God knows why you'd want to read anything more about that debacle, but there will be a post of some sorts on here at some point on Tuesday - hopefully before close of business. No, it's not some sort of elaborate scam to get you to keep coming back so that I can get $0.0000001 cent in advertising revenue per visitor, I'm just half finished it as of 11.30 Monday night and the only thing that gives me more fear than a half finished post is waking up in the morning and having to go outside.
If you, like me, enjoy reading lengthy articles on Monday (or in this case Tuesday) morning as a substitute for doing any actual work at the start of the week may I direct you to this page which has enough reading material to ensure that you're sacked by the boss before midday.
Saturday, 11 June 2011
Saturday, 4 June 2011
Violent Mood Swings
Another week, another twist in my abusive relationship with Dean Bailey. After last week's fiasco where he went out to try and defend a nil-all draw, persisting with playing a forward structure that the Diamond Valley Under 12's wouldn't spit on - and a full forward who wouldn't get a game with them - I was firmly back in the "oh my god, what is he doing? What's Todd Viney doing next week?" camp.
It was a drastic overreaction, but the longer you read this page the more you'll be used to that. Fact of the matter remains that nothing is going to happen at this club without the personal stamp of approval by one James Stynes of Dublin, and he's not going to sack anybody halfway through the year no matter what the media says or how much we bleat online - and my god we bleat.
So having gone from SELL to HOLD after the Adelaide game and then back to SELL again last Friday night I'm shamefully backtracking into the HOLD camp again. We can bag out Essendon and Carlton fans for swapping from wanting to lynch coaches to loving them the next, and naturally there were more than a few lining up last night to start the potting process on Hird, but the way this team is playing I feel like that nutbag off Mad Money, running around changing my stock tips on a whim and throwing chairs around the room.
I'm right back to where I was after the Adelaide game - not sure about the long term future and wanting a few good weeks in a row to convince me that he'll be there next year, but watching the replay of the wild celebrations at the final siren made me shamefully backtrack that little bit more. That's exactly what I want in a coach, not just when he's had a shit week beaten from pillar to post by everyone including opposition players and his own supporters, but every week. He usually seems to be under heavy sedation, and reverted to type by the time the press conference rolled around, but the punching of the roof of the dugout was magic. Hands up who else was disappointed when they realised it was water flying off the top of the box and not glass/perspex shattering everywhere?
Thank god we finally got to see the Gawn/Howe show unleashed. Should have happened last week, and probably took Newton's injury to get them both in for the same game, but both impressed and had the rare feat (in the last four years at least) of playing in a win on debut. For #statmybitchup fans, The Stefan Martin Experience is the only other player to have done it since Bails took over, and there have been a lot of debutants in that time.
I did feel sorry for Newton though. To be entirely fair I don't want him in the team, and haven't wanted him on the list since early 2008, but you'd have to be sporting a solid rock, black heart to not at least feel a twinge of sadness for a guy who is in the team, playing to save his career and then suffers a six week mystery injury halfway through the season. Is now surely absolutely finished, and probably knows it very well. Don't know where all this compassion has suddenly come from. I blame Twitter, there would never have been any of this treating players as humans back in the glory days of Luke Williams and Scott Chisholm, but seeing people writing in to the guy with "sucked in, thank god you're injured" etc.. messages made me feel ever so slightly guilty. After all what is this page other than exactly the same thing without the abuse being neatly packaged and delivered to the player's desktop? Half of me says it serves them right for going on Twitter in the first place - especially when 96% of their posts are about the NBA anyway - but the other half wants a look at the sort of messages they're getting sent and the chance to commandeer the keyboard to write some filth back to the community.
Even though there was no way that the same sort of limp, defensive garbage as last week was going to be served up I still didn't think we could win. We did have a lot going for us, the Essendon bubble bursting against the Tigers, the shit record of teams coming off the bye (and don't we know about that) and the "are Melbourne soft?" media frenzy during the week. So there was absolutely no doubt that we were going to come out like a house of fire in the first quarter, especially with SCULLGOVE back in the side, but the big question was whether they could maintain it for four quarters - especially with five players out of 22 never having played in a win and two first gamers in key positions. Apparently it was our youngest team since 1982 and we went out with less total game experience than Gold Coast did this week. Neither fact improved my confidence about us pulling off a shock result.
You'd like to think there was no doubt about them improving their intensity anyway, but I suppose it could have gone the other way with the Bombers blowning us off the park with better intensity in the first quarter. Imagine the obscenity count in this post if that had happened?. But if there was ever any hope for these players, this coach and god help us all this club (in the short term at least) they were always going to come out and have a decent crack at it. Even if they'd done that and the Bombers had gradually pulled away late in the game we'd probably have copped it with a long list of asterixes, backhanded compliments and outright whinges.
So when Sylvia jumped high in the goalsquare from Evans' centre to kick the second goal in the 7th minute it could have gone either way. Nobody's getting sucked in by early form again after the capitulation against North, but at least what we were doing was being built on toughness - and thank god Brad Green was back in the forward line where he belongs. His mark and first goal was the perfect start to stick it up the peanuts who were hammering him last week. He's not getting any younger, he's not going to play in the midfield like he did a few years ago and the only reason he was spending time there was because Scullgove and McKenzie were all out of the side - they're back, he goes forward and Bailey decides to play with a normal forward line again. Result = magic, or at least as close to magic as you get with the MFC. Compare and contrast with the dysfunctional Bomber attack which could barely get near it despite winning the inside 50 count easily with Macdonald, Rivers and Frawley dominating them.
Despite that early dominance we were still giving them chances by the bucketload, and eventually on the strength of a stack of inside 50's they took the lead at quarter time. But as there have been so many times over the years, there were signs. How good was Watts' mark in the square? Perfect bodywork to get rid of his opponent, and even though he spent a fair amount of time playing in the middle of the ground and around the backline he was so much better at that than last week it wasn't funny. Confidence is high, I repeat confidence is high.
Still, I was convinced that we'd probably fired our best shot and would get rolled from there. With them kicking the first goal of the second in 18 seconds (and how often does that happen to us?) and Sylvia looking gone late in the first quarter before pulling the pin entirely soon after, it seemed even more obvious to me that they were going to run over the top of us. But what do I know?
By our recent standards losing Sylvia in the 2nd quarter with a corkie is positively generous. He says he'll be ready for Queen's Birthday, I say he'll somehow be 4-6 weeks by Wednesday if the last few weeks are anything to go by. And Bartram will be found at the bottom of some stairs on Monday morning, having mysteriously plummeted down them at some point over the weekend - extending his injury to 4-6 weeks. Then Nick Smith and Leigh Newton will be revealed as our fitness coaches.
We were still struggling to get it out of the centre, but it wasn't for want of trying. The SME has impressed me with his desperation all year, but how good was he when the ball hit the deck last night? He's no Jamar circa 2009-2011, but 11 contested possessions shits on most of what The Russian gave us from 2003 to when he was finally revealed as one of the great geniuses of the competition. Not to mention that Jamar's famous (by Demonblog standards) PB of 7 kicks in a match was doubled by the Experience. Anyone want Paul Johnson back now? To be honest I don't think anybody not in a mental hospital ever did.
My only sadness is that at some point Maximum Gawn is going to have to go back to the 2's so we don't end up in the same situation as the Bombers where we're trying to force three ruckmen into the side because they're all in form. Was absolutely thrilled with Maximum's debut too - he took a while to get into the game, which is no surprise considering how raw he is but once he did the kid was pretty bloody good. I'm scared of declaring somebody a certainty on the basis of one game, because he'll get a lot more attention next week, but he could be an absolute monster player in a couple of years and not just because he's a 9 foot tall giraffe. Either way has the makings of cult figure status bigger than the Jurrahcane, the Experience and Philthy Phil combined. He also racked up five kicks, and it took Jamar until Round 19, 2007 to do that, so by applying some made up logic a'la SEN talkback callers I'm going to make the outrageous claim that Maximum will be an absolute superstar of the competition by his 23rd birthday. Now watch him do bugger all for the next five years.
What I enjoyed with both Gawn and Howe (who was also super impressive) was their technique of dancing about on the mark, waving their arms in the air like they just didn't care. Reminded me a bit of The Spencil's ruck technique - and hasn't his two year contract saved him from a one way ticket back to Toowoomba now that we've gone from one ruckman to three and with Robert Campbell waiting in the wings as well? Could he end up back on the rookie list again next year? Will be unlikely to feature in the senior squad again unless there's another plague of injuries to talls halfway through next year or he puts on about 50kgs before his return.
They dominated us for the first five minutes of the second quarter, and it could have gone horribly wrong were it not for the dominance of the defence. I'd written off Joel Macdonald pre-season, and I still don't think he could get a game in front of Garland, but he's been immense over the last two weeks. A really good forward line might have put them under more pressure with better contests, but against the wonky Bombers forwards they were nearly unbeatable - and unlike last week where every time Warnock touched the ball the crowd groaned as one you could rest easy when they were kicking it. Even when they were switching the ball from one side of the ground to the other to try and set up the play there wasn't the usual tension that they were going to stuff it up. Even Strauss, whose inclusion I was most surprised by, managed to shrug off one howler OOF kick and getting pinged for holding the ball when Ryder tackled him on the cock to play a really good, composed game.
He wasn't alone. We've had bigger and better wins over the years, but when was the last time you saw us put in a performance where nobody had a bad game? The only person I wouldn't either fit into the votes or give some form of apology to from last night was Sylvia, and I'm sure he'd have carved the joint up if he'd stayed on the field.
It might have had something to do with their opponents not putting the slightest bit of pressure on them but Evans and Nicholson looked comfortably for 2nd/3rd gamers, and even guys like Jetta and Bennell who have spent half the season going in and out of the departure lounge were running around doing as they pleased.
I was also impressed by Morton. He didn't have a great first quarter, but from then on he started playing with more confidence than he has for a year and looked good in the process. I'm no longer expecting him to go out there and play like what I assume a #4 draft pick should, so what he did last night - resembling a fancier version of Daniel Ward - will do me for now. He was visibly a broken man last week, so I'm glad they kept him in instead of bouncing him back to the reserves every second week a'la Bate (who has clearly been given up on) and gave him the chance to get some confidence about him. Maybe they did bust out the sports psycholgist during the week? Maybe he did it off his own bat as a 2-for-1 deal with Mitch, but either way I'm thankful there was no need for Lifeline to be piped over the stadium speakers for either him or his fellow footy depressive Brent Stanton. Hopefully the ex-Sad Panda can build on it and really rip a game up sooner rather than later - if we're going to build from defence like that again he'll certainly get his chance to star.
Mind you, I don't blame him for losing confidence over the last few weeks. Playing in the teams that he has over the last four years would make anybody reach for the Zoloft. And don't worry, plenty of us have been there - I spent the majority of the 1999 season on weapons grade doses of the stuff, and as a consequence don't actually remember most of it or Year 12. Which is not such a bad thing considering how rubbish we were on field and I was off it. I wouldn't blame Morts for lining up with a script for bucket loads of the stuff after having played 12 wins in 55 games, and I feel like I should throw my support behind him and punt his career home but we've all seen how well that's gone for Emo Maric this year so I'll stay well clear.
Incidentally what was with the Bombers banner congratulating Stanton on "150 Loyal Games". Great way to make him feel wanted. Surely by the time you've hit 150 then you're entitled to be given "150 great games" even if the cheersquad don't actually believe it. Strange club - but what do you expect from people who hold a guy to a ridiculous standard just because he wears the same number as James Hird? To nobody's surprise the hypocrites celebrated as one when he kicked his goal. Hope he tells them to piss off, goes elsewhere and commits the rest of his career to wrecking Essendon every time he plays against them.
On a night where 21 men were equal some were more equal than others. Gysberts, McKenzie, Scully and Trengove did as much as the backline did to keep us in the game in the first quarter and a half. We might not have been winning out of the centre, and Moloney didn't really fire until the second half, but those four were superb. The Gizz was sublime in his best game yet, and could still win this year's Rising Star via a rare 2nd nomination, showing why even as much as I (and almost certainly nobody else) would take Brock back to sit on the rookie list next year, there's no doubt that the deal that got him to Melbourne is shaping up as the best trade since Troy Longmuir to Freo for the pick #19 which landed us Green. Time, and the ravages of taggers, will tell if he goes on with it but last night showed that he's got all the makings of a class player.
Trengove too has the making of MFC royalty. He bounced back from being absolutely rorted and forced to spend three weeks in the stands as if he'd never left, and not once did he shirk smashing somebody in a tackle just because he's got a record and could at any moment be outed for 12 weeks on the whim of the morons on the Match Review Panel.
Then there's Scully. Good god. If that's him on 65% of one game in the 2's this year then we must move heaven and earth to keep him at this club. For a club that is supposedly supported by rich businessmen galore why is nobody talking about doing some kind of filthy Vi$y/J**d style deal to close the financial gap with what GWS can offer? It's ugly, it's immoral and it should never have been allowed in the first place but we're not playing on a level field here, if the league are intent on doing everything they can to hand premierships to GC and GWS then let's get down into the sewer and do whatever we can within the rules to stop them. Look at the reaction he got from his teammates when he kicked his goal last night, that didn't look to me like somebody who is a dead certainty of going - so let's work on getting him the biggest deal possible with some outside help and lock him in.
The kid's not considering going up north to wear a hideous coloured uniform and have a pair of ranting crackpots as his senior coaches, he's considering it because they're offering him ridiculous money. We might not be able to match it, but if we can get him a fortune just to take bins out/do a few ads then it might get us a 250 game player and future champion. Either way, if he leaves now and we get some dinky pick 16 compensation selection for him then it's going to be the biggest heel move since Rowdy Roddy Piper smashed a coconut over Superfly Snuka's head in Piper's Pit.
McKenzie, on the other hand, is at absolute opposite end of the class scale from those three. I say that in the nicest way too, they've come from the top end of the draft with every possible chance and are playing silky football whereas Jordie took his chance, came off the rookie list and has been a tackling machine from day one. There's none better at it on our list and we were certainly worse for his absence in the first ten weeks of the season. You're never going to rely on him to get 30 kicks, and even if he gets ten then five of them might be clangers but at the drop of the ball there's hardly a fiercer competitor around. I'm prepared to turn a blind eye to the kicks because I love the way he goes about everything else he does, and I love the way that when he's interviewed he just sounds like a country kid who is just loving being there - no wonder Neil Craig tried to pinch him at the end of his first season. He couldn't be anything less like the two men who wore #13 before him, but he's going to be a great asset for the next few years.
Despite nobody on our side having anything approaching a howler in the first half we were still down at the long break and it looked like the two teams had agreed pre-match that Essendon were a four or five goal better team but that for the sake of Channel Seven and its nervy executives they'd drag it out for at least three quarters. Not that they were playing particularly well either mind you, but you just felt that the lack of experience - and most importantly the lack of winning experience - would count against us. Which is why what followed was such a shock. Turns out that as quickly as Hird managed to polish the turds that Knights left behind, they have managed to go back to their old selves.
By my count it's the second time we've managed to keep a team to one point in a quarter in the Bailey era, and just the fifth time we've kept one goalless. The others are;
0.1 - Q4, Round 3, 2010 vs Adelaide (we scored 2.4)
0.2 - Q3, Round 4, 2010 vs Richmond (7.4)
0.2 - Q4, Round 5, 2010 vs Brisbane (3.6)
0.5 - Q4, Round 20, 2008 vs West Coast (3.1)
Not quite as good as that third quarter against the Tiges, but even with their bubble bursting in epic fashion this year's Bombers are a hell of a lot better than last year's Richmond so it means much more. What it also means is that there's only two times in the last four years that we've really put another team to the sword in a quarter when the game was on the line.
Also shows that R3-R5 2010 don't get half the credit they deserve. Mainly because R3 was won on the back of Adelaide losing half their team, R5 was discredited when Brisbane turned out to be rubbish and when it came to R6 we were shit.
Even when we stuffed it up and allowed the Bombers to practically run into an open goal at the other end they stuffed it up thanks to Rivers storming back into defence to make a contest - and for once our forward line was absolutely smacking somebody. By the time it was over and we'd opened up a five goal lead it was scarcely believable. Even The Jurrahcane, so rightly lambasted last week for wandering around putting in a half arsed performance, was up the ground laying tackles and setting up goals. The only downside to it was Maximum missing both his shots at goal. There was worse to come for him on that front, but at the time we were just sitting there with mouths agape at how easily it was coming to us for once. It was even happening in the hated white monstrosity of a jumper which, even though it's better than the even more monstrous silver version, usually signifies that we're going to be thrashed.
Could it last? Well if previous debacles against the Bombers were anything to go by probably not. They were even nice enough to ask a question about The Chris Sullivan Line game in one of their mid-match trivia segments (hosted by that sellout who also MC's Carlton and North games) so that didn't help ease the tension.
Still, it takes an epic collapse to stuff up a five goal lead at three quarter time. Maybe the sort of collapse that a team who had spent the proverbial petrol tickets in the third, had two debutants, used their sub, featured a superstar coming off one reserves game and were fielding three other players that had never played in a win might suffer? Certainly looked that way after they kicked three goals in a row to cut the margin to under three with 12 minutes of game time left. We could have already finished it off too, which would have made it even more offensive to have thrown it away. Thank god then, as has not been said very often this year, for Brad Green who managed to hoof through that goal out of mid-air to steady the ship. Of course every commentator was moved to crap on about his soccer background (did you know he tried out for Manchester United? No? Well you've not listened to/watched a game on TV in the last decade) even though it was such a vicious mid-air roost that it would have flown out of Old Trafford and landed in Brussels. Was hit roughly as hard as this shot but fortunately not with the same hilarious consequences.
That pretty much did it. They went down the other end and flavour of the month Crameri finally kicked one after missing them all night to at least keep us nervy, but with the backline playing like they were we couldn't be beaten. Macdonald's big contested mark which ended in Watts pulling down a hanger on the half-back flank was the defensive sealer, and we deservedly went on to smash them from there and eventually win the quarter despite giving them the first three goals.
Luckily when Maximum took the massive pack mark over Fletcher and went back only to deliver one of the three worst set shots I can remember in modern times (The Spencil against North when he dropped the ball in the run-up and Holland from the square in the last game at Princes Park the only two keeping him off the top of the list) the game was already won, but it would have absolutely bought the house down if he'd put it through. Shame too because for somebody with a giraffe-like build his other four kicks for the night were pretty good. Was nice to see the Bombers fans flooding out of the ground when he took the mark too. Obviously the ones who left didn't remember the fiasco of us copping four goals in the last four minutes of Daniher's last game.
Despite the Gawn shank it was still the opening of the floodgates. The Jurrahcane did a classic pickpocket with his octopus arms and kicked the real sealer, before Bennell's nifty handball to Nifty Nev and Moloney's Tapscott style roost put an exclamation point on it. Siren, wild scenes, loved every second of it - except the ones where I thought we were going to get dicked.
Matthew Lloyd was having a sook on the radio about us celebrating the win too vigorously, but there's no surprises there considering he spent the whole night slurping up his old club's plums and vigorously making apologies for anything they did wrong. It's quite right to say that we shouldn't have to cop it from the entire football community in order to put in a tough performance, but to deny them the chance to enjoy it is just boring. Much like the diving master himself. The only reason I was listening to SEN was because Triple M had Luke Darcy (never again), the ABC is like listening to 1958 and 3AW's signal apparently doesn't reach the top deck of the Ponsford.
Walking home through Birrarung Marr the only thing better than the shellshocked looks on the faces of Essendon fans was the absolutely trashed businessman, shirt untucked and stumbling everywhere who was trying to walk the other way across the bridge. Poor bastard was tottering like a drunken sailor in a Tijuana whorehouse, clutching the railing for support and finding that the fans of a defeated sports team have absolutely zero interest in moving out of the way for a fat pisshead. Epic.
