Temporary respectability adjustment

If I may break into the usual schedule of paranoia, conspiracy theories and horribly outdated pop culture references I'd like to open with something particularly relevant to this week and talk about my mum. There's probably old content being rehashed here, but isn't every second post I make just the same reheated "woe is us" lament from previous weeks?

As a single mother I'm sure she was horrified when I suddenly decided to get into the game in the late 80's. With a tiny pool of people who would take me to games she was always going to be trapped into having me drag her along eventually. Where was my dad in all this you ask? Good question, and one worthy of several obscenity heavy posts unrelated to footy. Incidentally it recently came to my attention that he was in charge of the VFL's 1987 marketing campaign, so that practically explains my entire adult life other than the whereabouts of 32 years of birthday presents. If you're out there reading feel free to contribute by clicking an ad or something.

Anyway, let's save all that nonsense for my therapist and get back to business. I got to go to a handful of games early in 1990 thanks to the parents of school chums who followed opposition sides and took me when my side played theirs - even in those days when we were 'good' nobody else in my class ever seemed to follow the Dees - but eventually 'pushy child' and 'no further handball options' came together and she was forced to humour me with an afternoon at the MCG. It didn't entirely go to plan...

... but at least we seem to have won the Little League and presumably somebody somewhere was cursing the name of umpire Goldspink for being at fault. In other news who remembers NatWest Bank ever operating in Australia? Notwithstanding the fact that scoring 10.13.73 would be a cause for celebration now the way we played that day we should have been sponsored by the Nugan Hand Bank.

I wasn't daunted by this minor setback (though I bloody well should have been), and as the Dees went on an eight game winning streak on the way to the finals she was forced to take me to the MCG several more times. It just got worse in 1991 as Jakovich fever hit like the Ebola virus and I settled in for every game at the MCG and Waverley because she wouldn't take me to any of the creaky, scumbag filled suburban grounds. Even Waverley got the arse when they started charging for the bus from the train station. To her credit she didn't even crack the sads when I'd come home after the game and replay both senior and reserves matches in the hallway of the dinky little flat we lived in. Jakovich would usually kick about 32 goals in each match.

Early in the 1995 season I lost interest in leaving the house for pretty much any reason let alone football, and confined myself to the television/radio for the rest of the year before almost entirely giving up in '96 and most of '97. She must have been thrilled at not having to fork out scarce money on watching slop. By the time I grew up moved out of home she was finally off the hook, and it took her years to start going again. She got into it when she did, taking up a membership and keeping the faith through the high level bullshit of the 08/09 spoon seasons - including that memorable day we came back against Freo and she got so tense that her back locked up and she couldn't move for 20 minutes after the game. Which was funny at the time, until I suffered a similar ailment a few years later when we beat Essendon and I couldn't leave Row LL for 20 minutes because my legs had ceased operating.

Through what was in retrospect a relatively decent 2011 she started to lose interest, often leaving games halfway through no matter what the score was, and made it halfway through Round 1 2012 before famously declaring an early verdict on the Neeld era by saying she was bored, going home and never coming back. Had things turned out differently it might have been the last game she ever went to. In early 2013 mum was diagnosed with breast cancer. Thankfully she caught it early enough that it wasn't life-threatening, but it still required surgery and a course of chemo that left her with a Nathan Jones style cue-ball.

Fortunately she also had Nathan Jones style courage to go along with it. Despite my continued suggestions that she take time off work, put her feet up and rest she kept living her life as if she didn't have to regularly roll in to Peter Mac to be hooked up to a black back full of weapons grade chemicals. She wasn't even phased after the very first batch of the stuff caused some kind of allergic reaction which caused her to stop breathing and led to nurses charging from everywhere to hit the emergency stop button. Had it been me hooked up to the thing that would probably have been the last straw for me before I turned into a nervous wreck, but she just kept going with barely a word of complaint even though she must have been feeling terrible.

Right in the middle of all this there was also the small matter of my impending wedding, and to a far lesser degree my football team being an outstanding shambles. Looking back at posts from around that time there is certainly an even more depressed than usual feeling about them. At the time it was just a weekend distraction but it'd have been nice for something positive to happen. I think at one point I was more stressed than her. One day after she'd had chemo and was right in the zone where she should have been curled up in a ball feeling awful I called her to check up and she was on a treadmill at the gym. Between her refusal to let the situation get her down and the amazing work Mrs. Demonblog did making sure the wedding went off without a hitch (my main contributions were creating a reasonable knockoff of the Footy Record as an event program and showing up on the day) I am lucky to have two amazing women in my life.

So what I'm getting at here, in a more roundabout fashion than would seem absolutely necessary, is that I took mum to the Field of Women last night. We were in the feet, right at the top of the Ponsford Stand end goalsquare looking up at my beloved stand and wondering how some utterly shithouse companies could afford a corporate box at the MCG. And no, it was not in the exact spot where the Bulldogs got that last goal courtesy of a novelty bounce so I'm not taking the blame.

It was a happy coincidence that the event took place during a Melbourne game, but I would have gone anyway even if it was GWS vs Gold Coast (at the MCG for some reason) to show how proud I was of her and the way she beat it (hopefully forever) without wavering, let alone totally falling apart like I probably would have in the situation. It wasn't just that, but also saying thanks for looking after me when I was quite frankly insane during my teenage years.

Once we'd assembled ourselves into something resembling the East German traffic light symbol there was a lot of standing about, but I must say that other than the crocodile near-tears of rage you get when you really go right off your nut (Port Adelaide or North Melbourne 2007) or when a great victory is snatched from your grasp in the last second (Collingwood 2010) when they showed the video packages on the big screen I probably went closer to shedding one at a footy match than at any other time in my life. I'm not one prone to emotion but it was a powerful experience (CLICHE) being in the middle of all those people who had similar experiences - not all of which turned out as well as ours has so far.

The only issue was that you could barely hear what the people on the stage were saying (especially considering we were as close to the stands as you can get), which was an issue given that what was being said was more for our benefit than the 125 people in the stands. Bad news for the people who were trying to give speeches where nobody could hear them and didn't know when to clap, cheer, cry or wave a mini torch around in the sky. It was still worthwhile though, considering that all the money raised went to BCNA. There is no doubt that in your life you have at least one amazing woman like the ones I do, or you are one yourself, so it's never a bad time to donate to a great cause.

After all that sports seemed to be a load of old tosh in comparison, but given that there was an hour between them kicking us off the ground and the game starting I still had time to take up a spot in that lovely stand (and no, I didn't make my mother climb all the way up to Row LL) and start nervously dreaming about two wins in a row for the first time since that bizarre 2011 season. We could have done it too if we'd held our nerve a little better and had a bit of luck.

If last week demonstrated that footy could lead you to the brink of a massive heart attack then leave you delirious with joy, this was the evil bizzaro version where your emotions are toyed, your vital organs are torn out and waved in front of your eyes but you don't get the fairytale ending. Even more than 24 hours later I still feel shit about the loss because a win then would have done wonders for us, but at the same time at least it shows us (players and fans alike) what the heartbreak of losing a thriller feels like again. Now we've seen it from both sides, let's make sure that we're at least in a position to have our heart broken rather than just turning up to get thrashed.

As I've said more than once this season I feel alive again. Having gone to almost every MCG game over the last few years there were so many times where we'd lose by 40 or 50 points and I went away not happy or sad but pretty much over it from the time I reached Richmond Station to the point where I sat down to write a post expecting to keep it 2005 era short then got all fired up again and pressed publish at 3.22am on a Monday morning.

This time I've been kicking the metaphorical cat for over 24 hours and thinking about Matt Jones' miss on the run more times than is good for my mental health. What if he'd converted? Should he have been pinched for running too far anyway? Was the Bulldogs player smart enough to do a quick calculation in his head and decide to deliberately back stay on Salem (?) in the square because he knew Jones was more likely to want to handball over the top than kick on the run after a big sprint that late in the game (and yes, remember the sub rule and interchange cap exist so that players are exhausted at the end of games for some reason)? I've not been this troubled by an individual piece of MFC play for years, and overall that can only be a good sign.

We're coming from a low base, and admittedly we did beat the Bulldogs first time around last year so in some ways it is a step backwards, but at least now when we play other bad teams we're sticking with them and not just making it look respectable by booting five goals in the last quarter when they're all limbering up their vocal cords to sing the theme song. Last year if we'd lost to the Bulldogs in that fashion we'd be slapping ourselves on the back and congratulating everyone on a job well done even though it was a winnable game. Now expectations have risen and we feel like we should have done better against a team who are right in our bracket. Let's save the self-congratulations and slaps on the back for decent performances against good teams - and brace for impact because there's a lot of them on the horizon after the next fortnight.

Given the circumstances of her dramatic "against modern football" style walkout in 2012, and the fact that she was trapped there for four quarters because trains weren't running on her line and I'd driven her, I was concerned that mum was going to retrospectively send me to my room during the first quarter when the game descended into stoppage hell. Even as an advocate for the idea that low scoring doesn't necessarily mean bad football I was starting to shift nervously in my seat and think that it was actually ugly to watch.

Thankfully for Channel 7 executives and neutrals it got much better from late in the first quarter onwards, but in a coaching battle between Paul Roos and the guy who described his side's defeat the week before as "too open" it was hardly going to be anything other than a trench warfare slog. The irony is that it not only turned out to be thriller with about 10 lead changes but that we registered our highest score of the year and courtesy of a couple of cheap goals at the end still lost relatively comfortably.

It took its time, and there were about 2500 stoppages which allowed Jamar to run his own club record for hitouts in a game close, but eventually it turned out as good a game as you're going to get between two sides who aren't very good. I thought we were a good shot of winning based on our much improved form this year and the win against them last season, but there were significant differences between this week and our last gasp victory over them at the MCG in Neil Craig's single victory last season.-That night we had Watts and Fitzpatrick running riot up forward and nine others in the side who didn't play this time. Having said that it's debatable whether or not Daniel Nicholson (who did play a surprisingly good game that night) or David Rodan would have helped us this time around considering the way the Bulldogs were tearing us apart in tackles.

Since records have been kept (1987) 11 tackles in a game would get you into our all-time top 20. On Saturday night the Bulldogs had three players hit the mark in one game. It was a match made for tackling, but what a benchmark of intensity for our players to aim for. It's the second time this year we've been on the end of one of the great tackling efforts, but most of the top days on that list were in the wet. This was in slightly slippery conditions where not a drop of rain fell during the match. There was no excuse for it other than the fact that they set out to batter us all night and achieved success. We still should have won, but after romping in the inside 50s for no reward I know exactly how the Crows felt last week. At least we were hitting targets occasionally when we went down there, and we did find avenues to goal other than key forwards but by the time it came to win the bloody thing we lost our nerve. It happens, but let it be a lesson to us not to let it happen again in the future - especially against sides we're battling against for the glory of mid-table mediocrity.

Thank god for a reasonably functioning midfield. Vince has been handy, but Cross and Tyson have been huge gets. One of them will not be around for long, one will hopefully be playing for another decade. Dom dropped off for a couple of weeks after a good early start but has since come back with a vengeance over the last two weeks. With Salem hopefully ready to play a full game next week we're closer than ever before to exposing the space filling, clickbait generating hacks who wrote off the trade on the basis of Josh Kelly having a good game against us. Big deal, most weeks Kelly Clarkson would have a good game against us. As long as they don't both fall down the Jordan Gysberts Memorial Black Hole we can come out of this in front. The GWS guy might turn out to be a wonderful player but even if our two only equal the price of one we've still not lost out - and desperately needed the extra midfield depth.

