addressing our needs for some players who are absolutely shit human beings? Jones tried hard by playing up that one in the third quarter but I was the players who pray upon the stupidity of the umps by rolling over and playing dead without anyone near them. Most of the time you'll still get the free apparently. Where are the players who wouldn't even dream of going near Twitter because all they'll cop is hateful abuse? You don't see Hayden Ballantyne rushing to install Tweet Deck do you? GOOD. How will we ever get by without hearing how much he loves parmas?

When Jones got that goal at the start of the second quarter I can't have been the only one to think that we were going to be ok (where ok = a ten goal loss). It didn't last, and ten minutes later the game was not only lost but started getting ugly. If Neeld could only find four players who were reasonable last week he'd be absolutely buggered doing the same today.

I'll start him off by telling him who doesn't need to be considered. In alphabetical order, and in varying degrees of not being any good he can scratch Bail, Bartram, Bennell, Garland, Green, Jamar, Macdonald, McKenzie, Petterd, Sellar and Watts off his list for today.

Now I'm usually loathe to throw players into the "go and go now" category, given that they're trained professionals and I'm a keyboard mashing porky, but is there any doubt now that Jamie Bennell has entered Luke Williams/Scott Chisholm territory? I know our depth is wafer thin despite 200 top draft picks but if he's playing next week then all involved can slurp the plums of an Irishman. In 16% less game time Bate had 11 more disposals - and who didn't see that happening? Why Bate was persecuted again after his last quarter against the Lions is mystifying, especially when Bennell hasn't played a good game since... anyone? What did he do to deserve a start? He wasn't even in the best for Casey last week so why not, have a start against a side that is likely to pulverise us.

I'm trying desperately to not be negative towards Neeld and Co, because they have been handed a steaming turd but sometimes you just have to wonder. I'd rather have kept Aaron Davey in the side, faded to a mere shadow of his former self, than promote somebody who has a proven track record of doing absolutely bugger all and provided next to nothing in the pre-season.

The third quarter needs no discussion. We were 186-esque in our rolling over and dying, with the inability to hit a target by either hand or foot. The disposal efficiency which was almost dead level with the Eagles at half-time started to slip backwards as they went forward relentlessly and kicked goals from every available source. At the other end even when we did manage to go forward Clark was having the thing kicked to his fingertips at full extension with two opponents on him and nobody on the ground - all the time while Jeremy Howe, the sort of guy who could leap over two opponents and take a screamer, was playing a serviceable but hardly damaging game backwards of centre.

They finally let Bate out of his substitution hell with six minutes to go in the quarter and the damage well and truly done (sadly we have no record of Bennell doing the honourable thing and subbing himself). His first kick went straight to the opposition, but at least it was out of the middle of the ground which is more than pretty much anybody other than James Magner could say for their day. As the afternoon wore on he, shock horror, gained some confidence and started hitting some nice passes - how about a full four quarters next week? If he ends up as sub again I'll riot.

Everyone know he's not going to win the Brownlow anytime soon but for god's sake at least getting out of the middle will be a start even if it does wind up going to the opposition most of the time - at least it's not just pinballing straight out of the centre and down the throat of opposition forwards. If we're unable to do defensive pressure anymore at least start the ball going in our direction. For god's sake we nearly, nearly conceded the modern day record for inside 50's in a match. The same team who conceded 31 goals just a few short months ago - have the backline not suffered enough? No wonder Frawley played a shocker, he's probably sick to death of having to stop us losing by 186 every week.

There is just some sort of sick, black cloud hanging over us. In a way we deserve it for all that tanking business, and I don't blame supporters of other clubs for taking their chance to piss themselves laughing over how we've botched it so badly. It's like nothing we do will come off, and before you know it we'll be this year's Port Adelaide - duelling with start-up franchises to avoid winning another spoon. Of course while Port showed enough pride to avoid finishing last we'll be 'guided' towards defeat while our fans jump around celebrating the chance to ruin another young man's life by drafting him in the top five.

At the risk of bringing up the draft fiascos just a few paragraphs after saying I never want to hear from them again I dare say that the way we're going even if we went into the time machine and picked Naitanui and Jack Darling then Nic Nat would be palming the ball straight to the opposition and Darling would either be on the half back flank or having the ball kicked towards him at full extension with two opponents while Eagles Jack Watts and Lucas Cook slap us around.

Even our noblest warriors are looking like they've had enough. Poor old Jamar visibly slumped at one point when his tap was roved by Priddis without an opponent in the same postcode. I enjoyed hearing that he had a tete-a-tete with midfield coach Brian Royal at three-quarter-time, presumably asking when any of Brian's troops would show an interest in getting to one of his taps. Then there was Green who is playing like a broken man. I still think he's a good option as an alternative forward but if they've got no interest in playing him there then he doesn't deserve his spot in the team.

The Eagles did their best to let us get it back under a hundred in the last quarter but being utterly shit means that even when teams have given up they'll still kick goals. When Josh Hill started taking the piss even I, usually a calm and collected character, nearly threw a laptop at the TV.

But there was no violence against inanimate objects. Round 24 last year when we lost to Port (taste of things to come) I was punching sofas, kicking doors and generally scaring the neighbours. Today I'm resigned to it, and even the violence of the margin wasn't a surprise. I felt optimistic that we'd keep it to 'just' 70 something, and when that's the best case scenario then you probably follow a team who deserve to get humped by 108 points.

Time to rebuild the rebuild. It's like one of those A Current Affair 'dodgy renovators' stories where some poor, gormless bastards are left out of pocket and with a derelict house. I look forward to seeing Tracy Grimshaw chasing Bailey, Prendergast, Craig Cameron etc.. down the street with a microphone, demanding answers while they try to cover the lens of the camera. There are no answers, we're in more trouble than the proverbial. You have my permission to give up.


2012 Allen Jakovich Medal Votes

5 - James Magner
4 - Nathan Jones
3 - Mitch Clark
2 - Jeremy Howe
1 - Tom McDonald

Apology to Jared Rivers who was good in the first half at least, Trengove who tried and Bate who should have been given longer to take himself out of contention.

Leaderboard

10 - James Magner
5 - Nathan Jones
4 - Jeremy Howe, Jack Trengove
3 - Mitch Clark, Stefan Martin
1 - Tom McDonald

Stat My Bitch Up
Let the records tumble. Our biggest loss against the Eagles, at Subiaco and ever outside of Victoria. Our outright 17th largest loss in history, and James Sellar becomes the 11th player to lose by 100+ in his first MFC game.

Commentary Corner
Come back Dwayne Russell, all is forgiven. It doesn't help your mood when you're watching your side get hacked to death unmercifully but if there's even been more frustrating coverage than today I've yet to experience it.

Tony Shaw, Gerard Healy, Matt Campbell, Glen Jakovich and Fox Footy in general, How much did I hate you? Let me count the ways:

1) Mid-match puff piece interviews with players during the match. This is not NicNat/Watts propaganda, but I don't want to hear casual chats with players of any club including ours while there's play going on.
2) Lengthy discussion about what Nic Nat calls his hit-outs
3) The pisstaking of having him listed as the #1 pick in the 2008 draft in the on-screen super during previously mentioned puff-piece
4) Kiddy style giggling over the free kick count.
5) Shaw's attempts to justify Frawley's marathon run because he took a few sidesteps.
6) Healy calling a kick 'effective out of the centre' when he went straight to an Eagles player.
7) Healy suggesting that today's performance is why you can't have players like Colin Sylvia being suspended. Sylvia's suspension ended last week, now he's just got the small matter of a broken back to cope with.
8) I just generally loathe Tony Shaw's rambling, bumbling commentary.
9) Gerard Healy blazed the trail for $cully by dicking us to go to the Swans for fat cash in 1985.
10) Glen Jakovich not only talks out of his ringpiece but reminds me of what we could have been if his brother wasn't a porky, mad rooter with a dodgy back.