Tweet Like A Demon
Hey @demonblog, stick that up your arse by @deanbailey - 10.34pm, Friday 3 June 2011
2011 Allen Jakovich Medal Votes
In complete contrast to last week where there were ten very, very ordinary players who had to be squeezed into the five - undeserved - votes this week is a nine player cavalcade of superstars who might have gotten one. Your top five may vary, but never before have there been so many apologies given out on the same week.
5 - Jordan Gysberts
4 - Jordie McKenzie
3 - Jared Rivers
2 - Joel Macdonald
1 - Jack Trengove
Absurdly apologetic apologies in no particular order to Scully, Green, Frawley, Moloney and the Stefan Martin Experience. If there was any justice in the way these awards are handed out they'd be given a share of the votes awarded after last week's debacle. But there isn't. Everyone else except Sylvia gets lesser apologies.
Leaderboard
19 - Brent Moloney
18 - Colin Sylvia
16 - Mark Jamar (LEADER: Jim Stynes Medal for Ruckman of the Year)
10 - Jordan Gysberts, Jared Rivers (LEADER: Marcus Seecamp Medal for Defender of the Year)
9 - Stefan Martin
8 - Jack Watts, James Frawley
7 - Colin Garland
6 - Luke Tapscott (LEADER: Jeff Hilton Medal for Rookie of the Year)
5 - Jack Trengove, Rohan Bail, Joel Macdonald
4 - Michael Evans, Jordie McKenzie
3 - Jack Grimes, Liam Jurrah, Nathan Jones
2 - Ricky Petterd, Clint Bartram, Neville Jetta
1 - Brad Green
Crowd Watch
Seems like every time we play Essendon I'm the only MFC fan not to have gotten into a near brawl with a freak and last night the tradition continued. Can isolate a classic moment of tension and drama against every Victorian club, but can't for the life of me remember - without going through the archives - an incident with one of their fans in the last few years. Still, seems like once again the rest of the ground was a series of pitched battles while Q33 in the Ponsford Stand was an oasis of calm.
In fact I've had a cracker of a run this year with avoiding ordinary humans. Terrible news for those of you who love coming on here just to read about crowd watch antics, but definitely a bonus when trying to enjoy a game. Should come to a crashing half next week when the doors swing open on Queen's Birthday and thousands of black and white muppets are suddenly introduced to thousands of bandwagon once-a-year Demon fans who reinforce the stereotype of us all pip pipping and not knowing who half the players are. These people are going to have a nervous breakdown when they show up next week to find a 47, 49 and 50 in lineup.
What I did enjoy last night was Essendon showing the names of first year members on the scoreboard before the game, just because it gave us the chance to piss ourselves laughing at some of the abysmal names that people have inflicted on their poor children. At least I'm assuming that Kyly and Jesuha are little kids, because there's no way that the moment they hit high school they're not just going to call themselves Kylie and Joshua to avoid distress.
Contrary to what some members of the underclass thought when I posted this on Twitter before the game it's not a shot at Essendon fans in particular, god knows if I'd wanted to swing at them I wouldn't have had to look any further than the mulleted porkies sitting two rows in front. I blame society in general and fear that if you'd done the same thing for our 'new' members (i.e kids signed up without knowing it) there'd be as many heinous crimes against humanity. For god's sake if you must have kids then give them sensible names - and if you want them to have the best possible chance of playing for the Dees make sure it's something starting with J - preferably Jack.
People who only go to home games miss the ludicrous pre-match entertainment gimmicks that other clubs get up to. The trumpet makes me want to neck myself, and the less said about the flag raising debacle the better but contrast it with the farcical angles that other clubs are getting up to and you feel that little bit better. Essendon play an air raid siren before the theme song (yes, we know you're the Bombers very humorous) and then the Red Energy "Energy Meter" goes off like Thousand by Moby before the first bounce, generally scaring the shit out of the kids and/or people who grew up in war zones/the Western Suburbs.
In other news what was the guy who operates the scoreboard on last night? The following names were botched at various times - Arron Davey, Jarred Rivers, T. Coyler and T. Belchambers. You'd think that a basic knowledge of player names would be a basic requirement of the job, but obviously not. Happy to put my hand up and have a crack at the job if the MCG are keen, but I'm putting it out there that I will be chucking sickies if Melbourne are playing elsewhere at the same time and that I won't be turning up for cricket season.
Next Week
None of the above means squat if they don't do it for four quarters against the Pies next Monday week. I'm not expecting a win, and you can forget last year's QB when they handed us two points with absymal kicking for goal and the presence of Josh Fraser, but as long as we play with the same intensity as last night and give ourselves every possible chance then I'll be happy.
Suddenly games against Freo and Richmond which were iffy the way we played the last three weeks seem winnable again, and with Jamar potentially coming back in against a sans-Sandi Freo so much the better. I'll take 2-1 over those three games, but only if we lose the Pies. God forbid we find a way to win on Monday week we've got to win the lot and set the season up. Bulldogs come after that and they're probably going to be even more of a farce in a month than they are now.
Last night I was convinced that the players do want to play for the coach and that he can deliver the goods so let's consolidate and have a belated decent crack at this season shall we?
Final Thoughts
What did I miss? The whole bloody thing is a big old blur to me other than the last ten minutes which I got home in time to see on the replay.
It was a drastic overreaction, but the longer you read this page the more you'll be used to that. Fact of the matter remains that nothing is going to happen at this club without the personal stamp of approval by one James Stynes of Dublin, and he's not going to sack anybody halfway through the year no matter what the media says or how much we bleat online - and my god we bleat.
So having gone from SELL to HOLD after the Adelaide game and then back to SELL again last Friday night I'm shamefully backtracking into the HOLD camp again. We can bag out Essendon and Carlton fans for swapping from wanting to lynch coaches to loving them the next, and naturally there were more than a few lining up last night to start the potting process on Hird, but the way this team is playing I feel like that nutbag off Mad Money, running around changing my stock tips on a whim and throwing chairs around the room.
I'm right back to where I was after the Adelaide game - not sure about the long term future and wanting a few good weeks in a row to convince me that he'll be there next year, but watching the replay of the wild celebrations at the final siren made me shamefully backtrack that little bit more. That's exactly what I want in a coach, not just when he's had a shit week beaten from pillar to post by everyone including opposition players and his own supporters, but every week. He usually seems to be under heavy sedation, and reverted to type by the time the press conference rolled around, but the punching of the roof of the dugout was magic. Hands up who else was disappointed when they realised it was water flying off the top of the box and not glass/perspex shattering everywhere?
Thank god we finally got to see the Gawn/Howe show unleashed. Should have happened last week, and probably took Newton's injury to get them both in for the same game, but both impressed and had the rare feat (in the last four years at least) of playing in a win on debut. For #statmybitchup fans, The Stefan Martin Experience is the only other player to have done it since Bails took over, and there have been a lot of debutants in that time.
I did feel sorry for Newton though. To be entirely fair I don't want him in the team, and haven't wanted him on the list since early 2008, but you'd have to be sporting a solid rock, black heart to not at least feel a twinge of sadness for a guy who is in the team, playing to save his career and then suffers a six week mystery injury halfway through the season. Is now surely absolutely finished, and probably knows it very well. Don't know where all this compassion has suddenly come from. I blame Twitter, there would never have been any of this treating players as humans back in the glory days of Luke Williams and Scott Chisholm, but seeing people writing in to the guy with "sucked in, thank god you're injured" etc.. messages made me feel ever so slightly guilty. After all what is this page other than exactly the same thing without the abuse being neatly packaged and delivered to the player's desktop? Half of me says it serves them right for going on Twitter in the first place - especially when 96% of their posts are about the NBA anyway - but the other half wants a look at the sort of messages they're getting sent and the chance to commandeer the keyboard to write some filth back to the community.
Even though there was no way that the same sort of limp, defensive garbage as last week was going to be served up I still didn't think we could win. We did have a lot going for us, the Essendon bubble bursting against the Tigers, the shit record of teams coming off the bye (and don't we know about that) and the "are Melbourne soft?" media frenzy during the week. So there was absolutely no doubt that we were going to come out like a house of fire in the first quarter, especially with SCULLGOVE back in the side, but the big question was whether they could maintain it for four quarters - especially with five players out of 22 never having played in a win and two first gamers in key positions. Apparently it was our youngest team since 1982 and we went out with less total game experience than Gold Coast did this week. Neither fact improved my confidence about us pulling off a shock result.
You'd like to think there was no doubt about them improving their intensity anyway, but I suppose it could have gone the other way with the Bombers blowning us off the park with better intensity in the first quarter. Imagine the obscenity count in this post if that had happened?. But if there was ever any hope for these players, this coach and god help us all this club (in the short term at least) they were always going to come out and have a decent crack at it. Even if they'd done that and the Bombers had gradually pulled away late in the game we'd probably have copped it with a long list of asterixes, backhanded compliments and outright whinges.
So when Sylvia jumped high in the goalsquare from Evans' centre to kick the second goal in the 7th minute it could have gone either way. Nobody's getting sucked in by early form again after the capitulation against North, but at least what we were doing was being built on toughness - and thank god Brad Green was back in the forward line where he belongs. His mark and first goal was the perfect start to stick it up the peanuts who were hammering him last week. He's not getting any younger, he's not going to play in the midfield like he did a few years ago and the only reason he was spending time there was because Scullgove and McKenzie were all out of the side - they're back, he goes forward and Bailey decides to play with a normal forward line again. Result = magic, or at least as close to magic as you get with the MFC. Compare and contrast with the dysfunctional Bomber attack which could barely get near it despite winning the inside 50 count easily with Macdonald, Rivers and Frawley dominating them.
Despite that early dominance we were still giving them chances by the bucketload, and eventually on the strength of a stack of inside 50's they took the lead at quarter time. But as there have been so many times over the years, there were signs. How good was Watts' mark in the square? Perfect bodywork to get rid of his opponent, and even though he spent a fair amount of time playing in the middle of the ground and around the backline he was so much better at that than last week it wasn't funny. Confidence is high, I repeat confidence is high.
Still, I was convinced that we'd probably fired our best shot and would get rolled from there. With them kicking the first goal of the second in 18 seconds (and how often does that happen to us?) and Sylvia looking gone late in the first quarter before pulling the pin entirely soon after, it seemed even more obvious to me that they were going to run over the top of us. But what do I know?
By our recent standards losing Sylvia in the 2nd quarter with a corkie is positively generous. He says he'll be ready for Queen's Birthday, I say he'll somehow be 4-6 weeks by Wednesday if the last few weeks are anything to go by. And Bartram will be found at the bottom of some stairs on Monday morning, having mysteriously plummeted down them at some point over the weekend - extending his injury to 4-6 weeks. Then Nick Smith and Leigh Newton will be revealed as our fitness coaches.
We were still struggling to get it out of the centre, but it wasn't for want of trying. The SME has impressed me with his desperation all year, but how good was he when the ball hit the deck last night? He's no Jamar circa 2009-2011, but 11 contested possessions shits on most of what The Russian gave us from 2003 to when he was finally revealed as one of the great geniuses of the competition. Not to mention that Jamar's famous (by Demonblog standards) PB of 7 kicks in a match was doubled by the Experience. Anyone want Paul Johnson back now? To be honest I don't think anybody not in a mental hospital ever did.
My only sadness is that at some point Maximum Gawn is going to have to go back to the 2's so we don't end up in the same situation as the Bombers where we're trying to force three ruckmen into the side because they're all in form. Was absolutely thrilled with Maximum's debut too - he took a while to get into the game, which is no surprise considering how raw he is but once he did the kid was pretty bloody good. I'm scared of declaring somebody a certainty on the basis of one game, because he'll get a lot more attention next week, but he could be an absolute monster player in a couple of years and not just because he's a 9 foot tall giraffe. Either way has the makings of cult figure status bigger than the Jurrahcane, the Experience and Philthy Phil combined. He also racked up five kicks, and it took Jamar until Round 19, 2007 to do that, so by applying some made up logic a'la SEN talkback callers I'm going to make the outrageous claim that Maximum will be an absolute superstar of the competition by his 23rd birthday. Now watch him do bugger all for the next five years.
What I enjoyed with both Gawn and Howe (who was also super impressive) was their technique of dancing about on the mark, waving their arms in the air like they just didn't care. Reminded me a bit of The Spencil's ruck technique - and hasn't his two year contract saved him from a one way ticket back to Toowoomba now that we've gone from one ruckman to three and with Robert Campbell waiting in the wings as well? Could he end up back on the rookie list again next year? Will be unlikely to feature in the senior squad again unless there's another plague of injuries to talls halfway through next year or he puts on about 50kgs before his return.
They dominated us for the first five minutes of the second quarter, and it could have gone horribly wrong were it not for the dominance of the defence. I'd written off Joel Macdonald pre-season, and I still don't think he could get a game in front of Garland, but he's been immense over the last two weeks. A really good forward line might have put them under more pressure with better contests, but against the wonky Bombers forwards they were nearly unbeatable - and unlike last week where every time Warnock touched the ball the crowd groaned as one you could rest easy when they were kicking it. Even when they were switching the ball from one side of the ground to the other to try and set up the play there wasn't the usual tension that they were going to stuff it up. Even Strauss, whose inclusion I was most surprised by, managed to shrug off one howler OOF kick and getting pinged for holding the ball when Ryder tackled him on the cock to play a really good, composed game.
He wasn't alone. We've had bigger and better wins over the years, but when was the last time you saw us put in a performance where nobody had a bad game? The only person I wouldn't either fit into the votes or give some form of apology to from last night was Sylvia, and I'm sure he'd have carved the joint up if he'd stayed on the field.
It might have had something to do with their opponents not putting the slightest bit of pressure on them but Evans and Nicholson looked comfortably for 2nd/3rd gamers, and even guys like Jetta and Bennell who have spent half the season going in and out of the departure lounge were running around doing as they pleased.
I was also impressed by Morton. He didn't have a great first quarter, but from then on he started playing with more confidence than he has for a year and looked good in the process. I'm no longer expecting him to go out there and play like what I assume a #4 draft pick should, so what he did last night - resembling a fancier version of Daniel Ward - will do me for now. He was visibly a broken man last week, so I'm glad they kept him in instead of bouncing him back to the reserves every second week a'la Bate (who has clearly been given up on) and gave him the chance to get some confidence about him. Maybe they did bust out the sports psycholgist during the week? Maybe he did it off his own bat as a 2-for-1 deal with Mitch, but either way I'm thankful there was no need for Lifeline to be piped over the stadium speakers for either him or his fellow footy depressive Brent Stanton. Hopefully the ex-Sad Panda can build on it and really rip a game up sooner rather than later - if we're going to build from defence like that again he'll certainly get his chance to star.
Mind you, I don't blame him for losing confidence over the last few weeks. Playing in the teams that he has over the last four years would make anybody reach for the Zoloft. And don't worry, plenty of us have been there - I spent the majority of the 1999 season on weapons grade doses of the stuff, and as a consequence don't actually remember most of it or Year 12. Which is not such a bad thing considering how rubbish we were on field and I was off it. I wouldn't blame Morts for lining up with a script for bucket loads of the stuff after having played 12 wins in 55 games, and I feel like I should throw my support behind him and punt his career home but we've all seen how well that's gone for Emo Maric this year so I'll stay well clear.
Incidentally what was with the Bombers banner congratulating Stanton on "150 Loyal Games". Great way to make him feel wanted. Surely by the time you've hit 150 then you're entitled to be given "150 great games" even if the cheersquad don't actually believe it. Strange club - but what do you expect from people who hold a guy to a ridiculous standard just because he wears the same number as James Hird? To nobody's surprise the hypocrites celebrated as one when he kicked his goal. Hope he tells them to piss off, goes elsewhere and commits the rest of his career to wrecking Essendon every time he plays against them.
On a night where 21 men were equal some were more equal than others. Gysberts, McKenzie, Scully and Trengove did as much as the backline did to keep us in the game in the first quarter and a half. We might not have been winning out of the centre, and Moloney didn't really fire until the second half, but those four were superb. The Gizz was sublime in his best game yet, and could still win this year's Rising Star via a rare 2nd nomination, showing why even as much as I (and almost certainly nobody else) would take Brock back to sit on the rookie list next year, there's no doubt that the deal that got him to Melbourne is shaping up as the best trade since Troy Longmuir to Freo for the pick #19 which landed us Green. Time, and the ravages of taggers, will tell if he goes on with it but last night showed that he's got all the makings of a class player.
Trengove too has the making of MFC royalty. He bounced back from being absolutely rorted and forced to spend three weeks in the stands as if he'd never left, and not once did he shirk smashing somebody in a tackle just because he's got a record and could at any moment be outed for 12 weeks on the whim of the morons on the Match Review Panel.
Then there's Scully. Good god. If that's him on 65% of one game in the 2's this year then we must move heaven and earth to keep him at this club. For a club that is supposedly supported by rich businessmen galore why is nobody talking about doing some kind of filthy Vi$y/J**d style deal to close the financial gap with what GWS can offer? It's ugly, it's immoral and it should never have been allowed in the first place but we're not playing on a level field here, if the league are intent on doing everything they can to hand premierships to GC and GWS then let's get down into the sewer and do whatever we can within the rules to stop them. Look at the reaction he got from his teammates when he kicked his goal last night, that didn't look to me like somebody who is a dead certainty of going - so let's work on getting him the biggest deal possible with some outside help and lock him in.
The kid's not considering going up north to wear a hideous coloured uniform and have a pair of ranting crackpots as his senior coaches, he's considering it because they're offering him ridiculous money. We might not be able to match it, but if we can get him a fortune just to take bins out/do a few ads then it might get us a 250 game player and future champion. Either way, if he leaves now and we get some dinky pick 16 compensation selection for him then it's going to be the biggest heel move since Rowdy Roddy Piper smashed a coconut over Superfly Snuka's head in Piper's Pit.
McKenzie, on the other hand, is at absolute opposite end of the class scale from those three. I say that in the nicest way too, they've come from the top end of the draft with every possible chance and are playing silky football whereas Jordie took his chance, came off the rookie list and has been a tackling machine from day one. There's none better at it on our list and we were certainly worse for his absence in the first ten weeks of the season. You're never going to rely on him to get 30 kicks, and even if he gets ten then five of them might be clangers but at the drop of the ball there's hardly a fiercer competitor around. I'm prepared to turn a blind eye to the kicks because I love the way he goes about everything else he does, and I love the way that when he's interviewed he just sounds like a country kid who is just loving being there - no wonder Neil Craig tried to pinch him at the end of his first season. He couldn't be anything less like the two men who wore #13 before him, but he's going to be a great asset for the next few years.
Despite nobody on our side having anything approaching a howler in the first half we were still down at the long break and it looked like the two teams had agreed pre-match that Essendon were a four or five goal better team but that for the sake of Channel Seven and its nervy executives they'd drag it out for at least three quarters. Not that they were playing particularly well either mind you, but you just felt that the lack of experience - and most importantly the lack of winning experience - would count against us. Which is why what followed was such a shock. Turns out that as quickly as Hird managed to polish the turds that Knights left behind, they have managed to go back to their old selves.
By my count it's the second time we've managed to keep a team to one point in a quarter in the Bailey era, and just the fifth time we've kept one goalless. The others are;
0.1 - Q4, Round 3, 2010 vs Adelaide (we scored 2.4)
0.2 - Q3, Round 4, 2010 vs Richmond (7.4)
0.2 - Q4, Round 5, 2010 vs Brisbane (3.6)
0.5 - Q4, Round 20, 2008 vs West Coast (3.1)
Not quite as good as that third quarter against the Tiges, but even with their bubble bursting in epic fashion this year's Bombers are a hell of a lot better than last year's Richmond so it means much more. What it also means is that there's only two times in the last four years that we've really put another team to the sword in a quarter when the game was on the line.
Also shows that R3-R5 2010 don't get half the credit they deserve. Mainly because R3 was won on the back of Adelaide losing half their team, R5 was discredited when Brisbane turned out to be rubbish and when it came to R6 we were shit.
