#fistedforever

Before we begin, Demonblog Films presents the second instalment in our series tracing Mark Neeld's harrowing journey through 2013. This was supposed to stretch out across the season and culminate in a spectacular conclusion in Round 23 but I'm getting antsy that sadly we won't make it that far together, so best rush produce the last three episodes in case they all need to be played at once next Sunday.



*Normal programming resumes here*

This football thing is all getting a bit much isn't it? (spoiler alert: YES IT BLOODY WELL IS). Even when something tasty is briefly dangled above our head it's soon snatched away and replaced by strips of rancid meat. Dark clouds are everywhere and karmic payback for ruining Addam Maric's career by stereotyping him as an emo is that we shall all be turned into emos for the rest of our supporting lives. Sorry about that.

Thank god for Essendon I suppose, though it would have been nice if they could have been thrown into turmoil last week before obliterating us. Not that it would have mattered much considering the performance we put in, James Hird could have been fronting the International Criminal Court in The Hague and he'd have still managed to get back in time to rack up a 20 goal plus win by taking advantage of grand slam defending like this (picture courtesy @lachie66, who seems to have a chandelier in his house).

I assume that everyone goes through different stages of footballing grief, but I've got mine down to such a fine art that you can manage your calendar by it. Assuming we've lost (and the odds of that are pretty good) I'll trudge home gloomily, kick a few inanimate objects, eat my feelings and mangle the keyboard until some minor level of catharsis has been achieved. Then on "Day 2" I'll look at some forums, read the newspaper reports and listen to us being unmercifully pilloried on the radio, which will cause my blood pressure to head north again.

If it's a Sunday game there's generally less time for cleansing of the soul and we get a jump start on Day 3 (Monday) where deepression has well and truly set in and I start to wonder if there's any reason to go on. This is exacerbated by having to talk about the result to every man and their dog. Yes, I know we were no good. No I don't know what's wrong with them. Repeat five times. It's ok with MFC fans, but please Hawthorn and Collingwood fans queue up and tell me what's wrong with our club because that's something we really appreciate.

By Day 4 (Tuesday) I've had everybody in the world who considers themselves a "bit of a comedian" doing jokes at our expense (there was one belter this week about the waterboy being sacked for poisoning the players that somebody tried to get over about ten times, all of which were totally ignored until he gave up and moved onto our other local MFC fans), have foolishly clicked more SACK EVERYONE threads and will have read/seen enough SACK EVERYONE, WAIT DON'T SACK THEM THEY'RE ALRIGHT media reports to cause maximum deespair to set in.

It's more of the same on Wednesday before everything starts to turn around on Day 6 (Thursday). By 5pm I'm gagging to see team changes, and am actually starting to look forward to the game even though I know exactly what the pattern of the next week is going to be. It should be pointed out for the record, and for evidence in future Fair Work Australia cases, that somewhere in the midst of all of this deestress actual work is occasionally done. Friday is more of the same, the excitement of "this could be the week somebody good happens", topped off by watching good teams play at night and trying to remember back to what it was like when we were young and full of hope. Then the match rolls around, we got tonked and the vicious cycle begins again.

In those grim days mid-week where THE FEAR has well and truly taken over I wind up like Homer Simpson seeing Moe's face everywhere in the wake of the Flaming Moe/Homer incident. Everything I read, and everything I hear features some sort of wisdom that either seems to explain the predicament of the Melbourne Football Club or seems highly apt about the state we've got ourselves into.

This week I was looking for something else when totally by accident I stumbled upon a cheery piece called To Those Born Later by our East German correspondent Bertholt Brecht (who has Demonblog form, having previously been turned to in times of crisis). Join me in putting aside full footy bogan mode for a paragraph and entering full literary wanker mode instead - and tell me if this doesn't ring true as a Melbourne loyalist.

Truly, I live in dark times!
Frank speech is naive
A smooth forehead suggests insensitivity. 
The man who laughs has simply not yet had the terrible news.

He goes on to basically suggest life is shit which, with respect to people in the world who have real problems, it actually is if you're a Dees fan.

There is no ducking the fact that we're constantly finding new ways of hitting rock bottom, because unless you're a kid who isn't old enough to know better (and the ones that do have until Monday to switch teams and avoid becoming a playground comedy figure) the fun has been completely sucked out of the experience (not The Experience, whose name just conjures up memories of good times and great haircuts in the recent past) of being a 'fan'.

The rush some of us still get before and during a game - at least for a while - is one thing, but other than Essendon killing themselves and the inaugural Carnival of Hate, which had a completely different storyline, the last time I had actual proper fun at the footy was 659 days ago on Saturday 25 June, 2011 when we beat Richmond, the late Jack Watts was best on ground and Melbourne (yes, that Melbourne) moved half a game inside the eight. Good times indeed. Just over a month later we got clocked by the 186 meteorite and it's been one horror after another since to the point where Jack has been driven mental, we've won six games at about one every 110 days (including the off-season) and Richmond are apparently actually quite good. And more power to the Tigers, somebody has to take their opportunities instead of imploding at the slightest provocation.

Admittedly not every single week ends with friends and family holding me back from introducing fork into toaster. For instance summer is quite restful, but even during the season sometimes you just sit there for four quarters watching the inevitable then go home and think "well, I've done my bit". Sometimes you might even get a few minutes or a quarter to bag up and take home as a happy memory in lieu of actual solid gold wins. Occasionally you get a mixture of all the emotions - take for instance last year against St Kilda when the first half was so boring you'd have been forgiven for falling asleep, then they thumped us in the third quarter before we got the cut-out-and-keep, possibly never to be repeated NQR Blease rampage in the final term.

What I really want is the right to be at least a little bit arrogant again. Obviously until you're at least a finals team you should generally shut your mouth and get on with your life, but I was re-reading an old post during the week and this bit from the day we flogged Sydney (the absolute undoubted highpoint of the Dark Ages) says it all in regards to some panicking fool who would go on to see his team win a flag two years later:

My highlight was in the middle of the third quarter massacre when Sydney were trying, albeit comically, to get it out of their backline and he screamed "KENNEDY! KENNEDY! KICK IT TO KENNEDY!" and somebody yelled out "Kick it to whoever you like, it's not going to fucking help you". Brought the house down. Hearing our fans ripping out arrogant lines again is almost enough to bring a tear to the eye.

Can you imagine that happening today? Too much ammunition has been handed out to the opposition for anybody but the bravest individual to start dropping bombs on other supporters until at least 2015. We've gone from 'on the rise' (allegedly), to a scandal tainted, farcically run outfit who are permanently mired in the bottom four (at best) and have been officially designated as the punching bag for every poon in the media who wants to rack up a few more hits on their articles or get the switchboards to light up by saying something provocative about us. Step forward Barrett, Darcy, Smith, Wilson et al and take your shots, you're kicking a lifeless corpse you weak pricks.

Anyway, as if you needed to go through all that for me to tell you we're no good. I'm sure you were well aware of the situation, but here's the stat that'll make you wish for a nuclear war - our winless start and percentage across the first three games of the season (35%) represent a worse first three games of the season than any side since St Kilda - 1985 (34.7%).

Think about that for a while and see if you're still interested in getting out of bed on Monday morning. If I'm going to be pitched into a state of terminal self-loathing I'm taking the 300 or so readers of this page with me. If that's not bad enough if it's officially the 8th worst start in history and third shittest since 1910.

1 - St Kilda - 1898 (21.3%)
2 - St Kilda - 1899 (22.7%)
3 - Carlton - 1901 (24.8%)
4 - St Kilda - 1897 (26.5%)
5 - Hawthorn - 1950 (29.3%)
6 - St Kilda - 1910 (34.7%)

Given how easy if was to have dramatic rises and falls in percentage in the years when teams scored about 15 points a match (the 1898 record was set with a largest loss of 76 points) I'm not even counting those in the final tally - let's skip straight to 1950 and honestly call it the third worst start ever. CALL 1300 DEMONS AND BUY A MEMBERSHIP IMMEDIATELY! At least we're not St Kilda right?

So that's the sort of hole we're in, and god knows how we're going to get out. There really were some good signs today, and I'd almost have taken any loss under 100 before the first bounce if you'd offered it, so it's hard to get too down on what happened (other than the usual level of background disappointment that has hovered over us since Round 1, 2007) but the fact remains that in the end we were lucky to avoid our 25th entry to this list. Does the fact that the disaster was almost entirely confined to one quarter wipe out all the gains from the first two?

I think there's still a lot to be taken from the first half even knowing what came after it. Without a recognised tagger, and with two of our key defenders (Frawley and Thousand Yard Stare Garland) playing like they'd finally cracked under the pressure of holding us together for years we played proper, league standard football for large periods of time and twice kicked four goals in a row - which without consulting the record books probably happened twice all of last season.

First things first let's get it out of our system and boo the all too often inept umpires for rorting us out of our deserved 10 goal loss. Do you feel better now? It can at least be said that our players had an actual, proper bash for the first half this week. Not the first five minutes before the CBF's kick in like Essendon, two entire quarters. They were running with their opponents, they were running for their teammates, we were even winning honest to goodness clearances against a proper midfield. I even saw somebody shepherd. Good god who are these players and what have you done with the real MFC?

Of course we had to go through a period where it looked a bit Round 2, a bit exactly like the real MFC, where we spent the first five minutes breaking even and thinking we were in it before getting (presumably) belted. Even worse this time we conceded the first two goals (don't forget last week at one point it was 6-6), causing red lights and alarms to start going off everywhere.

Then something magical temporarily happened and we started to look like an AFL side again against a team who were not Gold Coast or GWS. It wasn't just Nathan Jones and Mitch Clark carrying the team on their shoulders as usual, Trengove was playing his best game for a long time and even Jamar had remembered how to tap (although in general play he bombed out to levels approaching his almost criminal 2003-2008 output) and Sylvia was clearly responding to me trying to get rid of him (more likely responding to his agent reminding him that it's not good enough to just be a free agent, you have to score a decent contract too) with one of those cameos he throws in every once in a while which make you think he'd be a deadly permanent forward. Not getting fooled yet, but I'll still enjoy it when it happens.