Nothing else needs to be said about Nathan Jones, he just gets on with the job, but I was happy that Jack Viney played another good game after the drawn-out saga of the last week. Considering his adventures with the tribunal ("booooo, filth") and the appeals board ("legends one and all") you could have forgiven him for going through the motions and getting through the game without being assassinated by the Match Review Panel, but football brutality is in his blood and he was right at home in the slog. Bless everyone who chose to let us get him with a ridiculously low pick. He's got time to tighten up on his disposal, and when he does my god watch out. There are more options than there have been for a long time but he may be my favourite player at the moment.

I thought happy days were officially here again when shortly before half time the Dogs made their sub then seemingly lost Tom Williams to an injury. It was last week all over again (though admittedly we actually played better before the Crows lost their second player), with the key difference being that the Adelaide player Dawes accidentally crippled didn't come back on after half time hobbling like he had a peg leg and stick it to us by kicking three goals. In a week where Brisbane thrilled footy nerds everywhere (*raises hand*) by donning a Brisbane Bears design and invoking the spirit of the late Laurence Schache it was a nice throw-back to the days before interchange when crippled players would be sent back on to stand around in the forward line because they couldn't move any further.

I'm not going to clamber aboard the bandwagon and take the moral highground on getting rorted by the umpires considering we did get one goal from a farcical review and another after Dawes got away with a blatant foul on his opponent immediately before Vince's mark and goal but bloody hell the noble art of officiating was in absolute disarray. We got plenty in the first half and people who think the free kick count should somehow magically equal up are usually certifiably insane (or the coach of Footscray), but who didn't think that there were square ups to come later in the game? We were still in front comfortably at the end, but quality over quantity ended up doing us in. Does 'out on the full' count in the free kicks? If so the stat is even more useless in the big picture than inside 50s.

My favourite moment - apart from conceding a goal for Dunn brushing a fingernail across Crameri after nearly everything had been let go all night for both sides - was when at one point Watts chased (!) and tackled (!!) Cooney, causing the former Brownlow Medallist to do a full spin and go down on one knee as if he was accepting Jesus as his personal saviour before eventually handballing three weeks later. Play on. It was up there with Terlich being belted and not only failing to receive a free but also lying face down on the turf for about three minutes with the game going on around him as the umpires declined the opportunity to stop the game at any number of stoppages so he could be carted off. Though we did almost score a goal while he was lying there, so in that case I'd have taken it.

Despite these various shenanigans the game itself balanced out nicely during the third quarter, and we eventually got in front despite usually letting them return fire seconds after we scored a goal. They were also kicking them in decidedly un-MFC fashion, like the tap-down from the boundary throw-in that was perfectly crumbed and smacked straight through. We must do that once a season tops.

We still should have won it in the last quarter, but all of a sudden after two weeks of dead eye clutch kicking we suddenly shit ourselves and couldn't convert several chances which might have won it. At the other end the Dogs could (even if one was assisted by a rort) and that was the difference. I'm not going to crucify Jones for his two misses, because even if he had put us seven points in front with five minutes to go we were still always threatening to leak multiple goals. In the end he didn't put us in front and we still leaked the goals. Live and learn.

In the heat of losing, dodgy decisions and Liam Jones' un-Vineyesque cheapshot on Terlich it looks like everyone's decided they hate the Bulldogs but as the second most long suffering fans in Victoria (though St Kilda fans may wish to invoke the quantity vs quality discussion here as well) I feel like I've got an affinity with them. My views on Victorian sides winning flags are well known (not into it), but a few years ago when Footscray were getting close I was always going for them. If I can go for all the interstate sides other than GWS I'm happy to slot the Dogs in to replace them. Not only that, but we're also developing a decent rivalry (of sorts) with them over the last three games. Long may it continue to the mutual benefit of two sides who will be first under the bus when the AFL sends the grim reaper around again.

We might not be winning all that much, and we've got a brutal run of games to come, but the good thing about 2014 is that we are now fully fledged members of the lower-middle class. Last year we were scrapping with GWS several timezones away from everybody else but now you can throw us both in with any of St Kilda, Carlton, Footscray, Brisbane and pending next week's result possibly Richmond. The concern is that unless the Saints score 16 or less in their next game then we're still the lowest scoring team in the competition but at least tonight showed we are starting to manufacture goals from different situations. Good luck with that against the good teams, so for god's sake can we please get Hardwick sacked next week just to firm up our own position in the top 17?

2014 Allen Jakovich Medal votes
5 - Dom Tyson
4 - Daniel Cross
3 - Jack Viney
2 - Nathan Jones
1 - Mark Jamar

Apologies to Howe, Frawley and Dawes who might have snuck in for the last vote. Several others were reasonable, only a handful were horrible.

Leaderboard
26 - Nathan Jones
14 - Dom Tyson
13 - Lynden Dunn (Leader: Marcus Seecamp Medal for Defender of the Year)
12 - Daniel Cross
9 - Jack Viney
8 - Chris Dawes, James Frawley
5 - Bernie Vince
4 - Cameron Pedersen, Jack Watts
3 - Matt Jones, Tom McDonald, Dean Terlich
2 - Jeremy Howe, Jay Kennedy-Harris
1 - Jack Grimes, Mark Jamar (Co-Leader: Jim Stynes Medal for Ruckman of the Year), Neville Jetta, Jake Spencer (Co-Leader: Jim Stynes Medal for Ruckman of the Year)

Aaron Davey Medal for Goal of the Year
No change at the top, with Pedo still in front. The winner of the weekly prize, a full English breakfast with 2000 Grand Final heroes Matthew Collins and Troy Simmonds, is Mark Jamar for his clutch set-shot from the boundary line during the third quarter.

Did you know at one point around 2010 he was the most accurate kick for goal of any player with +50 scoring shots since 1987? I may have mentioned it once or twice. His 65.75% compares favourably to the post-1972 leaderboard. Also of note in that list is the high placing for the oft maligned Watts. If we could only find a way to consistently give him shots on goal that don't involve having to take contested marks firts we'd be laughing. Remember his majestic leading against the Bulldogs in both games last year? I'll never forget it. The positive news is that you can malign Jack until the cows come home (and many will) but now that the Eagles have lost the plot and decided to pay NicNat a million bucks a year for five minutes of excitement every week we're at least equal if not in front on a cost > benefit analysis.


The Bulldogs provided an old-school banner experience which the players then ruined by ducking under it instead of busting through manfully. It was an adequate effort by league standards, but as regular readers of this column will know that's not good enough to beat the top of the league Demons. I know they're still recovering from sacking their cheersquad before the season so I'll reinvestigate when we play them again later in the year. Their font was terribly bland, there was some spacing issues with letters and the minor touches of pink were completely overshadowed by our all-pink background. So, a comfortable win to the Demon Army who extend their unbeaten streak to eight.

Crowd Watch
A potential corporate box angle fell through (which would have allowed me to further boost the crowd figure by signing in three times) and we were instead forced back into the stands, to sit amongst several people who had a laissez faire attitude towards swearing in front of children. Nobody who brought children along seemed to mind though, and the kids were probably loving it so who was I to complain? Not to mention the fact that I may have joined in heartily in the last quarter and kicked a seat with some venom when they got the sealer.

Speaking of the crowd the final figure was clearly boosted by the thousands of people who only showed up for Pink Lady to pissed off home, but when average attendances are bandied around as if they actually mean something at least it gave us a boost.

Several of the Bulldogs fans who did stay around opted to boo Jack Viney, which was interesting. It was up there with the week that James Hird got fined for abusing umpires on The Footy Show then got booed during that week's game by the sort of humanoids who do nothing but complain about umpires. I swear I even heard one lone nutter give one to Daniel Cross, presumably shortly before being throttled to death by a fellow Footscray fan.

Next Week
Even though we played reasonably well I feel like there are changes to be had. We've only got to get through one more game to the bye so I'm not prepared to concede and rest players next week considering that we're going to get brutalised by the best teams in the competition when we come back, but it wouldn't surprise me if there were a few alterations. Interesting that both Clisby and Gawn were there tonight - one player's always going to be held out of the VFL as cover but it's interesting that they had a tall on standby as well. Was Frawley questionable? If so I could certainly see them giving him the fortnight off.

As for Blease I will keep trying to get him back in the side until he's finally called back to his home planet and/or traded elsewhere. So on that note - without factoring in dramatic mid-week injuries or players who are too crocked to walk courtesy of being tackled 72 times:

IN: Blease, Clisby
OUT: Terlich (inj), Byrnes (omit)
UNLUCKY: Riley and McKenzie who both racked up disposals out the yin yang in the VFL but have run into the nightmare scenario of Melbourne finally developing a reasonable midfield. Gawn replaces Frawley if he's not available - I'm not thrilled with it as a straight swap but I'd rather Maximum than Puttin' on the Fitz at the moment.

Is it time to switch Howe and Frawley again? Chip was good up front, but while Howe didn't play badly he did give away at least one goal trying to take Mark of the Year. It's fine to drop them in the forward line or in the middle of the ground but it can cost us badly down back. Also on a purely selfish note I'd like to see him rip Jack Riewoldt to shreds one more time in red and blue before he's doing it in a fecal shade of brown from 2015 onwards.

Was it worth it?
Most certainly it was, for both charitable (did the included match ticket ruin any chance of claiming it as a tax deduction?) and footballing reasons. The end result was painful and we should have won two in a row for the first time since future MFC coach Michael Voss described as an up-and-coming powerhouse in 2011, but the signs are there and stronger than ever. We could still very well finish last, but the gulf in class between 2012/13 and 2014 is astronomical. There are problems, and there will always be problems but when somebody asks me if I think we deserve our place in the league I can say we're closer than ever before.

Final Thoughts
At the time I didn't think the result had caused any long term psychological damage, but I'm told that I then went on to spend the entire night grinding my teeth in my sleep and woke up with a jaw that felt like I'd run into Marley Williams outside a nightclub. Tension is back. It's good to be alive.

Demonblog's 500th post spectacular

Melbourne Football Club you magnificent bastards. How could you have known that this was a milestone game? For all the psychological trauma that we've been through since Round 1 2005 it's appropriate that on the day we joined together to celebrate the 500th Demonblog post that 22 men good and true (+ some coaches and the runner who stopped and called for ball at one point) would slay the dragon that has caused us so much grief and physical trauma (episodes 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13) in that time.

The 13 years and 27 days of MFC futility in the state of South Australia is over, and while you'd think it would be tinged with some sadness that we didn't manage to end it at Football Park before the shutters went up, but stuff that - the Adelaide Oval will do very nicely thanks. I'd have played a game for premiership points in Snowtown if it meant finally achieving four points in the Serial Killer State.

A recap of our previous victory in Adelaide isn't necessary considering that the Leoncelli wondergoal finish has probably been referenced in every single one of the 13 posts above and during the NAB Cup when we played there and won (doesn't count) but let's look at the goal anyway:



All I'll about that night that players in that team include Ben Beams, Steven Pitt and Luke Williams. That's how long ago it was. In the meantime the following players have played at least one game at either Football Park or the Adelaide Oval since during their MFC caerer without ever playing in a win (deep breath please):

Steven Armstrong, Clint Bartram, Matthew Bate, Daniel Bell, Jamie Bennell, Clint Bizzell, Troy Broadbridge, Simon Buckley, Nathan Carroll, Kyle Cheney, Aaron Davey, Craig Ellis, Ryan Ferguson, Simon Godfrey, Chris Heffernan, Ben Holland, Chris Johnson, Paul Johnson, Travis Johnstone, Liam Jurrah, Chris Lamb, The Stefan Martin Experience, Brock McLean, John Meesen, Brad Miller, Brent Moloney, Shannon Motlop, Cale Morton, Michael Newton, Ricky Petterd, Phil Read, Jared Rivers, David Rodan, *** ******, Colin Sylvia, Scott Thompson (though he's done quite well since going there permanently) Peter Vardy (who did a reverse Thompson),  Shane Valenti, Matthew Warnock and Austin Wonaeamirri.