The good news for Fox is that we're a captive audience, so just like the AFL they can treat us with utter contempt and we'll just roll over and pay up. Good thing I like watching endless episodes of Air Crash Investigation (what can I say, I'm drawn to disasters) so I'm getting my money elsewhere - I feel for those of you roped into paying good money to watch this shit through the XBox and then finding out that there's one match every week that they mysteriously don't cover.


MFC Facebook Comment of the Week


Difficult to suggest that any insane comment hasn't got some validity after that performance but it's good to see that some people have already lost their nerve and are trying to get rid of Neeld - as if wheeling in any other living man would have any impact on this shit sandwich.


Then there's this guy who shares the same name as our ex-rookie but isn't the same guy unless he's put on about 100kg since we delisted him. Next thing a false Trent Zomer will start abusing us.


Also, for Rhys and 75% of the other commenters - it's LOSE. Just like it's TRENGOVE, MOLONEY and MCLEAN not LOOSE, TRENGROVE, MALONEY and MACLEAN. Also at least have a go at punctuation, even if you get it wrong a'la Demonblog.

I doubt anybody other than me sits down and looks at the full Facebook thread but the number of people who threaten to ditch us is ridiculous. Just do it you internet hero idiots, we know you'll come sneaking back when we're good in ten years. Especially the people who freely admit they're not members, as if they are owed something. Die in a fire you yellow cowards.

Crowd Watch
Never been there but you can tell by the audio alone that they're even bigger mutants than the Geelong crowd. 

Next Week
Another week of media hell I presume, leading neatly to giving Richmond their first win of the year. Just a reminder that it was less than one calendar year ago (June 25 to be precise) when we beat them in the clash to decide who would be the next big thing in the world of footy. Then somehow the water supply at AAMI Park began to be sourced from Coode Island and that was the end of us.

IN: Moloney, Martin (if fit) and some combination of Blease, Couch, Tapscott, Tynan and Morton depending on the Casey result.
OUT: Bennell, Macdonald, Bail and Green unless they're going to play him forward.

Final thoughts

You can officially wipe out the "best case scenario" section of the pre-season preview, and fire your lighter up underneath all the ones that don't involve us being shithouse. If you've got a sensitive disposition you might want to close your eyes now.

12 bright, shining moments (and one free plug)

How far away does winning a Grand Final seem right now? Don't think like it's still Saturday morning, think of right now. In the event that absolutely everything went right and we somehow managed to ransack the draft for some out-and-out superstars (stop laughing) I'll give you five years minimum.

Take Hawthorn as your control group. Even with the likes of Franklin and Hodge floating in and others like Crawford just a few years off their best football it was five years for them from 15th to a flag. Wait, in that case make it a decade for us. Thrilling stuff, bet you can't wait eh?

Well, if you're in the key Demonblog demographic (under 50, bitter and twisted) it may come as a surprise to you that it hasn't always been the case. In fact it has come to my attention that, and speak it in hushed tones, we used to be quite good. Can't actually imagine it myself but there you go.

I've been wanting to do this post for a while, and when Slattery Media sent me a copy of the covers of all our winning records to plug the 100th anniversary of the Footy Record and the release of a set of every Grand Final record ever printed I thought it was as good enough excuse as any to get on with it and commit our greatest triumphs to the historical record.

Now, as you might have gathered over the years I've not got a great deal of time for the modern day Record. I know who are our players are, I don't care who theirs are (and listen to the radio anyway) and the rest seems to be nothing more than a shiny endorsement of all that is great and good if the league agrees it is. Like the Herald Sun it's worth reading if somebody slings you a free copy but really you're only paying for it because you feel sorry for the acne ridden kid flogging it outside the ground - or need something to roll up and swat out with when things go horribly wrong. Midway through Round 2, 1999 I threw my rolled up Record off the back of the Waverley stairs. Bits of it are probably still floating through people's backyards in that new housing development.

It might not have met my needs since roughly the last time we were in a Grand Final but what the Record does do is provide a quality historical record of the game. It's near on impossible to find what you're looking for in an old newspaper without one of those bloody microfilm machines (which if you've never had the joy of operating I can tell you are almost the most non-ergonomicly designed devices ever invented) but after years of being hidden away the old copies of the Record are starting to become better utilised and easily accessible.

My adventures on Demonwiki have been aided to no end by the digitised collection of Records that the State Library of Victoria are currently uploading to their website. Alongside Google News Archive (now sadly near abandoned) the two have contributed enormously to the content on the Wiki - which as I will never tire of pointing out is the most comprehensive collection of info about this club that you'll ever find. Without the Record and News Archive it'd be a shell like most MFC related articles on Wikipedia.

As a fairly blinkered amateur historian I feel like it should be pointed out that if your interest lies in matches other than Grand Finals and you don't care for matches not involving us then you can get most of the Records for free in PDF form via the SLV but this new collection is obviously one for the collector with a serious interest in the wider history of the game or who just wants to show off. It's not cheap at $400 a shot but really if you've got the dosh 100 Records for $4 each is still better value than the $5 cover price it comes for now.

For my own personal needs I couldn't justify the $400 but I admit that it would be nice to actually hold the real record, admittedly a replica of, in my hands and look through it with a wider historical interest. To be honest of all the records available now on SLV I've never once looked at any of the finals not involving the MFC so god knows how many classic ads I'm missing out on.

So personally I'll stick to the free version (Dear Slattery, please don't make SLV take their copies down for this reason or I'll openly cry) but as an addition to a serious footy memorabilia collection you could certainly do worse. It's limited to a thousand copies though so do get in quick if you're keen. Also helps if you're not concerned that the only two times we feature in the last 45 odd editions is when we're about to be belted from pillar to post.

Usually I wouldn't involve myself in free commercial plugs - and indeed nobody would ask - but after eight years somebody finally acted as if Demonblog were a proper media outlet and not just a lone nutter with a keyboard so I'm happy to give them a free plug as the prelude to this The Pocket Guide to MFC Premierships segment (which doesn't actually fit in your pocket because I waffled so much before we finally got to it). Consider it an informercial.

1900

With the Record not published until 1912 we've only got newspaper evidence to tell the tale of the unlikely Fuschia flag. It was the first real premiership the club had ever won. They'd been acknowledged as the champion side of the colony six times before the formation of the VFA, but with the coming of an organised competition for the first time they managed to be runners up four times but not much else other than a brief flirtation with liquidation in the early 1880's.

Luckily success was not a pre-requisite to enter the VFL when it formed, and the chance to bring the mighty MCG into the new league's fold outweighed any concerns the other clubs might have had about the lack of recent success or a proper geographical base.

In an early sign that you can't please anybody when you're a sports administrator the VFL came under heavily criticism for their finals series format from which the sixth placed Demons manage to win through to the Grand Final.

Perhaps they had a point, it seems almost wacky now play an entire season just to effectively decide seedings amongst the teams who didn't finish first. As was the custom at the time Fitzroy went straight to the Grand Final, regardless of what happened in the sectional rounds and would have won the flag outright if they'd topped their group. Luckily for our history, and the frayed nerves of the fans who had watched us win nothing for a quarter of a century (which almost sounds like a good deal now), they finished second to Essendon in their group and kept the season alive.