By the 20 minute mark we were in front and the small but tightly wound up crowd were going well over the top (myself included). Jack Viney even got a rousing ovation just for getting a kick. Suddenly the presence of fringe players like Bail, Evans and to a lesser extent Jetta was having the sort of positive influence I'm sure they were convinced the Byrnes, Pedersen, Rodan trio were going to provide before they collectively failed to fire a shot other than a couple of cheap Byrnes goals.

Given that we weren't doing too badly in the middle despite the likes of Priddis and Kerr being able to run around doing whatever they liked, it would have been just reward for bouncing back from a bad start to hold the lead until quarter time - but that was that for the first term and the Eagles got the last three. Gate slammed shut again. Typical MFC.

Still, apart from Bail going off with what was suspected to be a concussion at the time and which could have finished him off forever, the second quarter had moments to recommend it for future viewing as well. Ok, so the Eagles got the first goal within the first minute and it looked like we were about to be wiped off the face of the planet (save that for later), but once we realised that Mitch Clark was a god amongst men and decided to just boot it at him and let him do the rest we managed to not only put the brakes on but actually kick some goals as well. He got another one on either side of some crumb - the one thing we seem to be better at this year - and god help us all we were not only in front but in front by double figures. Jaw dropping stuff. If you thought alarms were going off earlier in the game imagine what was happening at this point, apparently even UVB-76 briefly went off air due to the shock. Then we got thrashed.

Yes, the four goals in a row and the brief moment of joy across the MCG which greeted them was pretty much the end of it for us, but at least we got to see something memorable - and it wasn't just two crumbed goals from a side who almost completely rejected the concept last year - it was in fact another highlight reel screamer courtesy of Jeremy Howe. It's doubtful that anything else memorable will come out of the match (unless you're a West Coast fan), but we'll always have his Mark of the Year - and at least this time when it's shown endlessly the score in the corner of the screen will reflect a point in the game where we were actually doing well. My highlight from that picture is the woman who has shown up to sit in the stands and casually read the paper. Also good to see celebrity Dees fan Anthony Michael Hall reprising his role in The Breakfast Club in the bottom right of shot.

As far as highlights went our collection sort of grinds to a halt at about the time he landed on earth and flubbed the kick, because once again just as soon as we got ourselves in a decent position we fell apart. Terlich went from a hero in the first quarter to booting the ball down the throat of an Eagles player, eventually leading to a Josh Kennedy goal. He of the fruitiest run-up in history had botched two easy chances in the first term, one possibly due to the crowd breaking out in laughter just before he dropped the ball, but give him enough chances to get it right and he will eventually. By half time he'd very much solved the issues, seemingly by removing one shuffle out of his motion, and we were very keen to give him as many chances as required to practice.

Then there was Darling who [INSERT COMMENT ABOUT LUCAS COOK HERE]. We got the last goal of the half through Trengove but it was no good getting involved in a shootout because that's something we're woefully underprepared for. It's fine to get a few goals out of the midfield, but unless we were kicking it at Clark or Sylvia there was barely any point going forward. Compare and contrast to the other end where they were threatening to kick them from all over the place, and both Frawley and Garland looked like they wanted to be anywhere else. Tom McDonald, the official King of Sizzle, was having his issues with Darling but at least he appeared to care.

You could just tell that it was going to go wrong at some point, though even I didn't think we'd manage to find a way to almost lose by the ton, even though the Eagles were 0-2 and facing the possibility of landing at Perth Airport to be attacked by an angry mob if they somehow contrived to lose to. Big deal, you could tell that Worsfold wasn't all that concerned by the prospect - even if it's hard to tell because he only has one more facial expression than Garland - he knew as well as anybody that we were playing out of our skin when we took the lead and that after everything settled down his side had too many stars for us to handle. It looks to me like they're also got a few duds (and as a Melbourne fan I think I can spot them) but who cares when they're not the ones required to do the heavy lifting?

When we got the margin to season high double figures in the second quarter courtesy of Howe's arsey snap Worsfold might have broken into a very light sweat but he needn't have worried. Even with the underdone Kerr and Le Cras (complete with dodgy arm cast a'la Cowboy Bob Orton) they had too much power for us on all lines - but especially up front, and even more especially when Cox went down there to give us three talls to have no idea about/no interest in stopping.

So, the chances of us winning were somewhere between slim and none anyway but surely after the most popular 10 point half time deficit in the history of footy (they even got clapped off, which I wasn't entirely against considering everything which has happened recently) we'd get a bit more of the same, even if the returns rapidly diminished as the afternoon went on. That'd be ok, we could handle that.

Surely the team building benefits of the Sorrento Scrabble tournament (sample scores include FARCE - 10pts and SHAMBLES - 15pts) and the prospect of spending another week being beaten from pillar to post in the media would encourage them to not go out and get totally molested. "We might even run over the top of them in the last quarter and win!" said nobody, but plenty of us were willing to believe that we could go into next week's Battle for 17th with a credible 30/40 point defeat behind us. That really is as good as it gets against finals contenders at the moment.

We were horribly wrong, and it was two of the great storylines of the Neeld era which came together to sink us and possibly him. Despite losing the first two games by a combined total of a million points we'd kept the damage in the first five minutes of third quarters down to just 1.1 - and had even scored a goal ourselves. Considering we lost that count by 20 goals last year it was one of the very few positives to come out of Fiasco Fortnight, but when the first goal went in within seconds and another one followed soon after it was obvious that yet again whatever had been said or done at half time had not had the desired effect.

Last week the Bombers got their 28 goals via a consistent spread of 6, 8, 7, 7 - so to go out and cop 11 in one quarter today was a heartbreaker. For the third week in a row we looked half decent going forward in the first half before totally falling in a hole during the third - with our worst quarter since the 2nd of 186 where we conceded 12 goals to one. Why does this happen once every week? We have had runs of four or five goals against us in every single full length match we've played this year, and almost every match last season as well. Are they all mental, is it the coaching (internet says yes) or a combination of the two?

As usual when the landslide started we just stood there and got poleaxed by it. It doesn't matter which players they bring in, the same thing happens. Now that I'm starting to look back on the last two years of the Dean Bailey era as a golden age (relatively speaking and pre-186 anyway) it's become clear to me that while this sort of stuff used to happen every few weeks when he was coach that it happens every single week since he hasn't been. This is the kind of thing that will sink Neeld in the end.

Ok, so both the first five minutes curse (which really needs a catchy name that people can get into like Bailey Quarter. Neeld Time?) and the 11 goal massacre were started by some classic cheating tactical mastery by Ashton Hams, but it serves them right for trying to tackle him around the shoulders in the first place. One day he'll duck straight into some sort of Byron Pickett-esque shirtfront and leave the game with a broken jaw. The aggressor will get six weeks and he'll need it to read through all the letters of congratulations from around the country. I don't know why we keep recruiting people who try to play within the rules (since Pickett at least) because obviously it gets you nowhere. There's no time for snobbery any more, give me the neck tatted psychos from Broadmeadows Tech.

So a manageable, and in fact almost heroic, 10 point deficit had become a "more of the same old shit" 73 in about half an hour. At least at the other end we'd kicked ten, which is actually only the 6th time we've done this under Neeld. If we can get the ball down there consistently we can kick half decent scores, it's just a matter of getting it down there instead of having it go the other way.

All of a sudden 100 was back on the cards, which was good news for West Coast fans or peanuts trying to get their head on TV yelling stupid shit over the race at the end. It was natural and understandable after round 1, but last week it was just tossers grandstanding and Essendon fans trying to be smart - and I can only imagine what it'll be like if we get done next week (possibly back to natural and understandable). Either way I'm not sure these players need to be told they're shit anymore, I think if they weren't aware of it after the Port game they've certainly worked it out of the last fortnight.

In the end we just managed to avoid the dreaded triple figures thanks to Sellar making his one and only contribution of the day to kick a goal which seemingly made it safe (until they got one back straight after) and we were forced to endure a nervy wait to see if the psychological barrier between serious disappointment and murderous rage was going to be passed. We just held on, and even though it's not fooling anyone that we were any good at least it's not a big, juicy three digit margin for everyone to wave around.

It's a good thing we got poleaxed in the third and were just normally bad in the last (even though the Eagles had all but given up and we still lost the last quarter easily) because the last thing they need is to go into next week on the back of conceding 11 goals in a quarter. Last year when there was still a bit of life in them, and when GWS were still losing by 150 every second week, we could stand to concede the first three goals and come back to win easily - I fear if that happens again next week it could be curtains and that the 200 people present will resort to violence.

Good luck being a coach trying to review this game with the players. Striking a balance between concentrating on what they did right at the start and so badly in the third quarter would be difficult. There's a lot of material for them to work with, but is there a special setting in the software which shows where everyone was when we went missing in the third quarter? Following us is like investing in the Zimbabwean Stock Exchange, for every minor gain there's a gigantic crash waiting just around the corner.

As long as they don't shy from showing footage of players stopping in traffic because they had no idea what to do or Grimes (who is excused due to signing a new contract) being so surprised that Toumpas was shepherding for him that he decided to handball into the Teen Idol's guts. It didn't end well. As a group they still don't know what to do under pressure, and neither Byrnes or Pedersen was helping with that today. I'm starting to come around to the folly of getting these guys, and if the SME isn't a better option then Pedo I'm not here, but we still need players to replace them with.

Some of the inclusions did well today (especially Evans) but how much more is there in the tank? Realistic options not in the side today were Blease, Dawes, Gawn, Gillies, Kent, Macdonald, McKenzie, Nicholson, Rodan, Spencil, Strauss, Tynan and Watts. McKenzie is straight in, Dawes will be, Blease could replace Byrnes, Strauss will get a go at the back at some point and maybe Gawn/Spencer into the starting ruck and Jamar forward with Sellar/Pedersen out?