That's not even counting players like Brad Green who appeared in the win then spent the rest of their career being humiliated at Football Park. It's an impressively lengthy list, but at least it's one that's about 18 players shorter than it was yesterday afternoon when the scenes at Demonblog Towers could only be described as wild. There was so much shouting and running around that my neighbours must have thought the Towers were being invaded by terrorists a'la Nakatomi Plaza in Die Hard.

It was another case of celebrating a routine win like winning a flag, but noticeably the amount of incoming messages from neutrals was reduced to one text and one phone call so while I still feel like we're a tremendous charity case maybe people are already starting to get sick of us winning. We have just levelled the 22 weeks of 2013 in the space of two months while only suffering one tremendous beating, that's a thing of beauty considering how many injuries we've had.

What a nine years and seven rounds it's been since the good people at BigFooty got in contact and asked me to write their MFC blog. To put it conservatively there have been more downs than ups. If you'd told me then that it would take this long to win in South Australia and that I'd be treating a 2-5 record as if we'd climbed Mt Everest I'd probably have sworn at you - but those of you too young to remember 2005 would be surprised to know it was actually  (comparatively) a magnificent time to be alive. I remember it like it was yesterday...



To quote the late Whitney Houston "Didn't we almost have it all?" Well not really - our brief flirtation with being top of the ladder in 2004 came too early for the blog era (spoiler: we stuffed it up anyway), and we might have made the finals in both 2005 and 2006 but looking back were never any better than 'making up the numbers' slop like Carlton or Richmond last year. Which is not such a bad way to be, I'd trade vital parts of my anatomy just to get back to the level of finals lightweights.

I started out full of fire, with frivolous and bizarre posts like this on a near daily basis before reverting to the current all-match review (never a report, because even I can't work out what's going on in most of the old posts), all the time format. Looking back at the first of these reviews it's frighteningly primitive but I was only in the early stages of addiction at this point.

By 2007 Deepression about us falling off the face of earth set in and there were a career low 38 posts for the whole year, but sometime in the following years we moved out of BigFooty's house and onto Blogger where the design has barely changed since but the posts started to expand in length to the point where you deserve a medal if you can get to the bottom of one without giving up.

There have been unfortunate moments which can never be removed from the internet thanks to archive.org saving it all (e.g saying admittedly horrid things about the other Nathan Brown's leg for 'comic' effect) but everybody who has been slandered, abused or mocked since 2005 can comfort themselves in the fact that any karmic debt which was incurred then has been well and truly paid back via a series of painful (mostly metaphorical) anal intrusions.

So thanks to everyone who has contributed to the first 500 posts by reading, commenting or writing one. Your continued support is valuable no matter which point you got on board at, if you're getting something out of it we're obviously operating somewhere on the same deranged frequency. I was going to do a commemorative jumper featuring the name of everybody who has ever commented on a post but 97% of the names on it would be 'anonymous'.

But enough misty eyed reminiscing about the grim nightmares of the past, let's concentrate instead on the temporary outbreak of sunshine and rainbows. Opposition fans who come here just to wipe their brow and go "thank god that's not me" don't go too far away, later on we'll look towards a grim dystopian future. Play the end of dream sequence music.



I'm pleased to confirm that the Carlton experience wasn't a one off, the world is definitely a better place after the Dees win. Obviously. How could it not be? Not that I was any great help to the cause, setting some sort of record by calling for a seven change massacre and getting absolutely none. Sure last week's post was written before Casey delivered an MFC style turdburger five goal performance, but that's still no excuse for missing the mark by such a record distance.

Then to prove why Paul Roos and selection committee are highly paid football professionals and I'm a poon with a keyboard and nothing but 500 blog posts to show for it six of the projected victims played good games and two arguably had their career best. Yeah, well maybe my Slamming Sam Blease and Maximum Gawn led stable of inclusions would have delivered a four point win? Perhaps not.

It should have been a good sign when frayed nerves caused by Dangerfield kicking the first goal within 15 seconds were calmed by Rohan Bail of all people yelling "fuck you Demonblog" towards the heavens and levelling the game by wobbling through a relatively difficult set shot. He was good for the rest of the game too, but at the time having just seen Hawthorn take to St Kilda with a pickaxe the goal settled me down after initially assuming old eggshell head was going to have 50 more kicks and five goals in a 140 point win.

From then something remarkable happened, and for a quarter and a half we actually bullied a team. A real life, AFL team in a properly constituted home and away match played for premiership points. It was wonderful, even if it will probably end in Jack Viney getting suspended for lifting his foot one centimetre off the ground (also known as 'running' and 'movement') then participating in the triple-banger head clash which broke the Adelaide guy's jaw.

Tribunal madness aside he's going to provide us for good times for years come. His kicking was better, he delivers clearances, he tackles but he also appears to have a head made from the same material as the Bolte Bridge. Clack-clack-clack went the heads like one of those office ball things, and as the other two lay on the turf gazing at the clouds he bounced back to his feet and got on with the job as if nothing had ever happened. Later on he was crunched in the head again, took 15 seconds to ensure his bonce was still attached to his shoulders and again kept going with no obvious side effects. Then having been belted from pillar to post all day he unloads a family friendly tweet like this which would have caused the marketing department to break into a round of applause. What a man for all seasons.

Adelaide contributed to our early success by kicking towards their forward 50 with the same sort of insane "if we go inside 50 somebody will surely mark it" optimism that worked so badly for us in the first fortnight of the season. They had similar results, but backed it up with abysmal kicking all over the ground for a grand total of 31% efficiency in the first quarter - a figure that even we can't have ever managed in a first quarter. If they were playing a top side they'd have been 50 points down at quarter time playing like that, but the nature of being a struggler is that even though we were moving the ball well and finding targets inside 50 we never totally killed them off.

Lack of a fatal blow aside there were so many good times in the first half that no doubt I've forgotten some of them because I was sitting there jaw agape wondering if the bus team bus had been redirected to Football Park while another side (admittedly in highly convincing disguises) replaced them.

Even Salem, temporarily freed of the council worker vest while Georgiou was off being assessed for concussion, joined in the party with his second quality snap in two weeks. He didn't do all that much after or when he came on permanently in the third quarter (in fact it appears he had all of one more kick) but looking at what Kennedy-Harris did playing a full game this week (after I tried to drop him) I'm just assuming that Salem will start as sub again next week but be racking up his first votes by Queen's Birthday before winning the Brownlow in September.

Speaking of JFK he was involved too, finishing off a goal set up by a clever tap by Watts before the much maligned Jack kicked one of his own to put us three goals in front. Which was unusual, but not as unusual as the umpiring. When he ran into goal and the whistle went I thought that he'd been pinched for running too far - and fair enough too he'd been going forever - but it turns out the umpire was actually paying a free against a Crows player who put his hands so lightly into the back that would later cause so much consternation that Jack didn't even trip or break stride.

Considering everything they neglected to pay on the day it was an odd decision, but that's the nature of umpiring when you're expecting two school teachers and a chartered account from Ringwood to perform multiple split second interpretations of a rule book more complicated than the user manual of an Airbus. When they get orders from 'the top' to crack down on certain rules do you think they collectively groan and think "here we go"? For instance, somebody must have had a word today suggesting that they clamp down on the 15m rule. And how exactly do you do that when it involves making an educated guess at the best of times? Nothing was gained from it except for us being forced to play on more often after kicks which might have gone anywhere from 11m to 20m as far as the umpire could work out.

There's some talk of expanding the 15m to 20m to try and stamp out 'congestion' (which apparently also needed stamping out in 1987) and I feel like I might have written the exact same thing a couple of weeks ago but how does making more balls 'live' reduce the amount of packs? Players might start kicking long, but it will be to a contest where the ball hits the ground and everyone lies on them for the same result. Everyone loves kicking to a contest, but if you think you're going to get one-on-ones all over the ground without totally stuffing it up you're on drugs or are Kevin Bartlett. Is it any coincidence that suddenly when you can watch every game that people have realised that there are a lot of shit games being played?

Anyway, no matter what the rules are there's nothing in them about Melbourne actually playing properly and when Dawes was gifted his first goal by another shithouse Crows kick it was starting to get ridiculous. The natives were beginning to show symptoms of Oh Shit A Bad Side Is Beating Us Syndrome by bleating like dickheads at every available opportunity. How they booed fiercely when Viney kicked the goal that he'd set up in the first place by (legally) pushing his opponent off his kick, and how they continued to jeer heartily when Dawes took the perfect contested mark against his opponent without a hint of malice (though he had just put one of their players out the game via the Touch of Death, so maybe that contributed to their inner turmoil) to open up a patently ridiculous 35 point lead.

Meanwhile I've still got no idea what constitutes a "one percenter", but the King of Sizzle Tom McDonald should have got one for his FURIOUS demands for a video referee call on the touched ball at the start of the second quarter. For a second I had grave fears that he was about to do a John Bourke on umpires both field and goal if they didn't review it. It was fantastic fury befitting his new skinhead look. Apart from one goal where he was outmarked in the square he was good again this week.

It didn't hurt our cause that they were basically a man and the sub down by half-time, but given that at various times we had Jetta and Frawley off the ground and the commentators were practically consigning Watts to the Jesse Hogan Ward of St Prymkes Home for Terminal Back Injuries it wasn't smooth sailing in our direction either. Thankfully for Watts the diagnosis by the medical experts at Fox Footy that he'd slipped a disc proved to be, unsurprisingly, total bollocks and after a few rounds of Downward Dog on the sidelines he came back and played the game out.

I await the midweek diagnosis where it turns out he really is crocked and that's why he hasn't been keen on jumping for anything over the last month. Unfortunately you don't have to wait a month for Frawley who is apparently getting around in a moonboot that will cost him a substantial wedge of his $800k asking price next year. My medical advice - sign a new contract with us, relax for the rest of the year if you have to and come back as the best full-back in the game in 2015.

The most outrageous thing about being a Melbourne is that you know if your side ever gets a few goals in front (which admittedly doesn't happen very often) your first thought is "how are we going to throw this away?", whereas in any other game you see a side open up a lead like that and think "how far?" While some teams launch dramatic comebacks from that sort of position (for instance Essendon falling in a hole on Aznzac Day) I'm sure that statistically when you're six goals in front in the second quarter the odds say that you almost always win. We did eventually, but good god we tried very hard to give it back once the Crows realised what they were doing and started to play properly.

I feel like I know all our wins of the last few years intimately, so the best comparison I've got is the 2010 game against Port Adelaide in Darwin where we just held on to win in the face of a furious last quarter comeback and Jamar conducted what stood as the greatest MFC post match interview ever (until he bettered his effort by walking off on Andy Maher a few weeks later) while sitting on the turf with Leigh Colbert. The difference yesterday was that the comeback was stretched out across two and a bit quarters instead of being compressed into 25 minutes of hellfire and vengeance, but the major similarity (apart from us holding on) was that on both occasions I spent the entire last quarter standing up, pacing/running around the room whenever something crucial happened before ending up on the floor behind my couch for 15 minutes after the final siren.