Even when we stuffed it up and allowed the Bombers to practically run into an open goal at the other end they stuffed it up thanks to Rivers storming back into defence to make a contest - and for once our forward line was absolutely smacking somebody. By the time it was over and we'd opened up a five goal lead it was scarcely believable. Even The Jurrahcane, so rightly lambasted last week for wandering around putting in a half arsed performance, was up the ground laying tackles and setting up goals. The only downside to it was Maximum missing both his shots at goal. There was worse to come for him on that front, but at the time we were just sitting there with mouths agape at how easily it was coming to us for once. It was even happening in the hated white monstrosity of a jumper which, even though it's better than the even more monstrous silver version, usually signifies that we're going to be thrashed.
Could it last? Well if previous debacles against the Bombers were anything to go by probably not. They were even nice enough to ask a question about The Chris Sullivan Line game in one of their mid-match trivia segments (hosted by that sellout who also MC's Carlton and North games) so that didn't help ease the tension.
Still, it takes an epic collapse to stuff up a five goal lead at three quarter time. Maybe the sort of collapse that a team who had spent the proverbial petrol tickets in the third, had two debutants, used their sub, featured a superstar coming off one reserves game and were fielding three other players that had never played in a win might suffer? Certainly looked that way after they kicked three goals in a row to cut the margin to under three with 12 minutes of game time left. We could have already finished it off too, which would have made it even more offensive to have thrown it away. Thank god then, as has not been said very often this year, for Brad Green who managed to hoof through that goal out of mid-air to steady the ship. Of course every commentator was moved to crap on about his soccer background (did you know he tried out for Manchester United? No? Well you've not listened to/watched a game on TV in the last decade) even though it was such a vicious mid-air roost that it would have flown out of Old Trafford and landed in Brussels. Was hit roughly as hard as this shot but fortunately not with the same hilarious consequences.
That pretty much did it. They went down the other end and flavour of the month Crameri finally kicked one after missing them all night to at least keep us nervy, but with the backline playing like they were we couldn't be beaten. Macdonald's big contested mark which ended in Watts pulling down a hanger on the half-back flank was the defensive sealer, and we deservedly went on to smash them from there and eventually win the quarter despite giving them the first three goals.
Luckily when Maximum took the massive pack mark over Fletcher and went back only to deliver one of the three worst set shots I can remember in modern times (The Spencil against North when he dropped the ball in the run-up and Holland from the square in the last game at Princes Park the only two keeping him off the top of the list) the game was already won, but it would have absolutely bought the house down if he'd put it through. Shame too because for somebody with a giraffe-like build his other four kicks for the night were pretty good. Was nice to see the Bombers fans flooding out of the ground when he took the mark too. Obviously the ones who left didn't remember the fiasco of us copping four goals in the last four minutes of Daniher's last game.
Despite the Gawn shank it was still the opening of the floodgates. The Jurrahcane did a classic pickpocket with his octopus arms and kicked the real sealer, before Bennell's nifty handball to Nifty Nev and Moloney's Tapscott style roost put an exclamation point on it. Siren, wild scenes, loved every second of it - except the ones where I thought we were going to get dicked.
Matthew Lloyd was having a sook on the radio about us celebrating the win too vigorously, but there's no surprises there considering he spent the whole night slurping up his old club's plums and vigorously making apologies for anything they did wrong. It's quite right to say that we shouldn't have to cop it from the entire football community in order to put in a tough performance, but to deny them the chance to enjoy it is just boring. Much like the diving master himself. The only reason I was listening to SEN was because Triple M had Luke Darcy (never again), the ABC is like listening to 1958 and 3AW's signal apparently doesn't reach the top deck of the Ponsford.
Walking home through Birrarung Marr the only thing better than the shellshocked looks on the faces of Essendon fans was the absolutely trashed businessman, shirt untucked and stumbling everywhere who was trying to walk the other way across the bridge. Poor bastard was tottering like a drunken sailor in a Tijuana whorehouse, clutching the railing for support and finding that the fans of a defeated sports team have absolutely zero interest in moving out of the way for a fat pisshead. Epic.
Tweet Like A Demon
Hey @demonblog, stick that up your arse by @deanbailey - 10.34pm, Friday 3 June 2011
2011 Allen Jakovich Medal Votes
In complete contrast to last week where there were ten very, very ordinary players who had to be squeezed into the five - undeserved - votes this week is a nine player cavalcade of superstars who might have gotten one. Your top five may vary, but never before have there been so many apologies given out on the same week.
5 - Jordan Gysberts
4 - Jordie McKenzie
3 - Jared Rivers
2 - Joel Macdonald
1 - Jack Trengove
Absurdly apologetic apologies in no particular order to Scully, Green, Frawley, Moloney and the Stefan Martin Experience. If there was any justice in the way these awards are handed out they'd be given a share of the votes awarded after last week's debacle. But there isn't. Everyone else except Sylvia gets lesser apologies.
Leaderboard
19 - Brent Moloney
18 - Colin Sylvia
16 - Mark Jamar (LEADER: Jim Stynes Medal for Ruckman of the Year)
10 - Jordan Gysberts, Jared Rivers (LEADER: Marcus Seecamp Medal for Defender of the Year)
9 - Stefan Martin
8 - Jack Watts, James Frawley
7 - Colin Garland
6 - Luke Tapscott (LEADER: Jeff Hilton Medal for Rookie of the Year)
5 - Jack Trengove, Rohan Bail, Joel Macdonald
4 - Michael Evans, Jordie McKenzie
3 - Jack Grimes, Liam Jurrah, Nathan Jones
2 - Ricky Petterd, Clint Bartram, Neville Jetta
1 - Brad Green
Crowd Watch
Seems like every time we play Essendon I'm the only MFC fan not to have gotten into a near brawl with a freak and last night the tradition continued. Can isolate a classic moment of tension and drama against every Victorian club, but can't for the life of me remember - without going through the archives - an incident with one of their fans in the last few years. Still, seems like once again the rest of the ground was a series of pitched battles while Q33 in the Ponsford Stand was an oasis of calm.
In fact I've had a cracker of a run this year with avoiding ordinary humans. Terrible news for those of you who love coming on here just to read about crowd watch antics, but definitely a bonus when trying to enjoy a game. Should come to a crashing half next week when the doors swing open on Queen's Birthday and thousands of black and white muppets are suddenly introduced to thousands of bandwagon once-a-year Demon fans who reinforce the stereotype of us all pip pipping and not knowing who half the players are. These people are going to have a nervous breakdown when they show up next week to find a 47, 49 and 50 in lineup.
What I did enjoy last night was Essendon showing the names of first year members on the scoreboard before the game, just because it gave us the chance to piss ourselves laughing at some of the abysmal names that people have inflicted on their poor children. At least I'm assuming that Kyly and Jesuha are little kids, because there's no way that the moment they hit high school they're not just going to call themselves Kylie and Joshua to avoid distress.
Contrary to what some members of the underclass thought when I posted this on Twitter before the game it's not a shot at Essendon fans in particular, god knows if I'd wanted to swing at them I wouldn't have had to look any further than the mulleted porkies sitting two rows in front. I blame society in general and fear that if you'd done the same thing for our 'new' members (i.e kids signed up without knowing it) there'd be as many heinous crimes against humanity. For god's sake if you must have kids then give them sensible names - and if you want them to have the best possible chance of playing for the Dees make sure it's something starting with J - preferably Jack.
People who only go to home games miss the ludicrous pre-match entertainment gimmicks that other clubs get up to. The trumpet makes me want to neck myself, and the less said about the flag raising debacle the better but contrast it with the farcical angles that other clubs are getting up to and you feel that little bit better. Essendon play an air raid siren before the theme song (yes, we know you're the Bombers very humorous) and then the Red Energy "Energy Meter" goes off like Thousand by Moby before the first bounce, generally scaring the shit out of the kids and/or people who grew up in war zones/the Western Suburbs.
In other news what was the guy who operates the scoreboard on last night? The following names were botched at various times - Arron Davey, Jarred Rivers, T. Coyler and T. Belchambers. You'd think that a basic knowledge of player names would be a basic requirement of the job, but obviously not. Happy to put my hand up and have a crack at the job if the MCG are keen, but I'm putting it out there that I will be chucking sickies if Melbourne are playing elsewhere at the same time and that I won't be turning up for cricket season.
Next Week
None of the above means squat if they don't do it for four quarters against the Pies next Monday week. I'm not expecting a win, and you can forget last year's QB when they handed us two points with absymal kicking for goal and the presence of Josh Fraser, but as long as we play with the same intensity as last night and give ourselves every possible chance then I'll be happy.
Suddenly games against Freo and Richmond which were iffy the way we played the last three weeks seem winnable again, and with Jamar potentially coming back in against a sans-Sandi Freo so much the better. I'll take 2-1 over those three games, but only if we lose the Pies. God forbid we find a way to win on Monday week we've got to win the lot and set the season up. Bulldogs come after that and they're probably going to be even more of a farce in a month than they are now.
Last night I was convinced that the players do want to play for the coach and that he can deliver the goods so let's consolidate and have a belated decent crack at this season shall we?
Final Thoughts
What did I miss? The whole bloody thing is a big old blur to me other than the last ten minutes which I got home in time to see on the replay.
Saturday, 28 May 2011
Zombie Nation
If you think we've got it bad spare a thought for the executives at Channel Seven. Friday Night Football rating its arse off is one of the great certainties of the Australian television industry. Men have built fortunes off the backs of bonuses for delivering big numbers following on from Better Homes and Gardens. Now these ponytailed spivs are left in the position of having to find some way, any way to make our second consecutive appearance on Friday night interesting enough to make anybody watch.
What I know for sure is that when the Melbourne Metro ratings started plummeting at about 9.15pm towards the levels usually enjoyed by shows involving Mick Molloy that at least one TV executive would have floated the idea of calling Andrew Demetriou and trying to use the "come on, we've paid a billion dollars for this" card to try and get us booted off next Friday night. It's hardly a week of blockbuster clashes but you can be absolutely sure that they'd prefer Collingwood/St Kilda, Geelong/Bulldogs or even god forbid Hawthorn/Freo in the 'showcase' timeslot than us coming out with a defensive mindset like Accrington Stanley trying to steal a nil-all draw in a cup game at Old Trafford. Just the sort of 'exciting' game style that people will be able to vote with their wallets and not turn up to watch next year when it's live on TV.
I couldn't tell whether it was a good omen or not when the toothless junkie bird on Southgate stopped me, slurred "yeah Demons yeah, we're gonna win yeah" and then stuck out a hand for a high five. I reluctantly obliged despite the obvious danger of catching a bloodborne disease. As the night wore on I started to wish she'd menaced me with a syringe instead. Does the fact that not only the dancing man of Kew Junction supports us, but that those who struggle to find a vein are starting to get on board mean that we're broadening our appeal to the community or that the whole place is about to go tits up?
After vowing never to make another First Goalkicker bet again after last week's Watts debacle I was sucked into it by them offering up Ricky Petterd at the generous, nay seemingly ludicrous odds of 41-1. Sure he was starting on the bench, but come on. I'm convinced that there's somebody from the TAB who reads this blog and sits there on a Monday thinking "now, how can I make this idiot part with another $20?". Because it's always $20. I never seem to have a tenner on hand and am too lazy/ashamed to queue up just to claim a tenner from the counter so some other ridiculous bet. So I threw the second half of the twenty on Maric in the hope that he'd get forward, throw one on the boot and bring the house down with one of his famous beaming smiles. Stupidity all round. If you see somebody in an SME jersey loitering around the Ponsford Stand basement TAB next Friday I implore you to crash tackle him to the ground. Hopefully it's me. Surely nobody else is supporting the Experience on their jumper.
Of course these antics in the TAB, including five minutes spent trying to teach an old man how to use the betting terminal only for him to find out you couldn't use coins in it (oh my god), caused me to miss the live Olivia Newton John concert. Which, as I'm not a housewife donning flashing red horns wasn't a big issue. From the footage I saw on the one screen downstairs that wasn't showing the Maitland greyhounds it looked pretty cringeworthy, but good on Jimmy for setting it up just so he could live his dream of sleazing up ONJ. Was hoping her missing husband who faked his own death might turn up wearing a green vest and reveal himself but it wasn't to be. Wouldn't be the last missing individual not to turn up on the night.
Contrary to popular belief, and what you read on here, I'm actually quite the optimist when it comes to football. We can all take a lesson from the interview with Robbie Flower on Fox Sports during the week where he said that every week he turned up at the ground thinking that he was a chance of playing in a winning side. He played in 88 wins from 272 games for a winning percentage of 32.35%. Ludicrously we have five players who have played more than 50 games and have worse winning percentages than this.
Even when I know deep down that we're no chance I've still got to try and find some sort of reason why we could possibly scab an undeserved victory, otherwise it would be hard for me to show up. Conversely when we're red hot favourites (thanks to Gold Coast for giving us the chance to have that feeling again) most of the week is spent finding ways for us to get done.
Even before the scurrilous rumors about J**d being out starting going around at 6pm (only to be quashed by the Blues at about 6.01) I'd tried to double our allegedly 'improved' performance last week into them missing their top ruckman and attempted to ignore the fact that our black death injury crisis had not only taken Tapscott (expected) and Davey (not surprising) but Bartram as well, the latest victim of a mysterious mid-week injury that nobody knew about until 5.01pm on Thursday. Realistically as long as J**d played we were always going to be in substantial trouble unless the midfield fired on all cylinders. They didn't, but they certainly weren't alone.
We were always on a hiding to nothing being forced to pick players who didn't warrant being there, but surely we'd all have rather lost by ten goals playing decent football than eight goals in a desperate attempt to minimise the damage? Starting Watts behind the ball was absolutely rude, and we got what we deserved with Juice being completely outclassed on his own up front with little or no support from Bate, Jurrah and Petterd - and Watts rewarding Bails with the sort of shit game is always going to play when they're being dragged dragged from one end.to the other on the whims of a coach desperately trying to plug gaps in a gameplan that nobody on the field seems to understand/care about.
It was all downhill the moment poor old Sad Panda Morton copped that free kick against him. We were already going for the world record of the most inside 50's without a score when he responded to a month of being slaughtered by all and sundry for having zero intensity by trying something physical, copping a free for it which directly led to the Blues first goal and then proceeding to play like a terrified 14-year-old schoolgirl for the rest of the night. Do we employ a sports psychologist at this club? If so can somebody please book Cale in for about three days of lying on the couch this week talking about his issues? He can't be depressed at being outshone by his brothers because they're both toilet as well, so what's the issue? For all the people wanting to ship him off to West Sydney good luck, because the last thing they need in a team that is going to spend its first two years being thrashed every second week is a mentally scarred kid who has spent four years wandering around the half-back flank slowly losing confidence until he's a wreck.
Up front nobody looked like they were any chance of scoring let alone kicking a goal. With Watts loose in defence, and playing quite well before taking a nasty turn for the worse in the second half and having about ten clangers in a row, it was left to Juice to be on the end of our traditional high bombs into the forward line. Never mind that pretty much the only time he ever looked half decent was against North when they kicked it to him so he could lead out to it, the ball was coming in high to marking contests and he was getting soundly and deservedly beaten in every single contest. Wasn't entirely happy about them not replacing him with Jeremy Howe, but if they were just going to kick it in like that anywhere then I'm glad that it's cannon fodder like Juice who got stooged instead of somebody who we're expecting to play a part in the future - as horrid a future as it may be.
Two goals down and our forward target de jour Juice takes a mark inside fifty and finally brings up a score. Of course he missed, and he would later disprove every theory I've ever had about how he might be a decent defender, but I'll you something about Newton. At least he has a crack. He's no good and everyone knows that he wouldn't be in the side if we didn't have a rash of injuries, and probably won't be in it for long but at least he's always having a go which is more than you can say for some players who are hundreds of times better footballers than him. If we're going to have to be slaughtered by injuries, shit coaching and shit drafting then at least we could have somebody with the slightest bit of desperation in him. Of course the reason that he's desperate is that he know that at any given time he's about five minutes away from working in Cranbourne Red Rooster next year but at least it's more than you can say for others.
If The Jurrahcane is 100% fit then I'm not here because he's going at about 50% pace at the moment. Flash back to the West Coast fiasco where he was so starved of opportunities by our rubbish tactics and the ineptitude of his teammates that he came up the ground, got his own ball and ended up leading our inside 50's. Then look at the last two weeks where he's barely moved other than when the ball is kicked straight to him or he's crumbed one of the pack. If he's not fit then don't play him, if he is then put him in the forward line and kick the fucking thing to him on a lead instead of over his head into a three-on-one pack.
Same goes for Green. He got plenty of touches in the middle of the ground last night but they were overwhelmingly ineffective or crap. Now that SCULLGOVE are poised to make their triumphant return to the tag team ranks next week it's surely time for Bailey to abandon the experiment of playing him in the middle of the ground and put him back where he kicked 55.27 last year. It's not like he'd be keeping Watts out of position considering that Jack has suddenly become a defender (oh joy), and Petterd has spent the last three weeks proving Bailey right for not picking him in the first place. Still, maybe if he was allowed to run onto a lead and all that..
Of course it won't happen for more than five minutes at a time, because apparently the people running this club seem to despise the idea of changing something when it's not going well (e.g Davey being tagged to buggery for four quarters, Morton only being allowed near the forward line against GC) so we'll just leave him in the centre until his confidence is completely destroyed and we're forced to put up with an entire season of retrospective punditry about how we should have made XYZ the captain. Some goose called SEN last night and first suggested Sylvia should have been made the #1 before calling Green a 'squib'. I almost stacked the car hearing that. I wish right now he had gone to Collingwood where he'd be a champ, instead of having to try and please the clowns that follow us. Rang up myself to issue a spirited defence of him, but after 25 minutes on hold totally forget to abuse the original caller. Missed opportunity.
Somehow despite our best efforts and getting smashed in the centre, where the Experience was winning the taps and not finding anybody other than J**d most of the time, we spent most of the first quarter in touch. Home viewers everywhere might have been flicking to see whether there was a far more interesting episode of Cops on another channel but we had given ourselves the slightest chance of nicking it if we could get our forward structure right and the backline held firm. Even with the Waite goal at the end of the quarter, and yet another of the world famous one goal Bailey Quarters we were only two goals behind. Might have helped if the mids could have given us anything but you can't have it all.
It all went horribly wrong from there, but we weren't being helped by some baffling free kicks. How about the Big Setant contributing to Warnock's horror night by leaping underneath him on the goal line and winning a free kick? Opened up a three goal lead and that was pretty much the end of us. Good on Rivers for telling the umpire he was a dickhead, for which a 50 was then paid. When the mark was already on the goal-line. Very effective. What happens if you kept giving away token fifties in that situation? Reported for time wasting? (even though the clock should have stopped) Free from the centre? Complete anarchy and the collapse of footy as we know it? Somebody's got to try it before the year is through. Where's our version of You Are The Ref?
Of course no umpiring rorts in the world could have contributed to the simple mark he dropped in the goalsquare. Had been ok the last couple of weeks but played an absolute howler last night. May as well have gone back to the tactics of Jordie McMahon Tank Day and played him at FF for all the benefit he or our actual FF were giving us.
But did we change anything after going three goals down? Of course not. The vain hope that we could somehow defend our way out of a 20 point lead and onto victory let us pretty much break even at two goals apiece in the second quarter they were always the better team, and as we blundered our way up and down the ground butchering chances galore it was left to, of all people, Michael J Newton, to thread a set shot from a difficult angle and keep us in it. And when that's your best forward option then give up. Or at least drag Petterd, Jurrah and Bate and ask "WHAT IN GOD'S NAME IS WRONG WITH YOU ALL, YOU'RE BEING MADE TO LOOK BAD BY JUICE!"
I couldn't help notice that at least one half of the pre-match shit bloke/ex-player theory was coming true and that the Chernobyl Child Mitch Robinson was doing as he liked in the midfield. Was obviously excited that Olivia did a concert in his honour beforehand, but it didn't mean our players had to avoid him like he was actually radioactive. Turncoat J**d you can understand getting off the leash, because for all of his personal faults he is actually a bloody good player BUT copping it from Robinson is a bitter pill. Olivia announced before the game that she had raised 45k for her foundation by singing about Mitch. That's nothing, J**d got 100k from Visy for getting up on Friday morning and putting the bins out.