There are options, but are there enough to make a difference? Evans and Bail did well today, McKenzie certainly would just for the tagging, Dawes is an unknown quantity and it's anybody's guess which Watts or Blease will turn up on any given day.
 
Mark Neeld doesn't seem to be the kind of guy to shit himself under pressure, but if I were him I'd spend at least one day next week laying explosive booby traps around the edges of my office and investing in bullet proof armour because rightly or wrongly if we lose against the Giants he will have to run the biggest, most brutal siege since Waco to be in Brisbane on the afternoon of Sunday 28 April.

Every week there's more and more people turning on him, and I can't blame them considering the results but I really don't think that no matter what happens next week there's any point dumping him right there and then. We're hardly going to make the finals (this is not The Club and Jimmy Toumpas is not Geoff Hayward) and secondly he's just going to get replaced by somebody who has been involved almost as intimately in the process over the last couple of years. It would be nothing more than a sacrifice to the media and fans, and if you think a new coach is going to save us from getting shithouse crowds every week for the rest of this year you're mad.

Unless there's some ridiculous power struggle behind the scenes between Craig and Neeld (and I'm sure there isn't) where they're pulling in different directions you're not going to get anything more than the token 'new coach' bounce for a half like we did today before the Memorial Reality Bus arrives and we get thrashed anyway. That is if Craig becomes coach. People seem to be whacking off over the idea of Todd Viney doing it again, which I'd cop if it got to that but has anyone made sure he's actually interested?

Talk to me again in Round 11 when I might be in the absolute minority if I'm not already, but throwing him in the volcano now seems almost completely pointless unless you're going to wheel the permanent new coach in to fill the gap straight away and they can get on with preparing for 2014. Unless Paul Roos loses his mind in the next eight days or we're going to exhume the corpse of Checker Hughes and prop it on the sidelines there is nobody who is in a position to do that so what's it going to do for us? Is it going to have the same big boost that we got from sacking the CEO, because that was totally awesome for about three minutes.

Yes, mistakes have been made and yes at the moment there is absolutely no doubt that we're heading down the path of our fourth mid-season sacking in a row at the moment. If it happens, and next time I'm just going to be anti-whoever the coach is because every time I get sucked into optimism and it ends badly, it's time for the players to put their hand up and admit that they're just as responsible as anybody else - and it's time for the assistants to start preparing their CV's and checking seek.com.au in preparation for the end of the season. Though apparently not before one of them coaches out the rest of the season if the Sack Neeld faction get their way.

I just want to know for my own sanity what has gone on over the last few years. Can we hold some sort of Truth and Reconciliation Commission, where we invite back every single person who has played or worked for us in any capacity between 2007 and today (including Bailey, Schwab, $cully, Isaac Weetra and Trent Zomer) to iron out exactly who ordered who to do what, who sacked who, who should have sacked who, who couldn't be stuffed doing the extra training sessions they were set and who cheated at Scrabble in Sorrento. Get it all out in the open, it'll have more of a positive effect than filming Harlem Shake videos.

2013 Allen Jakovich Medal votes
5 - Nathan Jones
4 - Colin Sylvia
3 - Matt Jones
2 - Jack Viney
1 - Mitch Clark

Apologies to Bail, Evans, Grimes, Howe and McDonald.

Leaderboard
Normal service resumed at the top, with additional Jones in second.

10 - Nathan Jones
9 - Matt Jones (LEADER: Jeff Hilton Rising Star Award)

7 - Jack Viney

4 - Jack Grimes (LEADER: Marcus Seecamp Medal for Defender of the Year), Jeremy Howe, Colin Sylvia

2 - Aaron Davey, Mark Jamar (LEADER: Jim Stynes Medal for Ruckman of the Year)

1 - Mitch Clark, James Frawley, Jordie McKenzie

Crowd Watch
Not quite the empty arena match I expected, but that's probably due to a combination of a) us having a hardcore base of 12/13,000 who will show up no matter what, b) West Coast being relatively well supported in Victoria, c) people from Perth booking their annual holiday to be for a guaranteed win and d) the fact that it didn't absolutely piss down beforehand.

I got there at 2.09pm and missed all the exciting pre-match entertainment but I'm reliably informed that the bugler was not present, which could be the second best thing to come out of this season after this but we'll have to wait for next week to confirm that he was given his marching orders in a two-for-one package deal with Cameron Schwab. Maybe he just called in sick because he had to play in an acid jazz festival somewhere?

Stupid question but have the Eagles remixed their theme song to make it even worse? It's always had some horribly 80's slap bass style shit going on in the background and a woman wailing away on backing vocals but I'm sure today she was even more prominent with her fake orgasm style singing techniques. Please note visiting fans, this is not me being bitter and twisted as I would adopt Call Me Maybe as our theme if it meant winning.

Facebook Comment of the Week



At the risk of losing faith in humanity I'm delving back into the slop. There's such a wide variety of bizarre comments that it's hard to narrow them down to a handful - sadly nothing too over the top, but I'm surprised at the amount of insanely optimistic people still left on there.

It's one thing to say "hooray for the first half, the rest was poo" but people who are going "great performance!" and "We're only two games out of the eight!" are living in a world of innocence which I can only admire. Luckily for them this feature is designed solely to celebrate the ZOMG SACK EVERYONE crowd, who are actually about to win. Now I know how hardened ALP fans feel knowing Tony Abbott is a cert.

Highlights include a topical North Korea reference, Bailey as saviour, a bizarre demand for hidden camera footage, some attempted humour and a person who doesn't seem to understand that our worst start to the season in history has taken place solely at the MCG.



Next Week
To say I'm worried about next week would be an understatement. It's not even about $cully anymore (dollar sign restored, I can't stay non-angry at him for long even if we did clean up on the compo), he's just a sideshow to the whole thing who we might (MIGHT) get the chance to take out a bit of our anger on if we've got the game wrapped up in the last quarter.

No, it's basically become a referendum on Neeld now. If we win then nobody cares because GWS aren't supposed to win at the MCG yet, and if we lose then the "Kick on the G" promotion is going to be marred by people tearing down goalposts and burning obscene messages into the grass at the Punt Road end.

It was disheartening to see them totally stuff up the Watts omission. I swear they dropped him to give him a rest, and that's the reason he didn't play in the VFL, so why bring him to the MCG instead of just sending him away and telling him to totally forget about football for a while? Why create an unnecessary controversy when they could have packed him away for a week and admitted that it was a mental health day (or even 'send him to Casey' where he suffers a mystery injury at home on the morning of the game and can't play).

Otherwise why not just play him in the 2's? If you're going to go through all that you might as well just give him a game and hope he can get some confidence back. Instead we look stupid when it's revealed that not only is he the emergency at the MCG but that Rodan and Spencer are there as well. Craig was on the radio saying the reason he was there is because they didn't want to have to put Spencer in if there was an injury - but in that case who are you expecting Spencer to replace? Late breaking injuries in the warm-up are common enough, but the odds of it happening to Jamar are low enough but when you consider we already had ruckmen of varying degrees in Sellar, Pedersen and Clark playing the odds of the Spencil being required must have been pretty remote unless there was something they knew that we didn't. He certainly played like somebody who couldn't run, but if you're ok to drop a fit Watts then surely you wouldn't hesitate to rest/drop an injured/ill Jamar after last week?

Elsewhere it's time to send Toumpas back to Casey to get some form. The guy came in smiling broadly, shaking hands warmly with his opponents (Gentlemania) and looked good in the NAB Cup but he's a year behind Viney and isn't there to be making difference in a shite team yet. He's not even smiling any more. All of a sudden "We cocked up not drafting Wines" is going around, and while history may very well prove that to be right (if our drafting history is anything to go by) let's remember than Wines has played two games against soft targets in Melbourne and GWS, whereas Toumpas has played two and a bit games in which his side has been absolutely porked sideways.

Your expectations may be higher than mine, but I don't expect a kid to lift a crap team on his shoulders and the fact that Viney seems to be having some success at it should be celebrated as a miracle rather than being set as the standard for other draftees. The Toump will be back, we just need to accept the fact that you don't need to play every high draftee from Round 1.

Good to see Magner amongst the best at the Scorpions again. He'll be thrilled to have to get a job in the KFC Drive-through to supplement his wages because we stuffed up and marooned him on the rookie list. Strauss was amongst the top players too, and I'm sure he'll get a run before long too - at least we can pick him.

IN: Gawn (though no doubt they'll try The Spencil first just to really try everyone's patience), McKenzie, Watts (because if they're not going to properly rest him he may as well play 1's).
OUT: Pedersen, Sellar, Toumpas

LUCKY: Byrnes, Garland, Jamar

Holy Shirt
I meant to include this last week, but forgot it amongst all the angst in the wake of the Essendon debacle. Thanks to everyone who contributed to our fundraiser towards paying a small chunk of the $500k Not Guilty of Tanking Tax. All 55 shirts sold, and after production costs and GST we raised $440 which has been donated to the club.

It was a bit risky for me as I had to order a quantity of shirts up front not knowing if anybody would be interested, but based on the killer design put together by @somtum and some early pre-orders by people who knew about it before it went public it seemed like a good bet.

I was overwhelmed by the response, and wish I'd had about 30 more to sell in the end but the good news is that those of you who scored one got something very limited edition. Thanks for handing over money to me sight unseen, not knowing if I was going to nick it (not that I'd have got very far).

Many thanks also to Barney's Print Management for their support in giving us a great deal on production which allowed us to maximise the donation. I suggest gettng @somtum to design something (not just t-shirts, enquire within) and then getting Barney's to print it. Then go on BigFooty and write about it (for Demonblog would not have been born without them), after clicking taking a legitimate interest in our ads to help pay for the hosting costs of Demonwiki.

Was it worth it?
Approximately 40% yes, 20% was neither here nor there and the rest was total gash.

