Until something unprecedented and weird happened in the last minute of this game, I was ready for a post that delivered all the classic hits from 21.5 years as the Chief Football Writer of Demonblog.com. Self-inflicted near misses, imagine if we had a forward line, there goes another season up in smoke, and the evergreen claim that if you want Collingwood to buy into the most one-way rivalry in footy we need to beat them a few times in a row.
It would be nice if that came via a series of savage landslide thrashings, but at the moment I'd be happy to start at one, then aim for a streak. The popular 2004 - 2007 run started before three of the players in Monday's team were born so it's no longer relevant. Unless you're a rusted-on freak who's here until the bitter end, you may only remember winning two thrillers, and a solitary thumping, leaving our aggregate margin in Monarch's Birthday matches only slightly better off than our modern record at Kardinia Park.
On paper, there should be consolation that the margin was 6.5 goals less than I expected, but in a week where we risked ironic "it's the hope that kills you" disaster by flogging these water bottles, honourable losses can go piss up a rope. This wasn't quite as traumatic as our last one point heartbreaker against the Pies, but it died in almost exactly the same part of the ground. Then it was Ricky Petterd narrowly failing to pull in a mark, this time it was Max Gawn's Hail Mary kick coming off the boot like a 10kg bag of shit.
It's a bit unfair on them to be remembered for these incidents when both were pivotal in having us within range of a mega upset in the first place, but that's how it goes. Wherever Petterd was watching this from (and a spot of light Google stalking suggests the answer is Byron Bay), I bet he wished a teammate took the heat off him by delivering an unfortunately timed, and seemingly inappropriate spray immediately after the ball hit the ground.
I was more annoyed at the final siren of this game than anything since the 2022 Brisbane final, but I'm not going to blame Gawn or the umpires. We battled hard to stay alive all day, before a surprise outbreak of poise helped us get in front during the last quarter. Then we shit ourselves, it all went up in smoke, two of our all-time greats nearly had a punch on, and the prospect of a miracle finals run is deader than Kelsey's nuts. As far as I'm concerned it already was after last week, but if this went two points in the opposite direction the door would have been slightly open, with players going into the bye buzzing off their teet about delivering a shock win via old-school Goodwin football terrorist methods.
It's still baffling to me how we survived in this game long enough to be up to our necks in it until the last minute, but there was an all too brief time where we were a red-hot chance of rising above our putrid forward conversion and umpiring best described as 'unhelpful' to beat the best team in the competition. They'd still spend September playing finals while we were probably imploding off-field again, but it would have been fun at the time.
Morally, the Carlton final was worse because a) it ended the season, and b) we'd had multiple chances to finish it off, but I was still pumped full of premiership anaesthetic then and comforted by the idea that we still had a couple of years to cash in on this generation of players. If I'd known what was coming in 2024/2025 I might have jumped on the tracks at Jolimont Station that night instead of aimlessly driving around for three hours before eating a McFlurry at 3am. As anyone who has watched a team long enough knows, narrowly failing to pull off an incredible win as underdogs is one of the worst feelings you can have as a fan.
Fortunately, I didn't have to put up with any of this live due to squibbing the opportunity to leave the house. The version of me that stomped a pair of sunglasses to dust the final siren of Round 2, 2010 would be disgusted at this attitude, but the 2025 version has nearly ceased to function as part of society so I regret nothing. Except, a bit whenever Neale Daniher was on the screen battling his heart out to be there in the most difficult circumstances, while I'm sitting on the couch sooking about being cold and tired.
The other big regret was that the TV options once again came down BT vs Dwayne. In what bogan run universe is it better for Jason Bennett to be calling a Sunday slopfest in regional Western Australia than a marquee game? And on the Fox side, unless Anthony Hudson fell down a well on Sunday afternoon I'm offended on his behalf that he comes below Russell on their commentary depth chart.
Like last week when Gerard Healy accidentally said he spent half time "in the crack lab", choosing the pay-tv call accidentally paid off when Dwayne got mixed up in the early stages and said "Petty went gay", which was quite the revelation. Later, he recycled his own "Fritsch Magnet" gag from five years ago, and the usually sensible Jason Dunstall let the side down by guffawing as if it was improvised genius. Nobody ever asks me why I keep writing this (and it's ok, you don't have to, it's purely for my own amusement and if anyone else is interested that's a bonus), but linking back to offbeat and weird things from 2020 makes it all worthwhile.