The second half of the theory didn't go according to plan and Brock wasn't particularly good. Must have thought he was still playing for us and not a good team. Not sure why you'd boo him though, except as an excuse just to boo because you're hating life as a footy fan right now, because even though The Gizz had a shit night it's still the killer deal of the millenium for us. Right up there with Steve O'Dwyer for pick 3 and Troy Longmuir for the pick we got Green with in the history of great moments on the draft table.
He was no good, but at least he had a bash. I posted this on Twitter last night and people I'd never heard of came out of the woodwork to (wrongly) assume it meant I didn't want to trade him in the first place but I'd rather have had him in our side last night than Morton flapping about and Jones stuffing up everything he went near.
I had a sick fantasy about Brock during the week. He runs on off the bench to contest an early centre bounce, the Experience gets the tap down, J**d sharks it as usual only for Brock to block his path, knee him in the aggots, drop him with an uppercut, throw an elbow down as a tribute to the Macho Man and tear his light blue jumper off to reveal a shirt with the letters MFC on underneath. He then tearfully embraces The Gizz, walks off to the acclaim of the crowd once more and we go on to win by plenty.
In the extended version of the fantasy he walks to Bails (conveniently located back on the sidelines) and announces he's back in the MFC fold, to which Bails says "That's nice but I don't want you next year" and Brock says "never mind you won't be coach anyway" and (insert new coach here) signs him on a rookie list free where he spends the rest of his career as a Casey superstar, occassionally filling a gap in the seniors when everyone else is hurt. Well if Juice can take a spot on the list all these years....
From the moment the second half started and we copped a goal in the first minute it was going horribly in the wrong direction. It took Rivers roaming forward to provide a mark inside 50, the Blues continued their cavalcade of uncontested marks around the ground and Watts finally lost the plot after a month of good football and took off on his world record run of ineffective kicks. What pissed me off royally in the third was the amount of times we'd kick it to a three - or worse - on one situation, and then when the Blues won it back they'd kick to another three-on-one, for a grand total of six-on-two within the space of twenty seconds. That leaves four players wandering around aimlessly looking at seagulls a'la Geoff Hayward.
I hear Malthouse called Emo Maric a cheat for trying to rort the umpire into thinking he'd kicked a goal just before 3/4 time. Because I'm sure Mick has never, ever, EVER done anything deliberately outside the rules himself has he? Shit comments but the upside is everyone is going to be talkin' emo this week so it's a great time for Demonblog's own black prince to get some airtime. Because he did precious little else this week.
Nicholson, who replaced Warnock when they finally got jack of his shambolic performance, was good considering his limited game time, but Evans suffered the traditional second game let down when the opposition work out who he is and decide to put some time into him.
Looks like we attempted a belated go at the old forward press in the last quarter and it lasted about five minutes before Juice went for a howler of a kick across the ground to Frawley who cocked up the half volley from the rubbish pass and allowed the Blues to go straight down the other end and score. Then we all sat there and nearly died of boredom for the next twenty minutes.
Tweet like a Demon
"Disappointing result! Heaps to learn before next week. Can't wait for Friday night. Playing FIFA against Juice. Go Bulls. Parmas for lunch"
2011 Allen Jakovich Medal Votes
There have been more than few games over the years where it was hard to fill the votes, but I don't think I've ever been there for a more even spread of rank ordinary players. No apologies to be delivered because about 15 could have slunk unfairly into this top five..
I honestly almost gave Newton a vote just for having a crack despite an abject lack of AFL standard talent.
5 - Jared Rivers
4 - James Frawley
3 - Joel Macdonald
2 - Stefan Martin
1 - Colin Sylvia
Leaderboard
19 - Brent Moloney
18 - Colin Sylvia
16 - Mark Jamar (LEADER: Jim Stynes Medal for Ruckman of the Year)
9 - Stefan Martin
8 - Jack Watts, James Frawley ((LEADER: Marcus Seecamp Medal for Defender of the Year)
7 - Colin Garland, Jared Rivers
6 - Luke Tapscott (LEADER: Jeff Hilton Medal for Rookie of the Year)
5 - Rohan Bail, Jordan Gysberts
4 - Jack Trengove, Michael Evans
3 - Jack Grimes, Liam Jurrah, Nathan Jones, Joel Macdonald
2 - Ricky Petterd, Clint Bartram, Neville Jetta
1 - Brad Green
Crowd Watch
The only highlight of the evening was the Carlton fan being hassled out the door as I was coming in. "I've got a ticket" she screamed. "It's a child's ticket" said the MCG attendant. "IT DOESN'T MATTER!" she yelled going in the other direction. Odds on that she spent the entire first half trying to pull off the same scam at every ticket outlet in the ground.
How about the flames when the team ran out? Almost as bad as him on the trumpet and his velvet jacket. I was hoping at least Juice would fall in and make them worthwhile. I can't fault the club for trying to do something to get the kids in and distract us from the fact that the team is going nowhere but we're starting to do gimmicks that even American soccer teams would consider too kitsch, and they play at stadiums with names like Pizza Hut Park.
Shattered that the OPSM giant glasses gimmick seems to be a permanent fixture this year. It's a step up from junkies kicking for cash or the time we played up every stereotype by having fake snow outside the ground on Queen's Birthday, but bloody hell is it really worth downgrading your dignity in public on the off chance that some perverted cameraman will pick you out of the crowd (and how often is it young girls that they pick?) and win you a 'seat upgrade' for the last three quarters.
Even worse are the people who apply/wave around the promotional item in question even though the camera is clearly not showing any interest in their part of the ground. A grown man in front of me was going absolutely wild with the glasses despite it being abundantly clear that a) he wouldn't win for being male b) they always pick somebody in the front row and c) the cameras were focusing on the Southern Stand the whole time. Needless to say he didn't win the coveted 'seat upgrade'.
MCG Masterchef
Forget the floppy hot dogs in rock-solid, stone age bread that they sell inside the ground and your natural aversion to 'comedy' shop names and get into the Kaiser's Sausage outside the Ponsford Stand. Don't worry, this isn't a sponsored tweet for which I'm being given my bodyweight in kransky sausages (not that I'm not interested if you're reading Von Kaiser),
it's just a community service announcement. If like me you'd rather eat your own sock than a meat pie then honk right onto that German sausage. It costs about $1.50 more than the chemical shit that is sold inside the ground but provides about $6 more value.
Get into it before the MCG adopt the same Stalinist policies towards outside food as Corporate Stadium.
Next Week
With any luck Essendon will find some way to become depressed by the bye like we did and come out serving up the sort of utter garbage that we might be able to do something with. That is if we're not lining with 18 players behind the ball
Not even bothering with changes because somebody will suffer a mystery injury during the week and stuff it all up anyway.
Next Season
With no regard to their contract status I'm putting Morton, Warnock, Newton, Bate and Dunn in the departure lounge. Have given up supporting Bate, and the only one that I see even the slightest hope for amongst the rest is Morton is he gets his head right or finds a new role. Tom McNamara is going nowhere, James Strauss might be dead a'la Paul McCartney and even though the Spencils is - I think - contracted for next year there's fat chance he'll ever play seniors again.
Then there's the backroom staff. Bailey is hanging on by a thread, Schwab has had to shut up shop publicly recently, Connolly has been reduced to hosting sportsman's nights and god knows what the likes of Mahoney, Royal, West, Williams et al are doing at the moment.
There are going to be some very, VERY lucky survivors on this list at the end of the year. Roll on celebrity status at other clubs for the ones we drop.
What I know for sure is that when the Melbourne Metro ratings started plummeting at about 9.15pm towards the levels usually enjoyed by shows involving Mick Molloy that at least one TV executive would have floated the idea of calling Andrew Demetriou and trying to use the "come on, we've paid a billion dollars for this" card to try and get us booted off next Friday night. It's hardly a week of blockbuster clashes but you can be absolutely sure that they'd prefer Collingwood/St Kilda, Geelong/Bulldogs or even god forbid Hawthorn/Freo in the 'showcase' timeslot than us coming out with a defensive mindset like Accrington Stanley trying to steal a nil-all draw in a cup game at Old Trafford. Just the sort of 'exciting' game style that people will be able to vote with their wallets and not turn up to watch next year when it's live on TV.
I couldn't tell whether it was a good omen or not when the toothless junkie bird on Southgate stopped me, slurred "yeah Demons yeah, we're gonna win yeah" and then stuck out a hand for a high five. I reluctantly obliged despite the obvious danger of catching a bloodborne disease. As the night wore on I started to wish she'd menaced me with a syringe instead. Does the fact that not only the dancing man of Kew Junction supports us, but that those who struggle to find a vein are starting to get on board mean that we're broadening our appeal to the community or that the whole place is about to go tits up?
After vowing never to make another First Goalkicker bet again after last week's Watts debacle I was sucked into it by them offering up Ricky Petterd at the generous, nay seemingly ludicrous odds of 41-1. Sure he was starting on the bench, but come on. I'm convinced that there's somebody from the TAB who reads this blog and sits there on a Monday thinking "now, how can I make this idiot part with another $20?". Because it's always $20. I never seem to have a tenner on hand and am too lazy/ashamed to queue up just to claim a tenner from the counter so some other ridiculous bet. So I threw the second half of the twenty on Maric in the hope that he'd get forward, throw one on the boot and bring the house down with one of his famous beaming smiles. Stupidity all round. If you see somebody in an SME jersey loitering around the Ponsford Stand basement TAB next Friday I implore you to crash tackle him to the ground. Hopefully it's me. Surely nobody else is supporting the Experience on their jumper.
Of course these antics in the TAB, including five minutes spent trying to teach an old man how to use the betting terminal only for him to find out you couldn't use coins in it (oh my god), caused me to miss the live Olivia Newton John concert. Which, as I'm not a housewife donning flashing red horns wasn't a big issue. From the footage I saw on the one screen downstairs that wasn't showing the Maitland greyhounds it looked pretty cringeworthy, but good on Jimmy for setting it up just so he could live his dream of sleazing up ONJ. Was hoping her missing husband who faked his own death might turn up wearing a green vest and reveal himself but it wasn't to be. Wouldn't be the last missing individual not to turn up on the night.
Contrary to popular belief, and what you read on here, I'm actually quite the optimist when it comes to football. We can all take a lesson from the interview with Robbie Flower on Fox Sports during the week where he said that every week he turned up at the ground thinking that he was a chance of playing in a winning side. He played in 88 wins from 272 games for a winning percentage of 32.35%. Ludicrously we have five players who have played more than 50 games and have worse winning percentages than this.
Even when I know deep down that we're no chance I've still got to try and find some sort of reason why we could possibly scab an undeserved victory, otherwise it would be hard for me to show up. Conversely when we're red hot favourites (thanks to Gold Coast for giving us the chance to have that feeling again) most of the week is spent finding ways for us to get done.
Even before the scurrilous rumors about J**d being out starting going around at 6pm (only to be quashed by the Blues at about 6.01) I'd tried to double our allegedly 'improved' performance last week into them missing their top ruckman and attempted to ignore the fact that our black death injury crisis had not only taken Tapscott (expected) and Davey (not surprising) but Bartram as well, the latest victim of a mysterious mid-week injury that nobody knew about until 5.01pm on Thursday. Realistically as long as J**d played we were always going to be in substantial trouble unless the midfield fired on all cylinders. They didn't, but they certainly weren't alone.
We were always on a hiding to nothing being forced to pick players who didn't warrant being there, but surely we'd all have rather lost by ten goals playing decent football than eight goals in a desperate attempt to minimise the damage? Starting Watts behind the ball was absolutely rude, and we got what we deserved with Juice being completely outclassed on his own up front with little or no support from Bate, Jurrah and Petterd - and Watts rewarding Bails with the sort of shit game is always going to play when they're being dragged dragged from one end.to the other on the whims of a coach desperately trying to plug gaps in a gameplan that nobody on the field seems to understand/care about.
It was all downhill the moment poor old Sad Panda Morton copped that free kick against him. We were already going for the world record of the most inside 50's without a score when he responded to a month of being slaughtered by all and sundry for having zero intensity by trying something physical, copping a free for it which directly led to the Blues first goal and then proceeding to play like a terrified 14-year-old schoolgirl for the rest of the night. Do we employ a sports psychologist at this club? If so can somebody please book Cale in for about three days of lying on the couch this week talking about his issues? He can't be depressed at being outshone by his brothers because they're both toilet as well, so what's the issue? For all the people wanting to ship him off to West Sydney good luck, because the last thing they need in a team that is going to spend its first two years being thrashed every second week is a mentally scarred kid who has spent four years wandering around the half-back flank slowly losing confidence until he's a wreck.
Up front nobody looked like they were any chance of scoring let alone kicking a goal. With Watts loose in defence, and playing quite well before taking a nasty turn for the worse in the second half and having about ten clangers in a row, it was left to Juice to be on the end of our traditional high bombs into the forward line. Never mind that pretty much the only time he ever looked half decent was against North when they kicked it to him so he could lead out to it, the ball was coming in high to marking contests and he was getting soundly and deservedly beaten in every single contest. Wasn't entirely happy about them not replacing him with Jeremy Howe, but if they were just going to kick it in like that anywhere then I'm glad that it's cannon fodder like Juice who got stooged instead of somebody who we're expecting to play a part in the future - as horrid a future as it may be.
Two goals down and our forward target de jour Juice takes a mark inside fifty and finally brings up a score. Of course he missed, and he would later disprove every theory I've ever had about how he might be a decent defender, but I'll you something about Newton. At least he has a crack. He's no good and everyone knows that he wouldn't be in the side if we didn't have a rash of injuries, and probably won't be in it for long but at least he's always having a go which is more than you can say for some players who are hundreds of times better footballers than him. If we're going to have to be slaughtered by injuries, shit coaching and shit drafting then at least we could have somebody with the slightest bit of desperation in him. Of course the reason that he's desperate is that he know that at any given time he's about five minutes away from working in Cranbourne Red Rooster next year but at least it's more than you can say for others.
If The Jurrahcane is 100% fit then I'm not here because he's going at about 50% pace at the moment. Flash back to the West Coast fiasco where he was so starved of opportunities by our rubbish tactics and the ineptitude of his teammates that he came up the ground, got his own ball and ended up leading our inside 50's. Then look at the last two weeks where he's barely moved other than when the ball is kicked straight to him or he's crumbed one of the pack. If he's not fit then don't play him, if he is then put him in the forward line and kick the fucking thing to him on a lead instead of over his head into a three-on-one pack.
Same goes for Green. He got plenty of touches in the middle of the ground last night but they were overwhelmingly ineffective or crap. Now that SCULLGOVE are poised to make their triumphant return to the tag team ranks next week it's surely time for Bailey to abandon the experiment of playing him in the middle of the ground and put him back where he kicked 55.27 last year. It's not like he'd be keeping Watts out of position considering that Jack has suddenly become a defender (oh joy), and Petterd has spent the last three weeks proving Bailey right for not picking him in the first place. Still, maybe if he was allowed to run onto a lead and all that..
Of course it won't happen for more than five minutes at a time, because apparently the people running this club seem to despise the idea of changing something when it's not going well (e.g Davey being tagged to buggery for four quarters, Morton only being allowed near the forward line against GC) so we'll just leave him in the centre until his confidence is completely destroyed and we're forced to put up with an entire season of retrospective punditry about how we should have made XYZ the captain. Some goose called SEN last night and first suggested Sylvia should have been made the #1 before calling Green a 'squib'. I almost stacked the car hearing that. I wish right now he had gone to Collingwood where he'd be a champ, instead of having to try and please the clowns that follow us. Rang up myself to issue a spirited defence of him, but after 25 minutes on hold totally forget to abuse the original caller. Missed opportunity.
Somehow despite our best efforts and getting smashed in the centre, where the Experience was winning the taps and not finding anybody other than J**d most of the time, we spent most of the first quarter in touch. Home viewers everywhere might have been flicking to see whether there was a far more interesting episode of Cops on another channel but we had given ourselves the slightest chance of nicking it if we could get our forward structure right and the backline held firm. Even with the Waite goal at the end of the quarter, and yet another of the world famous one goal Bailey Quarters we were only two goals behind. Might have helped if the mids could have given us anything but you can't have it all.
It all went horribly wrong from there, but we weren't being helped by some baffling free kicks. How about the Big Setant contributing to Warnock's horror night by leaping underneath him on the goal line and winning a free kick? Opened up a three goal lead and that was pretty much the end of us. Good on Rivers for telling the umpire he was a dickhead, for which a 50 was then paid. When the mark was already on the goal-line. Very effective. What happens if you kept giving away token fifties in that situation? Reported for time wasting? (even though the clock should have stopped) Free from the centre? Complete anarchy and the collapse of footy as we know it? Somebody's got to try it before the year is through. Where's our version of You Are The Ref?
Of course no umpiring rorts in the world could have contributed to the simple mark he dropped in the goalsquare. Had been ok the last couple of weeks but played an absolute howler last night. May as well have gone back to the tactics of Jordie McMahon Tank Day and played him at FF for all the benefit he or our actual FF were giving us.
But did we change anything after going three goals down? Of course not. The vain hope that we could somehow defend our way out of a 20 point lead and onto victory let us pretty much break even at two goals apiece in the second quarter they were always the better team, and as we blundered our way up and down the ground butchering chances galore it was left to, of all people, Michael J Newton, to thread a set shot from a difficult angle and keep us in it. And when that's your best forward option then give up. Or at least drag Petterd, Jurrah and Bate and ask "WHAT IN GOD'S NAME IS WRONG WITH YOU ALL, YOU'RE BEING MADE TO LOOK BAD BY JUICE!"
I couldn't help notice that at least one half of the pre-match shit bloke/ex-player theory was coming true and that the Chernobyl Child Mitch Robinson was doing as he liked in the midfield. Was obviously excited that Olivia did a concert in his honour beforehand, but it didn't mean our players had to avoid him like he was actually radioactive. Turncoat J**d you can understand getting off the leash, because for all of his personal faults he is actually a bloody good player BUT copping it from Robinson is a bitter pill. Olivia announced before the game that she had raised 45k for her foundation by singing about Mitch. That's nothing, J**d got 100k from Visy for getting up on Friday morning and putting the bins out.
The second half of the theory didn't go according to plan and Brock wasn't particularly good. Must have thought he was still playing for us and not a good team. Not sure why you'd boo him though, except as an excuse just to boo because you're hating life as a footy fan right now, because even though The Gizz had a shit night it's still the killer deal of the millenium for us. Right up there with Steve O'Dwyer for pick 3 and Troy Longmuir for the pick we got Green with in the history of great moments on the draft table.
He was no good, but at least he had a bash. I posted this on Twitter last night and people I'd never heard of came out of the woodwork to (wrongly) assume it meant I didn't want to trade him in the first place but I'd rather have had him in our side last night than Morton flapping about and Jones stuffing up everything he went near.
I had a sick fantasy about Brock during the week. He runs on off the bench to contest an early centre bounce, the Experience gets the tap down, J**d sharks it as usual only for Brock to block his path, knee him in the aggots, drop him with an uppercut, throw an elbow down as a tribute to the Macho Man and tear his light blue jumper off to reveal a shirt with the letters MFC on underneath. He then tearfully embraces The Gizz, walks off to the acclaim of the crowd once more and we go on to win by plenty.
In the extended version of the fantasy he walks to Bails (conveniently located back on the sidelines) and announces he's back in the MFC fold, to which Bails says "That's nice but I don't want you next year" and Brock says "never mind you won't be coach anyway" and (insert new coach here) signs him on a rookie list free where he spends the rest of his career as a Casey superstar, occassionally filling a gap in the seniors when everyone else is hurt. Well if Juice can take a spot on the list all these years....