I walked home again. At the point where I was the furthest away from public transport of any kind (or indeed a road on which a taxi might have come past) it threatened for a minute or two to absolutely piss down and put the icing on the cake of what had already been another thrilling up and down (then down again) day following the Dees.

Final Thoughts
Back to Brecht, because it's my blog and if I want to infuse it with pseudo-intellectual bullshit then I will. He was obviously talking about communism (and didn't that turn out well) but the finale of To Those Born Later also has something for you as an MFC fan - or more likely your yet unborn children.

You who will emerge from the flood.
In which we have gone under
Bring to mind
When you speak of our failings
Bring to mind also the dark times
That you have escaped.

Put that on a t-shirt.

Minus five stars

It's either 5.24am or 6.24am and I am under no circumstances going to proof read this for now. If there are any glaring errors or randomly ending paragraphs let me know. Otherwise introduce fork to toaster to bathtub.

Update - 2.46pm (actual time). Some errors now corrected and additional information added. We're still shit.



Attempting to block out the result of a game in this day and age is foolhardy to the point of being almost stupid. Once upon a time if you were scheduled to be at 'an event' when a game was on (weddings and funerals only, everyone else can work around my schedule) you only had to worry about somebody ducking out to their car for scores before running through the room singing the theme song or somebody else being an even more terrible guest than you are and doing updates from a barely concealed radio under the table.

Now you've got to shut your own phone off, inform complete strangers that you would very much like not to know what is happening during a match AND still have to watch out for idle chit chat/somebody publicly announcing the result. This was the rocky path I set upon last night, as the one and only conflict between real life and footy for the year (so far) meant that I would miss the game. Any sane individual would concede defeat and just follow scores via the wonders of mobile internet, which has come a long way since the night I was similarly indisposed as we played a NAB Cup semi final against Adelaide and enjoyed the 2006 version of the AFL website on a mobile phone showing us rapidly racking up the points and storming away to a big win only to get home and find out that we'd actually lost by 85 points.

These days we're in a glory era where every single piece of digital technology except the AFL website itself has come a million miles and you can get all sorts of scores, stats, Supercoach points etc.. etc.. without having to worry that you're being stooged by somebody getting the teams the wrong way around. But stuff that, I don't care about watching numbers tick over when it's Collingwood vs Footscray but when it comes to my 'beloved' Dees I want to see everything happen in front of my eyes as if live, and actually live where possible.

Of course if I knew in advance that said Dees were about to put in their third worst performance in history I'd probably have opted to stay home and watch in horror through my fingers. I was there for #2, and quite frankly in the end I'm absolutely stoked that I wasn't there for #3 - so, straight into the Demonblog Hall of Fame go Cindy and Brendan for innocently scheduling their wedding reception at the exact same time as this match took place. If I walked home in despair after last week there's no telling what I'd have done tonight if I hadn't watched from the relative safety of Demonblog Towers VIII (which is on the third floor mind you) instead of the Ponsford Stand.

In the end there was only the slightest drama in blocking it all out and concentrating on enjoying myself instead. If my life were a sitcom (and with the Dees being garbage as well as AFC Wimbledon about to get themselves relegated wouldn't that show be an absolute LAUGH RIOT when it came to the topic of sports?) I'd have made it through the whole night only to have the whole thing collapse when randomly selected for drug testing at a booze bus only for the cop to fill in the awkward few moments while waiting to see if I'm off my nut by introducing small talk footy topics like "Hey, how shit are Melbourne, wouldn't you hate to support them?

But alas no, I could have driven home from the Mornington Peninsula three sheets to the wind with cocaine dripping from my nostils and I've have been fine as there wasn't a booze bus to be seen. Even if we drove past cars with scarves flapping from the windows I reasoned with myself that in the dark it would be nearly impossible to tell a Melbourne one from an Essendon one. I also managed to remember to press record on the IQ beforehand, which at least made me watch us being humped like a small, helpless dog instead of just going straight to the final score and yelling "WHAT!" as I flung my phone/computer/self across the room and at a wall to shatter into a thousand pieces.

The slight drama came from the seating plan, as I was conveniently placed next to somebody I was assured I'd get along well with because he was into sports. And indeed I did, but an early request not to provide any sort of score update or tell me what was happening in the game was met with the news that he was an Essendon supporter who would very gladly have put on a TV to watch if it was socially acceptable to do so and that he would most certainly be looking up the scores for his own benefit throughout the evening.

Fair enough too, and he was very kind in not letting on except for the bit where the beans were almost spilt via the reflection of his phone onto a window behind him. Even knowing what I do now I'm happy not to have seen the score then (probably sometime mid-Q3 when it would have ruined my night but not my quality of life) or I've have probably given up the charade, followed the rest of it via Twitter and ruined two people's wedding night by climbing into the bathtub full of ice reserved for drinks and insisting that somebody remove my kidneys for sale on the black market.

At one point not long after somebody on the table behind us said "Melbourne" in a conversation and I successfully did a runner to avoid hearing more of what he was saying. Presumably the words "aren't" and "an embarassment to the competition?" were on either side of it.

This was all fine, but suddenly I found myself engaged in the sick sport of trying to read the body language of the guy sitting next to me to see if he was thrilled and keeping a lid on it to honour our agreement or about to lob his phone in disgust but trying to be casual about it. This was, even before I knew what happened, one of the stupidest ideas I've ever had. Why was I bothering with any of these secrecy and subterfuge when I knew we were going to lose, you knew we were going to lose and every human being on the face of the planet knew we were going to lose?

Ok, we have (well, had) some sort of bizarre record against Essendon where despite being wank against most every other team in the competition we can't possible lose to them, but last night there were never going to be any miracles and I think most reasonable people would have settled for an honest loss. Make it ten goals if it's because Essendon were good, and not us being filthy. In fact at the moment I'd take 100 flat, but that's no longer on offer because being the good, willing victims that we are we let them inflict our largest ever loss at the MCG instead. A fond goodbye to the day John Longmire kicked 14 (second game I ever went to, should have given up then) and hello to the day 22 men tore the limbs off another 22 as if it were the long awaited zombie apocalypse.

Beating Essendon in 2010 and 2011 was not such a surprise, and it left with some great memories (sadly now tainted by association) such as the Bombers giving away about nine 50's in 2010 and Dean Bailey (last seen rolling on the floor laughing, trying to keep his sides from completely splitting apart) punching buggery out of the roof of the dugout and seemingly saving his job the year after (also Max Gawn's comic relief, missing from the square when the game was already over).

Oh we had some good times back then. If Bailey really was operating some sort of Camp Granada style holiday resort club as claimed by Jim Stynes, the new regime (although they tend to allude to it rather than directly criticise, which is probably a good thing considering what they've served up so far) and even the players themselves then at least we all shared in the warm sunshine once in a while before tropical cyclones tore the place to shreds.

Beating them last year was magnificent, but it doesn't count for anything. Their performance was the longest suicide note in history, and the chances of them putting together another game like that against any club in the next decade are very slim. It doesn't matter how you win it, and we all loved it at the time, but the rest of that season showed just how deep a ditch we'd got ourselves into. We fool ourselves into thinking that the second half of the year was better than the first because we won a few games and didn't lose by over a hundred but I defy you to go back to the tapes of the last two weeks against Adelaide and Fremantle and tell me that was a side in any way on the up. Wow we beat Gold Coast (via one good quarter) and GWS (despite ourselves) to pad the ledger a bit. Swell, but wipe those two matches out and the way we're playing now looks a lot like the last two weeks of the season but with the sort of adrift at sea shattered confidence that can only come from knowing that they've hit rock bottom a long, long way out from the finish line.

So back to the wedding, when I was blissfully unaware that any of this criminal activity was even taking place. In fact as the night went on I'd devised a theory. Unfortunately it turned out to be about as useful a theory as the one we drag out every season about how "this is Colin Sylvia's breakout year", and I'm moderately ashamed to recount it here but as this page is a permanent record of my life as a Demons fan I present it for future educational purposes and study.

Every once in a while my tablemate would go for a look at the scores, politely informing me that it was time to look away lest I see a reflection or a telltale facial expression, he'd deliver a Port/GWS update and we'd get back to the actual event at hand. At first it was all very nonchalant, no emotions regarding our game betrayed at all but as the night went on and the action started to move away from the tables he disappeared, score updates became less frequent and he started to look like he was having a shit night.

"Hold on a minute" I foolishly thought to myself, "This could be footy related". Knowing that the idea of losing to us again would drive any man to an early grave I formulated this crazy theory in my head that we had conceded some sort of decent lead (let's say five goals) only to storm home in the last quarter to pull off another remarkable farcebusting victory for the ages. Now I've started to realise that he was actually probably quite embarassed at the scale of it all (but let's be fair simultaneously no doubt LOVING IT as anybody would and should if their team is the one handing out the kicking) and felt sorry for me not knowing what was happening.

Also bless the great Mrs. Demonblog who knew what the 3/4 time margin was and not only didn't tell me but also indulged my nutbag theory about him being glum because the Dees had scored a shock victory all the way home for an hour AND for the entire first quarter before clearly realising it was about to get a bit brown and wisely retreating to bed before the stuffing commenced and I wised up to the fact that I'd failed Body Language 101 with a score of 0%.

Fancy that, thinking we'd won a game. I might as well have announced that I was off to try and find the Loch Ness Monster because to say we are no good at the moment would be one of history's greatest understatements. At this very point in time, despite a new 'regime', unprecedented investment into the football department and more top draft picks than we knew what to do with we are fairly and squarely in Fitzroy 1995/1996 territory - and even they, crippled to the point of certain extinction and probably being paid out of brown paper bags out the back of Whitten Oval, saved their lone 150 point of that last season for late in the year. We're one week and one inevitable disaster away from their photo being removed from the dictionary definition of 'hapless' and replaced with the MFC logo.