It's easy to forget when we've suffered a world record string of heavy losses in the last few seasons but there really is no better way to find out you're alive than to watch your team play a game like that. By the end I wouldn't be surprised if the people who live below us in the Towers thought there was some sort of domestic dispute taking place there was so much noise. As it was there was nothing but domestic harmony - Mrs. Demonblog even wandered in for the second half and declared that Chris Dawes was her favourite player. Which as far as my family goes is a step up from when Dawes' dad was on the phones for an early 2013 membership telethon, rang my mum in a last ditch attempt to renew her membership and discovered that she had no idea who the Collingwood premiership player was.

Speaking of Dawes after a week off against the Swans may I again please profess my undying love for him. There was the crucial, well taken goals and there was the 17 other touches but let's talk about one of his two tackles. I've got no idea what the other one looked like, but one was so fantastic I could watch it on a loop for the rest of the day. He flew out of nowhere like The Predator, and for once I had to agree with the shrill disagreeable scream of "TACKLE OF THE YEAR!!!" from Dwayne. If the world of Australian Rules has ever needed an animated GIF it was for this, and thanks to Twitterist @daveywarhol we have one:



So much heart, and by the standard set for several other holding the ball decisions he could have got a free kick for it - he might have had it for one second, but we copped one holding the ball when our player didn't even have it and one where he'd taken possession three seconds before so hand it over umpire. Coming at a time when Adelaide were battering us it was criminal that we didn't end up getting anything out of it, which was as much our fault as the umpire's who was actually right for once in not paying it - but it certainly looked spectacular.

Going back at the highlights, as you do for a win, I see we were still 45-18 up with 13 minutes to go in the third quarter but the Crows always looked a better side in the second half. They had rescued right from themselves from the 31% nightmare and closed right up on forwards so they didn't have acres of space to work in. They'd got the last goal of the second and had started to kick the ball forward properly instead of just aimlessly throwing it on the boot to be picked off by Howe, Grimes.

We were still holding out relatively well in defence, but with even with two wins we're only up to 56.42ppg and you're not going to win more than a handful scoring like this. But we've reached the same point as last year already, so blessed be the defenders. Even Neville Jetta was joining in the fun and waving two fingers in my direction after trying to delist him last week by playing possibly his finest ever match as he flogged Eddie Betts (salary difference approximately $500k p/a) and Podsiadly was generally being smacked around by McDonald but we'd still stopped scoring, and while Adelaide weren't playing particularly well it wasn't going to be hard to beat a team which took a 35 point lead then scored 45 for the match.

You knew that we were in trouble in more ways than one when the Crows kicked a goal, Dwayne declared it to be a potential 'firestarter' and my entire loungeroom momentarily stopped swearing at the Crows and instead turned on him as if we needed any prompting. Throwing away a big lead is bad enough without having his type trying to hype it up even more to keep neutral viewers from turning over to Are You Being Served on Fox Classics. He later attempted to shoehorn the phrase "chaos ball" into conversation at least three times, one of which was a very simple low kick inside 50 with absolutely no chaotic properties whatsoever. Sitting next to him was Mark Ricciuito who spent the great comeback nearly blowing a whole in his pants.

After we got nothing out of Dawes' big tackle and Frawley missed his shot on the run the Crows went straight down the other end and kicked a goal courtesy of a novelty bounce - admittedly aided by a clever flick-on from Podisadly when he could have easily let the ball go out of bounds. By the last minute it was only six points the difference and as much as the commentators tried to talk up some cyclonic breeze that we'd have the use of in the last quarter I did start to think we were going to totally throw it away and ended up getting thrashed. Would that have been better or worse than losing it by under a goal right at the end? Who cares, because enter Dawes again as he was finally rewarded with a free kick on behalf of our entire forward line after they'd spent the quarter being violated. "That's monstrous!" screamed Dwayne for some reason but his kick took the margin back to 12.

Time to breathe again briefly before going back to frantically pacing up and down, leaping atop the back of my couch and screaming at the television as if the umpires could hear me calling them a filthy pack of swine. In the spirit of Umpire Appreciation Round (and gee isn't that a token effort by the AFL?) I know they're given a second to make crucial decisions where they're often unsighted etc.. etc.. but in a close game they could have Albert Einstein, Martin Luther King and Jesus Christ out there and I would still temporarily lose my mind and question every decision except the Dunn deliberate out of bounds which was there every day of the week.

Much more leaping and dancing was had in the last quarter due to the fact that I was too nervous to sit down, and god knows what I'd have done if Rory Sloane - who still appears to be in auditioning to join One Direction - hadn't hit the post with a kick that would have levelled the scores. With a fresh sub, an extra player on the bench and Cyclone Ida allegedly blowing in our favour we should have run away with but it seemed that somehow they'd run out of gas.

With Nathan Jones well held for once and possibly injured the fear was that they were going to run over the top of us. But then enter the captain, winning a free kick which may or may not have been there (LIKE ALL THE ONES AGAINST US RIGHT CROWS FANS?) and converting the dictionary definition of a captains goal to give us some room again. I ended up running into the kitchen in exhilaration as it went through, but the glee only lasted about 90 seconds before Dangerfield emerged from having done stuff all for 30 minutes to kick a quality goal to get them back to within four again. At this point a chair was tipped over and Mrs Demonblog began to openly wonder about my chances of having a heart attack before the end of the match.

Like a basketball match you might as well have skipped the first 95% and come in at the end for the exiting finish, especially with your friend and mine Dwayne reminding us of what had already happened "if you're just joining us" every two minutes when he wasn't randomly opening pages in the Big Book O' Footy Anecdotes and telling us about what hospital Matt Jones' second cousin was born in.

Even if we suddenly looked to be playing under the influence of sheer terror there were some magical moments. What about Grimes' spoil on Dangerfield? Melbourne fans know what a great fist looks like (though not usually from the front), and that was crucial. The way he was playing after deciding to return to the game he'd have kicked the goal from 45m on not much angle, but it got us out of jail long enough to get the ball down the other end where less than a minute later Watts and his totally destroyed back with fused spinal column and possible paraplegia took a shot on goal which fell short but into the XL sized mitts of Jamar who capped his best game in ages by kicking a goal to extend the margin back to 10 with six minutes to go.

Kicks falling short due to crippling injury and an aversion in leaping for contested marks aside he didn't play too badly either Jack, he was hardly running around with the manic intent of a Daniel Cross or a Jack Viney but he was a lot better than last week but I need to see it happen multiple times before I believe it's here to stay.

On the topic of contested marks what about Jetta's? In a fitting tribute to the first game my beloved ever watched with me the couch almost went over the balcony in celebration when he held onto that. At least she knew what she was getting into straight off the bat and has sensibly avoided being in the same place as me during a close game ever since. Which is not difficult considering we've only had about three.

After Jamar's goal it would have been so cruel to lose. I'm not going to suggest the Crows didn't deserve it because they were clearly the best team in the second half, but as previously discussed there's a fine line between getting close enough to be happy (Gold Coast/Sydney) and getting so close that you're heartbroken (hasn't happened for a while), and it would have been tears before bedtime plus a hole kicked in the nearest inanimate object if we'd blown this one.

The Tyson goal seemingly made it safe, but also increased the potential psychological blow if we managed to cock it all up. On cue we managed to do our bit for keeping the game close by gifting the Crows a goal about 15 seconds later to cancel out Tyson's, poor Grimes stuffing up a simple chest mark from a quick clearance and allowing them to cut the margin again.

We managed to hold out for the next five minutes, and just when it looked like we were going to be safe Frawley went down back and hoofed one of the most ill-advised out of bounds on the fulls of recent times with 30 seconds left.  I understand heading for the boundary, but that was criminal. The resulting kick and a ball which bounced off several pairs of hands led to Pods bringing the margin back to under a goal with 30 seconds left and in the Towers the air turned blue. Language which should not be uttered in front of a lady came flowing freely as the possibility of losing via two goals in the last 30 seconds became very real. Now that's fear.

Thank god then for Bernie Vince getting the ball from the centre and dinking it out to the boundary line for a throw-in to cap off what was by some margin his best game for us (the old play well against your old side trick) then Bail winning the ball from the throw-in to make it safe. The siren went, I lay on the floor for 15 minutes. It was magnificent.

Surely instead of talking down everything about Australian rules football we should be celebrating the fact that it allows games like this. How many other sports except perhaps basketball would you be realistically a potential victim of a two-score comeback within 30 seconds? Even then you'd end up with deliberate fouls and multiple timeouts before finally getting to the exciting conclusion. When the last centre bounce went down - and did I hear right that it was Pedersen in it instead of Jamar because we'd somehow ended up with the Russian marooned on the bench? - it was a true 50/50 where if it went left we'd win and if it went right there was every possible chance we'd lose in heart shattering fashion. Wonderful, wonderful stuff. If we'd lost I'd be demanding zones and a reduction to 16 players per side.

2014 Allen Jakovich Medal votes
5 - Chris Dawes
4 - Bernie Vince
3 - Dom Tyson
2 - Jay Kennedy-Harris
1 - Neville Jetta

Super apologies to Dean Terlich. Varying sized apologies to Bail, Grimes, Howe, Jamar, Pedersen and Viney.

Leaderboard
24 - Nathan Jones
13 - Lynden Dunn (Leader: Marcus Seecamp Medal for Defender of the Year)
9 - Dom Tyson
8 - Daniel Cross, Chris Dawes, James Frawley
6 - Jack Viney
5 - Bernie Vince
4 - Cameron Pedersen, Jack Watts
3 - Matt Jones, Tom McDonald, Dean Terlich
2 - Jeremy Howe, Jay Kennedy-Harris
1 - Jack Grimes, Neville Jetta, Jake Spencer (Leader: Jim Stynes Medal for Ruckman of the Year)

Aaron Davey Medal for Goal of the Year
Pedo retains his lead for the screamer against Carlton, but congratulations to weekly winner Jay Kennedy-Harris who wins a Saturday night out at The Meadows greyhounds (with complimentary car parking) with Cameron Hunter for his first quarter goal. Jack Watts gets a free $20 bet for his clever backhander which started it all. Even a certain commentator describing the finish as "the shake... and the bake!" couldn't bring the mood down on this one.

Apologies to Dawes' goal at the end of the third quarter which was as clutch as all buggery but lacked the spectacular finish which you need to get ahead in this highly subjective award.



Fox Footy didn't even bother to show the Adelaide effort today, so I'm going to have to declare the Demons winners of a seventh straight via walkover. Take it up with Port Adelaide's own Dwayne Russell and friends Crows fans. This segment is rapidly losing steam and needs something filthy like this to reinvigorate it.

Crowd Watch 
Look, nobody likes losing to a rubbish team but what a shameful scene it was to see Crows fans pouring out the door when they went all of 10 points down in the last quarter with plenty of time left on the clock. Even when Adelaide kicked a goal to bring it under four points against a side prone to being battered by multiple goals in double quick time they were still evacuating as if the fire alarm had gone off. Watch out if a war breaks out and you end up on the same battlefield as these poltroons.

One thing I'll give them credit for, before they scurried for the door like a bunch of cowards was that when Vince got his first touch the majority of them actually cheered for him rather than adopting a Collingwood style "you are now filth" reception. I bet they weren't as happy at the end when he was dancing around celebrating the win with a broad smile, but most of them were probably halfway home by that point. It was one in the eye for the "you have to boo ex-players" crowd. If you ever need an example of how it can work either way just go back to Carnival of Hate 1 and compare the reaction to $cully and Junior McDonald.