Against the odds the Fuschias won their section on percentage from Collingwood and were pitted against the Same Olds for the right to meet the Maroons in the final. Melbourne triumphed narrowly in the Semi Final to make the first of 18 Grand Finals in the club's history.

Despite the farcical nature of deciding who would play the match caught the attention of the public who showed up in numbers almost six times larger than the year before. The idea of Grand Finals was starting to catch on after years of handing premierships to the side who finished on top, and we are much richer for that now. Until they turn it into a top 15 and making the finals becomes meaningless. Much like it was in 1900. So, perhaps a good thing for us.

Arthur Sowden, Eric Gardner and Bill Bowe were missing from Melbourne's best lineup, but they scored first through a behind to Dick Wardill after he had won the toss and elected to kick with a slight breeze.

The Maroons got the first goal, and early on the match was played just as you'd expect it to be with such a gap between the two sides throughout the season. Somehow, despite being vastly outplayed for most of the term Melbourne took advantage of the breeze to sneak a slight lead into quarter time after Jack Leith and Tommy Ryan goalled.

Into the wind in the second Melbourne failed to register a major, but luckily for them Fitzroy only got one themselves. The game had tightened up noticeably but was still marred by scrappy disposal.

A two point lead to the Maroons at half-time seemed like a prelude to them taking over, they had been strong finishes all year, and soon enough the scores were level. Melbourne though were defiant and pushed ahead when Wardrill got his second goal of the match. Stewart Geddes kicked his first, and despite a mountain of attack Fitzroy couldn't penetrate the Melbourne defence and the unthinkable was on the brink of happening. Melbourne by 13 at three-quarter time.

The Maroons opened the last quarter with two missed shots, and with the use of the wind it looked briefly as if they were going to run over the top. The defence again held-firm though, and although they conceded a goal to bring the margin to under one straight kick it was not the sort of match where another goal was readily on offer. Melbourne held on and despite two goalless quarters they had won their first premiership. Fitzroy's carriages - left outside the ground already enscribed with PREMIERS 1900 - returned to a funeral like atmosphere at Brunswick Street oval while Melbourne players celebrated an unlikely but hard fought first VFL premiership.

Best were Langley, Wardill and Purse. Cumberland and Herring were also prominent.

1926

26 years after their first premiership, the Fuschias finally broke through for another. After many years of struggle following their first flag World War I had cruelly put the Redlegs out of action just as they qualified for a rare finals series in 1915 and by the time they came back in 1919 the club's stocks had been destroyed and they went through the season winless.

It took until 1924 to qualify for the finals again, a year after only avoiding the wooden spoon on percentage, and by '26 they were in their third straight September series and primed for a run at the Grand Final on the back of Ivor Warne-Smith having just taken home the club's first Brownlow Medal.

Captain-Coach Bert Chadwick pulled off a selection shock, picking Francis Vine for his first career match to replace Bob Corbett who had suffered a broken jaw in the three point Preliminary Final victory.

Matched up against a Collingwood side they had already beaten in the Semi Final they also boasted the first side to have three different players kick 50 goals in a match. The contrast to the battling team who lucked their way through to the Grand Final in 1900 was extreme, this was the first real champion Melbourne side.

Melbourne won the toss and goalled first through Bob Johnson, who had three by quarter time to help his side to a handy lead. It looked like they might run away with the game from there but the Pies stayed strong and hit back to be within striking distance at the long break.

With Syd Coventry thrown to quiet the dangerous Johnson, Melbourne still managed to provide multiple avenues to goal courtesy of Moyes and Duff, running the Pies off their feet. Moyes got two of his goals in quick succession and by the time the third quarter ended the match was as good as over.

Gordon Coventry broke the VFL season goalkicking record in the last term but his side were already well and truly buried. At the other end Johnson was unbeatable, except by his own boot, kicking 6.7 in a best on ground performance. The Australasian newspaper described his performance by saying "He soared in the air like a bird, marked magnificently and uncannily, and kicked six goals". It was his goal three minutes into the last quarter which put the result beyond doubt. The final score of 17.17 was a record score in a Grand Final for its time.

One of the interested spectators was Henry Harrison, first captain of the club in 1859 just days short of his 90th birthday. Also present was 1900 premiership player Dick Wardill.

In addition to Johnson, Wittman and Moyes were also amongst the best.

1939

Melbourne had thumped the Pies by 92 points earlier in the season and qualified for the Grand Final by beating them in the Semi Final, so despite Collingwood's thumping victory over St. Kilda in the Preliminary Final and Ron Todd's 11 goals, the Demons still went in as red hot favourites.

Todd loomed as the biggest danger to Melbourne's third premiership, having kicked more than a hundred goals for the season, and when Collingwood started the game with a six goal first quarter it looked as if as an upset was in the making. Seven goals in the second quarter helped Melbourne back into the game, taking a four point lead at the long break which would have been even more if they hadn't been robbed out a goal when Umpire Coward broke his elbow and was unable to provide an all-clear sign. Despite the controversy the umpire's misfortune was eventually to Melbourne's benefit as they booted three quick goals after the break for him to be exchanged for the emergency.

The comeback at the end of the second quarter killed the Magpie challenge, and the second half became a procession. The first three goals of the third quarter, and a five goal to three total quarter gave Melbourne the advantage entering the last but it was the seven goal to one avalanche there that made the result one side. The Pies were reduced to 16 men in the final term and the Demons took advantage by racking up the then record score in a Grand Final en route to their third flag.

Best for Melbourne were Beames, Roberts and Anderson. Norm Smith kicked 1.6 and Alby Rodda 4.5.

1940

You're not seeing things, they did use nearly the exact same design for the front cover two years in a row. I guess they thought nobody would notice, and for the best part of 70 years they were probably right.

The Melbourne Football Club too were up for a repeat, taking their second consecutive premiership and the first repeat success for the club since being named Challenge Cup winners from 1868 to 1870.

After their big loss in the previous year's decided Collingwood had fallen by the wayside, missing the finals, and were replaced as challengers by Richmond.

The defending champions had finished the season two games clear of the Tigers at the top of the table, but were shocked by them in a brutal Semi-Final. They struggled to a five point victory over Essendon in the Preliminary Final and went into the premiership decider as underdogs.

Suffering from a rash of injuries, Checker Hughes gave his team a light week of training and was forced to go back to the drawing board for tactics that would get the job done against the Tigers second time around. He set Jack O'Keefe to tag the deadly Richmond captain-coach Jack Dyer in the ruck, and it was a winning move. Dyer had been at his rampant best in the Semi, seriously concussing Norm Smith and injuring several other Demons but the champion police boxer kept him in check and Smith booted seven.

12 scoring shots to three in the first quarter put the Redlegs in the box seat, but after kicking the first goal through Baggott their abysmal kicking for goal was good for just 4.8 and left the Tigers in the hunt. By half time, though, they had been blown away, not only did O'Keefe negate "Captain Blood", but he managed two goals in the term and the margin had blown out to 45 points. The premiership was as good as theirs. One player not celebrating was Ray Wartman who was injured during the first quarter and replaced by Ron Barassi Sr, playing what would ultimately be his last match.