At least the similarities are confined to on field for the moment. We've got a few years like this left in us before we totally implode financially and wind up merging with North, relocating to Tasmania or both (option 1 is the get out where you can give up on footy easy, option 2 probably harder if it's the exact same club in a different location but each to their own, option 3 cram it in your arse). How many kids of an impressionable age do you reckon are either telling their MFC supporting parents to get stuffed or openly switching teams before the end of the school holidays? Up until today I used to fall about on the floor laughing every time a Demonland thread collapsed into "this club will die", "we're all fucked" style face-in-blender depression session. Now my confidence is shattered and I am starting to wonder if we're on the waterslide towards oblivion.

I was in such a hurry to get to the game itself and watch my glorious theory be proven right that I didn't even notice the bit about McKenzie being out of the side. What, the only person we've got capable of tagging even remotely effectively out against a side with a killer midfield? That would have confirmed right there and then that there was about as much chance of us winning this as you or I winning the lottery. Or at least it should have, I was so in denial courtesy of my theory that I'd have probably seen it as an omen - another reason to make it a heroic victory as Tom Gillies rises out of the Weetra Premier League to do the improbable stopper job of the millenium on Jobe Watson, who is held to three kicks all of which go out on the full.

McKenzie's absence allowed Davey to escape the dreaded green vest on the first leg of his 2013 farewell tour, and while the old Flash was back in parts tonight and he was actually not all that bad considering what else happened it was hardly a like for like change. Mind you when you've only got one person who can do something (maybe Magner, but he's melting away on the Rookie List) it's not all that easy to find a replacement. Witness, for instance, any soccer match before the sub goalkeepers on the bench era when a clearly terrified outfield player was called upon to don the gloves and put in a surprisingly limp wristed performance between the sticks. Sometimes the rest of the team held together and they ended up with a glorious victory or a heroic draw but usually they lost 8-0. Tonight we lost about 12-0 with more people doing jobs that they're not suited to than could possibly fill one Centrelink office on Monday morning.

Again, not knowing that any of this was going to happen I let my childlike sense of football innocence out of the locked basement one last time and imagined that the Neeld pre-match speech Channel 7 showed was going to be the catalyst for the remarkable victory which was sure to follow. At the time I was willing to ignore the fact that more than a handful of the players seemed to be staring back at him blankly, not taking not a word in and probably thinking about playing FIFA, smashing parmas or wondering when they'll be able to get back on Twitter to tell us about playing FIFA or smashing parmas. Childlike innocence bought in to all the rhetoric during the week about how we were going to come out higher, faster, stronger and at least make a game of it. Childlike innocence is now back under the trapdoor in a darkened room, being fed cold rat like a North Korean soldier. The fact that he had to point out that the coaches trust the players as if they didn't already know it worries me now, but I doubt either side will bother with each other anymore now that trust has been repaid by 20kg of turd and they're all on the verge of being sacked.

It was the first time I'd watched one of our matches live on Channel 7's Saturday Night and gee wasn't that a treat. We've all had the replay of the last quarter of 'that' Essendon game (now discredited forever) ruined by "BT" prattling on about James Magner building Eastlink and Darce reading out tweets from cockheads but at least you knew what was going to happen then. It's alright if you're going to win, what if you're going to your death?

Even Dwayne Russell starts to seem like a thinking man's option when you've enjoyed a few rounds of "WOW WEE!" and Luke Darcy - the man who says no to smiling - deriding us for starting Blease as sub last week because he's had "a real good pre-season". 15 minutes in a NAB Cup game, injured and nothing afterwards, he's absolutely flying "Darce" you poon. Whether or not he should have even been playing at all last week is highly questionable and this supposed expert wants him out there for four quarters after not playing a game for a month. It's live, it's interactive, it's shithouse.

Mind you I will say that in the last quarter when it was starting to get almost perversely ugly I did find a shameful amusement in Taylor calling the margin as a darts score. That's because darts is a good, honest sport which reminds you that it's ok to have fun again and that won't end up with you following teams who will only lead you into humiliation over and over again, leaving you watching matches with your head in hands hoping that the club will just get it over with and cark it already so we can stop embarassing ourselves as supporters.

To their brief credit everyone on field at the start had a bash for the first few minutes. We managed to keep the scores at 0-0 for quite a while, which was as good as it got in terms of a) nearly winning and b) stopping Essendon going through us like a knife into hot butter. In the end we conceded too many goals to even remember the point where it started going horribly wrong, and didn't kick enough of our own to provide any sort of decent reference point so let's just say it's no bloody doubt that we were violated so badly because if you've ever seen a worse centre clearance performance by a side EVER please list it. Maybe 186, but I've pushed most of what actually happened on field out of my mind.

Is it even remotely possible that we could have conceded any more straight down the throat on a platter clearances if we'd just removed our midfield and had Jamar and/or Sellar aimlessly jumping on their own? Once or twice a game we might get one of those magic clearances where the ruckman puts it down the throat of the midfielder who hoofs a long, dangerous kick into the forward line or (sometimes even better) hits a centre-half forward, or whatever excuse for one we're fielding, on the chest 50m out but usually it's some scraggy, panic kick out of the pack which either dribbles to the 50m line and stops or goes straight into the arms of an opposition player. No wonder the crowd rose as one when Nathan Jones - so often the savior when all else is wrong - got a clean clearance at one point.

The Bombers, on the other hand, were living out their own version of that glorious day when Jamar and Moloney set the all time gold standard for a ruck/midfielder combination by beating the living suitcase out of Adelaide. Except this time it wasn't just a two man team, they were all doing it - and unlike Adelaide that day (hello Neil Craig) we were trying to stop it to absolutely no avail.

There was not much we could manage to stop tonight, except for scoring after half time. Overwhelmed due to the constant midfield domination they may very well have been, but other than Frawley and to a lesser extent McDonald our backline was tremendously putrid. It's hard to tell with Garland because he only has one expression, but I swear he's playing like he's haunted and I've actually got some sympathy for poor Tom Gillies (who I'm sure is a lovely guy, insert disclaimers here etc.. etc.. etc..) but tonight he has stormed past Weetra and into a very uncomfortable place amongst MFC two game players. Without the dream run of having Geelong around him he's totally lost, and even though it makes me uncomfortable singing players out (though as if it matters when nobody is reading) due to my specialist role as a fat porky with a keyboard who breaks bones whenever he tries to play footy he has been rancid the last two weeks. If he's out there next week I will join the sack everybody faction.

Terlich didn't completely disgrace himself on debut, and he'll be happy to know than 10 men have lost by more in the first game of VFL/AFL football, but he wasn't all that good either. Hardly the night for it so I'll take a few more looks before writing him off for good (a'la Gillies) but nothing to call home about either.

At 6-6 after Davey brought back memories of 04/05 by snapping one from the carpark we looked ok, but the moment that everyone left Goddard alone to run around the back, take a handball and bomb a goal we were goners. At least Davey tried to liven things up by charging him, but it was so very MFC that not only did the bump not affect the goal but that Goddard leapt to his feet happy as larry, completely unscathed. We really to go out and get some psychos who can lay a murderous bump and cop weeks for the glory of making a stand. Now watch Davey somehow get suspended due to having his feet two centimetres off the ground when he delivered the 'bump'.

Cue total structural failure, Essendon players running around unattended everywhere and the 'opposition' not being able to get their hands on the ball. It started to become fairly clear that the insane theory I'd floated 55km away was just that, and that the guy was either trolling me masterfully by acting as if he was upset or had eaten a dodgy prawn and was trying not to put the dampeners on the night by ralphing everywhere. Grimes got that last goal of the first quarter care of a 50, and it at least took the margin back under five goals, but confidence was heading rapidly towards rock bottom both on field, in my living room and presumably in the stands.

Still, you wouldn't have predicted what actually happened in the end. You might have said a hundred was a possibility, but 148? These sort of things simply do not happen, to clubs who aren't mental anyway. I saw none of Footscray vs Freo today, but score checks seemed to indicate that Freo were going to win by about 20 goals only to come out post-actual wedding ceremony and find out the dogs held the margin to five. You tell me whether they fought or Freo gave up, but either way it shows the difference between a bottom of the barrel team with heart and one who look like they'd rather be anywhere else.

I can't help but feel sorry for Jack Watts, last week he apparently had a death in the family and this week he's allegedly ill and being hooted off the field by all and sundry. When you're having a run like that it might be time to take a week or two off and not think about football. Players probably play ill all the time and we only hear about it when it goes wrong (i.e Moloney in 186) but really, considering how much he'd been belted by fans and media after last week's game was it wise to send him out there ill tonight? Withdrawing him late might have caused a few raised eyebrows and snide comments but now he's got the mystery illness, a further diminished reputation and probably stuff all interest in playing footy for us again. Something interesting to consider is that it hasn't just been the last two weeks that he's been playing like this, he was quite good in the NAB Cup but think back to that rubbish last game of the season against Freo where he crashed back to earth with a thud and looked like he absolutely CBF playing. Now that Morton is no longer with us Jack will be the first man to go onto my Progessive Insurance MFC Psychologist's Couch for intense analysis to try and get him back on track before he totally falls apart and gives it away to hang out in nightclubs and grow hipster beards forever.

I've talked on here before about my night randomly (?) drawn out of the hat (?) to go to one of those supporter crisis meetings when we hadn't won a game last year (watch your inbox, there's got to be another round on the cards) and how my question to the floor - Neeld, Craig, Schwab, McLardy, any board members present was what sort of mental support services were available to players who had played in a million losses and were clearly exhibiting their own kind of footballing shellshock (I was polite enough not to mention C. Morton by name, but he wasn't alone) and the response was that there was a huge footy department full of people that players could talk to as well as some other support staff.

It was also at this point that it came to light that we had a "mental skills coach" (not that this was mentioned in response to my question), and it seems that he's not surprisingly no longer with us as of the end of last season. Whose decision that was, and whether they've replaced him or not is anybody's guess (nobody of that job description appears on the latest staff list) but it is 100% time to uncouple this from the football department and wheel in the psychologists. Sure it'll probably get leaked to the media, everyone will hang shit on us and both daily papers will try to out 'comedy' each other with some mocking cartoon but there is a serious, SERIOUS mental issue in this group. I'm not saying anybody's got clinical depression or we need to lock the AAMI Park fork drawer but the effect of having the season destroyed two weeks in and the accumulated pressure of years of losing every week mustn't be healthy. Also time to put strategies in place to stop Viney and Toumpas going mental before they do.