In other crowd news what in god's name is going on with that cringeworthy "19th Man" shit the Crows are trying to introduce? I know they've ripped it off lock, stock and barrel from other sports to highlight the fact that they've got 95% of the crowd in any given home game, but for one your 19th man is on the bench and secondly.. well there is no secondly, it's just shithouse. There's even a giant 19 flag wafting around in the breeze. Of course Dwayne was in love with the concept because it gave him a chance to waffle on about them 'getting involved' as if a crowd of 44,000 people is going to otherwise sit there and eat cucumber sandwiches during a thriller. Coincidentally about 19% of the crowd had left by the time the final siren went.

As happy as I was (eventually) with the wild scenes in the loungeroom of Demonblog Towers I'm a bit sad that I could have actually been there. When @foureyepig yelled across the office shortly before the start of the season that he'd just got an email with cheap flights and he could get us to Adelaide yesterday for $29 each way I didn't even bother to consult my calendar for any other important events which might be taking place on the same day. Sadly by the time we got through the booking form and to the payment page all the cheap flights had been snaffled and I was too tight to pay another $40 either way to get there at 6.30am and leave at 9.30pm. Had the expected result occurred I'd be thrilled that I didn't spend the money, now I'm a bit gloomy that I missed the chance to be there for something historic. But in the end I didn't have to spend a day in Adelaide and we won anyway, so I think I'm just in front.

Next Week
I would suggest that we can very much beat Footscray, but I thought that after our last victory and the next thing we're losing to Gold Coast. At least it gives us another genuine 50/50 game rather than taking us from the top of the world to an almost certainly brutal mauling against Hawthorn or Geelong.

I've already hung my head in shame at last week's disastrous predictions so let's have another go without waiting for Casey to deliver another rancid performance.

IN: Garland, Blease, Gawn
OUT: Georgiou, Byrnes (omit), Frawley (inj)
UNLUCKY: Clisby

The above is highly contingent on Blease actually doing something for the Scorpions, but even though I know two wrongs don't make a right, if we're going to have a player up front who goes missing for 75% of the match then I'll take the one who can run really quickly and kick goals from outside 50 even if he has to start as the sub.

No offence to Georgiou, but surely we can't hold Garland back any longer if he gets through the VFL game unscathed. I thought he could do with a rest last week before he got belted around today, and by the end of the game he was sitting on the bench looking like somebody who'd gone to war and seen his best friend's head blown clean off next to him in a foxhole, so I respectfully submit that he could do with a weekend lying around in a deckchair sipping cocktails and reminiscing about the time he became a national celebrity for slapping Lance Franklin in the chops.

In other changes as one of the few players to come out of last week's VFL game with any credit maybe Gawn comes in to give Jamar support against Will Minson, but who's to argue with Pedersen's performances at the moment? Perhaps he comes in and plays up front to replace the presumably injured Frawley.

Clisby is unlucky as he'd been amongst the best players in the seconds for the last couple of weeks but Terlich was mighty today so I can't try to force him out this time.

If Jack Viney gets suspended then a) we riot and b) either Jordie McKenzie or The Pornographer Aiden Riley can raffle the spot based on today's performance. As much as I love Jordie for his wholehearted performances I'm keen to see Riley at some point in the near future. Given that the Bulldogs have a decent midfield above all else maybe we could pick both? After last week what the hell do I know. No change is imminent.

Stat My Bitch Up
Now to break the following losing streaks (at places where it's possible, I am aware that we haven't won at Arden Street since 1976):

Sydney Showgrounds - Since life on earth began
Carrara - 8773 days (I admit we have an excuse for this one)
Stadium Australia - 3663 days (no chance we're ever getting another game here)
Subiaco - 3620 days
Kardinia Park - 3187 days
SCG - 2934 days
Geelong - 2922 days
Hawthorn - 2902 days
North Melbourne - 2815 days
St Kilda - 2796 days
Collingwood - 2520 days
Docklands - 2459 days

Have at it new look Demons.

Free advice for the incoming CEO of the AFL
Please make like your predecessor in his declining years, write us fulsome checks and sweep any mischievous behaviour by our club under the rug while handing out harsh punishments to others.

Final Thoughts
Ding dong, the witch is dead and we're comfortably within the top 17. It remains, as always, a weird and wonderful world.

Huddled masses yearning to breathe free

If there's not an unwritten rule which bans you from being (relatively) happy about the result a game where your side scores 38 points then there really should be. However, as much as it puts me on the same level as people who slow down to get a good luck at gruesome accidents on the freeway last night that we me. I was  - please direct hate mail and accusations of tanking to the usual address - quite content with our performance.

It should be pointed out that I'm not trying to be wacky here. This isn't an attempt to generate controversy and get people to leave abusive anonymous comments because I've run out of ways to describe a loss and need to do something different. I really do feel, deep in my red and blue pacemaker powered heart that while we've still got problems up and down the yin yang that we did brilliantly to hold a far superior side as well as we did.

Obviously if we had to lose by 31 points (which I'm sure many of us would have taken before the bounce) I'd rather it was 69-100 instead of 38-69, but before we delve into the usual litany of things that are still horribly wrong with our side let's look at some of the positives. Here's one..

Melbourne didn't concede under 90 points once in 2013. Done it five times from six games this year. Plenty to work with. #AFLDeesSwans
— Ethan (@ethan_meldrum) April 26, 2014

That's right. Not once in 2013. NOT ONCE. Not one time in 22 matches of competitive Australian Rules Football did we manage to restrict a team to less than 90 points - and while we were conceding +90 every week we were often putting up scores similar to 5.8.38 so at least we're making progress in one aspect of the game. Eight points isn't much in a game of football, but the gulf in class between the 38 we scored last night and the 30 we scored at Kardinia Park last season is ridiculous.

Reasons to be cheerful #2 - Nathan Jones. I don't think it's much of a spoiler to reveal that he gets five votes again. I may as well just copy and paste 5 - Nathan Jones on every new post, and I'd say it was getting tedious seeing him dominate the votes every week, but watching Jones every week almost makes leaving the house to see the Dees worthwhile. He's got no chance of making the All-Australian team as a midfielder from a bottom four side as his name is not Ablett but if they don't at least humour us and put him on the shortlist then the selection committee should be dropped into the same shark tank as the rules committee.

Meanwhile I'm astonished at how good Dunn has been this year. I often liked the guy against popular opinion (won't claim that I always did in case there's 25 posts in the archives where I'm trying to get him sacked) but his performance has gone through the roof this year. Watch for it to all go horribly wrong now that people are starting to notice OR watch him exercise his right as a free agent to wave us cheerio and take off elsewhere.

Speaking of astonished, was Pedo born again courtesy of that arsey goal of the year candidate against Carlton? He was hardly flawless this week, but compared to most of his other performances since we recruited him he was sensational. I still get nervous whenever he's seen marauding towards the forward line, but he was good around the ground and even held his own in the ruck.

In other good news Vince turned up in style for the first time since Round 1 (28 kicks!), Matt Jones played his best game for a long time, Jamar did fairly well on return even if I'm still desperately waiting for Gawn to come back and snatch the top job, Cross demonstrates that sometimes recruiting older players can work and Salem showed plenty in his quarter and a half even if previous experience shows that he'll probably start as sub again next week and drop off the face of the earth by 2015.

The most important thing for me was keeping them goalless in the second quarter. We looked horrible for the first 10 minutes of the game - and also conceding the cheapest charity goal of all time to the star of Celebrity Culpable Driving - then fought back to look right at home for a few minutes before giving it all away in the last few minutes and going in 20 points behind. It would have been very easy to then show up for the second quarter, cop a few more howling umpiring decisions (Jetta getting done HTB after having the ball for 0.1 seconds, Viney being tackled around the ankles, god knows what else) and gone into half time 45 points behinds. Instead we kept them to three points, and while we only managed one goal ourselves it was still a step up.

It's not as rare a feat as it sounds - we managed to keep sides goalless twice in 2012 - Round 19 vs Gold Coast (Q1) and Round 21  vs GWS (Q3) but with respect to the fact that both sides have streaked past us since they were both effectively junior clubs at the time - so you've got to go back to the third quarter of Round 11, 2011 against Essendon (the night Dean Bailey punched the roof and we thought that we would make the finals) for us doing it against a proper team. Since that night we've been held goalless in quarters ourselves (drum roll please) 22 times! What an outrageous figure. We're lucky they haven't put the shutters up and forced us into a promotion/relegation playoff against Box Hill.

The Swans missed some good chances, but I was thrilled that we managed to drag them into a guerrilla war instead of just flat out getting murdered as we did most weeks during 2013. Bad news for neutrals and Channel 7's ratings but they can all get stuffed. Of course it would be nice to be involved a swashbuckling, high scoring extravaganza but look at we're we've come from and enjoy it for what it is - not getting beaten to a pulp. It was also particularly exciting gradually driving Franklin insane and watching him engage in biff, cost his team with stupid free kicks and give away a 50m penalty. In the end he's got $10 million and was probably driving to $cully's house to roll around in banknotes when he crashed into all the cars but I don't even recall him looking so frustrated against us before - and we've held him relatively well over the years. May he bring the Swans down from the inside like we all hoped he would to GWS.

Congratulations to McDonald for doing well on him (other than the goal from the BS free kick) and Georgiou for punching him in the face and getting away with it (for now) despite the hapless umpire looking right at the incident - which Franklin did play up as if he'd been hit the head with a sledgehammer rather than a limp bitchslap. When he was replaced by Goodes has there even been a substitution with a greater gulf between respected team player and self-obsessed mercenary? It is highly unlikely. Though at the same time if it doesn't work out in Sydney and he wants to take a significant pay cut next year I think I'd probably have him considering Jesse Hogan has apparently died.

I'm sure that after a week of other games that were either of a good viewing standard or at least close the influential "change the rules, everything is stuffed" lobby will have the quarter on rewind at the old folks home, but was it really so bad? Maybe I'm looking at it through rose tinted glasses because a) we were up to our necks in it and b) won it, but surely sometimes an arm-wrestle can be beautiful. People who despise soccer and therefore equate low scoring with tedium will never believe it, but sometimes even a nil-all draw can be beautiful. When the scores are low every goal means so much more, and shite umpiring was doing far more damage to the game on the night than rucks, mauls or whatever the problem of the day is according to Leigh Matthews - a man who has developed far more interest in the rulebook now than when he was going around king hitting people during his playing days.

For all that positivity it's hard to ignore the fact that we did struggle royally to score a measly five goals for the whole game. Yet again our inability to work the ball from one end of the ground to the other without stuffing up a kick or a handball somewhere around the half-back line haunted us, and unlike last week Frawley and Dawes were having rotten games up front so we weren't able to take advantage of limited chances. While we were forced to fight for every opportunity, down the other end our loose as a goose defence was allowing Sydney players to roam free. Twice we fell victim to one of my most hated things in football (and I've got a lot), players about to take a long distance set shot then realising we've let one of their teammates get a million miles clear on a better angle inside 50.

We fall victim to this so often and it makes me want to kick the seat in front of me/my television in. It's one thing if the 'better option' is on the boundary line and they wind up as unlikely to kick the goal, but we are always letting players get 30/40m out on their own and on simple angles and it shits me to tears. Perhaps if we did the same once in a while I'd be ok with it, but whenever we have a shot on goal from 50m on the boundary line we're forced to hoof it hopefully at goal and watch it get punched through because we've forgotten to get talls back on the line.