We're all guilty of trotting out the classic material (and I generally don't wait five weeks let alone five years), but it was better the first time around when Mark Howard called him out for planning the gag in advance and there was an awkward silence which suggested Dwayne gave him the look from our long-forgotten Media Watch logo.
Anyway, as much as Russell gives me the shits, I'd prefer him calling with Kelli Underwood, Don Scott, and the anti-social dimwit you could hear yelling stupid shit near the effects mic, than Brian Taylor + the same ads over, and over, and over again. Even when we do our best to annoy Channel 7 by making sure there's as few goals as possible on free to air television, the song from the AAMI ad has me on the verge of causing aggravated mayhem.
It's not quite right to say we did everything right last week except kick straight, because there was still the small matter of the Saints rocketing the ball from end-to-end untouched and finding targets 15 metres from goal. We weren't cut up as badly this time, they were still able to extract the ball from the defence and head off towards goal at full speed but we were better at having defenders in place right at the end on the process.
Not much else obviously changed from last week. van Rooyen came back after reasonable form against unreasonably bad VFL teams for seemingly no better reason than he can play second ruck, which didn't work. More successful was the wildcard move of sending most relaxed man in the game Ed Langdon to do an old school, cynical, scragtastic tag on Nick Daicos. As a one-on-one matchup it worked, but how come this was the week we made Windsor sub when he did his best work on the wing last year?
The most important result of this hopefully one-off use of Langdon is that it's given weirdo MAGA-style receipt-clutching Pies fans something better to be upset at him for than when he said something strange about Collingwood in an interview and they carried on like as if he'd threatened to piss on Jock McHale's grave. The same people who idolised Joffa and thought Strauchnie was peak comedy got a second chance to cash in when May disgraced himself, three years after also daring to be less than 100% complimentary towards them into a microphone.
Back to the topic of having your greatest hits on repeat, our first score came from a missed set shot. For a change it wasn't from 20 metres out directly in front, but for the purposes of balance and fairness I'll note it came from a pretty cheap free kick, setting a standard for the rest of the day. I assumed more standards were being set when Collingwood's first shot on goal came via a player bouncing out of a tackle like he'd jumped into the wall of a bouncy castle, but overall the pressure and effort shit on anything delivered last week. Which one of these players will bolt for a bigger club and make sarcastic Bailey Smith-style references to not playing in Alice Springs? Please don't be anybody who played in the flag because I don't want to lose respect for anyone involved in that blessed event.
Like Petracca cutting through the nonsense and belting running goals through last week, the answer to straight kicking was again somebody just getting the ball 50 metres out and giving it welly. It was made by Chandler spelunking through the middle (and for five minutes in the first quarter I had visions of him winning the BOG trophy before he mostly disappeared), and Sparrow declining a set shot so he get a run-up and just belt it.
As I was still expecting to lose comfortably, jolly old Ed Langdon unleashing his inner villain and openly cheating against Daicos was good fun. Against all odds, this man turned out to be an assassin.
💪💪 pic.twitter.com/u3pOWUtCQR
— Ed Langdon’s Guns (@EdLoveGuns) June 9, 2025
And had we won, it would have been a famous performance. Now it'll be a 'remember when' footnote that seems fun at first, then makes you remember how we lost by a point. Like Jeremy Howe taking Mark of the Year in a game we lost by 110 points. In case you'd forgotten Jeremy will still around we tried tempting him to wind the clock back and stand on someone's head by constantly sending kicks in his direction. The only problem was that there usually wasn't any Melbourne players in the way, so he could just casually reach up and grab the ball instead of risking a mid-air calamity.
Trying to make something of our forward line from 2011-2015 was arguably even more difficult than it is now, so it's nice that Melbourne players finally decided to deliver passes on a platter for him. Incidentally, if you need proof that the Brownlow is rigged against defenders, he got six votes in 100 games for us playing in dreadful teams, then went to Collingwood, got one in 2016, and none since. But he did win a premiership, and only because we got there first I'm (relatively) happy for him.
Umpires who seemingly wouldn't know a tram was up them unless it rang the bell finally twigged and gave a free after Ed had racked up so many minor crimes that he'd reached the AFL equivalent of five stars on Grand Theft Auto. Once the gropefest had been rumbled I thought that was going to be the end of the fun, and it would turn out like the days we'd hold Judd for most of the game and he'd still end up best on ground, but it worked as well as possible all day. This prediction was wrong...