From the moment the second half started and we copped a goal in the first minute it was going horribly in the wrong direction. It took Rivers roaming forward to provide a mark inside 50, the Blues continued their cavalcade of uncontested marks around the ground and Watts finally lost the plot after a month of good football and took off on his world record run of ineffective kicks. What pissed me off royally in the third was the amount of times we'd kick it to a three - or worse - on one situation, and then when the Blues won it back they'd kick to another three-on-one, for a grand total of six-on-two within the space of twenty seconds. That leaves four players wandering around aimlessly looking at seagulls a'la Geoff Hayward.
I hear Malthouse called Emo Maric a cheat for trying to rort the umpire into thinking he'd kicked a goal just before 3/4 time. Because I'm sure Mick has never, ever, EVER done anything deliberately outside the rules himself has he? Shit comments but the upside is everyone is going to be talkin' emo this week so it's a great time for Demonblog's own black prince to get some airtime. Because he did precious little else this week.
Nicholson, who replaced Warnock when they finally got jack of his shambolic performance, was good considering his limited game time, but Evans suffered the traditional second game let down when the opposition work out who he is and decide to put some time into him.
Looks like we attempted a belated go at the old forward press in the last quarter and it lasted about five minutes before Juice went for a howler of a kick across the ground to Frawley who cocked up the half volley from the rubbish pass and allowed the Blues to go straight down the other end and score. Then we all sat there and nearly died of boredom for the next twenty minutes.
Tweet like a Demon
"Disappointing result! Heaps to learn before next week. Can't wait for Friday night. Playing FIFA against Juice. Go Bulls. Parmas for lunch"
2011 Allen Jakovich Medal Votes
There have been more than few games over the years where it was hard to fill the votes, but I don't think I've ever been there for a more even spread of rank ordinary players. No apologies to be delivered because about 15 could have slunk unfairly into this top five..
I honestly almost gave Newton a vote just for having a crack despite an abject lack of AFL standard talent.
5 - Jared Rivers
4 - James Frawley
3 - Joel Macdonald
2 - Stefan Martin
1 - Colin Sylvia
Leaderboard
19 - Brent Moloney
18 - Colin Sylvia
16 - Mark Jamar (LEADER: Jim Stynes Medal for Ruckman of the Year)
9 - Stefan Martin
8 - Jack Watts, James Frawley ((LEADER: Marcus Seecamp Medal for Defender of the Year)
7 - Colin Garland, Jared Rivers
6 - Luke Tapscott (LEADER: Jeff Hilton Medal for Rookie of the Year)
5 - Rohan Bail, Jordan Gysberts
4 - Jack Trengove, Michael Evans
3 - Jack Grimes, Liam Jurrah, Nathan Jones, Joel Macdonald
2 - Ricky Petterd, Clint Bartram, Neville Jetta
1 - Brad Green
Crowd Watch
The only highlight of the evening was the Carlton fan being hassled out the door as I was coming in. "I've got a ticket" she screamed. "It's a child's ticket" said the MCG attendant. "IT DOESN'T MATTER!" she yelled going in the other direction. Odds on that she spent the entire first half trying to pull off the same scam at every ticket outlet in the ground.
How about the flames when the team ran out? Almost as bad as him on the trumpet and his velvet jacket. I was hoping at least Juice would fall in and make them worthwhile. I can't fault the club for trying to do something to get the kids in and distract us from the fact that the team is going nowhere but we're starting to do gimmicks that even American soccer teams would consider too kitsch, and they play at stadiums with names like Pizza Hut Park.
Shattered that the OPSM giant glasses gimmick seems to be a permanent fixture this year. It's a step up from junkies kicking for cash or the time we played up every stereotype by having fake snow outside the ground on Queen's Birthday, but bloody hell is it really worth downgrading your dignity in public on the off chance that some perverted cameraman will pick you out of the crowd (and how often is it young girls that they pick?) and win you a 'seat upgrade' for the last three quarters.
Even worse are the people who apply/wave around the promotional item in question even though the camera is clearly not showing any interest in their part of the ground. A grown man in front of me was going absolutely wild with the glasses despite it being abundantly clear that a) he wouldn't win for being male b) they always pick somebody in the front row and c) the cameras were focusing on the Southern Stand the whole time. Needless to say he didn't win the coveted 'seat upgrade'.
MCG Masterchef
Forget the floppy hot dogs in rock-solid, stone age bread that they sell inside the ground and your natural aversion to 'comedy' shop names and get into the Kaiser's Sausage outside the Ponsford Stand. Don't worry, this isn't a sponsored tweet for which I'm being given my bodyweight in kransky sausages (not that I'm not interested if you're reading Von Kaiser),
it's just a community service announcement. If like me you'd rather eat your own sock than a meat pie then honk right onto that German sausage. It costs about $1.50 more than the chemical shit that is sold inside the ground but provides about $6 more value.
Get into it before the MCG adopt the same Stalinist policies towards outside food as Corporate Stadium.
Next Week
With any luck Essendon will find some way to become depressed by the bye like we did and come out serving up the sort of utter garbage that we might be able to do something with. That is if we're not lining with 18 players behind the ball
Not even bothering with changes because somebody will suffer a mystery injury during the week and stuff it all up anyway.
Next Season
With no regard to their contract status I'm putting Morton, Warnock, Newton, Bate and Dunn in the departure lounge. Have given up supporting Bate, and the only one that I see even the slightest hope for amongst the rest is Morton is he gets his head right or finds a new role. Tom McNamara is going nowhere, James Strauss might be dead a'la Paul McCartney and even though the Spencils is - I think - contracted for next year there's fat chance he'll ever play seniors again.
Then there's the backroom staff. Bailey is hanging on by a thread, Schwab has had to shut up shop publicly recently, Connolly has been reduced to hosting sportsman's nights and god knows what the likes of Mahoney, Royal, West, Williams et al are doing at the moment.
There are going to be some very, VERY lucky survivors on this list at the end of the year. Roll on celebrity status at other clubs for the ones we drop.
Sunday, 22 May 2011
If you tolerate this your children will be next..
My first instinct after a game like yesterday, and indeed most of the matches of the last five years, is to come on here and go absolutely troppo, skirting the boundaries of defamation law with writing horrific overreactions that make me cringe when I finally re-read them on Wednesday.
As I stomped home like a petulant - dare I say emo - teenager, furiously punching notes into my phone with no regards to pedestrian etiquette or the possibility of wandering into oncoming traffic it felt, not for the first time, that we were at the sporting equivalent of the end of the world. Not some Wobbies World style apocalypse declared by a Californian nutbag living in a cave, but the real stuff when you've been fooled by one too many mirages in the desert and are starting to wonder whether it wouldn't just be easier to give up. Not that I've ever personally been lost in the desert but go with it for dramatic purposes.
But the thing was that it didn't really matter to me anyway because, if I may briefly digress, the limp, lifeless lump of a game of football between two sides unlikely to trouble the AFL Fixture computer (an Atari ST) in September that we 'enjoyed' at Corporate Stadium - home of the slowest ATM in the civilised world - was just the entree to proper sporting drama.
The year is 1994, the MFC forward line is going bananas and a stupid child who has watched the Monday night Premier League highlights show for years has finally decided who he's going to support. A team that wins titles? Too obvious. A team that has a lot of fans? Very unlike me. No, I'll choose Wimbledon as my team based solely on the fact that I liked their colours, nobody else I've ever met supported them (though in 1994 that pretty much applied for any team in the competition because there was SCANT INTEREST in the world game amongst people I knew) and they got in a massive touchline brawl on the very night I was ready to make a decision.
Not the worst decision I've ever made, lest we forget that if Murray Wrensted the big spastic hadn't missed that goal in the '88 Elimination Final then my "I'll go for whoever plays Hawthorn" theory would have landed me with one of three other teams who have since won a flag.
So, for the next seven-ish years I 'enjoyed' never winning anything (though lest we forget that glorious year of being top of the league in November and making the semis of the League Cup and FA Cup), but never getting relegated either. Then we did get relegated. I kicked a small tree over. Then this happened. Think of South Melbourne to Sydney but with a hint of not only stealing the club but then going around to every fan individually and beating them half to death with an iron bar.
English football is a curious beast where teams are up and down as their circumstances change, it's not like VFL sides of the 80's which were either competitive or sent themselves bust trying not to lose by 50 goals every week. Some football clubs do get themselves into trouble by over-reaching, some adjust to their place in life and do just fine. We would have been the latter, and nine years later would probably have been in League 2 anyway, but instead while some frauds wasted a spot in the league we were sent on a nine year odyssey from the ninth division of league football.
So, eventually via the Seagrave Haulage Combined Counties League, Ryman League Divison 1, Ryman Premier League, Blue Square Conference South and Blue Square Conference National we landed at Saturday night - a one off match to go back into the Football League. Need a summary of why that's so important? Read this post on the SW19's Army blog. Incidentally, the very same blog that has, since I first discovered it in 1999, almost completely shaped - for better or worse - the way I watch and write about sports. Without SW19's there would certainly never have been a Demonblog, and for that I'm thankful even if nobody else is. It's to my shame that I've never acknowledged SW19's on here before, but how are you supposed to explain that you'vestolen the gimmick of adopted your style from somebody who writes about obscure non-league English football clubs without access to more charts, spreadsheets and Powerpoint presentations than a paranoid North fan.
So how could I possibly concentrate enough under those circumstances to come on here and recycle the same tired old cliches about how shit we are for the 50th time in the last three years? At that point the events on Etihad Stadium DID NOT MATTER. Ironically, what did matter was a game at City of Manchester Stadium where everything was sponsored by Etihad. A bad enough omen as any considering the inability of any team I follow to get the job done at anything with Etihad written on it, and after 120 minutes where we should have lost it twice, should have won it twice and had the ball in the net on an offside it went to penalties.
Ahh penalties. Last night, and to a lesser extent that World Cup qualifier shootout against Uruguay, is exactly why I want to stab people in the face whenever they suggest extra time, goalkicking shootouts and other marketing department invented bollocks to settle drawn AFL games. I think it's fairly obvious which way it went, but if you want to relive the moments of glory click here but for god's sake turn your speakers down because it was hardly an unbiased commentary.
With the greatest apologies to the last 22 years following the MFC it was my greatest ever sporting moment. Of course if we were ever to win a premiership I'm sure the emotions would multiply by a million and I'd probably drop dead on the spot from a massive brain aneurism, but none of us are holding our breath waiting for that to happen are we? I've spent my teens and 20's waiting for the Demons to give me the "now I can die happy" moment so we'll see if we can tick that off before I'm a porky, bald 40 year old living in Melton and being banned from going to footy because some snotty kids have to be dragged around to jazz ballet practice. A horrifying vision of the future.
Everyone knows Wimbledon have now found their place and they'll settle as a comfortable middle of the league club, so they've pretty much ticked off everything I wanted from them after themurder death of the original Wimbledon FC on May 28, 2002. Now all that's left is for Melbourne to win the flag and Atlanta to win a Superbowl, and I'll give up 50 of the latter for one of the AFL version.
So you can understand how even more than a day after the game it's hard for me to come to terms with another great MFC letdown amongst a cavalcade of hundreds (if not thousands for some of you) that we've seen over the years. Some sides have the disaster gene firmly implanted in their DNA, and alongside Footscray, St Kilda and Richmond of the last thirty years we've got it in spades. So, as this sadly isn't Wombleblog let's step into the Every Day Is Like Sunday Time Machine (available now at the Demonblog store. Free MEESEN MAGIC cape with each purchase), pretend that the FA made the right decision on that fateful day in 2002 and that my entire weekend/year wasn't saved by the combined powers of Seb Brown's hands and Danny Kedwell's boot. Let's try and maintain the rage long enough to really get worked up about footy again just enough to absolutely spaz it and get arrested on Friday.
Worst thing was that I'd half convinced myself that we were a chance. Like a smaller scale version of 2008 when I talked myself into believing that 2007 was an injury-induced abberation which we would soon correct the same logic was applied between the North and Saints games. Not entirely sure why given that we've not only gained more injuries since then (including THE CELEBRATOR and his mystery 'we didn't want to say we dropped you in indigenous week' knee troubles) but that the 07/08 hypothesis lasted all of a quarter before Hawthorn massacred us and set into motion (as if it wasn't already, who am I fooling?) the terrifying ghost train ride that we're still on today.
That day I think we all felt a bit sorry for Juice when he was fumbling around like he had absolutely no idea and we all wondered if somebody who was clearly the prototype of a 'good VFL player' could possibly survive another year in a rebuilding side. Four seasons later he's still there, scuttling around not looking much different. Viva la revolution.
Times may be tight, but not enough that I couldn't be persuaded to donate money to the TAB with another one of my ridiculous first goalkicker bets. The fact that the only players I have ever successfully picked to do it correctly are Will Minson and Tom Lonergan should be warning enough to stay away, but when I saw Jack Watts at the positively ludicrous odds of $34 I couldn't help myself. Even Dean Polo was considered more likely to do it. Somebody at the TAB must have taken notice of the barmy theories going around about him suddenly being the next big thing in defence because he took a couple of marks down there last week.
And bloody hell he almost did it too. When Joel Macdonald took the most unlikely first shot of the game since Nathan Carroll helicoptered his one and only career goal through after a 50 at the same venue nobody was surprised to see it fall short, but just for a second I saw Jack rise with his hands ready to snaffle it in the goalsquare only for some arsehole to get a hand in and punch it away. Would have been a good time for a baffling free kick from somebody running a fingernail across his back I'd have thought. Like the sucker for punishment and exotic betting options that I am if they keep offering $30 I'll keep taking it. And losing.
Despite the Saints then being hemmed in on their own goal-line with about 30cm of daylight to extract the ball we couldn't even force them through for a score and the tone for the day was set. Straight down the other end for the next President of IMF to make Clint Bartram look stupid and not only was my betting record looking poor but we'd allowed them to go from one end to the other almost untouched. When Milne got a second it looked like it was going to get ugly. Not because we were going to lose, we're well used to that, but because it was going to come at the hands of the #1 ordinary human in the competition.
What is it with us that encourages the shit blokes of the league to go to town on us? First Harvey, now Milne and you can absolutely mark it down that the Chernobyl Child Mitch Robinson will have a corker next week. Could it be that we have a list heavily weighed down with Bieber-esque teenage idol wannabees who inspire absolutely no fear whatsoever in their opposition? I'll do whatever human sacrifices that are required at draft time to get some of these hateable characters into our side. It's ugly, it's morally bankrupt and it's unpleasant to be giving a real job to somebody who should be collecting garbage cans but like Saints fans under Ross Lyon I'm prepared to turn a blind eye and pretend it's all for the greater good. Until we stuff up three Grand Finals, then I'll turn hard and flood to talkback to whinge about how terrible it's all been.
Thought it was an interesting but not entirely unlikeable move to start JMac forward. It certainly wasn't for his spectacular goalscoring prowess (just the casual seven in nearly 100 games, and absolutely none for us) but at least he offered some sort of presence and pressure. Besides most of the time our forwards are in the backline anyway so what are we losing? It was certainly a better idea than the clowns on the radio who were trying to make the case for swapping Watts and Frawley. If you're going to experiment then do it for the right reasons, or because you're trying to lose to a Richmond side featuring Jordan McMahon, not just because you're hoping that somehow two high draft picks will suddenly become guns at each other's position so that you can swap them around on a whim and baffle the opposition.
Would have been interesting to see how he went down there for the rest of the day, and how long they would have persisted with it when the Saints started getting on top, but if there was a tactical masterstroke waiting to be unleashed we only saw a hint of it in setting up Watts' goal (three too late kids) because he had to go back and cover Tapscott after the poor bastard booked his room in the MFC Casualty Ward (which is now starting to resemble a 14th century plague pit) by blowing his hamstring to shreds with the exact same kind of roosting kick that he's done about 50 times since Round 1. Justice may have been flowing in Manchester later that night but it was notable in its absence in the Docklands area around 2.15pm Saturday.
I'm not a huge Macdonald fan, but at least you know he's going to have a bash every time. I did enjoy when he sledged Fev about his gambling habits last year (which must have been unpleasant for all parties when they ran out together at Casey last week) but failed to see where he fit within our, surprisingly, half decent backline. Seemingly it's as the "our only other choice is Tom McNamara" option so get used to him being down there while Garland and Tapscott are on the sidelines. Tremendous cockup in the last quarter though when he beat Riewoldt to the ball (good...) then tried to play on with Nick a foot away from him and was, to nobody's surprise, pinged for holding the ball (horrendous...) Wouldn't have been such a big deal if Davey hadn't then enjoyed a massive brain explosion and thrown the ball back to JMac instead of Riewoldt in order hold up the play and copped the 50 which basically put the game away. Mark down another case of MFC Disaster Syndrome - originally thought to have been on the way to eradication, now spreading like Ebola.
Warnock can also be relied on to put in a big effort every time he's out there, but more than just whole hearted performances I thought he was actually quite good. No surprises because he really hasn't done a great deal wrong over the last couple of years other than be squeezed out of the side by Garland coming back from injury and playing good football. He's a good depth option and as long as he understands that much time is likely to be spent in the 2's if everyone else is fit then I'd be happy to keep him. Though I wouldn't be surprised if he didn't share the same viewpoint and demanded a trade at the end of the year. Didn't hurt his performance that he spent most of the day playing on Kosi who was, let's be frank, shithouse. When the SME wasn't using him as a step ladder in the ruck he was down front giving the Saints absolutely nothing. Must be a nice luxury to be able to play with the equivalent of 21 men every week just to try and prove a point. Apparently he was concussed at one point. How could they tell the difference?
It looked grim when they went three goals in front, considering we're lucky to kick three goals in a half most of the time, but to everybody's surprise we managed to fight back to some sort of respectability by quarter time. It wasn't all going our way though - Milne was having such a good first quarter that he even had the good fortune to totally stuff up a kick running inside 50 and have it land in Riewoldt's hands at the top of the square. Is there no situation he can't worm his way out of?
It took Jurrah and Green to get us back into it, shortly before they turned to doing almost completely bugger all for the rest of the match. He was hardly impressive, but what's with the urban myth going around about Green only having one tackle for the match? AFL stats are often as wonky as their website but they've got him down for four. To be fair I'm more likely to believe forum scuttlebutt than anything that comes off that site, but either way they can't have been four very memorable ones.
Jurrah was moving around like somebody who wasn't quite right. Managed to pad his stats a bit in junk time, but it was easily one of the worst games he's played for us. I fully expect him to stand on somebody's head on Friday night to keep us all interested.
Davey, on the other hand was pox, and you don't need me to point it out because everyone from Bailey down noticed. Pulling out backing into packs, jogging around like he's at training and once again getting tagged to buggery with no ability to shake it. He's NQR at the moment. I don't completely absolve the coaching staff of blame either because it seems they never even think of sticking him down in the forward line for a while to try something different. No wonder he's showing a distinct lack of interest when he knows if it's not going well at 0.05 in the first quarter he'll probably be in the same position at 27.50 in the fourth, but it's still no reason to let the head drop like that unless there's some serious off-field action going on. At the moment he'd be lucky - if we're in any way serious about sending the proverbial 'message' - not to be playing for the Scorpions next week. Will probably survive just on the basis of there hardly being anybody to replace him. After all you're not going to dump somebody for showing a lack of intensity and then pick Morton are you?
Strange to see both teams on five goals at quarter time, given that in most games featuring these teams they'd be lucky to be on that halfway through the last. The difference is the Saints would be 5.4 to 5.3, and we'd be 5.1 to 16.23. Trust us to play all their depressed superstars back into form, who didn't know instantly the moment Goddard had a shocker last week that he'd run riot against us? Other than the ex-player cutting us to shreds it's the most notorious move in the MFC playbook. Somewhere Brock McLean, who qualifies on both counts, is rubbing his hands together in glee at the prospect of redeeming his rapidly failing career with a 45 possession Friday night smackdown.