As noted our general play around the ground was hardly something to write home about and I'm certainly not endorsing some of the slop that was dished up when we had the ball. I fear that in addition to players sent to an unfamiliar position out of necessity (Frawley) and those dipping in and out of form on a weekly basis (Howe) that we've got too many in the side who just aren't good enough. You could get away with one or two of Byrnes, Bail, Jetta, Georgiou and Terlich (Pedersen temporarily promoted to the next division) but it's impossible to carry them all when we're so lacking in superstars to cover for them with their own acts. In addition to kids like Kennedy-Harris who are still trying to come to terms with the senior game we're sorely lacking class players. Not sure where we're going to find them, but at this point we've got to start having a proper look at the likes of Clisby, Toumpas, Blease and Strauss - and it's possibly a last look on the final two before we shuffle them off to Richmond.

Then there's Jack Watts. Oh dear. We might have gone in front in the first quarter if he'd held a simple mark, and in one breath you could hear every Melbournefans in the stadium go from cheering to groaning and openly swearing in front of children. Here's a live graph of the Jack Watts Fan Confidence Index during the game. Spot the point where he missed the mark.

(Melbourne FC there's a free match day promotion for you - hooking fans up to either a lie detector, a heart-rate monitor, or an election debate style worm and showing the results on the big screen during the game. It will be better than that heinous Chemist Warehouse three card monte gimmick. You're welcome.)

It was deflating, and it's not the first time it's happened this year either. It wasn't just the mark though, he just seems to be going through the motions at the moment. It looks like he gets to the right place all the time but can't have any serious impact on the game. What a tease that St Kilda game was, possibly assisted by the Saints bringing a midfield just as poor as ours - now against both good teams and average teams he looks all at sea. Last night he only had five kicks - and that's the one thing that he does at a constantly elite (CLICHE) level.

Can he be fixed? Well it depends what you mean how you define 'fixed'. I'd given up on the idea of him becoming an out-and-out superstar ages ago and was quite content for him to just roll out 200 career games as a solid citizen and subject of endless 'what if?' discussions for the next 50 years, but at this rate he's going to be run out of town on a rail before he even makes 100. The pitchfork wielding masses - a loose alliance of the people who have been waiting for him with a baseball bat since 2007 and those who patiently held on until now - are certainly coming from him after the last couple of weeks and while I have sympathy with them I also don't want to lose faith in my version of the future. Because I'm an idiot.

There's next to no doubt that if he does end up with a better team he can look good flouncing around the edges and take advantage of other great players instead of being expected to be one himself, but it's sad to finally come to the realisation that this might not work out. I'm sure I'll fall in and out of love with him seven more times before the end of the year but all of a sudden the question is what we'd get for him in a trade - surely nobody's going higher than pick 20. Wait for him to go to Carlton and dominate after copping exactly the same of foul invective from Malthouse that he crumbled under when it was delivered by the Reject Shop Mick who used to coach us.

What's sad is that if you could take the heart of Spencer, Pedersen or Bail and merge it with the skills of Watts you'd have a superstar - but instead we're left with half a list who try but aren't AFL standard and players like this who have good physical attributes and natural talent but quite possibly couldn't give a stuff if the stopped playing tomorrow. Look at Jack Viney, he can't kick for shit yet but we still love him because he almost gets killed five times a game - maybe Watts should just try that for one or two weeks and see if he likes it.

In a low scoring game that goal would have helped too, he is a beautifully accurate kick when he marks inside 50 so I'm assuming he'd have given us the lead. Instead, and this is not something I'm laying at his feet because he's got enough to deal with, we get one more goal in the second quarter and two for the half. Nobody is winning a game of football with two goals in the half, but even though we only took two points off the lead with all that effort in the second quarter at least it kept us in the game, which is all you can ask for in our situation.

We didn't stay in touch for long. Franklin came alive briefly before 'hurting his knee', setting up a goal before getting the red vest and a cosy blanket to wrap himself in on the bench, and even though we matched their first goal with one of our own the Swans were clearly not going to get mired in jungle warfare for the rest of the game and let us win 41-40. We only lost the quarter three goals to two, but signs were definitely ominous. It was clear to all but the most irrational dreamer/psychopath that there was no way we were going to rampage home from 24 points down to win, and true to form we didn't - but it would have been nice to keep the fantasy going a bit longer than the 40 seconds it took the Swans to kick the first goal.

A total whitewash it was not, though it threatened to be a few times in the last term, and at least you can go home dreaming of a bright future for Christian Salem until he falls into the same hole as every other prized recruit of the last five years. This was a danger game for another West Coast style massacre, and at least we came out of it relatively unscathed. You don't have to be happy that we only scored 38, and nor should you be, but there will be more than enough time to wail about everything that's wrong with us (possibly as early as next week) so why not pull the wool over your own eyes for a bit and try to look at the positives?

No, that's boring let's go throw a Molotov Cocktail at the Demon Megastore instead.

2014 Allen Jakovich Medal votes

5 - Nathan Jones
4 - Lynden Dunn
3 - Matt Jones
2 - Cameron Pedersen
1 - Bernie Vince

Apologies to McDonald, Cross, Jamar and Salem for his cameo.

Leaderboard
The committee has temporarily suspended Frawley from the Seecamp, pending him going back into defence and staying there for the rest of the season. Not that it matters at the moment considering he's not going to win it anyway if Dunn keeps playing out of his skin.

As for Pedersen I've got no idea if he's eligible for any of the minor awards at the moment, the whole process is in total Neeld style disarray other than the near certainty that Jones will have it all wrapped up by Queen's Birthday.

24 - Nathan Jones
13 - Lynden Dunn (Leader: Marcus Seecamp Medal for Defender of the Year)
8 - Daniel Cross, James Frawley
6 - Dom Tyson, Jack Viney
4 - Cameron Pedersen, Jack Watts
3 - Chris Dawes, Matt Jones, Tom McDonald, Dean Terlich
2 - Jeremy Howe
1 - Jack Grimes, Jake Spencer (Leader: Jim Stynes Medal for Ruckman of the Year), Bernie Vince.

Aaron Davey Medal for Goal of the Year
You have to kick goals to contend for the Flash, and given that we were doing stuff all of that then good luck. So it's still Pedo vs Carlton but we hope Christian Salem enjoys this week's consolation prize of a go-karting session with the Cockatoo-Collins brothers for his follow up from marking contest + snap which lifted spirits everywhere.

A nice traditional battle between two properly constructed banners, with nice fonts, old time motivational messages and no pissweak curtains. Congratulations to the Swans for a strong performance but the Demons go 6-0 on the back of the topical soldier silhouette, ANZAC Day message and a lot less visible sticky tape.

Having said that I was a bit baffled by the "2014-2018" date at the top of our banner which had something to do with a hundred years of the Anzacs. Do the Demon Army know something about an upcoming war that we don't? If total nuclear annihilation has to break out I hope we get one more win first and it breaks out before we play Hawthorn.

Crowd Watch

I can take it or leave it but I find it interesting that the the league/MCG didn't officially acknowledge ANZAC Day. We had it on our banner (see above) but while they were clearly only having one ceremony in every 'market' (*spit*) which is why they went through the whole thing at GWS vs Gold Coast a day late (and will probably do so again in Adelaide today) it seems reasonable to invite some military types along and at least get the crowd to give them a round of applause. Remember that time we played in Darwin while the US Marines watched on? We'd be lucky to get the Naval Reserve to show up and see us at the moment.

Considering there was 24,000 there (surely via furious massaging of figures and creative accountancy) it's frightening how many of them were Sydney fans. Unfortunately as much as slurry football is necessary at times it's is hardly likely to start dragging crowds through the door unless we somehow manage to start winning ugly - and even then I suspect the lure of TV will be too much for most until they're absolutely convinced that they're not being lured into one big con.

Could I also please confirm if the two (!) sets of people sitting in Row LL (I was in row P this time as I was with people, and dragging them to the heavens is downright rude) were inspired by my promotion of what a great place it is to watch footy or whether they were just sampling what it's like to be anti-social. Hopefully Row LL doesn't become the next big thing for football hipsters, there has to be somewhere to go (other than the fact that you're already at an MFC game) if you want peace and quiet at a live sporting event.

Crowd Watch Extra (4.36pm Sunday edition)
Forgot to mention, as if it was crucial, that I ex-Demons Josh Tynan and Rory Taggert were seen enjoying all that the top deck of the Ponsford has to offer. And they were both wearing MFC jumpers like they were regular fans, which is nice considering usually anybody we've delisted goes on Facebook and abuses the club for being a bunch of arseholes.

Blockbuster Corner
Assuming that Channel 7 aren't on the phone to the AFL now threatening all sorts of violence if we're ever featured in a prime-time game again, I'm all for this proposed ANZAC Day eve match against Richmond. The only problem is that I can imagine if Collingwood are against it that the AFL will be successfully strong-armed into turfing the idea. Demetriou isn't for it, but he doesn't like Good Friday either and 12 seconds after he's out of the job a game will be scheduled for that day on 2015 so who gives a rats what he thinks unless he's writing us another cheque?

It's more dangerous for us that McGuire is against it, because marks my words if the AFL ignore his undignified whinging and press ahead he will threaten to pull the Queen's Birthday rug out from under us. Which he can easily do considering it's his rug and they are doing us a favour by letting us have it as a home game every year - but while I'm expecting a negotiated settlement at some point in the next few years which either shifts us out of this game or rotates home/away status it would be nice if we're not just kicked out because Ed's gone beetroot coloured and thrown a tantrum.

Remember when he was going to kick us out of QB just for taking their recruiting manager? Just wait for him to get on the radio and drop a bit of "Well now that they're getting this other blockbuster they don't need Queen's Birthday" if for no other reason than to score some cheap publicity for the show when the comments are replayed everywhere. If Richmond were smart they'd be trying to double their blockbuster by negotiating for the ANZAC eve game against us one line and calling the Pies trying to replace us for QB on the other.

Next Week

Adelaide are neither here nor there this season, but it's reasonable to assume they will spifflicate us anyway. With any luck they give Taylor Walker another week in the seconds so at least we don't have to face that problem, but either way I can't see us getting this close. As for my changes what follows is an absurd wishlist considering barely anybody these days - much less a Zen maestro like Paul Roos - goes for the gigantic chop of +5 players in one go and we might not have the required players to do such a thing anyway but...

IN: Garland, Blease, Gawn, Strauss, Clisby, Toumpas, Riley
OUT: Byrnes, Kennedy-Harris, Terlich, Bail, Watts, Georgiou and Jetta (omit)

I'd like to split that hailstorm of executions up into a few batches - Byrnes, Bail and Jetta I can do without ever seeing in the seniors again, Terlich and Georgiou are useful soldiers but can do with a break or a run in the 2s, JKH is getting better but could also do with a full game at VFL level and I really don't know what to do with Watts. Part of me wants to keep him for one more chance, but I thought that last week as well. Any chance that we'll finally get a sports psychologist down to the club to try and work out what's going on with him before we turn him into another Cale Morton style lost soul?

It's hardly straight swaps on the ins and outs, but that's not going to matter is it? Maybe throw Jamar down forward for most of the game and let Maximum/Pedo (not a tag team name that Vince McMahon will be buying the rights to anytime soon) take the centre bounces. If Toumpas doesn't play for Casey today due to the knock he got last week (and at the time of writing it's 3.32am so god knows if he is or if he's in a nightclub drinking shots out of the belly-button of an 18-year-old floozy) then I'll give Bail a reprieve just because he tries hard and had a half decent game last week before reverting to type - then give him a handshake, say thanks for everything and send him back to Queensland the week after.