Despite hitting the post twice in the third term, Norm Smith added two more of his seven and the lead become unassailable. Melbourne's first premiership repeat was confirmed, and despite Jack Titus kicking his 100th of the season it was too late for the Tigers to do anything but boot a few consolation goals in the final term when the match was already won.

Best were Beames for the second straight year, Baggott and LaFontaine while Smith was presented with a gold medal by the vice-president of the club for his performance.

In honour of the victory Keith 'Bluey' Truscott penned a new verse for the theme song,

Now the Tigers they are haughty in the year 1940
But the Demons would not be licked
And we found them ahead at the final bell,
With the spirt of twenty six

The verse was later updated to become the official, but rarely used, second verse of the Demons theme.

1941

Slight changes to the design of the record, but they were still running with that same shot of Allan La Fontaines. And why not, he was shooting for the league's second premiership hat-trick.

In a season where the league was ravaged by players being called up for military service, the Demons missed a number of first choice players on Grand Final day. They also had their issues with injuries. In all they were without 12 players while the Bombers were nearly at full strength and for that reason started favourites despite finishing a game behind the Demons in fourth. Both teams had beaten minor premiers Carlton to qualify for the final

On an unnaturally warm September day the Bombers opened with the first goal but from then they were beaten solidly. The favourites were shocked by a full-frontal attack by their opponents, they were dominated in the ruck and went into the first break 35 points behind with their skills in tatters with a massacre on the cards.

Any hope that Essendon would recover and make a contest out of the match were ruined when they suffered a five goal to one second quarter, kicking themselves out of the match with 1.5. By half-time it was 57 points, and despite a brief rally by the Bombers in the third term (and a 52 to 20 free kick count) the Demons went on to win the game handily.

Inspired by captain-coach Dick Reynolds the Bombers fought it out with seven goals in the last term to reduce the margin from 47 to a more respectable 29 points but the Demons were already playing like the celebrations had begun and it was all too late. It was the Demons fifth premiership triumph from five Grand Finals.

Best were Beames, Lock, Heal, Mueller, Dullar, La Fontaine. Stan Heal returned to Western Australia the next week to play in a WAFL premiership for West Perth.

1948

The ravages of the war eventually caught up to the Demons and it took them another seven years to regroup and make another Grand Final, and they got two for the price of one.

Having lost twice to Essendon throughout the season, and again in the finals, the Demons started long shot underdogs for the Grand Final and there's no doubt they should have lost, but in the end they found themselves blowing a golden chance to win. The celebrations for the sixth premiership had to wait another week.

When captain Don Cordner met his Essendon counterpart Dick Reynolds for the coin toss in the middle of the MCG he said "this is it", to which Reynolds replied "unless it's a draw". The Bombers went on to dominate the Demons but kick themselves out of contention like no other team in Grand Final history.

Melbourne did well to lead at quarter time, let off the hook but Essendon kicking six behinds without a major, and the Bombers dominated the second term as well but could only add 2.9 and despite their dominance went into the long break behind.

The favourites straightened up, relatively speaking, in the third quarter and added 4.6 to retake the lead going into the last quarter. The match might have been over had it been not for their abysmal goalkicking. Full forward Bill Brittingham the worst offender with 2.11 on a day where one straight kick out of 11 might have won his side the flag.

A Norm Smith drop kick from 50m out in the last quarter tied the scores, and despite Essendon's dominance in scoring shot they were just one point away from defeat. In the end Melbourne could even have won it there and then, Smith playing on from a set shot 45 metres out and failing to score. From the resulting boundary throw-in Don Cordner attempted to fist the ball through for a point but collided with Smith and gave the Bombers a second life. He was about to collect the ball again when he slipped.

It would have been unfair, but nobody on the red and blue side was complaining. When the siren went just seconds later the fact that they managed to snatch a draw was remarkable enough.

Best for the Demons were Alby Rodda, Smith and Collins. Rodda suffered a broken rib.

The two sides reconvened for the replay a week later, delaying Checker Hughes' second retirement by a week. Melbourne went in knowing they'd been let off the hook by their opponent's poor kicking in the first game and that they'd have to improve to avoid their second Grand Final loss in history.

It had been a difficult week for the Bombers. They had shown up to Windy Hill for training only to find out that the cricketers had already taken over. Ferried to Arden Street in a fleet of taxis it was no way start a Grand Final week even if they had just been through one.

This time Melbourne were taking no chances on a thrilling finish and in wet conditions they blew Essendon away in the first quarter, taking a 35 point lead into the first break. Every key Bombers man was silenced and the match was all but over.

Dick Reynolds was forced to move into the ruck to spark his side, but Col McLean looked after him and despite Essendon kicking five goals to three in the third quarter they never got close enough to threaten. Melbourne added just four points to its first quarter lead but it was enough.

Jubilant supporters donated 200 pounds to the team for their victory, including 20 from former winger Ray Wartman who had seen his own Grand Final ruined by injury in 1939.

Jack Mueller, lured out of retirement before the finals, booted another six goals to take his tally to 20 for the series. Smith, Mueller and Bickford were Melbourne's best.

1955

Since the 1948 triumph the Demons had been forced to undergo an extensive rebuild, eventually leading them to the 1954 Grand Final where they were easily beaten by Footscray for the Bulldogs one and only premiership triumph.

Best on ground in his last MFC game in the 1948 replay victory, Norm Smith was now in charge and Collingwood stood between him and his maiden coaching premiership after four as a player. It was just two years since the Demons had finished second last on the league ladder and the speed of the rebuilding job made the successes that were to follow even more impressive.

Having already taken care of the Pies in the Semi Final, the Demons went into the premiership decider as favourites. Nevertheless the Pies had been the first team to beat Melbourne that year in Round 11 so couldn't be entirely discounted.

In a stark contrast to their Semi Final, the Grand Final was played in glorious sunshine. The Pies goalled first from a downfield free kick after Noel McMahen had ironed out Bob Rose. Checker Hughes had always stressed that when playing Magpies, "Once Collingwood starts handball, meet the player with shirtfront football", and the 1955 side had taken that age old concept to heart. It cost them a goal but the black and whites were on the back foot from them.

Incensed by the incident the Magpies players went in harder, but their physical exertions only served to highlight the bumps they'd taken in two gruelling games to qualify for the grand final. When the sting went out of the physical action Melbourne hit back to take the lead, and were a point in front at the first break having weathered the storm.

The Demons should have blown their opponents away in the second quarter but managed just 1.7. If it wasn't for the resiliency of the Collingwood backline they may have had even more shots on goal but were wasteful. The only saving grace was that at the other end the Magpies were doing nothing. They went from the ten minute mark of the first quarter to midway through the third without kicking a goal. Still, at the long break it was just 11 points the difference and they were still in the hunt.

The third quarter saw the Pies claw back a few more points, but the 88,000 fans were still no closer to an answer about who would win. They had taken full advantage of Demon inaccuracy to cut the margin to just seven points at the last change thanks to late goals to Rose and Smale.

With the match in the balance and the Magpies finally looking threatening again after so long without a goal in the middle of the game it was anybody's premiership as the last quarter started but early goals from Bob Johnson and Bob McKenzie early took the wind out of the Pies again and Melbourne never looked back.

Late in the game, with the Demons seemingly having the flag won, Frank "Bluey" Adams, Melbourne's 19th man, was introduced to the match to replace the injured Geoff Case. He sprinted off the interchange bench and collided with Collingwood's Des Healey. Both men were knocked unconscious and Adams' Grand Final lasted just 45 seconds. He would always maintain that he had no memory of the clash and that the last thing he could remember was was getting ready to run out onto the ground.