The ludicrous sea-saw nature of the game continued in the second quarter when they kicked away for a third time that day. Didn't help that we spent most of the term kicking to Newton in the forward line and watching him either miss sitters running straight into an open goal or being outmarked by defensive titans like James Gwilt while showing as much fight as a panda. No idea where Jurrah or Watts were during all of this (wait, I'll tell you exactly where Watts was - most of the time he was on a half back flank playing Baileyball. At least he was doing it well...) but surely halfway through the quarter somebody in the coaches noticed that another avenue might be required for us to have any chance of putting up a decent score? Nah, just keep doing the same thing over and over again and hope for the best. We're the football equivalent of World War I - just throw a million men over the top and suffer thousands of casualties in the vain hope that you'll gain about 15m of ground. Not as many hamstring injuries in the war though.
I'm trying so hard to be fair on Bailey that it's not funny, but I'll tell you what if the words OUT: Newton don't feature in our changes next week then all bets are off. He is symptomatic of everything wrong with us, not good enough to play in any sort of decent league football side but does just enough and shows the occassional flash of physical aptitude to scam the club into keeping him on the list. Then at the first hint of a black death style injury crisis he's in the side once again doing just enough so if you only judged the game on the stats in the paper you'd think he was ok. Could he possibly going down as the worst 20+ game player in league history ever to average more than one goal a game? He's the poor man's Brad Miller but without even that slight hint of intensity given by the former. The chase and tackle late showed that he has got a half decent defensive side whenever the other side have got it, so why does he have the air of terror around him whenever the ball goes near him?
I hope he bought last week's game on DVD so he can sit down and watch the first quarter on repeat. With the season effectively buggered we might as well bring Howe and Gawn in - they cannot possibly give less up front and in the ruck respectively than Juice does. Presumably Bate will be in trouble as well considering he was decidedly ordinary again, but you could see just how much interest they've got in him being part of our future when he was named as the sub. The fact that he got a run early is neither here nor there, he got dumped after one game for being shit, played a cracker in the VFL and was then reintroduced only to be - all things going well - marooned on the bench for three quarters. May as well see if Warnock wants to share a trade request form now for at least despite having had a couple of poor years he's got the credits in the bank to earn another go somewhere else where he'll inevitably go and kick nine against us.
That we were only 13 points down at half-time said as much about how shit the Saints are this year as it did about our (usually non-existant) fighting qualities. When Watts got his second from a dinky rolling toe-poke early in the third I even fooled myself into thinking we were about to run away with it. Bartram was on top of Milne (though did he give up a goal with a farcical cross field kick? Two weeks in a row of Docklands slop is melting in one in my memory. I can't even picture if the roof was open or not), and even though Montagna was killing us Frawley was holding Riewoldt relatively well. When even Juice started kicking snaps out of his arse even I, cynical as ever at the prospect of this team being any good, cocked an eyebrow a'la The Rock and tried to convince myself it was going to last.
Of course it wasn't, it didn't and it very rarely ever does. Maric brought joy to the dark hearts of teenagers everywhere by tying up the scores, and even briefly cracked a smile in celebration before realising that he's still the leader of the black parade and going back to the default snarl. It was such a crucial goal that even The Spencil managed to stand and applaud it;
Shame that from then we all became depressed. The late goal to Montagna didn't really hurt too badly, and it probably wouldn't have even happened had Petterd had a touch more luck with his kick that hit the post - and even though we were behind at the last change there was still the fact that the Saints have proven themselves to be flaky freaks this year to give us hope that we could steal it and 'earn' an undeserved reboot for season 2011.
That lasted about ten seconds of the last quarter until THAT Davey-Macdonald-Riewoldt howler, and from there the Saints were off to the races. Our battlers battled on, our fancyboys put the feet up and busted out the cocktails and the Jurrahcane picked up a couple of junktime specials to buffer his stats but when Frawley got confused in the backline and turned it over for the second Cripps goal we were stuffed. Would have been a good time to walk out if I hadn't pledged to see every minute of every game in Victoria this year.
It was a heinous last quarter. Forget the junky goals which kept it close, the Saints finally decided to play like the 2010 model and we had absolutely no idea what to do to get around it. Cue the best part of 30 minutes of dinky kicks and handbals in the backline which usually ended in tragedy or a final desperate hoof into the midfield which was neatly cleaned up. It was horrible and said it all about where we're it. We're so used to coaches who don't have a plan B that we probably wouldn't recognise what it looked like if they suddenly implemented one. Don't know why it worries me, I can barely work out was Plan A is most weeks.
Positives were few and far between. Gysberts was back to his best (so far - a lot more best to come from that guy), Watts continued his good form despite once again being called upon to occassionally wander around the backline and both Jetta and Maric showed that pre-season form isn't a complete fraud. Other than that it goes without saying for anyone who saw the game that Michael Evans had a great debut. He looked comfortable from the first bounce and his disposal under pressure was great - kicks into the forward line weren't much chop but a) he'll naturally improve (no really, don't be fooled by the rest of the list) and b) why bother drilling a kick into our forward line anyway? They're either not there or there's seven of them in the square waiting for a long bomb. No way he gets a game - at the moment - in a full strength side, but good luck seeing one of them again this year. I'm still not convinced that Tom Scully is actually injured and that we aren't being strung along in one of the greatest conspiracies of modern times.
No superstars, no grunt, no ordinary humans, no future for season 2011. There's another three months of this to go, and then you've got to sit through cricket season so that's even more painful. Forget whatever fellow member of the Commonwealth we're losing to in test matches this year, November means one thing for me and that's the draft. Here's my three point schedule of demands;
a) Big bodies
b) Players who are hateable to opposition fans
c) Funny names
I have no idea what Freddie Clutterbuck of East Perth does, plays like, looks like or does in nightclubs but he certainly fits category C. I suggest we pick him even if he's otherwise no good just to fulfill everyone's dream of having a player on our list called Freddie Clutterbuck.
2011 Allen Jakovich Medal Votes
5 - Jordan Gysberts
4 - Michael Evans
3 - Jack Watts
2 - Neville Jetta
1 - Stefan Martin
Apologies to Sylvia, Warnock, Maric, Moloney and McKenzie.
Leaderboard
By reader suggestion I've added Russian insult to Russian injury by temporarily taking back Jamar's Ruckman of the Year award due to Stef Martin getting within nine votes of him. Good luck making up those numbers, but with The Experience having it all to himself over the next few weeks he could at least make it interesting.
Suffice to say the Green back-to-back tilt is looking distinctly unlikely at this time.
19 - Brent Moloney
17 - Colin Sylvia
16 - Mark Jamar (LEADER: Jim Stynes Medal for Ruckman of the Year)
8 - Jack Watts
7 - Colin Garland (LEADER: Marcus Seecamp Medal for Defender of the Year), Stefan Martin
6 - Luke Tapscott (LEADER: Jeff Hilton Medal for Rookie of the Year)
5 - Rohan Bail, Jordan Gysberts
4 - Jack Trengove, James Frawley, Michael Evans
3 - Jack Grimes, Liam Jurrah, Nathan Jones
2 - Jared Rivers, Ricky Petterd, Clint Bartram, Neville Jetta
1 - Brad Green
Around the grounds
A big hand to the Bulldogs for leaving it until the very last moment to take the heat of us with that putrid display against the Eagles. Everyone punts home a ten goal performance, except when it's Tony Modra and you're about to get done by Freo, but there can't have been many non-Eagles fans more keen on Kennedy bringing up double figures last night than Dean from Melbourne.
Until the quarter of slaughter at Subiaco he was firmly in the gun for a weekend of media scrutiny, now it'll be pushed towards the racing results by the inevitable "will Rocket get the arse?" speculation surrounding the dogs. Leaves the field wide open for all the real whining about the Dees to be done by internet nutbags (hi) anyway, and that can never be a bad thing can it?
Certainly puts our debacle against West Coast into some perspective. If only we hadn't been shit two of the three weeks since (and admittedly sublime the other) you could nearly write that Thursday night debacle off as the result of the Eagles going absolutely bananas with the most multipronged forward line in the history of generously pronged items. Good side to watch too, not just because they fulfill my footy fetish of having towering, big bodied, anti-social looking bastards all over the place. Would help if they could win in Victoria but I'd rather see them pull off the comeback of the millenium to win the flag rather than see any of the *spit* other Victorian teams do it.
As much as I'd like to see Malthouse or Roos working for us on minimum wage next season I'll have Rocket if he's happy to work cheap. And let's be fair if he's employed the Bulldogs he certainly works cheap.
Next Week
Now that we've got the pesky winnable games out of the way it's time to start the month long disaster tour which will either see us emerge phoenix from the flames style, or more likely inevitably fall apart and end up struggling to stay out of the bottom four again - in a worse position than last year.
I don't want to be alarmist but there was a stat posted recently on one of the forums which sums up our last four seasons perfectly. Since Dean Bailey took over we are (counting Saturday) 4-1-40 against Victorian teams - for a grand winning percentage of 8.8%. And three of those were against Richmond who by all accounts are actually doing quite well for themselves now and have 10 wins and three draws against Victorian sides in the same period.
All absolutely outrageous reading for those of you who used to enjoy going to your office/school/family reunion etc.. and basking in the glory of having beaten up on sides that gave you bragging rights over somebody other than that weird woman in the finance department who likes Freo because they wear purple. It's not in itself a reason why we'll lose next Friday night, but it's as good a reason as any to expect it.
Unfortunately for all the anguished hand wringing and "sack the coach" panic calls to SEN whenever they lose a game, the Blues have emerged from the trash can as a half decent side. For want of any great depth of contenders this year they could very well finish top four and contend for a Grand Final berth. There's nothing surer than in front of the bright lights of the Friday night football cameras that even if we manage to stick them for three quarters then that filthy turncoat J**d will turn up in the last, drag them over the line and get another three undeserved Brownlow Votes. 2 votes McLean, 1 vote Robinson.
Then it's Essendon who obviously didn't read the memo about rebuilding from scratch and 'bottoming out' (as much as you can with thousands of draft concessions going to clubs nobody is interested in), and who have decided to polish some of the ex-biggest turds in the competition into a genuine finals contender within a year. Good luck getting them in the same psychologically destroyed, nigh on mentally tortured, state that saw them give away all those 50m penalties last year. Hird and his floppy haircut which hasn't changed since 1994 haven't got much to worry about from us this year.
Let's just concentrate on not humiliating ourself once or, god forbid, twice in front of a national television audience eh? We're only just emerging from therapy after that Geelong debacle in '08 (and it's out one door of the psych clinic and back through another when it comes to this club), so let's not go straight back to the bottom of the laughing stock league yet shall we? Think of the poor television executives who will lose out on mountains of coke and leggy Brazilian hookers if we ruin their ratings and cause Seven to demand their rights deal cash back.
Hopefully Bails openly swears on TV again to keep it interesting. No help for me, I'll be there trying to climb Light Tower 2 with my WE WANT MAXIMUM GAWN banners. If nothing else it should get the game shut down.
As I stomped home like a petulant - dare I say emo - teenager, furiously punching notes into my phone with no regards to pedestrian etiquette or the possibility of wandering into oncoming traffic it felt, not for the first time, that we were at the sporting equivalent of the end of the world. Not some Wobbies World style apocalypse declared by a Californian nutbag living in a cave, but the real stuff when you've been fooled by one too many mirages in the desert and are starting to wonder whether it wouldn't just be easier to give up. Not that I've ever personally been lost in the desert but go with it for dramatic purposes.
But the thing was that it didn't really matter to me anyway because, if I may briefly digress, the limp, lifeless lump of a game of football between two sides unlikely to trouble the AFL Fixture computer (an Atari ST) in September that we 'enjoyed' at Corporate Stadium - home of the slowest ATM in the civilised world - was just the entree to proper sporting drama.
The year is 1994, the MFC forward line is going bananas and a stupid child who has watched the Monday night Premier League highlights show for years has finally decided who he's going to support. A team that wins titles? Too obvious. A team that has a lot of fans? Very unlike me. No, I'll choose Wimbledon as my team based solely on the fact that I liked their colours, nobody else I've ever met supported them (though in 1994 that pretty much applied for any team in the competition because there was SCANT INTEREST in the world game amongst people I knew) and they got in a massive touchline brawl on the very night I was ready to make a decision.
Not the worst decision I've ever made, lest we forget that if Murray Wrensted the big spastic hadn't missed that goal in the '88 Elimination Final then my "I'll go for whoever plays Hawthorn" theory would have landed me with one of three other teams who have since won a flag.
So, for the next seven-ish years I 'enjoyed' never winning anything (though lest we forget that glorious year of being top of the league in November and making the semis of the League Cup and FA Cup), but never getting relegated either. Then we did get relegated. I kicked a small tree over. Then this happened. Think of South Melbourne to Sydney but with a hint of not only stealing the club but then going around to every fan individually and beating them half to death with an iron bar.
English football is a curious beast where teams are up and down as their circumstances change, it's not like VFL sides of the 80's which were either competitive or sent themselves bust trying not to lose by 50 goals every week. Some football clubs do get themselves into trouble by over-reaching, some adjust to their place in life and do just fine. We would have been the latter, and nine years later would probably have been in League 2 anyway, but instead while some frauds wasted a spot in the league we were sent on a nine year odyssey from the ninth division of league football.
So, eventually via the Seagrave Haulage Combined Counties League, Ryman League Divison 1, Ryman Premier League, Blue Square Conference South and Blue Square Conference National we landed at Saturday night - a one off match to go back into the Football League. Need a summary of why that's so important? Read this post on the SW19's Army blog. Incidentally, the very same blog that has, since I first discovered it in 1999, almost completely shaped - for better or worse - the way I watch and write about sports. Without SW19's there would certainly never have been a Demonblog, and for that I'm thankful even if nobody else is. It's to my shame that I've never acknowledged SW19's on here before, but how are you supposed to explain that you've
So how could I possibly concentrate enough under those circumstances to come on here and recycle the same tired old cliches about how shit we are for the 50th time in the last three years? At that point the events on Etihad Stadium DID NOT MATTER. Ironically, what did matter was a game at City of Manchester Stadium where everything was sponsored by Etihad. A bad enough omen as any considering the inability of any team I follow to get the job done at anything with Etihad written on it, and after 120 minutes where we should have lost it twice, should have won it twice and had the ball in the net on an offside it went to penalties.
Ahh penalties. Last night, and to a lesser extent that World Cup qualifier shootout against Uruguay, is exactly why I want to stab people in the face whenever they suggest extra time, goalkicking shootouts and other marketing department invented bollocks to settle drawn AFL games. I think it's fairly obvious which way it went, but if you want to relive the moments of glory click here but for god's sake turn your speakers down because it was hardly an unbiased commentary.
With the greatest apologies to the last 22 years following the MFC it was my greatest ever sporting moment. Of course if we were ever to win a premiership I'm sure the emotions would multiply by a million and I'd probably drop dead on the spot from a massive brain aneurism, but none of us are holding our breath waiting for that to happen are we? I've spent my teens and 20's waiting for the Demons to give me the "now I can die happy" moment so we'll see if we can tick that off before I'm a porky, bald 40 year old living in Melton and being banned from going to footy because some snotty kids have to be dragged around to jazz ballet practice. A horrifying vision of the future.
Everyone knows Wimbledon have now found their place and they'll settle as a comfortable middle of the league club, so they've pretty much ticked off everything I wanted from them after the
So you can understand how even more than a day after the game it's hard for me to come to terms with another great MFC letdown amongst a cavalcade of hundreds (if not thousands for some of you) that we've seen over the years. Some sides have the disaster gene firmly implanted in their DNA, and alongside Footscray, St Kilda and Richmond of the last thirty years we've got it in spades. So, as this sadly isn't Wombleblog let's step into the Every Day Is Like Sunday Time Machine (available now at the Demonblog store. Free MEESEN MAGIC cape with each purchase), pretend that the FA made the right decision on that fateful day in 2002 and that my entire weekend/year wasn't saved by the combined powers of Seb Brown's hands and Danny Kedwell's boot. Let's try and maintain the rage long enough to really get worked up about footy again just enough to absolutely spaz it and get arrested on Friday.
Worst thing was that I'd half convinced myself that we were a chance. Like a smaller scale version of 2008 when I talked myself into believing that 2007 was an injury-induced abberation which we would soon correct the same logic was applied between the North and Saints games. Not entirely sure why given that we've not only gained more injuries since then (including THE CELEBRATOR and his mystery 'we didn't want to say we dropped you in indigenous week' knee troubles) but that the 07/08 hypothesis lasted all of a quarter before Hawthorn massacred us and set into motion (as if it wasn't already, who am I fooling?) the terrifying ghost train ride that we're still on today.
That day I think we all felt a bit sorry for Juice when he was fumbling around like he had absolutely no idea and we all wondered if somebody who was clearly the prototype of a 'good VFL player' could possibly survive another year in a rebuilding side. Four seasons later he's still there, scuttling around not looking much different. Viva la revolution.
Times may be tight, but not enough that I couldn't be persuaded to donate money to the TAB with another one of my ridiculous first goalkicker bets. The fact that the only players I have ever successfully picked to do it correctly are Will Minson and Tom Lonergan should be warning enough to stay away, but when I saw Jack Watts at the positively ludicrous odds of $34 I couldn't help myself. Even Dean Polo was considered more likely to do it. Somebody at the TAB must have taken notice of the barmy theories going around about him suddenly being the next big thing in defence because he took a couple of marks down there last week.
And bloody hell he almost did it too. When Joel Macdonald took the most unlikely first shot of the game since Nathan Carroll helicoptered his one and only career goal through after a 50 at the same venue nobody was surprised to see it fall short, but just for a second I saw Jack rise with his hands ready to snaffle it in the goalsquare only for some arsehole to get a hand in and punch it away. Would have been a good time for a baffling free kick from somebody running a fingernail across his back I'd have thought. Like the sucker for punishment and exotic betting options that I am if they keep offering $30 I'll keep taking it. And losing.
Despite the Saints then being hemmed in on their own goal-line with about 30cm of daylight to extract the ball we couldn't even force them through for a score and the tone for the day was set. Straight down the other end for the next President of IMF to make Clint Bartram look stupid and not only was my betting record looking poor but we'd allowed them to go from one end to the other almost untouched. When Milne got a second it looked like it was going to get ugly. Not because we were going to lose, we're well used to that, but because it was going to come at the hands of the #1 ordinary human in the competition.
What is it with us that encourages the shit blokes of the league to go to town on us? First Harvey, now Milne and you can absolutely mark it down that the Chernobyl Child Mitch Robinson will have a corker next week. Could it be that we have a list heavily weighed down with Bieber-esque teenage idol wannabees who inspire absolutely no fear whatsoever in their opposition? I'll do whatever human sacrifices that are required at draft time to get some of these hateable characters into our side. It's ugly, it's morally bankrupt and it's unpleasant to be giving a real job to somebody who should be collecting garbage cans but like Saints fans under Ross Lyon I'm prepared to turn a blind eye and pretend it's all for the greater good. Until we stuff up three Grand Finals, then I'll turn hard and flood to talkback to whinge about how terrible it's all been.
Thought it was an interesting but not entirely unlikeable move to start JMac forward. It certainly wasn't for his spectacular goalscoring prowess (just the casual seven in nearly 100 games, and absolutely none for us) but at least he offered some sort of presence and pressure. Besides most of the time our forwards are in the backline anyway so what are we losing? It was certainly a better idea than the clowns on the radio who were trying to make the case for swapping Watts and Frawley. If you're going to experiment then do it for the right reasons, or because you're trying to lose to a Richmond side featuring Jordan McMahon, not just because you're hoping that somehow two high draft picks will suddenly become guns at each other's position so that you can swap them around on a whim and baffle the opposition.
Would have been interesting to see how he went down there for the rest of the day, and how long they would have persisted with it when the Saints started getting on top, but if there was a tactical masterstroke waiting to be unleashed we only saw a hint of it in setting up Watts' goal (three too late kids) because he had to go back and cover Tapscott after the poor bastard booked his room in the MFC Casualty Ward (which is now starting to resemble a 14th century plague pit) by blowing his hamstring to shreds with the exact same kind of roosting kick that he's done about 50 times since Round 1. Justice may have been flowing in Manchester later that night but it was notable in its absence in the Docklands area around 2.15pm Saturday.