Other options are limited. As much as I've been a McKenzie fan over the years I'm prepared to give Riley a shot against his old team. Nicholson is also on my 'never again' list, Kent is out for another week, Hunt is too young, Evans did nothing in the seniors for two weeks (albeit as sub) and could do with a couple of full games, Barry is a total mystery, Tapscott needs match practice, Spencer isn't required with Pedo filling in admirably and I'd rather try Jamar up forward before returning to Fitzpatrick because at least Russian is a better ruckman if Plan A winds up in the toilet with all our other well thought out plans over the years.

Stat My Bitch Up
If ladder position and wins are your guiding light this season then you're in for a disappointing year. Our percentage of 67.3 is 13% above last year, but we've had a bloody good draw to this point so this is where it gets interesting.

Meanwhile as you may remember (how could you forget?) last year we scored our lowest ever points tally in a 22 game season at an average of 66.13ppg. Well this year we're currently on 54.16 so you would think, assuming that there is no possible way for us to only score 1191 in a season (which would further extend the record by 300 points) improvement is going to come from somewhere. God only knows where tjhat will be when we start running into top five sides who will strangle the bejesus out of us.

The crucial difference is that last year we conceded 122.31ppg and this year it's 'only' 80.5 so that's a significant improvement. Still, if the iPad clutching ball-bag is correct and Jesse Hogan's not coming back any time soon we're going to have to do something about our forward line. Rather than blaming Frawley, Dawes and whoever else is down there I'd rather that we instead started to get the ball to them quickly instead of waiting 25 minutes with every kick forward and giving defences enough time to force them to try and take pack marks. I suppose it would also be nice if we managed to string a few kicks together as well, but that's just being overly optimistic.

Was it worth it?

Yeah, why not.

Final Thoughts
I don't know what to think about this season anymore. I was confident that we could finish third last, win four or five games and come out with a percentage of about 70 but I'm not so sure now, and with Brisbane winning yesterday the dreaded spoon is looming large. For once can we retain some dignity in the second half of the year and not punt home finishing in last place? Now watch us finish 16th, receive a standing ovation from me for playing fairly and then spent the next 10 years yelling abuse at #3 while the first two picks become superstars. Hello Melbourne.

Love in the Time of Ineptitude

At times it might be hard to imagine, especially to outsiders, but there are significant benefits to being a Melbourne fan. We've traded respect, success and at some points our integrity for shorter bathroom lines, a 75% empty carpark and quicker access to floppy, overpriced hot-dogs. Which is not a lot to hang your hat on when you've been battered by all and sundry for years, but imagine the horror of going through all that AND having to put up crowds. I went to the Grand Final once and missed half the second quarter waiting to take a whizz, people are overrated.

Supporting a desperately unpopular side also comes in handy when somebody's got a corporate box to fill and nobody else wants to go. Bless your heart anonymous benefactor - you know who you are - for inviting me to live the dream in the only place in the MCG other than the MCC Members Dining Room where you're served non-poisonous food without having to first wait for some idiot to pay by credit card and fumble with the mustard packets.

Not that I'd have been there if it wasn't Gold Coast, I'm a Row ZZ-Grade internet identity not a corporate high-flyer so it's clear that had any Victorian team been the opposition corporate fat-cats would have snapped up the tickets long before I was able to get an invitation. As it was there seemed to be plenty of room for everyone in the world of corporate hospitality yesterday:

At least there was a reasonable (relatively speaking) crowd by the time the game started. We had to get there 90 minutes before the bounce and there were more people in the box than outside it until the last 15 minutes. If we hadn't won last week they might as well have relocated the match to Toorak Park for the 1200 likely to show up. Still, I did my bit - the corporate freebie allowed me to rort the attendance figure by scanning in on both that and my membership card. What a wonderful world.

It was a welcome flashback to my late teens when mum's then boss - another true believer from the era when there more than a couple of hundred left - would book the company box whenever they didn't have anyone else of substance to invite, then stack it with Melbourne fans and/or people who just wanted to drink themselves to a standstill. Who could forget the afternoon in 1998 when we beat Collingwood in 1998 and I achieved both criteria, getting blind on about three beers (well I was 17, and thank god for the lax attitude to liquor licensing laws) then climbed into the windowsill to sing the song after we won.

The gravy train ended after the 2000 season - as it did in so many ways - but not before another drunken escapade after which I tried to offer Brad Green my girlfriend and correctly informed Shane Woewodin that he was about to win the Brownlow. It was a great era for mixing prescription medication with alcohol and I look back fondly on it. The football wasn't bad either.

The only time I'd managed to worm my way into a box during the Demonblog era we won. Looking back on the post from that day I'm not one to blow my own horn but *toot toot* on this bit "We need to get over this obsession we have with recruiting all youth and nothing else." How true. Of course this was said in the context of trying to recruit Barry Hall, BUT he did kick 80 goals the next season. Anyway, there'll be plenty more room for Alan Partridge style "needless to say I had the last laugh" anecdotes in my book, so let's get back to the unpleasant reality of 2014.

Much like last week I honestly felt that we would win this game. Admittedly there was less science to the prediction this time compared to playing Carlton fresh from the psych ward with key players dropped for no apparent reason, but I still duped myself into believing that when the China Southern Airlines rock rolled away from the door of the tomb (as foreseen in Roos 24:2-8) it would reveal a resurrected Melbourne Football Club poised to equal the achievements of 2013 in the space of a fortnight and move into a nice apartment in the 12th to 16th neighbourhood.

Maybe it was better for my health if we didn't win. Last week I managed to ride the highs of victory through to about midday Sunday when I went down with a blockbuster migraines which kept me in bed for most of the next two days. In a nod to that Seinfeld episode where George thinks he's going to get cancer because NBC are making the pilot the next thing you know I was being rolled into an MRI machine to make sure that the headaches weren't being caused by a brain tumour. That would certainly have taken the shine off a rare winning week, but I'm happy to report that the results are in and my only serious illness is an almost obsessive attachment to the Melbourne Football Club.

On the other hand, health be damned. Legitimate fatal illnesses aside if the price I had to pay for a premiership was to spend two days in a darkened room 25 weeks in a row then I'd sign up in an irregular heartbeat. The only problem was that the worst of it hit right in the middle of test driving some bloke's car and I temporarily forgot how to drive around a roundabout so I was probably lucky to even make it to the MCG to watch the latest instalment our shite footballing journey.

It's refreshing to see that increased expectations have led to people losing the plot over this result, but let's first remove all the expansion era prejudices from the discussion - Gold Coast are a far better team than we are so don't lob yourself out a window just yet. Sure they got flogged by Fremantle and Hawthorn but wait until you see what sort of X-rated acts those two are going to commit on us.

Compare to the inquest of epic proportions when they thrashed us last year and Neeld should have been given the golden electric chair instead of sputtering along for a few more weeks. With reasonably similar sides we conceded 10.9 to 1.5 at one end of the ground, lost by 10 goals and appeared to be a club run by and for the benefit of complete buffoons. Yesterday there were outbreaks of buffoonery, but at the moment we're so far in front of 2013 it's not funny. The real test is how this 'form' holds up when we trade matches against fringe dwellers and downhill skiers for games against confirmed contenders.

In all fairness even though I'd convinced myself we were going to win we have got a patchy record against Gold Coast. Yesterday may have levelled the all-time series at 3-3 after we won the first three but those came from malicious assault of kids, uninspired back and forth struggle and one great quarter followed by three of slop. You never turn back a win in our situation, but since our first meeting they've shuffled off the garbage, hid Karmichael Hunt in the sick bay and wheeled in solid gold guns like Jaeger O'Meara while we've sacked two coaches, burnt our list to the ground for insurance purposes and generally been a burden on the competition. Don't confuse the fact that they had 89 fans in the stadium with them not being any good, it's the New World Order, and whether you like it or not get used to it because it's probably going to become the best thing around by next year.

Given the obvious gulf in class and workrate between the two teams it's simultaneously outrageous that we were as close as we were in the last quarter and tragic that we didn't go closer to winning. There's no doubt in the world that Gold Coast played better football, they might have helped keep us in the game in the second quarter with absurd kicking on goal, but we did our bit to repay the favour and could very well have snatched it at the end. It wouldn't have been fair, but every one of us would have gleefully taken it.

Surely nobody expected a footballing classic, but it became obvious soon after the start that it was going to be another fumble heavy, shamblesfest where any targets hit bit foot would receive a round of applause. The difference was that eventually Gold Coast players started to run hard to get free for their teammates while we continued to try and thread the eye of the needle with kicks or just ram the ball onto the boot and hope for the best.

Despite it being clear that they were a much better run and carry side (ENORMOUS CLICHE), and were going to run us off our feet all day it didn't mean we couldn't combat it with pressure. Obviously if somebody's roaming free the best thing to do is have one of your players go near them, then wait until the get the ball and force them vigorously into the turf. Shame then we were both as loose as a goose all over the ground AND committed the cardinal sin of losing the disposal count and the tackles.

The manic intensity of last week was replaced with tepid tackling, half-hearted running and far too many needless free kicks given away. In other areas we were ok, Nathan Jones carried half the team on his back again, Jack Viney was a beast at the centre clearances even if his kicking is still a bit wonky, and when we could work the ball to Dawes, Frawley or Howe (in the second half) our forward line looked half reasonable even if their conversion was almost as bad as Gold Coast's.

The problem with the way we were playing was two-fold, for one we couldn't get the damn ball from the back line past halfway without going through 25 stoppages and secondly whenever Gold Coast got their hands on it they sliced us up and down the ground in ginsu knife fashion. Which wouldn't have been so bad if we'd restricted how often they got it instead of participating in a race to turn the ball over at the earliest available opportunity. Further from the land of the furious cliche they 'wanted it more than we did'.

Neither of these problems was so bad in the first quarter. It helped that they were botching shots all over the place and that we got given that Frawley goal despite everyone on the planet knowing it had been touched except the nutbag operating the review system. Looking at the scoreboard across the ground from the Olympic Stand to my beloved Ponsford I could see the deviation off the Gold Coast player's hand even though the screen was split into the four views - three of which were useless. Last week I was celebrating a dodgy decision finally going our way but this was absolutely criminal. If only we'd won by under a goal Gold Coast fans would have trashed AFL House like when Fitzroy got rorted in Adelaide that time.

Despite Dawes' snap (I express my love for this man) and Pedo running back with the flight of the ball then converting (I express my admiration for the way he has been more than adequate for the last three weeks) the biggest problem for me was the ridiculous amount of space we were giving their forwards. Not only was the King of Sizzle getting flogged to death in every one-on-one contest but they were finding spare players everywhere. At one point the marks inside 50 count was about 12-1, which is telling considering that's one of the aspects we stitched Carlton up on last week despite losing most statistical categories.

Issues which would come back to haunt us later aside we still played a reasonable first quarter, and had a lead of over a goal until the last few minutes when they finally took one of our five consecutive hints and finally took advantage of a another failed kick-in/shithouse attempt at short passing inside defensive 50 to kick a goal.

The significant differences - and when it came to the scoreboard the only difference - came in the second quarter where MFC 2012/13 reappeared with a vengeance.  If it wasn't our inability to clear the ball out of defence or stop them roaming free in numbers, it was the difference in contested marks or marks inside 50. If the Suns had converted half their chances it would have been completely over by half time (but as always must be pointed out if they kicked the first one they would never have had the rest so we might have gone on to win by 300) but instead they left the door ever so slightly ajar. Shame that Dawes missed an absolute sitter, but at least he won the free kick by slapping a strong tackle on. The guy might be getting paid out of proportion to what he's done so far but at least he cares. He missed another easy set shot and stuffed up a snap later by being too hasty but it was hard to fault him otherwise.