It was a victory for youth. Twelve premiership players were not yet 23-years-old.

Denis Cordner was the Demons best, dominating the ruck in the second half. Barassi and Melville were also prominent.

1956

The city of Melbourne was in the grip of sports fever in the Olympic year, and just over 116,000 people officially saw the Grand Final with many others climbing roofs or leaping over turnstiles to see the match.

In front of the massive crowd Norm Smith's Demons went in favourites, having beaten Collingwood in the last round of the Home and Away season as well as the first week of the finals. With a week off they'd been able to sit back and watch the Pies battle it out with Footscray for the right to play in the final.

Collingwood took a narrow lead into the first break but it wasn't to last. The soon to be two-time premiers out-matched their opponents in skill and ability, taking the lead into half time and never looking back. Four goals to one in the third quarter gave them a comfortable lead and the last was a rampage, with Collingwood conceding seven goals - including three to Athol Webb - as Melbourne sealed their status as one of the greatest teams in VFL history.

Keith Carroll suffered a broken nose and concussion after being struck with an elbow in the second quarter. He was already being operated on by the time the game ended but was one of the only losers on the Demon team that day. Every Collingwood player was beaten in his position and Melbourne dominated from then on. Denis Cordner dominated the ruck, and Laurie Mithen was brilliant at ground level.

Stuart Spencer was best on ground with his powerful roving, also adding five goals in what would prove to be his last VFL game. Ron Barassi and Ken Melville were also amongst the best. Noel McMahen and Denis Cordner also played their final VFL match.

Unsurprisingly for such a large crowd the match grossed an all-time VFL record crowd and gate receipts to match - raising 19,718 pounds.

1957

The 1957 Demons weren't as dominant as they had in previous years, losing five times throughout the year, but in an even season it was still good enough for the minor premiership.

Essendon beat them by 16 points in the Semi Final, pitching Melbourne into a Preliminary Final against finals debutantes Hawthorn. A 68 point victory qualified the Demons for the Grand Final and a second crack at the Bombers.

They had been accused of over-confidence in their first meeting with Essendon, but any hint of cockiness this time around had been replaced with steely determination. Ron Barassi booted the opening goal after 13 seconds and by the end of the first quarter they had put on six goals. At half-time the margin was 35 points and the match was all but done.

Despite several injury problems (John Beckwith had barely been able to run in a secret fitness test that morning and Keith Carroll was replaced with a thigh injury during the second quarter) the damage had already been done. The Bombers broke even in the third term but stopped cold in the last and suffered a 61 point loss. For the second time in Melbourne's history they had won three flags in a row, putting this group on the same level as the 1939-1941 side who had been torn apart by the war. The common denominator between the two was Norm Smith, now confirmed as one of the great coaches of all time.

Best were Barassi, Robert Johnson and Fenton-Smith

1959

Shocked by the Magpies in the 1958 decider when red-hot favourites, Melbourne's bid for four premierships in a row became a bid for four in five seasons when they lined up a year later.

Stung by their defeat the year before the Demons put in a strong 1959 season to finish as minor premier for the fifth time in a row, confirming their status as hot premiership favourites when they thrashed the second placed Carlton by 44 points in the Semi Final. Essendon had knocked Collingwood out in their elimination semi, depriving the football world the much awaited Grand Final rematch. It was generally expected that they would fall to Carlton in the Preliminary Final but when the Blues were knocked out in straight sets the Bombers instead created a replay of the 1957 decider.

The first quarter gave no indication that the Bombers were going to lie down. They used their pace to dominant procedings, but reminiscent of 1948 kicked poorly and only led by 13 points. Norm Smith, realising that his side was in danger of being burnt off by their pacy opponents, instructed his players to hit their opponents hard and often. They did and it eventually found their opponents wanting.

With the Bombers leading just minutes before half-time it was Ron Barassi who dragged his side back into the match with three goals. The first was a miracle snap before two strong marks put his side in front at the long break. The momentum had seemingly swung their way.

Essendon weren't ready to go away though, staying in touch before hitting back to take the lead. It was only two time-on goals by Bob Johnson that allowed Melbourne to take a six point lead into the last term.

The razor thin margin left the destination of the first VFL Premiership Cup a mystery but by then Essendon had run themselves into the ground. Six goals to one in the final term saw the premiership flag return to the MCG and John Beckwith the first captain to hold the now familiar cup aloft.

Best were Barassi, McLean and Johnson

1960

Once more the Demons finished top, this time in front of the Fitzroy side coached by Norm Smith's brother. The brothers faced off in the Semi Final but despite his side being fancied as the 'next big thing' in the VFL Len received no favours with his side thumped by 62 points. The Lions then lost the preliminary final by five points and it was Melbourne vs Collingwood again. The chance for revenge over 1958 had come a year later than expected.

The Demons went into the match as overwhelming favourites, especially after the Pies had been forced to play their preliminary final in terrible conditions the week before. Grand Final day was no better, heavy rain had lashed Melbourne for two days and the ground was in atrocious state.

Some thought the conditions might be a leveller, but right from the start Melbourne gave the Pies no chance. They dominated with perfect wet weather football and had what would probably be a match winning lead in the conditions at quarter time. Determined not to be sucked into fights like they were in the 1958 Grand Final the Demons kept their cool. Even when Ron Barassi was punched in the face at a boundary throw-in they didn't retaliate. In 2003 Barassi revealed that he still suffered pain from the blow more than 40 years later because of nerve damage.

The Pies got their first goal early in the second term, but even that was lucky - Tassie Johnson dropped an easy mark which allowed Ray Gabelich to convert. Their other goal came from a shot that barely made the distance from 45 yards - and even that was disputed by the Demons who believed it had been touched on the line. They had just six shots on goal for the entire day. Constant pressure destroyed the old enemy. It was the lowest Grand Final score since Richmond kicked one goal in 1927.

Best were Mithen, Lord and Mann

1964

The purest glory years had by now passed the Demons who had settled into a solid finals contender rather than the outstanding superstar team of the competition. They still finished top of the ladder in 1964 but it was one of the closest final fours ever - with fifth placed Hawthorn just a game behind the minor premiers and Melbourne just half a game and percentage out of fourth.

Pitched into a Semi Final against second placed Collingwood, Melbourne unexpectedly destroyed them by 89 points to win straight through to the decider. Collingwood were forced into a preliminary final against the defending premiers Geelong where they triumphed by just four points.

After their thumping win in the semi the Demons entered the match as red hot favourites but Collingwood showed they had learnt some lessons from a fortnight previous, matching their opponents with a ferocious attack on the ball. Despite their last start victory there were still questions over Melbourne, they were weak in the ruck and if Graham Wise was beaten they were short on other options.

The Demons won the toss and kicked with a slight breeze, but the Pies were on top in the opening minutes and goalled first. Both teams were showing Grand Final nerves and the early play was scrappy. John Lord equalised for the Demons, and his side soon took the lead. All the goals were kicked by the eight minute mark of the quarter and the rest of the term was spent with the sides locked in an arm wrestle for territory which ended with Melbourne leading by a point.

The two sides only had themselves to blame for the tight score, when Barrie Vagg booted a point early in the second term it was the 12th consecutive behind of the match. Melbourne had turned the tables and were playing better football but it took until the ten minute mark for them to finally break the goalscoring drought. After battling so hard for the breakthrough, the Demons capitalised almost immediately with a second goal for the term. That was the cue for the Pies to spark and they poured on three goals to the end of the term to take a narrow two point lead into the second half.