Being able to unload your worries on an assistant coach is good, but what about if a player wants to tell somebody that he thinks one of his coaches is a dickhead, that he hates playing footy and that his girlfriend is threatening to dump him for a Melbourne Victory player if he doesn't stop losing all the time. I want fleets of buses rolling down Swan Street with counsellors and sports psychologists ready to unlock the secrets of why we play terrified most of the time. After this post was originally written I've been told that the only sports psych that we use is based in Queensland, which is about as useful as when Dean Laidley was an assistant coach at Port via Skype. If this is incorrect I'd be happy for somebody from the club to contact me (anonymously if you like) to correct the record.

Back to the garbage tip, and if you were hoping that kicking the last goal of the first quarter was going to propel us to better things you're an even bigger optimist than I, but luckily the MFC has something for people like you and that's the ability to strangle your hopes and dreams by conceding goals within the first 20 seconds of a quarter. Goodbye game, hello massacre. You know what happens next, Davey briefly interrupts us copping a hiding to kick another old school, heritage round Flash goal and then it's back to regular service as the margin blows out over 50 at half time and I realise that the up-side to my night avoiding the scores is that I can fast forward through every break and not having to be subjected to 'analysis' about why we're so pox.

If you thought half-time would provide welcome respite and/or signal at least a moderate comeback then you were absolutely wrong and need to lower your expectations of this group significantly. Even with Jamar banished from the ruck (still don't regret giving him votes in a poor field last week, but he's lucky there's no mechanism for removing them based on this week) they still got the simple clearance and went straight inside 50 where - guess who - Gillies gave away a free, nobody bothered to man up the guy standing five metres over his shoulder and a simple pass led to a simple goal. Cue the avalanche. In scenes reminiscent of 186, and I'm so glad that all those of you who would never go to Geelong got the opportunity to have some taste of what that day felt like, the next thing you know we're a hundred points down at 3/4 time and nooses everywhere are being fastened while fans of 16 other clubs tune in with the same sort of glee that you do when you hear a cricket team is 7/13 and you change the channel hoping they'll be all out for 14.

No doubt sacking the coach(es) is going to be the flavour of the week, and while he's not exactly doing himself any favours by being at the helm of the HMAS Faeces, every piece of vitriol that you deliver at Neeld should go towards the playing group too. The captain might go down with his ship, but the people who contributed to sinking it will all survive for at least 21 more weeks and that's kind of unfair. Sadly this isn't a soccer team where if you don't like your players early in the season you can go out and buy a whole bunch more. We're stuck with this seemingly christ awful team and their tragic mental derangements for another five months, and some of them for another year after that. I've got no idea how we're going to dig ourselves out of this hole.

I just don't understand how they could put in workmanlike performances, at times shit but honest, in NAB Cup games and then go into a deadly plummet like this in the space of two weeks. Was last week our reverse of that day we mysteriously flogged Sydney for no good reason whatsoever, but with the key difference of it sending everybody loopy. Did the antics at the player's race and subsequent media frenzy cause a terminal loss of confidence that wouldn't have happened if we'd been beaten by 15 points?

If it's being blamed on something that's happening behind the scenes (I hear Mrs. Dunn put in an epic call to the SEN overnight talkback team, suggesting that our hierachy 'should be shot') how did it only burst out last Sunday? If the players "aren't playing for the coach" it's about time somebody called them out for being a shit excuse for professionals. If it's something else mental they need to get it sorted out before permanent damage is done.

What I know is that just like how I've never trusted players "training the house down" meaning anything since John Meesen did and wasn't seen for another two years I will never, ever, ever, EVER, as long as I live fall for any sort of propaganda about how a club are doing it and how they've had the greatest pre-season ever, because if they're Melbourne players they'll probably crack like a leftover easter egg the moment actual pressure is applied.

The only thing I liked about the last quarter, as we meekly trudged to our gruesome death, was when Mitch Clark went into the centre bounces as a midfielder and actually won two clearances with more ease than any of our other midfielders did all night. How he must kick the cat whenever he sees the way Freo are going now, knowing that for all the rockstar style adulation we shower him with that he could be getting paid good money to play for a non-farcical club.

Considering Jamar's woes we may as well swap them and play Mitch as the starting ruckman next week. Whoever plays at full forward isn't going to get a kick anyway when nobody is capable of getting the ball down there, so we may as well get something out of the fact that he's one of a handful of players we've got who always tries his hardest instead of wasting the rest of his career starving to death inside 50.

The margin got so rude at the end that I even lost score, even with BT's helpful darting score checks. By the time it reached the last few minutes and even Essendon had tired of the simplicity of it all (though they still managed to kick goals) the commentators had given up too. Sometime around the point where Gillies needlessly piffed his opponent into the fence to concede another goal from a free kick we were told that we apparently lost to Port Melbourne last week (which is at least realistic) and play GWS next week. I can understand them making the second mistake, because this performance has just given the media has just been given the green light to try and get Neeld sacked and the sooner we get to being rumbled by the Giants to the absolute delight of Kevin Sheedy the sooner the press can write his obituary and send Amy Parks down to AAMI Park again. Then in a couple of years when we're still no good they can act as if it was a hasty decision and we were stupid to do it, even though they cheered as one at the time.

My prediction for the week is that somebody will finally either float the idea of or start trying to gather support for an EGM/board challenge. It's a great opportunity to get your name in the papers even if you never follow through with it. Maybe I should send out a press release just to see if the Herald Sun will print it?

At least we'll get the points back when Essendon get banned.

2013 Allen Jakovich Medal Votes
This is almost 186esque in its difficulty, but at least when only one player deserved a vote that day (Jordie) and I had to fill the other four with a combination of guessing, deep statistical interpretation and Matthew Bate because at least he only played a half of it, I can come up with three almost deserving candidates for this one. The other two represent tremendous filler.

5 - Nathan Jones
4 - Jeremy Howe
3 - Matt Jones
2 - Aaron Davey
1 - James Frawley

Leaderboard
Note: Grimes is on probation for the Seecamp. Every possible chance of a DQ for over-midfielding in the next couple of weeks. Also, congratulations to Matt Jones for doing a Magner circa 2012 and taking a Jakovich lead into Round 3. Here's hoping they stick with him instead of trying to turn him into a woefully unprepared defensive forward like they did with Magner.

6 - Matt Jones (LEADER: Jeff Hilton Rising Star Award)

5 - Nathan Jones, Jack Viney

4 - Jack Grimes (LEADER: Marcus Seecamp Medal for Defender of the Year), Jeremy Howe

2 - Aaron Davey, Mark Jamar (LEADER: Jim Stynes Medal for Ruckman of the Year)

1 - James Frawley, Jordie McKenzie

Stats corner

Our percentage is 28.4. That is all. 

Next Week 

I would love to absolutely unload on 11 players, but who have you got to replace them?

IN: McKenzie and christ only knows.

OUT: Gillies (no comment), Nicholson (needs to go and find form elsewhere), Sellar (confidence shot to pieces), Sylvia (may as well be for good if he's going for good anyway), Toumpas (go and have some fun playing in a side that isn't complete gash), Watts (send him to a health farm)
LUCKY: Blease, Byrnes, Garland, Jamar, Terlich

I don't know what we're going to do next week. Thank god West Coast have some injuries, but they will still murder us. It might make the Essendon game look like a church picnic, and the joy of playing so many games at the MCG to open the season will most likely turn sour again when the 25 people who turn up in red and blue go insane.

We're shot, we're finishing last and every MFC player who has gone elsewhere - forcibly or otherwise - is pissing himself laughing about escaping this asylum. For the first (and hopefully last) time let me say this to you Tom Scully, you were right. Financial considerations aside you clearly made the right choice and to mark this revelation I've temporarily removed the dollar sign from your name.

Crowd Watch

Not a great deal of action on the dancefloor, but the Photo Booth gimmick went down a treat with perverts and non-perverts alike. You'll have to tell me what happened at the MCG, I'm guessing that it was mostly "OMG U R SHIT AND U TANK!" vs "OMG U R DRUG ADDICTS!!1!!" for the first quarter and a half until all Melbourne fans shut up or left. I wouldn't be bagging anyone else for being drug cheats, because we may as well get on it ourselves before we end up being relegated to the Ovens & Murray League.

Meanwhile I'm not sure the AFL.com.au reporter was looking at the Melbourne race as the players came off, but his chums who added the photo below right under the bit where he claimed there was "no animosity" are probably closer to the mark. The Channel 7 camera work was shaky on the way down the race, probably because the cameraman was worried about copping coins to the head, but clearly there was a shitload of oomph from the fans and it was just as 'bad' as last week.

To top it off I'm sure, and I shant be watching the replay to prove it, that some dickhead dangled an Essendon scarf onto either a trainer or a player and whoever it was that it hit tried to grab it off him. Not surprisingly they missed.

While this sort of thing isn't pleasant, I'm not entirely against it (more work for my friends the shrinks) when deserved, but I think it's been done now. If we get powerbombed by the Eagles next week I don't think there's much to be gained from hanging over the edge and going mental unless you're just desperate to get your face on TV and have your friends, family and colleagues identify you as an absolute nutter. 

MFC Facebook Comment of the Week

I honestly cannot bring myself to read it, the level of hatred would depress me too much and I want to pretend that I'm ever so slightly more rational in my horror than them. But hey, I made a video earlier in the week and it fits into the theme of players escaping with their lives before it's too late so play it anyway. 

I'm more than happy to add some suggestions by readers, so send screenshots to me via Twitter or Email and I'll update this post. Chances are even the nutbags are right this week.

Was it worth it?