Very enjoyable scrag from Langdon, even if Daicos will still end up having 38 touches. #scragchat
— Adam 1.0 (@Demonblog) June 9, 2025
... but to be fair I didn't say which Daicos would end up getting a shitload of touches, and the other half of the genetic lottery jackpot was free to hoover up possessions and win the BOG award because obviously defenders aren't legally allowed to collect any awards. In any sensible analysis, Howe or May would surely have gone close, and imagine the scenes if the votes were cast before the end of the game and May got to collect the trophy in front of hostile crowd and teammates.
Who even awards this medal now? It used to be done by a panel, but as the votes aren't publicly released now I assume that all went out the window after the lunatic fringe bullied some random journalist for picking Oliver over Mason Cox in 2022. There's a guy almost certain to be given a token game in the Round 24 rematch and end his career on a high by demolishing us.
The backlines of both sides were very good here, but the difference was ours had to stop legitimate chances rather than just having to get on the end of mad panic kicks towards a forward not even in the same area code as where the ball landed. They held back a bunch of chances, before we accidentally allowed a quick attack when Fritsch narrowly failed to pull down an intercept mark in the middle of the ground.
Meanwhile we were blundering forward, where van Rooyen was making a bid for Tom Fullarton's "poor old" title by appearing to be thoroughly Melbourned. We need to hire some cult deprogrammers to put him in a room and make him forget everything that's happened since the first half of the second West Coast game last year. I know they didn't pick Jefferson despite more goals against the same pissweak VFL opposition because he'd snap in two trying to play ruck, but JFC for JVR we've massacred this guy. He had 46 scoring shots in 21 games last year, and is currently tracking at seven in seven this time. I don't know if freeing him from rucking will help but they have to do something else.
There's no point trying to save this season, so we may never get the novelty of four club Tom Campbell while Gawn is fit (though feel fit to rest the poor bastard at some point) but as much as I'm for playing the kids if you can't impact a contest inside 50 what's the point? I don't expect him to be pulling down screaming pack marks, but be around to try and stop the other side easily intercepting everything. I'm all for Melksham, but relying on him to do this single-handedly is NQR, and exactly why three different Collingwood players went around chomping down loose kicks like Pac Man yesterday.
The answer was not Fullarton, and at the moment it's probably not Jefferson, Petty does his intercepting best work 60 metres away from goal, and the coaches would obviously rather drink poison than ever play McDonald forward again, so I'd like to make the really stupid proposal of parking Gawn forward for a couple of weeks and playing Campbell, Verrall or anybody else you want as the ruckman. Who cares if he kicks 0.14, maybe his physical presence will bust the door open for the rest of them to take advantage? The season is dead, I repeat the season is dead, let's not do like last year and hold on to the dream of playing the same team, the same way until it's 100% mathematically impossible to play finals. And if our only reason for continuing to play Max every week without a rest or change in duties is to get him into the All-Australian team again then the whole place has lost the plot.
It felt like Round 57 of "it we had a forward line we'd be good", and that there was no way we'd score enough to compensate for Collingwood kicking the goals that naturally come when you're a top of the table team who may very well win the flag. For instance, here's Jamie Elliott standing 10 metres on his own after several weeks kicking goals left, right and centre.
Held back a bunch of chances before Fritsch narrowly failing to pull in an intercept opened the door for them to go the other way. Another case of if we had a forward line we'd be good. Eventually we let Jamie Elliot stand 10 metres on his own in front of goal, nevermind that he's been in red hot form. He was otherwise kept very quiet, as were most of their forwards. They only had one player kick multiple goals, we had two get three each, but fat lot of good that did us.
Until Houston set this up I forgot he was playing for Collingwood. Remember when he was linked to us last year, before doing the old Homer Simpson style disappear backwards into a hedge when we started to die in the arse on and off-field? If you believe there's any life in this team, and I did at the start of the year, Houston would have probably been a handy player for us, but god knows what it would've cost us so even if Lindsay and Langford didn't do much here it's probably better to have both of them than three or four years of this guy regretting his life decisions as we sink like a stone.
What a sport this is, change a couple of things at the end of the game and this post would be full of glee, now I'm ready to pull the shutters down and issue an unconditional surrender. There was some hope when Tholstrup and his extreme static electricity hair won a free 50m out and became our first player to convert a set shot from further than the top of the goal square in about two combined hours of play. I enjoyed his big celebration, and a pretty good performance considering he didn't come in off the back of any blockbuster VFL form. Can we just keep playing him now? He won't get dropped after this, but I'll blow up if his trajectory over the next few weeks is ordinary game > one quarter as a sub > Casey Fields.