I'm not a huge Macdonald fan, but at least you know he's going to have a bash every time. I did enjoy when he sledged Fev about his gambling habits last year (which must have been unpleasant for all parties when they ran out together at Casey last week) but failed to see where he fit within our, surprisingly, half decent backline. Seemingly it's as the "our only other choice is Tom McNamara" option so get used to him being down there while Garland and Tapscott are on the sidelines. Tremendous cockup in the last quarter though when he beat Riewoldt to the ball (good...) then tried to play on with Nick a foot away from him and was, to nobody's surprise, pinged for holding the ball (horrendous...) Wouldn't have been such a big deal if Davey hadn't then enjoyed a massive brain explosion and thrown the ball back to JMac instead of Riewoldt in order hold up the play and copped the 50 which basically put the game away. Mark down another case of MFC Disaster Syndrome - originally thought to have been on the way to eradication, now spreading like Ebola.
Warnock can also be relied on to put in a big effort every time he's out there, but more than just whole hearted performances I thought he was actually quite good. No surprises because he really hasn't done a great deal wrong over the last couple of years other than be squeezed out of the side by Garland coming back from injury and playing good football. He's a good depth option and as long as he understands that much time is likely to be spent in the 2's if everyone else is fit then I'd be happy to keep him. Though I wouldn't be surprised if he didn't share the same viewpoint and demanded a trade at the end of the year. Didn't hurt his performance that he spent most of the day playing on Kosi who was, let's be frank, shithouse. When the SME wasn't using him as a step ladder in the ruck he was down front giving the Saints absolutely nothing. Must be a nice luxury to be able to play with the equivalent of 21 men every week just to try and prove a point. Apparently he was concussed at one point. How could they tell the difference?
It looked grim when they went three goals in front, considering we're lucky to kick three goals in a half most of the time, but to everybody's surprise we managed to fight back to some sort of respectability by quarter time. It wasn't all going our way though - Milne was having such a good first quarter that he even had the good fortune to totally stuff up a kick running inside 50 and have it land in Riewoldt's hands at the top of the square. Is there no situation he can't worm his way out of?
It took Jurrah and Green to get us back into it, shortly before they turned to doing almost completely bugger all for the rest of the match. He was hardly impressive, but what's with the urban myth going around about Green only having one tackle for the match? AFL stats are often as wonky as their website but they've got him down for four. To be fair I'm more likely to believe forum scuttlebutt than anything that comes off that site, but either way they can't have been four very memorable ones.
Jurrah was moving around like somebody who wasn't quite right. Managed to pad his stats a bit in junk time, but it was easily one of the worst games he's played for us. I fully expect him to stand on somebody's head on Friday night to keep us all interested.
Davey, on the other hand was pox, and you don't need me to point it out because everyone from Bailey down noticed. Pulling out backing into packs, jogging around like he's at training and once again getting tagged to buggery with no ability to shake it. He's NQR at the moment. I don't completely absolve the coaching staff of blame either because it seems they never even think of sticking him down in the forward line for a while to try something different. No wonder he's showing a distinct lack of interest when he knows if it's not going well at 0.05 in the first quarter he'll probably be in the same position at 27.50 in the fourth, but it's still no reason to let the head drop like that unless there's some serious off-field action going on. At the moment he'd be lucky - if we're in any way serious about sending the proverbial 'message' - not to be playing for the Scorpions next week. Will probably survive just on the basis of there hardly being anybody to replace him. After all you're not going to dump somebody for showing a lack of intensity and then pick Morton are you?
Strange to see both teams on five goals at quarter time, given that in most games featuring these teams they'd be lucky to be on that halfway through the last. The difference is the Saints would be 5.4 to 5.3, and we'd be 5.1 to 16.23. Trust us to play all their depressed superstars back into form, who didn't know instantly the moment Goddard had a shocker last week that he'd run riot against us? Other than the ex-player cutting us to shreds it's the most notorious move in the MFC playbook. Somewhere Brock McLean, who qualifies on both counts, is rubbing his hands together in glee at the prospect of redeeming his rapidly failing career with a 45 possession Friday night smackdown.
The ludicrous sea-saw nature of the game continued in the second quarter when they kicked away for a third time that day. Didn't help that we spent most of the term kicking to Newton in the forward line and watching him either miss sitters running straight into an open goal or being outmarked by defensive titans like James Gwilt while showing as much fight as a panda. No idea where Jurrah or Watts were during all of this (wait, I'll tell you exactly where Watts was - most of the time he was on a half back flank playing Baileyball. At least he was doing it well...) but surely halfway through the quarter somebody in the coaches noticed that another avenue might be required for us to have any chance of putting up a decent score? Nah, just keep doing the same thing over and over again and hope for the best. We're the football equivalent of World War I - just throw a million men over the top and suffer thousands of casualties in the vain hope that you'll gain about 15m of ground. Not as many hamstring injuries in the war though.
I'm trying so hard to be fair on Bailey that it's not funny, but I'll tell you what if the words OUT: Newton don't feature in our changes next week then all bets are off. He is symptomatic of everything wrong with us, not good enough to play in any sort of decent league football side but does just enough and shows the occassional flash of physical aptitude to scam the club into keeping him on the list. Then at the first hint of a black death style injury crisis he's in the side once again doing just enough so if you only judged the game on the stats in the paper you'd think he was ok. Could he possibly going down as the worst 20+ game player in league history ever to average more than one goal a game? He's the poor man's Brad Miller but without even that slight hint of intensity given by the former. The chase and tackle late showed that he has got a half decent defensive side whenever the other side have got it, so why does he have the air of terror around him whenever the ball goes near him?
I hope he bought last week's game on DVD so he can sit down and watch the first quarter on repeat. With the season effectively buggered we might as well bring Howe and Gawn in - they cannot possibly give less up front and in the ruck respectively than Juice does. Presumably Bate will be in trouble as well considering he was decidedly ordinary again, but you could see just how much interest they've got in him being part of our future when he was named as the sub. The fact that he got a run early is neither here nor there, he got dumped after one game for being shit, played a cracker in the VFL and was then reintroduced only to be - all things going well - marooned on the bench for three quarters. May as well see if Warnock wants to share a trade request form now for at least despite having had a couple of poor years he's got the credits in the bank to earn another go somewhere else where he'll inevitably go and kick nine against us.
That we were only 13 points down at half-time said as much about how shit the Saints are this year as it did about our (usually non-existant) fighting qualities. When Watts got his second from a dinky rolling toe-poke early in the third I even fooled myself into thinking we were about to run away with it. Bartram was on top of Milne (though did he give up a goal with a farcical cross field kick? Two weeks in a row of Docklands slop is melting in one in my memory. I can't even picture if the roof was open or not), and even though Montagna was killing us Frawley was holding Riewoldt relatively well. When even Juice started kicking snaps out of his arse even I, cynical as ever at the prospect of this team being any good, cocked an eyebrow a'la The Rock and tried to convince myself it was going to last.
Of course it wasn't, it didn't and it very rarely ever does. Maric brought joy to the dark hearts of teenagers everywhere by tying up the scores, and even briefly cracked a smile in celebration before realising that he's still the leader of the black parade and going back to the default snarl. It was such a crucial goal that even The Spencil managed to stand and applaud it;
Shame that from then we all became depressed. The late goal to Montagna didn't really hurt too badly, and it probably wouldn't have even happened had Petterd had a touch more luck with his kick that hit the post - and even though we were behind at the last change there was still the fact that the Saints have proven themselves to be flaky freaks this year to give us hope that we could steal it and 'earn' an undeserved reboot for season 2011.
That lasted about ten seconds of the last quarter until THAT Davey-Macdonald-Riewoldt howler, and from there the Saints were off to the races. Our battlers battled on, our fancyboys put the feet up and busted out the cocktails and the Jurrahcane picked up a couple of junktime specials to buffer his stats but when Frawley got confused in the backline and turned it over for the second Cripps goal we were stuffed. Would have been a good time to walk out if I hadn't pledged to see every minute of every game in Victoria this year.
It was a heinous last quarter. Forget the junky goals which kept it close, the Saints finally decided to play like the 2010 model and we had absolutely no idea what to do to get around it. Cue the best part of 30 minutes of dinky kicks and handbals in the backline which usually ended in tragedy or a final desperate hoof into the midfield which was neatly cleaned up. It was horrible and said it all about where we're it. We're so used to coaches who don't have a plan B that we probably wouldn't recognise what it looked like if they suddenly implemented one. Don't know why it worries me, I can barely work out was Plan A is most weeks.
Positives were few and far between. Gysberts was back to his best (so far - a lot more best to come from that guy), Watts continued his good form despite once again being called upon to occassionally wander around the backline and both Jetta and Maric showed that pre-season form isn't a complete fraud. Other than that it goes without saying for anyone who saw the game that Michael Evans had a great debut. He looked comfortable from the first bounce and his disposal under pressure was great - kicks into the forward line weren't much chop but a) he'll naturally improve (no really, don't be fooled by the rest of the list) and b) why bother drilling a kick into our forward line anyway? They're either not there or there's seven of them in the square waiting for a long bomb. No way he gets a game - at the moment - in a full strength side, but good luck seeing one of them again this year. I'm still not convinced that Tom Scully is actually injured and that we aren't being strung along in one of the greatest conspiracies of modern times.
No superstars, no grunt, no ordinary humans, no future for season 2011. There's another three months of this to go, and then you've got to sit through cricket season so that's even more painful. Forget whatever fellow member of the Commonwealth we're losing to in test matches this year, November means one thing for me and that's the draft. Here's my three point schedule of demands;
a) Big bodies
b) Players who are hateable to opposition fans
c) Funny names
I have no idea what Freddie Clutterbuck of East Perth does, plays like, looks like or does in nightclubs but he certainly fits category C. I suggest we pick him even if he's otherwise no good just to fulfill everyone's dream of having a player on our list called Freddie Clutterbuck.
2011 Allen Jakovich Medal Votes
5 - Jordan Gysberts
4 - Michael Evans
3 - Jack Watts
2 - Neville Jetta
1 - Stefan Martin
Apologies to Sylvia, Warnock, Maric, Moloney and McKenzie.
Leaderboard
By reader suggestion I've added Russian insult to Russian injury by temporarily taking back Jamar's Ruckman of the Year award due to Stef Martin getting within nine votes of him. Good luck making up those numbers, but with The Experience having it all to himself over the next few weeks he could at least make it interesting.
Suffice to say the Green back-to-back tilt is looking distinctly unlikely at this time.
19 - Brent Moloney
17 - Colin Sylvia
16 - Mark Jamar (LEADER: Jim Stynes Medal for Ruckman of the Year)
8 - Jack Watts
7 - Colin Garland (LEADER: Marcus Seecamp Medal for Defender of the Year), Stefan Martin
6 - Luke Tapscott (LEADER: Jeff Hilton Medal for Rookie of the Year)
5 - Rohan Bail, Jordan Gysberts
4 - Jack Trengove, James Frawley, Michael Evans
3 - Jack Grimes, Liam Jurrah, Nathan Jones
2 - Jared Rivers, Ricky Petterd, Clint Bartram, Neville Jetta
1 - Brad Green
Around the grounds
A big hand to the Bulldogs for leaving it until the very last moment to take the heat of us with that putrid display against the Eagles. Everyone punts home a ten goal performance, except when it's Tony Modra and you're about to get done by Freo, but there can't have been many non-Eagles fans more keen on Kennedy bringing up double figures last night than Dean from Melbourne.
Until the quarter of slaughter at Subiaco he was firmly in the gun for a weekend of media scrutiny, now it'll be pushed towards the racing results by the inevitable "will Rocket get the arse?" speculation surrounding the dogs. Leaves the field wide open for all the real whining about the Dees to be done by internet nutbags (hi) anyway, and that can never be a bad thing can it?
Certainly puts our debacle against West Coast into some perspective. If only we hadn't been shit two of the three weeks since (and admittedly sublime the other) you could nearly write that Thursday night debacle off as the result of the Eagles going absolutely bananas with the most multipronged forward line in the history of generously pronged items. Good side to watch too, not just because they fulfill my footy fetish of having towering, big bodied, anti-social looking bastards all over the place. Would help if they could win in Victoria but I'd rather see them pull off the comeback of the millenium to win the flag rather than see any of the *spit* other Victorian teams do it.
As much as I'd like to see Malthouse or Roos working for us on minimum wage next season I'll have Rocket if he's happy to work cheap. And let's be fair if he's employed the Bulldogs he certainly works cheap.
Next Week
Now that we've got the pesky winnable games out of the way it's time to start the month long disaster tour which will either see us emerge phoenix from the flames style, or more likely inevitably fall apart and end up struggling to stay out of the bottom four again - in a worse position than last year.
I don't want to be alarmist but there was a stat posted recently on one of the forums which sums up our last four seasons perfectly. Since Dean Bailey took over we are (counting Saturday) 4-1-40 against Victorian teams - for a grand winning percentage of 8.8%. And three of those were against Richmond who by all accounts are actually doing quite well for themselves now and have 10 wins and three draws against Victorian sides in the same period.
All absolutely outrageous reading for those of you who used to enjoy going to your office/school/family reunion etc.. and basking in the glory of having beaten up on sides that gave you bragging rights over somebody other than that weird woman in the finance department who likes Freo because they wear purple. It's not in itself a reason why we'll lose next Friday night, but it's as good a reason as any to expect it.
Unfortunately for all the anguished hand wringing and "sack the coach" panic calls to SEN whenever they lose a game, the Blues have emerged from the trash can as a half decent side. For want of any great depth of contenders this year they could very well finish top four and contend for a Grand Final berth. There's nothing surer than in front of the bright lights of the Friday night football cameras that even if we manage to stick them for three quarters then that filthy turncoat J**d will turn up in the last, drag them over the line and get another three undeserved Brownlow Votes. 2 votes McLean, 1 vote Robinson.
Then it's Essendon who obviously didn't read the memo about rebuilding from scratch and 'bottoming out' (as much as you can with thousands of draft concessions going to clubs nobody is interested in), and who have decided to polish some of the ex-biggest turds in the competition into a genuine finals contender within a year. Good luck getting them in the same psychologically destroyed, nigh on mentally tortured, state that saw them give away all those 50m penalties last year. Hird and his floppy haircut which hasn't changed since 1994 haven't got much to worry about from us this year.
Let's just concentrate on not humiliating ourself once or, god forbid, twice in front of a national television audience eh? We're only just emerging from therapy after that Geelong debacle in '08 (and it's out one door of the psych clinic and back through another when it comes to this club), so let's not go straight back to the bottom of the laughing stock league yet shall we? Think of the poor television executives who will lose out on mountains of coke and leggy Brazilian hookers if we ruin their ratings and cause Seven to demand their rights deal cash back.
Hopefully Bails openly swears on TV again to keep it interesting. No help for me, I'll be there trying to climb Light Tower 2 with my WE WANT MAXIMUM GAWN banners. If nothing else it should get the game shut down.
Saturday, 14 May 2011
Shit Sandwich
Here endeth the footballing week from hell. How many sides have ridden the sort of ridiculous rollercoaster that we've had over the last few weeks? From the debacle in Perth to unbridled joy last week and then back to the gigantic turd that was served up in the last three quarters of today's game we're proving to be even bigger bi-polar freaks than Port Adelaide.
Of course even when we got dicked by the Eagles in embarassing fashion and the internet exploded in a shower of sparks we could console ourselves with the fact that we had players to come back into the side. Even when Rivers went out injured before the Crows match you could laugh and say that we probably deserved one or two injuries after the good run we'd had from Round 1 onwards. Then Grimes busts his foot, the Trengove Debacle robs us of Jack for two (later three) weeks, Jamar hurts his knee and The Spencil totally destroys his in the 2's. It never rains it pours etc..
Still, despite our putrid record against North (lost eight in a row) and at Docklands (one win from 14) there were still plenty of people willing to throw their hard earned on us beating North at Docklands. It wasn't an idea entirely without merit, the 19 survivors from the Crows game had been bloody good and North's sole win for the year had come against Port. Even without Jamar in the centre if everything went right we could have gotten away with it - and for a while we did.
So, just another shite afternoon at Corporate Stadium then? Well, it looked good for the first twenty minutes. We expected The Experience to be competent in the ruck, but for the first quarter he absolutely dominated. North were running with absolutely no idea what they were doing and even Juice, born under the zodiac sign of SPUD, was running around inside 50 like he was Jonathan Brown. By the time he'd won the free kick that allowed Watts to kick the second goal it looked like last week had never ended. Next thing he's dropping to the ground theatrically in honour of the birthday of the league's #2 Shit Bloke Boomer Harvey (and we all hope that he'll be promoted to #1 soon when Stephen Milne is finally locked up) and winning a 50 for his second goal and everything's coming up Melbourne. Forget the fact that he went down like a housewife - deliberately for once - and consider that he had two goals and a hand in another, we were four goals in front and it was looking like the former delistee was about to have the greatest day of his life. Somewhere John Meesen must have been sitting on a couch yelling obscenities at his foot for robbing him of the chance of being out there as well.
After three more goals and with Lachie Hansen missing sitters that even Ben Holland would have got with his eyes closed you could almost believe it was going to continue. Alas the Demons are great at lulling you into a false sense of security - witness the second quarter of the Hawks game for the perfect example - and there was something false about the way we were running all over them. Still, at least if we got out to a big enough lead we might have been able to withstand the inevitable correction in the umpiring and North working us out in the middle.
Naturally we were ahead of schedule and nearly managed to stuff it up by the end of the quarter. Suddenly Newton was in the ruck and while he was having a fair bash at the bounces - and getting a hand from Sylvia and Gysberts elevating the third man up tactic to an art form - he was everything to the right of your dial that he wasn't to the left of it. Absolute shite, and never really recovered even though he tried hard for the rest of the day. That's what you get with Juice, effort and at least no dropped marks today but he's not getting any better. God forbid one of Gawn or Campbell can get through enough games with Casey without suffering crippling injuries I'd much rather one of them and Bate into the team - who was unlucky to be dumped after one ordinary performance in an otherwise brilliant side - and Newton back doing what he does best and killing VFL defenders. Possibly for Port Melbourne.
When North kicked two in a row, the second from a free kick delivered on a platter after a ruck infringment from the flaming spud, I thought the balance was about to tip in their favour. Should have gone with my first instinct, but the Bartram goal in the last few seconds sucked me into believing we were going to steady and run away with it in the second term. After all, not only was Bartram absolutely destroying the Shit Bloke but if he of all people (four goals in three years, how many of them set shots?) was booting them off an angle late in the quarter then we could do anything.
Indeed we could anything, as long as that meant playing like muppets for the next three quarters. There was an element of terrible luck in it at times - we were getting rubbish bounces all over the place, the majority of the pox umpiring decisions started to go against us (and make no mistake there were plenty in either direction throughout the day), Garland went off with a sore ankle, came back and then succumbed to it, and Bail did his knee. As if that wasn't bad enough we were butchering the ball going forward or bombing it in aimlessly only to see it come back the other way at a million miles an hour. When Goldstein - who must love playing us after we gifted him five goals at the end of '09 when The Tank was in full gear - realised what he was playing against and started to dominate the balance tipped noticeably in their favour.
Didn't help that Moloney couldn't get near it. Just when those of us prone to insane hyperbole started to declare him a contender for the Brownlow he spent the first three quarters barely able to get near it. Having the bloke who near single handedly tore the Crows to shreds last week being dominated by Hamburgers Ziebell (he of the leg that is even more fragile than Patrick Dangerfield's head) said it all about our performance today.