For me it was, I could have just followed the scores and saved myself from watching the match at all but at least I didn't ruin my night moping about footy instead of being a decent guest. I'd do it all again but this time I wouldn't bother formulating dodgy theories, I'd just assume we were going to get pulverised.

Not being there for the third biggest beating in club history was also as close to a win as it got for me having been to #2 and what is now equal #5 as well as plenty of other great days out. Watching it on TV was horrific, but knowing that it was all over in real life and not being surrounded by villanous opposition fans gave me a sort of disconnection that lessened the brutality of it all. If you were there I'm sure you feel like you've been run over by a truck.

Final thoughts

Do you think that if we did go through this year with one or two wins that the AFL would be ballsy enough to give us a priority pick? If we are legitimately awful enough to win four games or less (four games? HAH!) and don't get given one we should get our $500k back as a trade off for the one we supposedly rorted and both Chris Connolly and Bailey should get an official pardon from Demetriou.

Finally, I forsee another rough week for whoever it is that's tasked with answering the phones at the MFC when the regular receptionist rings in sick on Monday.I know you're angry, I know you want blood at every level and if you have to ring talkback radio and make stupid comments (like the guy who thought we had too many girls delivering water) do it. If you have to stage a dramatic self-immolation protest on the steps of the Demon Megastore then do it, just don't be that person who brings shame on everyone who considers themselves a 'hardcore' fan by ringing the club and abusing somebody who has nothing to do with what happened on Saturday night.

If you want to demand to be put through to the Football Department or to be given Cameron Schwab's mobile number then that's your business, but if you think unloading all your grief about sports on somebody who answers phones and does photocopying for a living is the best course of action then you're a fuckwit who deserves to follow a shit team for the rest of your life. Get a blog, it takes longer than yelling at the receptionist but you will have exactly the same sized audience.

Superfight of the Decade

In the late 1960's some American guy fired up a computer the exact same model as this (mmm, compact!) and held a simulated tournament to determine the greatest heavyweight boxer of all time.
 
It seems relatively easy to use a computer, whether it's a gigantic mainframe with the intelligence of an Atari 2600 or a legit modern one, to determine the probable outcome of a boxing match. After all other than reducing the amount of rounds and not letting fighters get punched to death so often (only one or two a week) the sport really changed over the years.
 
Footy, on the other hand, does not lend itself as well to such antics. For one thing the rules change every ten minutes, and half the players who were stars in the 1980’s would be picking cotton if they’d grown up today. So, four and a bit decades later while we still lack sophisticated (or any) methods with which to determine the winner of the following matchup I’m leaving it to you to decide. Who would win a fictional matchup, played this week, between our selected side and a team made up of all the players who have ‘gone elsewhere’ in the last decade?
 
Rules
Players must have appeared for MFC between Round 1, 2002 and Round 22, 2012 then moved to another club. Doesn’t matter if they were traded, delisted, free agents or scabs. This includes players who joined us from another club then returned to the original team (i.e Heffernan and nobody else).

Unless I’ve missed somebody - and no doubt I have - the ex-players team lineup is conveniently all the eligible players, so some players have been forced into positions they’re barely suited to (which should make them feel right at home). To make it fair you’re not allowed to have Scott Thompson circa now, you have to treat them as they were in their last year with us. Which is not all that good for Thompson, but a winner for the likes of Woewodin and Travis Johnstone.

Sadly for them Jeff Farmer and Troy Simmonds both miss out by virtue of only having been with us only until the end of 2001.

The match will be played under today's rules on the MCG, under Round 2 conditions at 1.10pm on a Sunday. Slight wind blowing to the right of your dial. Your field umpires are Darren Goldspink, Derek Humphrey-Smith and Ray Chamberlain (cop that). Delayed TV coverage on Channel 7 from 3.30pm and live radio broadcast by Magic 693.

So, I ask you. Who wins this match, how much by and why?
 
Teams
   
Team Discovery Channel (Round 2, 2013)
B: Gillies, Frawley, Terlich
HB: Watts, McDonald, Garland
C: Grimes (c), Viney, M. Jones
HF: Blease, Sellar, Howe
F: Sylvia, Clark, Byrnes
R: Jamar, McKenzie, Jones
I: Trengove (c), Toumpas, Nicholson, Davey (choose your own sub)
E: Pederson, Spencer, Rodan
C: Mark Neeld (Assistant – Various)
 
vs
 
The Ex-Files (Round 1, 2002 to Round 22, 2012)
 
B: Cheney, Warnock, C.Johnson
HB: Buckley, Rivers, Bruce
C: Moloney, Thompson, Woewodin
HF: Maric, Miller, Armstrong
F: Petterd, Martin, Bennell
R: Jolly, Johnstone, McDonald (c)
I: McLean, Morton, Walsh, $cully (hopefully the unused sub)
E: P. Johnson, Gysberts, Heffernan
C: Neale Daniher (Assistant – Dean Bailey)
 
Key questions
The Ex-Files team will absolutely dominate the middle of the ground, but is their forward line capable of kicking any decent score?
 
How many MOTY candidates will Howe take if he avoids having Rivers or Warnock against him?
 
Would they do as so many have against us in the past and go inside fifty so many times that they can’t possibly avoid kicking a winning score?
 
Is our current backline too tall considering what the old time team is chock full of small forwards?

Is a nil-all draw on the cards?

Would anybody turn up?

Cleanup in Aisle 666

Welcome to another huge week of following the Melbourne Football Club. When I saw this (part one, part two) posted on Twitter a couple of weeks ago I thought "by christ, that rings a few bells", now I'm convinced that somebody has worked out the rest of my life story and committed it to cartoon - right down to Demonblog Jr showing gratitude for the gift of life by turning around and claiming he's a GWS fan just before they win nine flags in a row.

Oh yes, we're back here again. Goodbye optimism, hello the sort of despair best expressed by the late My Chemical Romance doing Sylvia Plath covers down a coal mine. Even as I start writing this about seven hours after the final siren you can still hear the unmistakeable, deafening sound of expectations deflating and community confidence plummeting to earth like a fucked hot air balloon.

After last year's first round let-down and subsequent tailspin into horror I'm not sure anybody who doesn't reside in 'a home' could have had all that great a set of expectations for us anyway, but even those in the black veiled "the quicker everyone is sacked the better" ultra-pessimist faction surely wouldn't have dared dream of anything more than a 10 goal loss to a side who it was assumed resided firmly in the same "wounded battlers" category as us. You'd have been keelhauled at dawn for openly suggesting a nearly 80 point loss to them but here we are, back to the bottom of the laughing stock league with an anvil tied to our collective ankles.

As ballooning metaphors are clearly the next big thing in 'sports' 'writing' I didn't even think we'd get the thing more than a few metres higher off the ground than our last go anyway, which is what gives the sudden impact of stacking into some power lines (see what I... forget about it) and dying en masse even more disheartening. When expectations are set to practically rock bottom (yay, let's fight for the right to finish 15th) and you STILL come out of the first real game of the year feeling like you've been absolutely swindled something is horribly wrong.

Losing to Port alone is not worthy of a massive outbreak of self-harm, they had won two in a row against us before this don't forget, but the nature of that performance will be hard to push out of your memory for a long time. If we'd done the usual and kicked one goal in the first quarter, copped seven in a row at the start of the third and banged through a few pointless consolations at the end to keep the margin respectable pretty much everyone would have shrugged, gone "well, here we go again" and gotten on with their lives. Instead after months and months of waffle about how we've turned the club around under the new regime, how everything's heading in the right direction etc.. etc.. they come out and serve up this shit sandwich. Somewhere Dean Bailey is filling in his newly found spare time absolutely pissing himself laughing at us right now.

Minor setback it may eventually turn out to be, but damn right everyone gets to crack the shits now, because deep in their heart all footy fans are fuelled by hope. It's what gets you through the 15 games a year in which you consider yourself no chance in hell of winning, it's what the clubs prey upon to get you to hand over money for a membership this year even though every sane judge of the game and non-lunatic on the planet knows that we have only the remotest miracle chance of doing what it is footy teams are put on the park for - win the premiership.

You're talking to the goose who pays for a premium membership which guarantees me a Grand Final ticket if we're in it. I rarely sit in the seat, we're not going to make the Grand Final unless there's so few teams left in business that winning it would not actually mean anything so why do I keep doing it, and why do many others throw in more and more dollars every year knowing they're probably going to get garbage in return? Because we hope that we're contributing to something which will eventually put us in a position to be good. Because some of us want to say we were there and stuck with the team through thick and thin, and in my case because if this team eventually limps to their death like Fitzroy it'll leave a gigantic hole in my sad, black heart. Any more performances like this and they'll have to convert the Foundation Heroes dinner into an "Everyday People" BBQ where instead of standing up and giving $5k we throw our loose change at somebody carrying a blanket.

I'm not giving up, but I can see why you would after today. I'd say it was my third worst day at the footy of my adult life. First as it will hopefully be forever, never to be topped, is obviously 186. Second also belongs to Geelong, the night we were 53 points down before even scoring (via a charity point when a Geelong defender felt sorry for us and dropped a mark over the line to a huge cheer) and now welcome to the podium Port Adelaide who have just knocked Round 1, 2008 into fourth place. That's some sort of company to be in - and it says a lot about the shock value of this defeat, and the way it came about that an 80 point loss can push a 104 point out of the bronze medal spot.

The honeymoon for Team Neeld is now officially over. For some it was over about 45 minutes into Round 1 last year and hasn't let up, but for those of us who weren't dropped on our head shortly after birth we were prepared to sit back and give them the chance to belatedly swing the axe and put the players through a proper pre-season before we passed any sort of serious judgement. I'm not here to say anybody should be sacked, right now that would not only be counterproductive but also kind of insane, but that should be the wake-up call for everybody involved either front and back of house of the football department. We could finish last this year and I wouldn't even necessarily want to press reset on the coach and support staff yet again IF there were a series of strong performances and we happened to find ourselves last because everybody below us last year improved, but if that's the sort of slop that's going to be dished up on a regular basis there will be a lot very keen to rip the cables out and reboot. I can't say I won't be joining them at some point, but what are you going to do - go out and find another untried senior coach from a good club? Or are you going to wheel in Brett Ratten for a go? Unless the players are going to come to the party you might as well get Ken Judge to come in and do Hitler gags because the outlook isn't going to get any brighter.