An early goal in the third settled the Demons, then like the first quarter the game degenerated into a tense struggle. There were no more goals kicked until the 22 minute mark when Barry Bourke converted on the run. Melbourne took an eleven point lead into the final term and the Magpies were visibly tiring.

Melbourne sides had run away in Grand Finals before and after three behinds in a row to open the quarter and extend the lead to 14 points it looked like only a matter of time before the Demons put the match beyond doubt. Despite the early domination it was the supposedly tiring Pies who got the first goal of the quarter five minutes in to cut the margin. Melbourne missed another pair of shots on goal and left the door open for their opponents who reduced the margin to three points after Ray Gabelich goalled from a boundary throw-in.

Gabelich's second goal put the Magpies in front. The 193cm ruckman took the ball and had four bounces, nearly losing control before goalling from the square to put his side in front. It was too early to shut up shop, but the Pies suddenly had all the momentum. Straight from the bounce Barry Bourke found Hassa Mann 20m out almost directly in front but amazingly Mann missed - the Pies led by two.

23 minutes into the term Brian Dixon - guilty of many turnovers throughout the day - found himself with the ball at left half-forward. He roosted it towards the goals, and as the ball was thumped from the pack it landed in the arms of back pocket Neil Crompton who threw it onto his boot. The kick somehow managed to float through and put the Demons back in front. Had he followed the instructions of Norm Smith, Crompton would never have been there - he had followed his opponent up the ground.

The Pies still had time to win it. Ian Graham managed to miss everything when well in range, and was then denied what Collingwood fans throught was a sure free kick near goal. Melbourne held on to win, Hassa Mann breathed a sigh of relief that he hadn't cost his side a premiership and Melbourne went on to 45+ years of flag wilderness.

Norm Smith described the final term as "the most agonising I have ever experienced in football".

Best were Adams, Dixon and Tassie Johnson.

100 Years of Grand Final Records is available from April 27. Price $400. Click here for more details. And no, sadly I didn't pocket a freebie for doing this post. You'll only know something suss is taking place if they suddenly end up publishing one of the many half-thought out concepts I've come up with for MFC books over the years.

You've got to laugh (again)

Actually, no you don't. But nor do you have to set fire to a pair of novelty devil horns and toss them through the windows of the Demon Shop in the dead of night. Yet. Best stockpile petrol just in case though, because we've just had it confirmed that there's going to be an extended period of ugliness before things get better.

You don't have to tell me this, I picked us to come 13th. Still doesn't mean that there's not a hollow feeling about what happened today and enormous questions over both a large group of our senior players and the hoof 'n hope gameplan but I come to you this morning to urge calm and restraint.

I'm not going to charge to use the "week of mourning" defence, but neither am I going to flip right over to the other side of the spectrum and spit in disgust that we couldn't "get the job done for Jim". The only reason that theory got any sort of airtime was because we were involved in a supposedly winnable game. We were balls but we've been balls so often in recent times that maybe I'm starting to become desensitised to failure? Is this what it's like to be a Richmond fan born in the 80's?

We all expected better but in the grand scheme of things we'll be doing exactly the same thing in September now that we would have if we'd won so if lessons are learnt (which is a big if) and it either results in senior players firing up or hastens their demise then in the end it might leave us better off. Either that or we're going to have to rebuild on top of the rebuild, which is something to look forward to with the same delight as a bout of the Ebola virus.

I did go in with an uncomfortable feeling about opening the season with a match we were supposed to win. The ridiculously overinflated expectations from the Collingwood game were dented by Hawthorn then completely harpooned by Port, leaving our status as red-hot favourites for this game in serious question. Still, the perception that Brisbane were going to be easybeats set us up for a massive fall.

If we'd put in the exact same performance against Carlton we'd all be trying to pluck out positives and plan for the future, but do it against a supposedly rubbish side (as opposed to us, one of the great teams of the last five seasons) and plastic bits of the panic button are flying off at all angles as thousands of people rush to slam it down firmly.

A sick fantasy crossed my mind during the week that the long bomb, zero crumb extravaganza that we'd seen in the pre-season was some sort of genius rope-a-dope move by Team Neeld designed to lure our early premiership season opponents into a false sense of security before slicing and dicing them with precise kicking to leads within 50. It wasn't. Sadly conspiracy theories like that are the the exclusive domain of internet nutbags, not highly paid professional coaches.

Sadly the plan that was hatched by said professional coaches requires the players to execute it, and on the showing of today and most of the other pre-season matches we don't yet have the players who can. Though I must say it was heartening to see that one of the central tenents of the Baileyball philosophy was still going in the midst of all the imprecise kicking along the boundary and roosting the ball to a metre above a solitary, outnumbered key forward - Jamar was still the target of 9/10 kick-ins. Not surprisingly the Lions seemed to know this was coming. God knows how they picked that.

Do you think the long kicking to the square is part of some sort of masterplan or it's just the players not being able to execute it properly? Either way it was fairly obvious that by the second quarter Brisbane knew exactly what we were going to do every single time we went forward and they set up accordingly. So accordingly to the point where despite getting mauled in the centre clearances as usual we only had ten or so inside 50's less than the Lions. Sounds like a perfect day to launch my new Quality Inside 50's stat because plenty of ours wouldn't qualify.

Then there was the insistence on avoiding the middle of the ground at all costs despite the fact that they were beating the living shit out of us from clearances both out of the centre and from throw-ins. Ok Melbourne, the idea is to play like the Pies. I get it and it's a good idea in theory, but I've seen Collingwood, I've come to know Collingwood and you sir are no Collingwood.

Nevertheless we weren't bad early. If anybody had been able to hit a target inside 50 we might have kicked more than a point in the first fifteen minutes. It took the Magner double debut goal to get us on the board, and in front, but by that point we'd already botched a truckload of chances by aimlessly belting the ball towards the square.

As much as I loved the 2x Magner (and for you Stat My Bitch Up fans let the record show him as the first two goal, two career kicks Demon since Peter Tossol in Round 6, 1982) surely the last thing we want to see is free goals being handed out to all and sundry based on macho bullshit push and shove? The whole thing has been rotten since Matthew Lloyd flounced to the ground and cost us victory against Essendon in 2003 but why reward forwards who start the push 'n shove knowing that the defender has it all to lose if their hand/arm even remotely slides above the shoulder.

In true MFC fashion Magner paid the karmic price for having the merest bit of luck by suffering not one, not two but three injuries for the remainder of the match. He limped off once, he clutched his recently injured hand for a while and then he limped off again. The last one looked serious, that'll serve him right for being amongst our best.

Even after the Experience marked in the square and we ended the first quarter 11 points in front it was clear that 2012 was going to be another year of toil and struggle. Suffice to say that after watching Collingwood/Hawthorn the night before this was like turning back the FA Cup final to watch Accrington Stanley away to Macclesfield Town.

Things started to go wrong in the second quarter, but surprisingly amongst all of Brisbane's botched attempts to put us away we managed to kick a goal in the first ten minutes of the quarter which is the exception rather than the rule these days. Sadly in another traditional move we spent the whole quarter doing our toiling and struggling to create goal chances while the Lions ended up getting one when some guy nobody's ever heard of managed to get the ball off the ground despite being in the middle of a tackle. Is nothing sacred?

