Alive and Kicking

So - you thought we were dead didn't you? LIES! You're probably reading this in February. Alas that wasn't the case as just days after the Grand Final I skipped the country to Britain to watch football (Association variety) there instead.

So I found out we'd traded for Byron Pickett via an SMS message that woke me up at 3.30am. Top choice - he might be a dirty thug but he's a thug with our jumper on so he's ace. We haven't had a real ultimate hard hitting bastard since Grinter.

In other news - Guy Rigoni retires, and Luke Williams hasn't been delisted yet for god knows what reason. Back on draft day.

Bye!

With Carlton and Collingwood having the first few picks of the Pre-Season Draft we're not going to get anything for him, but is the Yze era over? More afterwards,

TALKS on a new contract for Melbourne's Adem Yze have broken down with the vice-captain likely to be searching for a new club for next year.

If negotiations can't be resolved on a new three-year deal to stay at Melbourne it is likely the out-of-contract Demon could be traded to another club, or even nominate for the pre-season draft and be lost to Melbourne for nothing.

Talks faltered after the club withdrew a mid-season agreement of a new three-year deal worth more than a million dollars and made a post-season offer on vastly reduced terms.

It is understood Yze's management had a new three-year agreement on the table but, when Melbourne fell into its seven-game losing streak, the club's board intervened and froze all contract negotiations until the end of season. At season's end, when contract talks resumed, the terms of the offer had changed, infuriating Yze and his management.

The midfielder, who turns 28 today, would be 30 in the third year of a new contract.

I know he's been playing crippled, I know he turned it on and wrecked a couple of rubbish sides during the year, and I know he's got a couple of years left in him but I don't find myself particuarly devestated upon reading this news. If we got a top 10 pick in the draft for him I'd be overjoyed - it's about time we made a statement to our playing list that we're not going to pay ridiculous amounts of money for players to run around, get cheap kicks and do a grand total of 0 hard things for the game. If somebody else is willing to pay him a fortune then good for them.

And thankfully the fact that he's out of contract should stop any of this idiotic membership burning, rioting against Daniher, whinging like little girls that went on after the Woewodin trade. Despite what everyone had to say, and the river of tears that flowed from people who had never had any more involvement in football than scratching their balls in the Southern Stand for 22 weeks a year, the football department were proved right on that one. I trust them to know when a player is on the way out.

If he wants to stay then good for him. I would have questioned this move six months ago, but if my final memory of him in a Melbourne jumper is going to be turning the ball over against Essendon and then just turning around and jogging off while it's bouncing around the turf five metres away from him then so be it. The least players can do is wait until we've won something to start demanding a huge wedge of cash. I'd rather flog off all our "superstars" and rebuild then pay the top 5 an absolute fortune for doing fuck all.

Wild Speculation Corner

We're still alive! Even if the season is over and nobody is reading this site anymore. When you log back on in November tell me whether this happened or not,

Carlton is believed to have sounded out Melbourne regarding its interest in Fevola, but the Blues received a lukewarm response.

However, the Demons have declared they would love the prized signature of Fevola's teammate Lance Whitnall.

The 26-year-old is unhappy with a new contract offer on the table at Optus Oval worth about $300,000 a season.

Whitnall's manager Ricky Nixon said yesterday the offer wasn't satisfactory and that West Coast, Melbourne and one other club involved in the finals had shown serious interest.

Demons recruiting manager Craig Cameron said last night the club was ready to pounce if Whitnall walked out on the Blues.

"We are certainly very interested and we'd be a better team with him in it," Cameron said.

"He has a great football brain and if he falls out with Carlton we are here."

Good thing they didn't persist with the Fevola angle. That would be the only thing worse than throwing a fortune at the poor man's Russell Robertson that is Chris Tarrant. I know we need a replacement for Neitz in the next couple of years but an overpayed clown with pineapple hair and a bad attitude is not the person.

The Big Fat Ugly Kid - on the other hand - I will take with open arms. Again provided he's not being paid too much.

Thank god for that

Well we lost, a little more viciously than predicted but when shaky (at best) form comes together with a black death style plague of injuries on the day you're rooted. You'll have to go somewhere else for wild analysis, I was huddled next to a radio listening to the season collapse while Sam Newman made a dick of himself and reminded me exactly why I hate listening to football. There was at least one world class "call the lawyers" exchange between Newman and Brian Taylor after a controversial umpiring call,

Newman: THIS IS THE MOST CORRUPT BODY IN WORLD SPORTS!
Taylor: Erm, of course he's talking about Triple M football!

Then he just walked off during quarter time and didn't come back. Wouldn't you love to get paid for doing that? Most overrated media "personality" in Australia bar none. No idea if he came back, when we were getting smacked at 1/2 time I pulled the pin, concentrated on work and switched to watching us go rapidly backwards via the AFL.com.au coverage.