Down the other end the era of umpires just making shit up began when Howes was held in a marking contest but penalised because he wasn't the player facing goal. We got away with it when Gawn cannoned towards the line to touch it through 1mm, after Bobby Hill had already shhhed the crowd. It didn't work for him here, but I'm all for this new trend of taking the piss out of the crowd and your opponents. For one, the more ill-feeling and villainry in this game the better, but most importantly a player is eventually going to make an absolute dick of themselves in a way that will be seen on more replays than Helen D'Amico's norgs. It almost happened the other night when Jack Ginnivan held the ball aloft on his way into goal then nearly kicked it at right angles from a metre out.
Unless you were selling ads on Channel 7, or a Collingwood fan expecting yet another easy win in this fixture, the first quarter was a big success. We didn't look capable of kicking a winning score or sludging the game up enough to win with a shit score, but I was content with staying in it as long as possible and hoping for something unusual to happen. Like the mad Pickett goal where he fumbled the ball forward while trying to gather, then lashed a boot out and the ball kindly bounced along the correct path.
In lieu of expertly crafted goals I was prepared to take them plucked from the arse in this fashion, but after we'd dominated the centre bounces all day this was reversed a few seconds later when Scott Pendlebury romped through the middle unchallenged in his 414th game. See also former Name of the Year winner Steele Sidebottom, a youngster in comparison after just 343 games. They've been teammates 315 times, while we've only had two players reach 300 games since 1897, and both were dragged over the line half dead.
If you can get over your animosity towards Collingwood for being a big club and having fans who think they're god's chosen people simply for choosing to follow the biggest team around, they've got a lot of admirable qualities. It probably helps to have more money than the Reserve Bank, decent training facilities, and more good father son players produced by a single man's plums than we've had in total after Ron Barassi, but that's their good fortune. It'll still be funny if all the old players simultaneously expire halfway through the last quarter of the Grand Final though.
Petty nearly countered their counter but treated his set shot in the traditional manner. Now that Turner is re-establishing himself as a shit hot defender I don't suppose we're ever going see him forward again any time soon, so I guess we're just going with Petty as a forward for the rest of the year. He's been a lot better at it than last year, but this is another case where parachuting one genuinely good full forward into our side would make a world of difference. I don't want to rely on Petty kicking goals, but he is very good up the ground so find me the big bastard he can play off inside 50 and aim at from outside then he can be a forward forever. If he kicks 20 goals a year but it helps set the table for somebody else to kick 60, and for Fritsch, Pickett etc... to get into more space then job done. The problem is now we've got several players who might kick 20 each, but none often enough to make us better than a mid-table side.
So there we were pounding away at the forward line for no reward, before Lindsay became the latest Melbourne player to try and fail to escape the mark and reach 'outside five' status, leaving him dancing around like Nigel Smart on hot coals while the umpire was telling him to stand. Cue 50, goal, and some reasonably brutal feedback from morale coordinator Steven May. It's not just because we keep breaking it, but the stand rule became an even bigger farce with the outside five loophole. Umpires often judge a kick hasn't gone far enough when it's barely left the boot, do we trust them to accurately judge distance here? Either make the player stand and bad luck if they get run around, or go back to letting them do star jumps on the mark and I bet nobody spots a drop in the quality of the game.
After Pickett embraced his status as the only player we've got who can pluck a goal from thin air, we nearly got to half time just two points down. That was until a stupid fumble in the final seconds cost us a goal, but this wouldn't have happened if an umpire hadn't invented a reason to pay a free against Melksham at the other end after he was violently mounted in a contest. This was rubbish, but unless the shitbox umpiring comes deep in the last quarter of a thriller it can still be overcome. You can't confidently say we'd have scored even if Melksham got the free, so the reality was we'd just kicked 4.6 in a half, and how are you going to win consistently doing that?
The sense that our resistance was about to go tits up was helped by conceding a goal right at the start of the third quarter, especially when it was laid out perfectly for a leading forward. It's offensive how badly we've necked ourselves with a substandard attack. It's alleged that Petracca was rotating through the forward line but not for any great benefit. I suppose we should just be happy that he didn't end up in intensive care this year, but this was a game crying out for somebody to single-handedly change everything like he did against Carlton last year. This time with the added benefit of not starting the comeback from seven goals down. He was otherwise perfectly fine, but like almost everyone who's ever kicked goals for us, his attacking life force has been sucked out at industrial vacuum strength. What about when Langford did better contested marks against Hawthorn than our actual forwards, any chance of throwing him down there just in case it makes a difference?