By half time the Lions had completely sussed us and taken the lead. They knew exactly what we were going to do every single time that the ball landed in one of our player's hands (i.e not at a stoppage) and even novelty players like Niall McKeever and Pearce Hanley were running riot, having the time of their life running us around in circles.

There was a tragic irony to the fact that during all of this two of the players who cut us to ribbons were Irishmen. Notwithstanding the events of this week aren't you slightly aggrieved that we can't find anybody capable of hitting a target and the Lions have got a pair of imports landing it on top of each other with the greatest of ease?

Still, being four points down at half time isn't fatal under any circumstances. Certainly not if the mistakes of the first two quarters are identified and rectified. So instead what we got was a continuation of the absolute refusal to set foot in the middle of the ground and more long passes to outnumbered forwards. Howe and Martin did their best considering the generally shithouse, haphazard delivery.

Clark wasn't great, fair enough, and his goals did come in classic Robertson/Jurrah junktime when the match was absolutely buggered but look at the sort of service he was getting and the role he's being expected to play. Want him to beat two or three men every time? Good luck with that. How about creating second, third or fourth options so that they're not able to say with absolute certainty where the ball's going to go whenever one of ours put the ball to boot forward of centre.

I'll still defend Green's overall contribution to the last few years to my death but if he turns out performances like that every week I'll be lonely at the fan club meeting. Can we use him or Petterd (when fit) to take the heat off Clark a bit? Brad can still kick 30/40 goals a season but if he's on the half-forward flank and the ball is being belted to the goal-square every time he's not going to contribute to the scoring is he?

We owe it to the Clark to give him some opportunity to do what we recruited him to do, and that's not to be a miracle worker who can beat three men in a contest single handedly. By being paid ridiculously over the odds for what he's done so far in his career (though we had the money and had to spend it anyway and yadda yadda, we've covered this) he's simultaneously put a big target on his back adn there'll be more than a few people keen to see this end badly, so can we at least play to his strong points? The best work he did in the pre-season was when he got one-on-one and used strength to win the contest so surely we're going to try more of that - and if that means sometimes going short to Howe, Petterd, Green, Watts, whoever and they kick the goals instead then who gives a toss - as long as somebody is kicking the goals.

If nerves had started to shred over the fact that we weren't thrashing the pants off the visitors as 'everyone' expected us to then they were completely destroyed by the third quarter when it all went horribly wrong™ for the first time in 2012. Rockliff went forward and took the piss for the next 20 minutes, kicking goals, missing sitters and generally putting us to the sword. Eventually they were so exasperated they had to put Joel Mac onto him, which was fine for all the times when the ball wasn't in or bouncing out of Joel's hands.

It was effectively all over when they got that goal from the bounce in the square. There can't be much worse for defenders than having to avoid conceding in that scenario. In the 'good old days' the ruckman would just whack it through for a point and we'd get back to the more important business of stuffing up our kick-in but now - as Mark Jamar found out one day at Docklands to his tremendous chagrin - that's a free kick and a certain goal for the opposition. May as well have tried his luck at the umpire losing the plot and failing to give the free because the ball hit the ground and the Lions snapped a goal out of their arse anyway.

Might not have been completely fatal but the next three were. We got one to end the quarter and keep it within record comeback margin but it was a band-aid across a violent chainsaw wound. Even that meaningless, token goal was the product of comedy with Green and Davey fumbling around and almost stuffing it up before the ex-skipper (© - the media) finally managed to get it through to what could only be described as muted applause. Personally I was just happy that Davey was still in the stadium, I thought he'd packed up and gone home after laying a cracker of a tackle in the first quarter.

With the contest absolutely stone dead they belatedly brought on Bate and he had ten touches in the last quarter. Not many of them actually did anything but at least he had a bash out of the middle. Whether Magner's out next week or not he's got to start. After a day when he passed Jamie Bennell to becoming our all time leading substitute (with four) the time has come to give the poor bastard four quarters to show what he can do. The answer might be 'nothing' but at least let him try, especially considering that he could very easily be playing every week for the Bulldogs this year if we'd taken whatever trinkets they were offering for him in trade week. If he proves to be not good enough over four quarters after a couple of goes at it then ok but don't make him sub again or somebody's going to have to talk him out of fashioning a noose from the green vest in classic Emo Maric style.

Apart from the interest of what Bate was going to do and if Clark could open his account there was absolutely nothing to recommend the last quarter to anybody. I enjoyed the fact that thousands of Demon fans waited until the goal at the eight minute mark which put us 40 odd points behind to choose to walk out as if we were still right in it until that point.

Another day, another debacle and the scary thing is that there's not exactly a plethora of players kicking the door down to get a game or returning from injury. The Neeld Plan had better come together soon or he's going to be prematurely buried by munters from coast to coast. Here's to him swinging the axe ruthlessly next week knowing that we're probably going to get humped by the Eagles anyway.

Our inability to develop anybody even remotely like a superstar this decade doesn't help the tension. Look at the Collingwood and Hawthorn sides on Friday night, the reason they could afford to field players like Broc McCauley and Jarrad Boumann in Round 1 with a straight face (though I'll concede McCauley was more out of necessity than anything) was because they've developed a shitload of quality, found some solid gold rookies/mature aged recruits and topped it off with good players from other clubs. If we started with McCauley people would have set the place on fire before the first bounce.

One day when you've got nothing else to do sit down and rank your top 10 players who debuted in 2000 or later. You'll find that the best you can do is have solid men like Green, Davey and Rivers jostling for positions in the top five with flakes like Sylvia. Soon enough it could be Frawley but what side ever won anything with their best player being a key defender? Not unless their second/third/fourth best players are guns in other positions.

And has any club (other than the filth franchises) been less successful at developing out and out great players than us in that time? It's no wonder we got away with it (intermittently at least) until the second half of the last decade, we were trading on the glories of the pre-2000 club like Neitz, White, Yze etc.. Now it's just honest toilers and if any of these thousands of top draft picks we've got ever make it we'll probably be too busy suffering from the effects of shock to notice.

I'll have Green at one but he's a good player not a star. What contitutes a star? Christ knows, but by my count we're amongst a small group of teams who haven't produced a solitary player in the 21st century who at some time has been worth a seat at either the top table or at least the next one down. We all mock Mike Sheahan's Top 50 as arbitrary guesswork but one thing you do know is that we haven't got anyone even remotely likely to crack the top 20 in the near future.

I struggle to find a Port player who fits the star bill, but at least they got a flag while clutching to the 20th century crop. Not many at Adelaide either but they were smart enough to pinch Scott Thompson from some gormless bunch of village idots.

Just one would be nice. A Jonathan Brown or a Pav who you know is always going to be strong even when all around them is crumbling. Could still happen but I won't hold my breath lest it ends in turning purple and being carried out of the new Demonblog Towers in leafy Hawthorn on a stretcher. For those of you following my ever changing previous Demonblog HQs have been in St Kilda (2005), Docklands (2005-06), Southbank (2006), Camberwell (2007), Richmond (2008-2009), Cheltenham (2010) and Southbank again last year. Not moving again next year, have had enough. Sadly having had enough with my football club is not enough to keep me away.

MFC Facebook comment of the week

At the time of writing there are 481 comments on the final score post alone, so many of them going off chop that it almost seems rude to select just one. In fact there are certain sections where I'd might as well do PRINT SCREEN and just paste the lot. Alas I'm too lazy to blank out the name of more than one person so after careful consideration we're proud to announce this week's winner.