Votes
I just shamelessly pinched votes from all over the place, put them together and came up with the following,

5 - Brent Moloney
4 - Russell Robertson
3 - Nathan Carroll
2 - Nathan Brown
1 - Ryan Ferguson

Demonblog.com Player of the Year FINAL VOTES

38 - Travis Johnstone
37 - Russell Robertson
26 - Brent Moloney
23 - Brad Green
18 - Adem Yze
17 - Cameron Bruce
12 - Jeff White
10 - Colin Sylvia, Nathan Carroll, Nathan Brown, Ryan Ferguson
9 - Brock McLean, Aaron Davey
6 - Clint Bizzell, Shannon Motlop
5 - Jared Rivers, David Neitz, Daniel Bell
4 - Alistair Nicholson, Daniel Ward, Phil Read
3 - James McDonald, Brad Miller, Paul Wheatley
2 - Matthew Whelan, Guy Rigoni
1 - Ben Holland

Congratulations Travis on winning the most prestigious prize in football journalism - The Demonblog.com Allen Jakovich Medal. Sadly the AFL nicked our medal and rebranded it the "Brownlow" and are going to give it to Ben Cousins instead so there's no prize. A big hand also to Russell Robertson for winning the "Judges Award" for the person we thought should win but couldn't quite rig the votes enough to get up, and Colin Sylvia for taking home the "Craig Smoker Rising Star" for 2005.

In the "tying up loose ends corner" congratulations to Mel who won our inaugural competition by sending in pictures of her posing with Duncan O'Toole (!) and BOTH Cockatoo-Collins brothers. Your prize is on the way.

Never fear, Demonblog is not finished for this year yet! It will comprehensively die in the arse at the start of next month as I skip the country to follow the third sexiest sporting team in the world, but until then we'll be firing out season in review features, great moments in history and wild trade speculation. Judd for Luke Williams? YOU HEARD IT HERE FIRST. If you've anything to say on anything football related send it in and (as long as it conforms to our strict anti-defamation laws) we'll print it.

Slop Saturday

I think the Kardinia Park scoreboard said it best a couple of weeks back,



We hardly deserve to be considered amongst the best sides in the nation, but what about a round of applause for whoever decided on putting half the league into the finals. We regain Bruce and Miller - who will apparently both play after passing fitness tests, and Neitz is almost certain to start and get his now customary ten minutes of game time before his body explodes.

And now the bombshell. I'm not going. As far as I'm concerned the season ended for me when we had to fall over the line against the slop Essendon outfit last week - that was final proof (as if the seven losses in a row wasn't enough) that we don't deserve to be there. If I had the day off work then I'd be there, despite my misgivings, but a rubbish final between two rubbish teams is not worth giving up a fat wad of money for. I've spent enough dollars on the side this season, including taking the worst holiday EVER to Queensland, so I've done enough. Maybe if we win and end up having to go to Sydney I'll pull the wallet out once again and make the trip but until then I will remain firmly unconvinced. Let's get started on '06 already and get it right this time.

For those of you who are going - i.e everyone but me - write a review and hand out the votes and I'll post them all.

The Demonblog.com "AWOL" verdict: Cats by 8

P.S - Any "oh but it's the finals! What sort of supporter are you! comments will be printed out and flushed down the toilet.

You go to hell and you die

And I thought the Big Footy forums were the internet's home of MFC related illiteracy, ignorance and all around stupidity. But thanks to reader Kazunary, who sent this link in I think we've just found a new champion.

A short summary of the discussion.

"GoDons!" - did allen jakovich die? ??/?
"Deesrule" - What the fark?
"iluvsteviearmstrong" - not that I know of
"godees3434" - go in to google and type his name and u will get the answer, sort off.
"demondude" - hu's allen jackovich is he related to jackovich from the eagles????

TAKE THE WORD DEMON OUT OF YOUR NAME! YOU'RE A DISGRACE! YOU MUST BE AT LEAST 10 YEARS OLD TO UTTER THE GREAT MAN'S NAME ON THE INTERNET. Even if you have no idea who he is.

Disgraceful that the new generation have no idea about the feats of this great man.

Apply Some Pressure

So that's another season over. Roll on the trade period, draft, pre-season and 2006! What? Hold on. You're saying we actually made the finals? We lost seven games in a row, beat Geelong by a point after they had the chance to win it after the siren, did the Bulldogs via a contentious free kick after being a million points down with ten minutes to go and fell over the line against the worst Essendon side in two decades and we're still the 7th best team in the country? This league is rooted!

We've done everything possible in our power to avoid it, but we've fallen into the 8. Let's be entirely frank and open and here and say we don't deserve it - we've spent the last two months losing to the best teams in the competition, and falling over the line against some duds. The good news is that anything can happen now - and should we, by some amazing stroke of luck, win the thing I will walk away and pretend this post never happened. The good (!?) news for now is that we've become Richmond and are going ape over falling into the finals despite being nowhere near a premiership quality side.