In a taste of things to come, the next goal started with Gawn trying too hard to be the saviour by blowing a risky kick into the middle of the ground. If anyone has the right to make a couple of shit decisions it's the guy who is still several hundred karma points to the good after a decade of saving us from dire situations. I can somewhat understand a teammate not being happy in the heat in the moment, but for those of us who have been watching and enjoying him all this time, just zip up and accept that not everything goes right all the time. How about getting to the point where we don't rely on him to pop up in random places taking saving marks?
We weren't going to sludge our way out of a 20 point deficit, but this is where it got interesting for a bit. Melksham got a goal from the next bounce but even if he missed his next chance, Melk did all the work to create the space for Fritsch, who got a bonus 50 that made sure of the goal. Tholstrup showed a level of joy at his opponent's misfortune which suggests he'll be a key generator of niggle in the future.
That goal lasted a couple of minutes before Lindsay had a tackle unfortunately slip down to the point where it looked like he was trying to apply a Kurt Angle style anklelock. No arguments over that free (though it's a bit harsh that he got fined for tripping, it may have ended in a trip but it's not like he stuck a hand out to grab somebody running past), but when we got one at the other end there was no more Melbourne outcome than Petty missing from right in front. Surprisingly he opted to aim it between the middle posts (not by much), and christ on a pedal powered conveyance the margin was back to seven points at the last change. In the dying seconds there was more commentary gold when Mark Howard said a player "looks at the cock". Combine that with Dwayne's earlier blunder and forget calling games from the studio, I think they were doing it from the Ram Lounge.
If, like me, you were patiently waiting for us to blow the game by wasting a bunch of inside 50s, you'd have enjoyed Petty kicking OOF, getting a free for a push in the process, then putting that OOF as well. Oof indeed. It was a rotten angle that I wouldn't expect him to convert from, but that's the kind of unexpected goal that we don't get enough of. Like, for instance, Fritsch booting the next one from a crazy angle on the boundary line.
We continued the party by getting first hands on the ball at the next bounce, but when Pickett was caught holding the ball he gave away a stupid 50 for putting the ball on the ground and Fritsch's goal was rendered irrelevant. This was Fritsch's best quarter of the season but he had a big cock-up in the same fashion as Pickett against Sydney, marking at point blank range and trying to play on without realising that there was an opposition player standing right to him. It tied the scores but what a massive waste. He did set up the next one, but Pickett's finish and the sheer good luck of a forward handball bouncing perfectly for him gets more credit.
Just when people were already ready to do a Fitzroy fans and graffiti AFL House in protest about umpiring, there was a karma disaster for Langdon when his fingernail down the back of Daicos caused Nick to fling forward like he'd be shot from a cannon. Sure he'd gotten away with about 100 crimes before this, but it was the undercard to the 'Wrong place, Wrong time' main event which broke out a couple of minutes later.
Tholstrup had another kick to put us in front, and thanks to some idiot directly zooming in excessively it looked like it was going right through the middle until the last second when you realised it was just falling short. That cut the gap to a point and the Pies started winding the clock down with two minutes left, which is usually way too early to try and protect a lead like that, but not a bad idea when the opposition leaves free players everywhere and you can casually boot the ball back and forth and waste time. We finally had a go at manning up and won a stoppage, but blew our load x2 going forward, including Oliver kicking out on the full when he might have been setting up a chance to at least pinch a draw.
And that was the end of us, as more time was drained via training drill kicks before they tried to land the killer blow with one final forward entry. Bit risky in theory, but what are the chances that even if they'd kicked a point we'd have been able to go coast-to-coast and kick a goal on demand? Instead they landed it in the hands of Gawn with 45 seconds left, which under normal circumstances might have opened them up to a lightning counter-attack but without looking at behind the goal footage I'm sure that a wall of Collingwood players were set up in the middle of the ground and we'd have needed everything to go right and/or the ball to miraculously bounce out the back of a pack and in our favour.
We'll never know because he was called to play on, and had to force the kick due to the close proximity of a defender, causing it to shank horrendously sideways and into the arms of a player on his own 40 metres out for game over. Sensibly, instead of having the shot they dinked it around until time ran out, adding psychological weight to the result by keeping the margin at one point.
