Dees do the Oregon Trail

It's time for that annual tradition, sending a group of Melbourne players down the Oregon Trail and seeing how many of them die. If I wasn't so good as this game we'd get more accurate results where they ALL carked it, but let's see how we go with this year's group.

The skipper is the first picked.

Followed by four of our best and brightest kids, who will be ruined by the only more deadly cross-country journey than playing at Subiaco?

The bit where you leave from looks like the car park before a Collingwood game.

Just when you've had enough of being robbed by umpires, now they're making it official.

Easy to float a bandwagon when nobody's on it.

Well shit, here we go. Obviously they don't have "Hogan has a mysterious back injury" loaded in the game's 'reasons for injury' file.

Of course, of all the players we could have to snap his leg and hobble off in circles it would have to be him.

Or him... 

May 21 is an accurate recreation of when our bandwagon usually breaks down.

Petracca is playing Mitch Clark as the replacement 'permanent injury' victim alongside Hogan.

... but even he isn't having these sorts of problems.

... and in a classic Nick Smith style "4 to 6" style injury upgrade that's the end of Hulkamania.

Look, we're approaching Etihad Stadium.

You would too if you had to carry that sort of load.

We have played a game in Oregon before, but when we played West Coast at Civic Stadium, Portland in 1989 the only diseases our squad were likely to catch were of the venereal sort after cracking onto the locals.

So Hogan's dead, Petracca's got the squirts, Viney is tired and lost. Ironically Angus Brayshaw is the only one of the kids who hasn't suffered as serious mishap yet.

Another end of season trip ends in disaster.

Congratulations to everyone except Hogan for surviving (it's rumoured he actually ducked off to join Freo halfway down the trail). We've arrived just in time for the end of trade week and the National Draft.

See you next year, where we'll push another group superstars off onto a ridiculous and probably deadly interstate trip. We'll also play Oregon Trail again.