Yesterday was painful. There were 50000 people there, and it sounded as if a quarter of them were supporting us. Unless there were a lot of Melbourne fans sitting there in complete respectful silence (which is our usual tactic) I'm sure that we were completely outnumbered. And why? Because apparently every single Essendon fan had shown up just because they wanted to see us get beaten and miss the 8. All day people are standing there in full Bombers kit yelling "go Doggies!" and marking out every time they kicked a goal. Why? I'm not entirely sure. I could almost understand us doing it in the same situation, because we've suffered 40 years of failure and misery. We're incredibly joyless people. But they've seen twenty years of success, premierships and being at the pinnacle of the game and suddenly they're reduced to showing up and cheering on another team to beat us. I thought it was just Big Footy that had a Melbourne Complex but it appears that now entire clubs are suffering it. Idiots. I knew there was a reason that I've started to hate their club in the last couple of years.

The game itself. Well, that's nothing to write home about. Most of our side looked completely disinterested in the first quarter, and after kicking the first goal from a free-kick (and there was more of that to come) we copped the next four and tensions started to rise. Come half time, despite kicking six goals to three in the second quarter, we were looking at one of the most shambolic pre-finals exits in history. Thankfully the defence were saving our asses on most occasions - with Carroll and Wheatley (especially) and Nicholson (having his best game for years against anyone other than Matthew Richardson) marking everything that came their way and spoiling wildly. Lucky thing too, because the forward line was doing nothing with the delivery from the midfield. The "kick it towards Robertson" ploy reminded me a lot of our old "kick everything to Neitz" tactic that always lead to him kicking a goal in the first five minutes and then nothing getting another touch for a half. Luckily everyone else was lively, especially Aaron Davey who couldn't kick straight to save himself but was all over the ball and chasing like a madman. Most of our goals came from free kicks, which pleased the local Essendon yokels no end. They were claiming conspiracy so stridently that you'd think that they were playing for their own finals spot, not to put Footscray in as part of some bizarre North/West Melbourne alliance.

By three-quarter time we were three goals up and if it wasn't looking over it was certainly going that way. It looked as if we'd finally shaken Essendon off, and even their mutant fans in the pissed bogan standing section under the giant Steven Kernahan poster in the bottom of the Southern Stand, had finally started to calm down and realise that they follow a side that is, for the moment, complete rubbish. We kicked the first of the last quarter and against any team it would be party time - but for those of us who remember being 42pts up against them in 1991, kicking the first of the last quarter and still losing by a point we will never settle for such a lead. It was quite a traumatic experience that has scarred me ever since. Next thing you knew Daniel Bell had broken his ankle, we were five points in front and some guy called Angus Monfries who I'd quite legitimately never heard of before was kicking for his third goal. He missed and we were holding on, clearly having run out of legs. Adem Yze was clearly not interested, he couldn't even be bothered chasing. If he's injured and is only playing to try and crack the consecutive games record then everyone involved in that idea should be lined up at the MCG and shot.

And then, just as I had to consult some guy standing in front of me to make sure that a draw put us in the 8, Robbo picked up the ball and hoofed it at goal. "FUCKING GO FOR A POINT" I screamed, for no apparent reason, as it looked as if the thing was going to sail out of bounds and leave us clinging to a lead like a shipwreck survivor on a raft, when suddenly it took the greatest bounce in VFL/AFL history and turned into a goal instead. Exciting times. Until the siren went and I realised that truly all we had "achieved" this season was to finish lower than last year, and fall into the finals where we will presumably be crushed like Chinese dissidents.

We finished the day with Suicide Celebration Sunday, as the elite of MFC support came together to debate the afternoon, watch the replay, and use our toaster to bake bread rather than drop it in the bathtub. Lovely.

But we won. And that's all that matters I suppose. First consecutive finals since 1990/91. To be entirely honest I was more excited at seeing Carroll and Nicholson killing it in the backline than any suggestion that we're going to take the finals by storm. Bring on '06 and let's get it RIGHT next time.

Demonblog.com Player of the Year votes

5 - Travis Johnstone
4 - Nathan Carroll
3 - Shannon Motlop
2 - Nathan Brown
1 - Paul Wheatley

Minus votes to the AFL for scheduling our first final on Saturday afternoon so I can't go. Feel free to write a review. I would chuck a sickie if I hadn't completely lost interest in this season last week. This is, I'm aware, almost sacrilegious but bad luck - I've have enough. If we win this, and I'm sure Geelong will be out to wreck us after what happened a couple of weeks back, we're going to get hammered anyway.

Player of the Year Leaderboard

Travis takes a near unassailable lead into the (potential) final round. Farcical scenario as I think Robertson has been our key player this season, and I'd give him the award in a minute. Thankfully for Travis the world's most undemocratic award is heading his way despite being second best.

38 - Travis Johnstone
33 - Russell Robertson
23 - Brad Green
21 - Brent Moloney
18 - Adem Yze
17 - Cameron Bruce
12 - Jeff White
10 - Colin Sylvia
9 - Brock McLean, Aaron Davey, Ryan Ferguson
8 - Nathan Brown
7 - Nathan Carroll
6 - Clint Bizzell, Shannon Motlop
5 - Jared Rivers, David Neitz, Daniel Bell
4 - Alistair Nicholson, Daniel Ward, Phil Read
3 - James McDonald, Brad Miller, Paul Wheatley
2 - Matthew Whelan, Guy Rigoni
1 - Ben Holland