Without looking at a replay, and if you think I'm going to subject myself to that then you're on crack, it's hard to piece together what happened over the next quarter and a half. I remember Aaron Edwards taking the Flaming Spud of the Century title belt from Juice and running with it while the former champion tried to roll through a snap from a tight angle like he was Lance Franklin and instead punted it straight through for a point. That was about it for Juice, but Edwards took it upon himself to run riot despite putting in the worst shot on goal since The Spencil dropped the ball on the ground on his run-up on the same day we tanked against Goldstein by playing Dunn on him all day.
From there we were just purely putrid, with very little to recommend us. Other than Jurrah's big mark in the goalsquare and his retrospectively unwise sledging of Firrito they just smashed us. With the centre absolutely locked up in their favour North seemed to have loose men everywhere - and what would an MFC game be without the opposition being able to spot up leads within 50 and without one of our players anywhere near them? - and picked us apart with ease. Normal service resumed, Melbourne Football Club apologises for any inconvenience.
Somehow we were still in front at half time but the tide had well and truly turned. We could have come out of the sheds and made a stand, but Wona (no celebrations, shit game due to playing a shit game) missed one and then Harvey the dog did his weekly cheating to milk a free kick from the gulliable twat of an umpire and kicked the goal. He'd done two thirds of bugger all until then but his success in cheating inspired him and North were off to the races. Undeservedly we got back to within two points when Petterd goalled at the second opportunity but it was just delaying the inevitable and by three quarter time we were stuffed.
How many times in one game can a team be just about to launch an attack when they cop a free kick or make a stupid turnover? Never mind we'd probably have stuffed it up anyway the way we were going today but Jones cost us two goals with the sort of cockups I'd started to forget that he specialised in and Davey another with a putrid kick across the ground. Is there any minor danger that we can get two good games in a row from some of these guys? Moloney only managed to get any sort of freedom once Ziebell went off at 3/4 time, Sylvia was good for most of the day but rapidly lost interest as the game went on and Green was missing again.
There's something wrong with Green, and it's not just that they're not using him the same was as they did when he was so good last year. Now that the swashbuckling Baileyball has been put to one side and we seem to be playing with a forward line again it would be a good move to give him a run up there just to get his hands on it. Especially if, and you may as well shut the doors if true, Jurrah is also hurt.
I did like Watts' game, even though like everyone bar Maric and Jurrah he couldn't get near it up forward in the second half, he looked good down back (!?) and through the middle. Still, I don't want him down back and through the middle - I want him leading to the ball inside 50. Maybe one day we will actually kick to leads on a regular basis and give him the chance.
The game petered out into a junktime slopfest in the last quarter, going on just long enough for every remaining MFC in the stadium - all seven of us - to completely lose the will to live. Maric racked up three after the bins had been dragged out and looked good in doing it, but there was precious little else to be said for us as North ran away to an easy win. The backline was ok, and Frawley was easily the best of them, but we got exposed doing stupid things so many times they were always going to crack under the pressure eventually. Still, when you let Edwards kick six you're either not going to win the match or are a VFL side. We had a hint of both about us today.
It's not to say North Melbourne aren't a half decent side this year, after all I can just picture one of their high proportion of paranoid schizophrenic fans stumbling upon this post and foaming at the mouth that they're not getting acknowledgment. Before I'm subjected to a cavalcade of Excel spreadsheet and flowcharts proving how they're the next big thing and a going financial concern for the future I'll admit that they were absolutely the better side on the day and their ladder position says more about the pox run of games they've had to start the year than it does their playing list.
But they are no better than half decent, and if we can't beat half decent on a regular basis then what's the chances of finishing anywhere near the eight? Last week might have seduced us back into thinking we were half decent but it's back in your/our box for at least one more week now. With the run of games we've got coming up over the next few weeks it's not inconceivable that we could lose the lot and end up back above only Port/Brisbane/Gold Coast. At least now Bails can blame injuries and suspensions for it, unfortunately for him that doesn't bode well for his future and there's no doubt that until we start playing well on a consistent basis that every week is going to be "I know a bloke, who knows a bloke, who cleans the toilets of the MCG who..." conspiracy theories which somehow end with him being replaced by Roos, Malthouse or Checker Hughes.
Frawley was right in the post-match interviews, we just gave up during the match and that's not right. He was one of the few who you couldn't fault for going at it hard for four quarters but there was definitely a sense of "well, that was fun while it lasted" when things started going wrong. There was never any doubt that they were going to come out like a house on fire at the first bounce. I wouldn't be surprised if the whole group joined in a circle for a group slash onto a picture of Demetriou before running out but the challenge was to keep up the same intensity for four quarters - or at least until the game was won - and we failed miserably.
Can we recover from here? Well the West Coast/Adelaide results show that anything is possible, but with the injury plague suddenly becoming even more black death-eque, and with Dunn almost certainly to be suspended for his flying knee drop in the first quarter (no loss considering the way he played) we're running very short on potential ins. Attention Cale Morton - this is your opportunity, if you're not going to come in and show some desparation now then don't turn up on Monday at all.
2011 Allen Jakovich Medal Votes
Almost impossible to give these today. Even when we're absolutely putrid - even more so - there's usually two or three standouts and it's impossible to fill the bottom two spots without reaching. Today the Stef Martin Experience's first quarter gets him over the line and then there's a writhing mass of about nine players who could go into the other spots in any order.
5 - Stefan Martin
4 - James Frawley
3 - Colin Sylvia
2 - Jack Watts
1 - Clint Bartram
Apologies to Newton (first quarter only), Davey, Jurrah, Petterd, Gysberts, Warnock and Maric (for junktime CRUMB).
Leaderboard
19 - Brent Moloney
17 - Colin Sylvia
16 - Mark Jamar (WINNER: Jim Stynes Medal for Ruckman of the Year)
7 - Colin Garland (LEADER: Marcus Seecamp Medal for Defender of the Year)
6 - Luke Tapscott (LEADER: Jeff Hilton Medal for Rookie of the Year), Stefan Martin
5 - Rohan Bail, Jack Watts
4 - Jack Trengove, James Frawley
3 - Jack Grimes, Liam Jurrah, Nathan Jones
2 - Jared Rivers, Ricky Petterd, Clint Bartram
1 - Brad Green
Encyclopdia Titanica
Demon Wiki can now be found at the far easier to remember URL of... Demonwiki.org. No need to change bookmarks or links, the old address will still work as well. And while we're at it, nice try to the person who tried to add Garry Lyon's nickname as "Cock Breath" during the week. Unfortunately that page is guarded like my own child and I'm on top of these sort of shenanigans.
On that note I apologise for being a massive scab for the first time in seven years but the advertising revenue from this site goes directly towards paying for Demonwiki - not straight into my pocket for cigs - so feel free to click a link to the right whenever you visit. Open it up a new tab and don't even look at it if you're really not interested. And I promise never to scab you again, until the next time when we start to get close to the payment threshold and need that little push over the edge.
Next Week
Back to Death Valley to play St Kilda. It's just our luck that they'll find some form against the Hawks tomorrow and then bore us into submission next week. Given that half their backline kick like Al Nicholson after an amputation it would be nice if somebody could put even the slightest bit of pressure on them before we're out of the match.
Can't be bothered playing fantasy selection committee, not particuarly excited by anybody we've got to come in except for McKenzie if fit. We've got a prick of a run after next week so get ready to hear the words "season defining" carted out by every broken down media hack alive - but for once they've got a point. After next week we play Friday night games twice in three weeks, and personally I'd rather us not like complete tools both times and once again be banned from appearing in marquee matches.
Was it worth it?
If you're into Maric self-harm then yes, very much so. And you'd have to be to watch this club regularly.
Speaking of Maric I think the most disappointing part of my week was discovering that he's not a complete emo afterall. Maybe it was Beamer Moloney's sparkling interview techniques that brought a smile to his face, and introduced us to the newest catchphrase in footy - "yeah, it's good" - but I think this image needs to be posted here for posterity just in case we never see anything like it again.
He'll always be the AFL's #1 My Chemical Romance fan to to me.
Of course even when we got dicked by the Eagles in embarassing fashion and the internet exploded in a shower of sparks we could console ourselves with the fact that we had players to come back into the side. Even when Rivers went out injured before the Crows match you could laugh and say that we probably deserved one or two injuries after the good run we'd had from Round 1 onwards. Then Grimes busts his foot, the Trengove Debacle robs us of Jack for two (later three) weeks, Jamar hurts his knee and The Spencil totally destroys his in the 2's. It never rains it pours etc..
Still, despite our putrid record against North (lost eight in a row) and at Docklands (one win from 14) there were still plenty of people willing to throw their hard earned on us beating North at Docklands. It wasn't an idea entirely without merit, the 19 survivors from the Crows game had been bloody good and North's sole win for the year had come against Port. Even without Jamar in the centre if everything went right we could have gotten away with it - and for a while we did.
So, just another shite afternoon at Corporate Stadium then? Well, it looked good for the first twenty minutes. We expected The Experience to be competent in the ruck, but for the first quarter he absolutely dominated. North were running with absolutely no idea what they were doing and even Juice, born under the zodiac sign of SPUD, was running around inside 50 like he was Jonathan Brown. By the time he'd won the free kick that allowed Watts to kick the second goal it looked like last week had never ended. Next thing he's dropping to the ground theatrically in honour of the birthday of the league's #2 Shit Bloke Boomer Harvey (and we all hope that he'll be promoted to #1 soon when Stephen Milne is finally locked up) and winning a 50 for his second goal and everything's coming up Melbourne. Forget the fact that he went down like a housewife - deliberately for once - and consider that he had two goals and a hand in another, we were four goals in front and it was looking like the former delistee was about to have the greatest day of his life. Somewhere John Meesen must have been sitting on a couch yelling obscenities at his foot for robbing him of the chance of being out there as well.
After three more goals and with Lachie Hansen missing sitters that even Ben Holland would have got with his eyes closed you could almost believe it was going to continue. Alas the Demons are great at lulling you into a false sense of security - witness the second quarter of the Hawks game for the perfect example - and there was something false about the way we were running all over them. Still, at least if we got out to a big enough lead we might have been able to withstand the inevitable correction in the umpiring and North working us out in the middle.
Naturally we were ahead of schedule and nearly managed to stuff it up by the end of the quarter. Suddenly Newton was in the ruck and while he was having a fair bash at the bounces - and getting a hand from Sylvia and Gysberts elevating the third man up tactic to an art form - he was everything to the right of your dial that he wasn't to the left of it. Absolute shite, and never really recovered even though he tried hard for the rest of the day. That's what you get with Juice, effort and at least no dropped marks today but he's not getting any better. God forbid one of Gawn or Campbell can get through enough games with Casey without suffering crippling injuries I'd much rather one of them and Bate into the team - who was unlucky to be dumped after one ordinary performance in an otherwise brilliant side - and Newton back doing what he does best and killing VFL defenders. Possibly for Port Melbourne.
When North kicked two in a row, the second from a free kick delivered on a platter after a ruck infringment from the flaming spud, I thought the balance was about to tip in their favour. Should have gone with my first instinct, but the Bartram goal in the last few seconds sucked me into believing we were going to steady and run away with it in the second term. After all, not only was Bartram absolutely destroying the Shit Bloke but if he of all people (four goals in three years, how many of them set shots?) was booting them off an angle late in the quarter then we could do anything.
Indeed we could anything, as long as that meant playing like muppets for the next three quarters. There was an element of terrible luck in it at times - we were getting rubbish bounces all over the place, the majority of the pox umpiring decisions started to go against us (and make no mistake there were plenty in either direction throughout the day), Garland went off with a sore ankle, came back and then succumbed to it, and Bail did his knee. As if that wasn't bad enough we were butchering the ball going forward or bombing it in aimlessly only to see it come back the other way at a million miles an hour. When Goldstein - who must love playing us after we gifted him five goals at the end of '09 when The Tank was in full gear - realised what he was playing against and started to dominate the balance tipped noticeably in their favour.
Didn't help that Moloney couldn't get near it. Just when those of us prone to insane hyperbole started to declare him a contender for the Brownlow he spent the first three quarters barely able to get near it. Having the bloke who near single handedly tore the Crows to shreds last week being dominated by Hamburgers Ziebell (he of the leg that is even more fragile than Patrick Dangerfield's head) said it all about our performance today.
Without looking at a replay, and if you think I'm going to subject myself to that then you're on crack, it's hard to piece together what happened over the next quarter and a half. I remember Aaron Edwards taking the Flaming Spud of the Century title belt from Juice and running with it while the former champion tried to roll through a snap from a tight angle like he was Lance Franklin and instead punted it straight through for a point. That was about it for Juice, but Edwards took it upon himself to run riot despite putting in the worst shot on goal since The Spencil dropped the ball on the ground on his run-up on the same day we tanked against Goldstein by playing Dunn on him all day.
From there we were just purely putrid, with very little to recommend us. Other than Jurrah's big mark in the goalsquare and his retrospectively unwise sledging of Firrito they just smashed us. With the centre absolutely locked up in their favour North seemed to have loose men everywhere - and what would an MFC game be without the opposition being able to spot up leads within 50 and without one of our players anywhere near them? - and picked us apart with ease. Normal service resumed, Melbourne Football Club apologises for any inconvenience.
Somehow we were still in front at half time but the tide had well and truly turned. We could have come out of the sheds and made a stand, but Wona (no celebrations, shit game due to playing a shit game) missed one and then Harvey the dog did his weekly cheating to milk a free kick from the gulliable twat of an umpire and kicked the goal. He'd done two thirds of bugger all until then but his success in cheating inspired him and North were off to the races. Undeservedly we got back to within two points when Petterd goalled at the second opportunity but it was just delaying the inevitable and by three quarter time we were stuffed.
How many times in one game can a team be just about to launch an attack when they cop a free kick or make a stupid turnover? Never mind we'd probably have stuffed it up anyway the way we were going today but Jones cost us two goals with the sort of cockups I'd started to forget that he specialised in and Davey another with a putrid kick across the ground. Is there any minor danger that we can get two good games in a row from some of these guys? Moloney only managed to get any sort of freedom once Ziebell went off at 3/4 time, Sylvia was good for most of the day but rapidly lost interest as the game went on and Green was missing again.
There's something wrong with Green, and it's not just that they're not using him the same was as they did when he was so good last year. Now that the swashbuckling Baileyball has been put to one side and we seem to be playing with a forward line again it would be a good move to give him a run up there just to get his hands on it. Especially if, and you may as well shut the doors if true, Jurrah is also hurt.
I did like Watts' game, even though like everyone bar Maric and Jurrah he couldn't get near it up forward in the second half, he looked good down back (!?) and through the middle. Still, I don't want him down back and through the middle - I want him leading to the ball inside 50. Maybe one day we will actually kick to leads on a regular basis and give him the chance.
The game petered out into a junktime slopfest in the last quarter, going on just long enough for every remaining MFC in the stadium - all seven of us - to completely lose the will to live. Maric racked up three after the bins had been dragged out and looked good in doing it, but there was precious little else to be said for us as North ran away to an easy win. The backline was ok, and Frawley was easily the best of them, but we got exposed doing stupid things so many times they were always going to crack under the pressure eventually. Still, when you let Edwards kick six you're either not going to win the match or are a VFL side. We had a hint of both about us today.
It's not to say North Melbourne aren't a half decent side this year, after all I can just picture one of their high proportion of paranoid schizophrenic fans stumbling upon this post and foaming at the mouth that they're not getting acknowledgment. Before I'm subjected to a cavalcade of Excel spreadsheet and flowcharts proving how they're the next big thing and a going financial concern for the future I'll admit that they were absolutely the better side on the day and their ladder position says more about the pox run of games they've had to start the year than it does their playing list.
But they are no better than half decent, and if we can't beat half decent on a regular basis then what's the chances of finishing anywhere near the eight? Last week might have seduced us back into thinking we were half decent but it's back in your/our box for at least one more week now. With the run of games we've got coming up over the next few weeks it's not inconceivable that we could lose the lot and end up back above only Port/Brisbane/Gold Coast. At least now Bails can blame injuries and suspensions for it, unfortunately for him that doesn't bode well for his future and there's no doubt that until we start playing well on a consistent basis that every week is going to be "I know a bloke, who knows a bloke, who cleans the toilets of the MCG who..." conspiracy theories which somehow end with him being replaced by Roos, Malthouse or Checker Hughes.
Frawley was right in the post-match interviews, we just gave up during the match and that's not right. He was one of the few who you couldn't fault for going at it hard for four quarters but there was definitely a sense of "well, that was fun while it lasted" when things started going wrong. There was never any doubt that they were going to come out like a house on fire at the first bounce. I wouldn't be surprised if the whole group joined in a circle for a group slash onto a picture of Demetriou before running out but the challenge was to keep up the same intensity for four quarters - or at least until the game was won - and we failed miserably.
Can we recover from here? Well the West Coast/Adelaide results show that anything is possible, but with the injury plague suddenly becoming even more black death-eque, and with Dunn almost certainly to be suspended for his flying knee drop in the first quarter (no loss considering the way he played) we're running very short on potential ins. Attention Cale Morton - this is your opportunity, if you're not going to come in and show some desparation now then don't turn up on Monday at all.
2011 Allen Jakovich Medal Votes
Almost impossible to give these today. Even when we're absolutely putrid - even more so - there's usually two or three standouts and it's impossible to fill the bottom two spots without reaching. Today the Stef Martin Experience's first quarter gets him over the line and then there's a writhing mass of about nine players who could go into the other spots in any order.
5 - Stefan Martin
4 - James Frawley
3 - Colin Sylvia
2 - Jack Watts
1 - Clint Bartram
Apologies to Newton (first quarter only), Davey, Jurrah, Petterd, Gysberts, Warnock and Maric (for junktime CRUMB).
Leaderboard
19 - Brent Moloney
17 - Colin Sylvia
16 - Mark Jamar (WINNER: Jim Stynes Medal for Ruckman of the Year)
7 - Colin Garland (LEADER: Marcus Seecamp Medal for Defender of the Year)
6 - Luke Tapscott (LEADER: Jeff Hilton Medal for Rookie of the Year), Stefan Martin
5 - Rohan Bail, Jack Watts
4 - Jack Trengove, James Frawley
3 - Jack Grimes, Liam Jurrah, Nathan Jones
2 - Jared Rivers, Ricky Petterd, Clint Bartram
1 - Brad Green
Encyclopdia Titanica
Demon Wiki can now be found at the far easier to remember URL of... Demonwiki.org. No need to change bookmarks or links, the old address will still work as well. And while we're at it, nice try to the person who tried to add Garry Lyon's nickname as "Cock Breath" during the week. Unfortunately that page is guarded like my own child and I'm on top of these sort of shenanigans.
On that note I apologise for being a massive scab for the first time in seven years but the advertising revenue from this site goes directly towards paying for Demonwiki - not straight into my pocket for cigs - so feel free to click a link to the right whenever you visit. Open it up a new tab and don't even look at it if you're really not interested. And I promise never to scab you again, until the next time when we start to get close to the payment threshold and need that little push over the edge.
Next Week
Back to Death Valley to play St Kilda. It's just our luck that they'll find some form against the Hawks tomorrow and then bore us into submission next week. Given that half their backline kick like Al Nicholson after an amputation it would be nice if somebody could put even the slightest bit of pressure on them before we're out of the match.
Can't be bothered playing fantasy selection committee, not particuarly excited by anybody we've got to come in except for McKenzie if fit. We've got a prick of a run after next week so get ready to hear the words "season defining" carted out by every broken down media hack alive - but for once they've got a point. After next week we play Friday night games twice in three weeks, and personally I'd rather us not like complete tools both times and once again be banned from appearing in marquee matches.
Was it worth it?
If you're into Maric self-harm then yes, very much so. And you'd have to be to watch this club regularly.
Speaking of Maric I think the most disappointing part of my week was discovering that he's not a complete emo afterall. Maybe it was Beamer Moloney's sparkling interview techniques that brought a smile to his face, and introduced us to the newest catchphrase in footy - "yeah, it's good" - but I think this image needs to be posted here for posterity just in case we never see anything like it again.
He'll always be the AFL's #1 My Chemical Romance fan to to me.
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