I don't blame him for trying something that came off badly, but it was still a notorious way for a game to end. But if that wasn't weird enough, the aftermath featured Turner trying to console his captain before May made a surprise appearance and said something that provoked the usually umflappable and gimmick loving Gawn to shove him away in disgust and say words to the effect of "get fucked".
Given that this is the same guy who told Max "it doesn't matter what happens, I still love you" before that kick in Geelong, I was hoping he'd just vigorously tried to reassure Gawn of his legend status and it wasn't what Max wanted to hear at the time. From the "I'm thinking about killing somebody" tone of Gawn's post-match interview, this was sadly not the case.
I've got sympathy for May finally snapping after playing yet another great game then standing at the other end while the forwards lose it by playing like escaped mental patients, but this could be the most misplaced spray at a teammate in history. Gawn's kick was a dud and everyone knows it, but considering how many times he's saved us over the years, May's reaction was like kicking Nelson Mandela in the dick on national television.
There's always somebody who wants to be contrary but not many people will side with him in this debate. And for all the people carrying on like he'd practically spat in Gawn's face, May would know he stuffed up badly here. He's the Kysaiah Pickett of human emotions, if you love the benefits of him playing with raging White Line Fever you've got to accept it'll go wrong sometimes.
I'm sure they'll get over it - and it'll be a good story for the Gawn biography - but Max looked like he wanted to kill on the way off the ground and in the rooms. How much of it was embarrasment at the clanger vs trying not to deck May in French restaurant style we'll never know, but the post-match chat would've been spicy.
This was an all-time great PR disaster but he's still the best Melbourne defender I've ever seen and played a Grand Final with his hamstring hanging on by a thread so apologies for not joining the lynch mob. Other than Pies fans and journos who were handed days of free content, the only people who got anything out of this was the players whose blown chances at the other end were instantly forgotten in all the chaos.
And that's enough of that. As usual we did 80% right and the other 20% was fatal. In the end the only big upset for the day was that instead of being kept awake all night thinking about how we cocked this game up I had my best unmedicated night's sleep in about eight months. Like a lot of things involving Melbourne it makes no sense but go with it.
2025 Allen Jakovich Medal votes
5 - Steven May (there will be no penalty points for making a kent of himself at the end)
4 - Max Gawn
3 - Daniel Turner
2 - Clayton Oliver
1 - Ed Langdon
Apologies to Bowey, Fritsch, Petracca, Pickett, and Salem.
Leaderboard
The gap at the top is now 4x BOG with 10 games left so fat chance anyone's catching Gawn from here. He's also the only player currently qualified for the Stynes so you wouldn't think somebody's going to score 40 and average more than 10 hitouts a game. No change in the other awards, but May and Turner (deemed still eligible by the selection committee) are both closing on Bowey in the Seecamp.
39 - Max Gawn (PROVISIONAL WINNER: Jim Stynes Medal for Ruckman of the Year)
19 - Kysaiah Pickett
17 - Jake Bowey (LEADER: Marcus Seecamp Medal for Defender of the Year), Christian Petracca
15 - Clayton Oliver
10 - Harvey Langford (LEADER: Rising Star Award), Jake Melksham
9 - Kade Chandler, Ed Langdon
8 - Steven May, Daniel Turner
7 - Xavier Lindsay, Tom McDonald
6 - Jack Viney
4 - Tom Sparrow
3 - Christian Salem
2 - Jake Lever, Harrison Petty
1 - Trent Rivers, Harry Sharp
Aaron Davey Medal for Goal of the Year
I liked the Fritsch one from the boundary, and it may have been in the mix for the top award if the game had ended differently. It shouldn't matter whether the goal was kicked in a win or not, but in this case I can't possibly elevate it about Chandler against West Coast.
Until now I thought we had the bye, but turns out we're playing Port on Sunday. So instead it's bye to any leftover good feelings from our revival if we lose to the only team in the league nearly as flaky as us. With two unpredictable teams this could go anywhere, but the question is whether this near miss is taken as 'near enough is good enough', or if they try something different.
OUT: van Rooyen, Windsor (omit), Lindsay (to sub)
LUCKY: Nil
UNLUCKY: Billings, Jefferson, Sharp, McDonald.
Final thoughts
In case my family reads these posts after I cark it, thanks to the four-year-old kid who had NFI what was going on and started cheering me up with random gimmicks within minutes of the final siren. This was a shit result and I hated it, but I'm officially too past it and broken down to tip the couch over in despair. This, I think, is a good thing.
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