Frawley was good again two. Like last week he kicked two goals in the first half then dropped out of the game a bit but is doing an excellent job in an unfamiliar position. Unfortunately with McDonald getting massacred, Georgiou looking shaky and Pedersen often on duties elsewhere we could really have done with Chip in defence at times today. Does anybody know if Jesse Hogan is still alive? If he can free up Frawley to go back and hang out with Garland then with all respect to his enjoyable forward cameos we'll be much better off.

Whatever good moments there were they were rarely seen in the second quarter. As players stuck out an arm and allowed an opponent to jog past it looked like Mark Neeld's famous "attempted tackles" were back in fashion, but there were also brief periods of reasonable football. Too brief. It made me want more, but usually five seconds later somebody was either hoofing the ball out of bounds on the full (OOF) or handballing it to a team-mate at a standstill who would then be mobbed.

Speaking out OOF, congratulations to Dean Terlich on completing one of the worst kicks I've ever seen during the first quarter. Has a ball ever taken such an angle to go out of bounds under no pressure? The last time anything even remotely as bad happened was during one of my very rare attempts at playing the sport when I was foolishly entrusted with a kick-in and managed a kick so bad that it went OOF but only narrowly missed going back through for a point from the top of the square. I challenge anybody from the MFC to top that.

In a continuing reversal of 2012/13 we were good in the third quarter again, but now it was our chance to start stuffing up shots on goal. Gold Coast were still moving the ball far better, and they looked significantly more dangerous whenever they went forward but I guess everyone thinks the other side are more likely to score.

When they got the first goal it was almost time to check the drop height from the box window (answer: not far enough) but we did well from there and if any of the three behinds late in the quarter had gone through I'd have been convinced we were a big chance. As it was I still felt like we were close enough if the Suns fell into a ditch, but that having reverted to the MFC who make scoring goals look more difficult than climbing Mt Everest what chance were we of a) scoring enough to overhaul a 20 point deficit, b) defending well enough to stop them from scoring. As it turns out the answer to both questions was 'nil'.

Still, teams sometimes win games when they've been second best all day - and what better time to do it than against a team just as inexperienced as we are. When Nathan Jones, grand human and the Robbie Flower of his generation, dragged the margin back to 13 points with a long, LONG time to play we were very much a theoretical chance but in all honesty I've never felt so far behind from a 13 point margin in my life.

Had it been the other way around I'd have been 100% convinced that we were going to get overhauled and rolled on the last kick of the day, but when it's us chasing the idea of a grandstand comeback seems stupid. Yet with five minutes to go they were pretty much out on their feet, and after Jack Viney got his goal we could very well have steamrolled them - if we hadn't then conceded a goal straight out of the centre bounce like complete dickheads.

Other than a couple of late consolations that was it, we'd left ourselves too much to do and didn't have enough good players to do it with. It didn't help that Gary Ablett was gifted one of the worst free kicks of all time (presumably his whinging about McKenzie's tag last year and the recent Trent Cotchin scragging debacle were front of mind for the umpires) but then again we did get what was officially the worst ever video review goal earlier so it's hard to point the finger too vigorously, even if we were shafted in several other uncomfortable ways by the umpires throughout the afternoon.

That we got so close was even more amazing considering how many bad players we had. Not necessarily 'bad' full stop, but well under their best. Vince and Tyson played like Byrnes and Rodan, Watts had one of those days where he's not all that concerned, Bail tried hard but was Bail, the King of Sizzle shaved his head and got thrashed accordingly, Spencer barely went near it, Terlich and Georgiou looked more like SANFL players than ever before, McKenzie couldn't get into it offensively or defensively and both Kennedy-Harris and Jetta were horrible in the first half before recovering to be at least reasonable in the second. One of them has the excuse of youth, the other is due to be inducted in the Juice Newton Society of VFL stars who just can't get over the line in the seniors.

Most of the players ran into the brick-wall of their own limitations, but if you accept that Tyson is still young the two without excuses are Vince and Watts. A'la Pedersen vs Gysberts we're still in front on Vince vs Sylvia, but let's be fair even though he had a few touches yesterday he's hardly fired a shot since Round 2. I'm certainly not saying he's in danger of getting dropped, because it's not like we've got enough quality in teh 2nds to put the pressure on, but he can add more. Given that we can't take the ball from centre half-back to centre-forward to save ourselves maybe he can play some role in that?

As for Watts I find it quite ironic than in the weekend where somebody finally admitted than Nic Nat is ridiculously overrated (though it was Tony Shaw so you've got to suspend your disbelief to believe that he's right) that Jack's approval rating has hit levels not seen since he got dropped post-148. Which is a shame because just when you think he's going alright he puts in a stinker where he looks like he's got absolutely no interest and has as much chance of winning a one-on-one contest as I do. Dropping him seems like the easy way out and I'm not into it, but god I'd love to see this again:



There was a hint of it last week, but I just want him to get made. I love the videos of him flipping pancakes for the homeless and visiting sick kids but for god's sake it's time for him to get angry. There's no pressure left to become the best player in the world but surely at some point the desire to ram a fork into the eyeball of your detractors kicks in? Perhaps not.

2014 Allen Jakovich Medal votes
5 - Nathan Jones
4 - Jack Viney
3 - Chris Dawes
2 - Cameron Pedersen
1 - Jeremy Howe

Apologies to Cross, Dunn and Frawley who were in the lottery for the last two spots.

Leaderboard
The medal is already at the engraving shop. Make room on your mantelpiece Nathan Jones, a world record fourth Jakovich is almost certainly coming your way. His current total would already be good for fifth in any of the last three years.

19 - Nathan Jones
9 - Lynden Dunn (Leader: Marcus Seecamp Medal for Defender of the Year)
8 - Daniel Cross, James Frawley
6 - Dom Tyson, Jack Viney
4 - Jack Watts
3 - Chris Dawes, Tom McDonald, Dean Terlich
2 - Jeremy Howe, Cameron Pedersen
1 - Jack Grimes, Jake Spencer (Leader: Jim Stynes Medal for Ruckman of the Year)

Aaron Davey Medal for Goal of the Year
No change. Pedo from the boundary in Round 4 reigns supreme. Chris Dawes wins the weekly prize of a night out at the Dromana Drive-In with Tom McNamara for his snap around the corner in the first quarter.


Small in size their creation may be, the Suns cheersquad goes closer than anyone else yet this season to toppling us. Considering they can't have more than a handful of people who scabbed on their team to change sides in 2011 they had a decent crack, and to their credit it was a proper run-through with no Carlton style gigantic slit (insert Bryce Gibbs jokes in the space provided) so players could go through the motions without having to touch crepe paper.

So, just like the Demons they lose narrowly but were always second best on the day. The introduction of a new font and some comedy flames to the non-sponsor side of the banner seal our fifth straight victory and that makes it 5-0 Melbourne.

The Name Game (+ more pissing about the with rules)
The great names on jumpers experiment went off without any total fiascos (unlike, say, the great decision review system experiment) so it's inevitable that they'll bring it in next year. It was a bit rich of the AFL to claim that they were waiting for fan opinion before deciding because it's not like they give half a shit about what the people think at any other time, but at the same time nobody believes that they care if we care so it all balances out.

The concept doesn't exactly enthuse me, and five years ago if I had nothing else to complain about I'd probably be vocally against it but let's be fair about three weeks after they're permanently introduced (i.e by Round 3 2015) nobody will give a second thought to any player who doesn't have a silly or extremely long surname. On that note it seems rude that they went out of their way to give Lewis Roberts-Thompson "LRT" (I'm sorry, is Lewis part of his surname?) but Jay Kennedy-Harris ends up paying tribute to his name with the exceedingly dull "K-Harris". Why doesn't he get JKH? Why doesn't LRT get R-Thompson? Does anyone except me actually care?

Other than the K-Harris fiasco the only change I noticed is that we had to move the MCC logo to the very bottom of the jumper so it was practically sitting above a player's ringpiece. That can't be beneficial for our relationship with them. Not sure how we can't fit it up the top when GWS/Sydney/Brisbane/Footscray can jam CANBERRA/SMFC/BBFFC/FFC and god knows what else above their names.

Either way, it's coming in 2015 and will neatly coincide with my retirement from half-kit wankerdom. Having ruined so many careers just by sporting player numbers (and Sam Blease is getting the treatment as we speak) I'm not adding names to the mix as well. This retirement will last until I'm about 40, have a mid-life crisis and decide that wearing the name of a 20-year-old on my back is a sensible idea.

I'm not sure whose benefit it's for, but in a world where people speak in one breath about limiting interchanges to make players even more fatigued then in another bemoan the fact that there's five thrashings every week (and what do you think is going to happen to shit teams when they're badly overmatched AND crawling along the turf for most of the last quarter?) it's far from the worst thing that's happened to the game in recent years.

On the other hand this could just about put me away. I'm there for the MFC until the shutters come down, but soon you're going to need to carry a guidebook around to understand what's going on in an AFL match. What is this state of footballing nirvana that we're trying to achieve by stuffing the rules around constantly? Can somebody please draw me a diagram of the perfect world that we're striving to journey to? When was football 'good' and how many people were complaining then that it used to be better? Perhaps time to admit that we've got a good game but it's not the greatest thing that's ever been invented and stop waffling on about 'rolling mauls' every five seconds.

No doubt Channel 7 and Fox Footy are on the phone 24/7 begging the AFL to do anything they can to help them boost television ratings, but who doesn't think that whatever brainwaves the boffins in the AFL's Footy Engineering division come up with will backfire 10 seconds later and we'll be left in exactly the same position in two or three years time. And the players want to make free agency even easier to achieve - how about we just pay them half instead (rookies and other minimum wage cases exempted) and if they can find another league to play in then good luck to them.

Crowd Watch
Never before have I heard an MCG crowd of any size flatter than when the 3/4 time siren went. At least last year there was people booing and shouting "off with his head!" This time despite there being 4000 more people in the ground nobody knew what to do.

Meanwhile, as nice as my accommodation for the day was I did find myself looking longingly over at the empty top deck of the Ponsford Stand thinking I could be over there swearing and kicking things to my hearts content with nobody within 20 rows to annoy.

Next Week
Now that Sydney are back in form there is little doubt that they will beat us, but it's important for the morale of everyone involved that we don't get murdered. As pointed out in the post for last year's Gold Coast disaster (one 100x worse than what happened this week) it's extremely rare for teams to win three games or less in a season. So rare that only Fitzroy (RIP) and GWS (unfortunately not RIP) have done it since 1987, and as much as last week showed me that a party can break out unexpectedly I still fear we'll struggle to reach four wins as the year goes on and we're gradually torn apart by (more) injury trouble and (more) confidence issues.

So forget those who have already been tried and failed this season, time to roll in the tried and true. And Mitch Clisby.

IN: Clisby, Garland, Jamar
OUT: Terlich, Jetta, Georgiou (omit)
LUCKY: Bail, Evans
UNLUCKY: Salem (by all accounts ran riot in the VFL but there's no need to throw him under the reality bus just yet), Toumpas (career all but destroyed by us drafting him)

Was it worth it?
As somebody with a sick fetish for watching videos/reading about the death of South Melbourne and Fitzroy yes - every day above ground is a good day.

Final Thoughts
Given that we were exchanging the cold, barren emptiness of the Ponsford Stand Row AA to LL for civilised inside comfort I took my beloved to the game. It was the first time she'd been with me since Round 22, 2010. Halfway through the second quarter she said: "I don't know how you do this every week". It seemed appropriate, but I had to explain that this wasn't even in the bottom 50 performances since that night.