Initially I was going to go for the hero who suggested the players should be "spat on" (note to stereotypers, not all of our fans are brandy drinking socialites) but then this furious missive turned up. If you're trying to win this segment I'll give you the tip that mashing your keyboard with the Caps Lock on is likely to put you at the front of the queue every time.



The problem is becoming sorting out the classic comments by our supporters from those of scumbag opposition fans who get their jollies trolling other clubs. Then there's the guy who called Ricky Petterd "Patterdale" in what was surely an auto-correct disaster rather than an honest mistake. I'll start to name and shame some of the serial offenders in coming weeks, hopefully stuffing up their name ranking on Google and costing them jobs/personal happiness.

2012 Allen Jakovich Medal Votes
Difficult is not a strong enough term to describe how hard it was to come up with these. Magner was good but he hardly deserved top billing. Shame nobody else did either and by default he joins Kyle Cheney and Michael Evans as players who have received maximum Jakovich votes on debut. Notably all three were in losses, and gee haven't Cheney and Evans done well for themselves since?

In Neeld's press conference he said only four players put in AFL standard performances today. I'd say the top three here are a gimme, perhaps not in the same order, but I'm struggling to work out who else he could include. Watts or Frawley might have snuck in one vote but given that both Howe and Jones are just filler anyway it still doesn't qualify either of them for an apology.

5 - James Magner
4 - Jack Trengove
3 - Stefan Martin
2 - Jeremy Howe
1 - Nathan Jones

Crowd Watch
Relatively large considering the combatants but you always get a few people who turn up for Round 1 dying for the chance to angrily screaming "Never again!" and not show up for the rest of the year. They'll be thrilled.

The minute's applause for Jim was well observed. Sadly it ended at a minute. We tried to keep it going but nobody went with us. I was hoping for a spontaneous outburst to keep it going for five minutes minimum, but sadly they thwarted us by just playing the national anthem even while we were still going. Obviously the minute's clapping did nothing for Joel Macdonald's hands as he spent the rest of the game dropping the ball every time it went near him.

Oh, and Brisbane fans make sure to come back in Round 13 to see how to properly abuse the player who dicked you to make a shedload of cash elsewhere. A few dinky little bronx cheers and boos will have nothing on the reception planned for the Two Million Dollar Turd. "Planned" is an overstatement because it's really just about 250 different one-off anarchist groupings who'll be doing their own thing as part of a larger cavalcade of hate. As much fun as it promises to be I'd still rather he did his knee first and never made it.

Who am I kidding, this is Melbourne. We'll talk tough and then when he does show up he'll cop some tepid booing. The least that I can hope for is a few offensive banners which are forcibly removed by MCG security for excessive use of the word cunt.

The People's Ground corner
Did anyone else notice that the G has ponced up all its warning messages? Now instead of a simple STAY OFF THE GROUND OR WE'LL TAKE YOU FOR 7K it's "Enjoy the game but don't become part of the action" then the threat of penalty as almost an afterthought. Also Liquor Licensing no longer dictates that no alcohol can be taken out of the MCG and fans of the Police Operational Commander are right out of luck. First the standard of law enforcement messages drops, the next thing Carlton fans are hitting women - not saying there's a connection but you do the math.

Interesting to note the Auskick games being marshalled by (presumably unarmed coppers). Did that happen everywhere this week or was there some sort of family court dispute on that required guards to be present in case a disgruntled parent leapt the fence and tried to snatch their kid?

Musically I'm not entirely sure what that pox "we fell in love in a hopeless place" song has anything to do with football but it's infinitely better than having to listen to Coldplay every ten seconds. Mind you the AC/DC ad will become more painful than the Dropkick Murphys version by Queen's Birthday. One person who did get right into the tunes when they played Edge Of Glory at three-quarter time (surely that's not a deliberate "ooh the last quarter is coming" thing? That would be a worse gimmick than the velvet jacketed trumpet poon playing wonky versions of the Star Wars theme) was the guy sitting in front of us who started dancing around in his seat as if it were 3.45am at A Bar Called Barry and he'd just sunk seventeen Vodka Cruisers. Born to dance. Born to be mocked mercilessly.

Media Watch
I've basically given up on the Herald Sun since they started charging for articles, but in a vain attempt to gain some perspective on what happened Saturday I read this and don't think I'll bother again. First he throws Bate into the mix as a disappointing senior player for only having ten possessions (in one quarter) then he somehow manages to come up with Jamar as the third best player on the ground. Not just the third best Demon either. No wonder they let you read that story for free, he's just making it up.

The Age, on the other hand, remains free. And while the actual paper itself is absolutely traumatic to read (which is why nobody does) their website continues to dish out far better footy coverage without the compulsion to waffle on about Supercoach in every article. See this for example. So far above the level of the competition that it's not funny. Now try making the print edition less complicated to read than performing open heart surgery and you'll be getting somewhere.

Public transport shenanigans of the week
No City Loop to be trapped in this week, but as I got off the train at Tooronga station and trudged towards my car - half expecting it to have been smashed to pieces by marauding gangs of teenage hoodlums - I noticed a gent who its fair to say may he been under the influence of either epic quantities of booze or powerful, not entirely legal opiates.

Now, he was having a bit of trouble walking but that's fine it's not like he was in danger of walking onto the tracks or falling off a bridge so I went straight past him walking around in tight circles and got into my car. Then I look out and he's gone for six, splayed out across the footpath with half the people who got off the train having to step over him to get past. Surely somebody's going to at least ask how he is I thought, but no everyone just clambered over him and kept going. Welcome to the caring society.

Much to the chagrin of the gawkers standing around watching him lie on the ground I went over and asked if he was alright and he asked if he was in Glen Waverley. Sadly I had to inform him that he'd actually gotten off the Glen Waverley train and would have to return to the platform and wait for another one. And off he went, walking around in a few more circles for good measure and failing to properly touch on his myki as he re-entered the platform and I got out of there before having to testify at an inquest. God knows where he ended up next, probably under the next train the way he was going.

So there you go, our footy team might be rubbish for years to come but there's always somebody worse off. Also I can confirm that it was definitely not Ben Cousins.

Next Week
186 might have altered my perspective on what constitutes a thrashing but I'm still expecting an apocalyptic belting by the Eagles. I'll be conservative in my changes but hopefully Neeld isn't and the Thursday afternoon selection meeting resembles the St Valentine's Day Massacre.

In: Tapscott and Petterd
Out: Macdonald, Blease (+ Magner?)

Davey gets one more chance (but just one) and Tynan earnt at least one more game with an ok performance. Not particuarly crazy about Moloney's performance either but surely he, like Green, has got enough credits in the bank to save him for a couple of weeks at least. Flash, on the other hand, has been spending them like a drunken sailor and might have to take matters into his own hand and punch somebody again to get thrown out of the team.

McDonald, Morton, Sellar and Bennell were all listed in the best for Casey but it looks like McDonald played forward (3 goals) and I can't see any of our tall forwards getting the chop yet (at least until somebody has tried to deliver it to them properly) so I doubt he'll get a run just yet. Maybe he could play CHF? God knows we appeared to be without one today.

Sellar could replace Macdonald if Tapscott's not right yet and we all know Morton's going to have to come back at some point so why not straight into the frying pan of a Subiaco massacre? Either way they might as well pick you and I for all the good it's going to do. In fact if Magner is out then give me Morton and his enormous bouffant hairdo. Bate to start and either Morton or Tynan as the dreaded shit rule sub.

Final thoughts
In no way was today worth it, but we're on a long road. Hold your nerve at least until halfway through the year.