This lot aren't a lost cause, but they don't do themselves any favours going into press conferences and talking about how shocking it is that all the good work that's done at training doesn't translate into a proper match. Maybe it came out badly, and god knows we still can't hear the questions being asked because a billion dollar industry is too cheap to buy a boom mic, but surely nobody expects that a player who puts in the same effort when faced with a) a teammate loosely defending against him in an orange vest or b) a highly paid opposition team is going to look anything other than a goose when he runs into option b? Reminds me of an indoor soccer team I used to play for - our pre-match 'training' consisted of all five players hoofing shots straight at the keeper without anybody playing as a defender. How good it felt to crack shots at this numptie with all the time in the world, watching them slam into all four corners of the net as if we were actually good. Not surprisingly when the game started and we were forced to fashion chances with several players standing between us and the keeper we weren't so good.

We - and let's include ourselves in this in the spirit of everyone shouldering the blame - stuffed it up, and you didn't need to wait any further than the first five minutes for any feel good factor (based almost entirely on one win by half our team over half Port's team and the assumption that it can't go on like this forever) to evaporate. When the 17th best centre clearance team plays the 18th you know there's unlikely to be a great deal of midfield excitement but it was obvious to all that something very bad was going to happen when we conceded two goals before even having a proper kick. Let the good times roll.

Suddenly everything that seemed like a relatively good idea until about 1.09pm Sunday has now got cartoon style comedy stinklines coming off it. Even the same people who were furiously beating themselves off over the performances of Watts in the backline last year are now storming to their phones to ring up SEN and scream "who's running this place?" etc... etc...

What went wrong? You don't have to wait for the black box to be picked out of the wreckage on this one, we got ambushed by a side who properly wanted it while we ran around like it was an intra-club game. Look at Footscray, Gold Coast and even GWS yesterday - that's how you come out with your backs against the wall in round one based on ok but not great pre-seasons and fight your heart out. The last two have got about 15 fans between them but every one of them would have been pleased with the performances of kids even if the Suns had lost in the end. They've probably got even lower expectations than we do at the moment but it shows that you don't have to go meekly to your grave every week. I thought we'd replaced all the fancyboys and people who just couldn't be stuffed with hardened professionals? When are more than a handful of them going to turn up then?

The strange thing is that in the first half, despite that period at the start where they were just teeing off on us without anybody in red/blue being able to touch the ball, we weren't all that bad up front. Seven goals in a half is actually a half decent return for us, it's just that when we didn't kick a score or win it out of the middle we were splattered. How often in the last few years have we bemoaned the ease with which opposition players break free and find themselves alone? Nothing's changed, except today it looked even worse than usual. It started to get worse as the second quarter wore on, to the point where Mitch Clark started abusing everyone who wouldn't kick it to him properly. And good luck to him, he should be able to tell anyone he likes that they're rubbish because he's a god amongst lesser men.

So many lesser men. How many times did two players run to one Port opponent and leave another alone? How many times did the Power have the chance to kick 30m into the middle of ground to a free man? Pressure was, on the whole, not existant and even when we did get the ball back either nobody would run hard to make space or the player with the ball would assume nobody was going to and take five hours of thinking just to kick it to a contest. You would hate to think that players didn't care, and that it just seemed like that because they were being run off their feet but today it looked like most of them weren't all that keen. I still have a sick fascination for the idea of Wayne Carey as a coach (though no doubt if there's anything that would drive somebody back on the gear...) and he absolutely nailed it when he said this. You can understand players looking for the finish line late in the year - and we've seen that a few times - but when it's happening in Round 1 something is rancid.

Usually the backline are innocent victims of everyone else being no good and put in a heroic shift under constant fire before eventually collapsing under the sheer weight of attacks, but even they were all at sea today. Dunn played one of the all time shocking milestone games, Watts didn't seem to be interested in anything other than arguing with his teammates after a goal, Frawley was running around like he couldn't wait for his turn at free agency to roll around at the end of next year and Gillies - with respect to Rohan Bail blowing a hammy 30 seconds into his first game - had the worst debut of any MFC player since Isaac Weetra. Unlike the Weet, who has rapidly become an icon of our time, he got a few kicks because he didn't have to find his own ball but bloody hell he appeared to have no idea otherwise. Not writing him off forever, but hoping we haven't been sucked in Nathan Djerrkura style into thinking that he must have been good if he couldn't get a game at a top side.

I'd love to say 'no Rivers, no defence' but even when he wasn't down there most weeks in the second half of last year they were beaten up by weight of numbers rather than the fact that they were running around like headless chickens. No 'King of Sizzle' Tom McDonald, no defence? He might be responsible for some comedy kicking at times, but at least he knows how to get within a kilometre of an opponent.

But really, when it comes down to this guy almost had it right, "it's the midfield stupid". On a handful of occassions during the first quarter, mainly thanks to Dreamboat Mitch Clark (bless that man), it looked like we were about to get our heads together and make a contest of it but only to turn around and cop a goal straight away. At least in the second quarter after we'd kicked two in a row to 'make it interesting' we waited a good five minutes before conceding two in a row. The brief flashes of good, honest football were just that - and once you've conceded a 20 point start you're not going to fluke your way to a win without turning the SS Wonky around and sailing it away from the rocks.

The collective bar/ladybar which everyone has cracked over Jack Viney is absolutely justified based on today's performance (he had our worst disposal efficiency AND WE DO NOT GIVE A TOSS), but other than him and the usual workhorse cameo appearance of McKenzie what have we got? Nothing and Port knew it - sit on Jones and we had no other real options. The reigning Allen Jakovich Medallist wasn't too bad, but he didn't have half the impact he did most games last year. I'm not going to go all Facebook and start crying about Moloney not being there, but as shite as he was for most of 2012 he hasn't been replaced. For all of the good guy traits that Byrnes, Rodan etc.. bring to the party other clubs aren't going to lose too much sleep about them and we can't rest it all on Viney's shoulders yet - even though he seems to be the type who would actually enjoy the challenge.

What were we supposed to do though? Keeping Moloney might have been an option, but without knowing the full behind the scenes circumstances I don't think it's a realistic one. And good luck going out and finding a ready made, experienced inside midfielder who is willing to join a bottom of the harbour team and doesn't cost a fortune in cash or picks (though to be fair others have found them for free in shitbox leagues). You've got to at least pretend you've got options though, or Jones will just get butchered every week. If we're not going to do it with skill I'm happy to roll in the grafters like Magner who will at least compete.

I'm not as down on Byrnes and Rodan as everyone else seems to be, obviously neither of them are going to play finals for us but it's as much of a gamble playing them as it would be throwing another kid to the slaughter or going out and getting yet another VFL player and hoping that we crack some sort of Michael Barlow style miracle eventually. Yes we should be using high draft picks in these roles and yes we did stuff up a lot of the picks but that can't be undone. No doubt now we're finishing in the bottom four again this year, and no doubt they'll draft another midfielder in the never ending quest to finally get it right. Might happen one day. They would both know that when it gets to Round 16 and we're completely shit that if the coaches want to see a kid they will play them even if it means pitching one or both of those two off to Point Gellibrand to play against Williamstown.

As for Pedersen I'd still prefer The Experience and his magnificent quiff (even though he's hardly setting the world alight at Brisbane), but I would say that wouldn't I? At least Pedo got to have one dizzying high (screamer + goal, surely paid as a mark only to square up the Jay Schultz one which was about a metre over the line) and one terrifying low (looking like a dickhead opting to punch instead of marking), so he's officially a Demon now. Prepared to give him more chances, but he's got to be in direct competition for a spot with Sellar if Dawes and Clark are ever in the same team. Sellar went backwards today (by about three time zones) but it's drawn them level after Pedersen didn't do anything pre-season.

Spoiler alert on the votes, I thought Viney was our best even if he rushed a few of his kicks and directly cost us a goal with one blind hoof out of a pack. At least he had a go, and looked capable of winning a few clearances here and there. He also crumbed a goal, and the quickest way to my heart is via crumbs. The only other two I can even confidently fit in without pushing my luck are Grimes (the only decent thing to come out of the third quarter) and Matt Jones who I wasn't all that keen on to start with but played a pretty good game given the circumstances.

Apart from one belter tackle Sylvia just went through the motions, and if we're going to accept this year as another shambles I will be ropeable if we spend half of it bending over backwards in the hope that he won't walk as a free agent at the end of the year. Unlike Jared Rivers who was always a company man even when he was sitting out contract talks waiting to see who came calling I'm not sure Col would even toss up whether to stay or go. He doesn't come across as the sort to give a toss about being the one to drag us off our knees. He's tried it a few times and nothing's come of it, so maybe he's decide that's enough but if he's not committed to the cause as the year goes on then drop him and let him go elsewhere. I don't want us to be held over a barrel but somebody whose highs are spectacular but the other 95% of the time is pure frustration. Fit in or fuck off. I hear Brisbane is nice at this time of year.

Call it tanking, if you're an arsehole, but I'd rather play Tom Couch trying to save his career than somebody trying to whore themselves out to a top four team by putting in a couple of token top flight games a year. Save the money from he and Davey and use it to try and hold Frawley when the entire league tries to sign him at the end of 2014. Any danger that Hawthorn wouldn't want him for when Lake goes?

 

As for the others there were a handful of good news stories, Jamar got plenty of taps (some even to our players) and took big marks, Jordie tried hard as usual even if he did kick one straight up in the air and wouldn't get within two miles of a premiership contender side and not much else. Sellar was the poster child for pre-season expectations burst violently, Nicholson wasn't much chop compared to his good form in the second half of last year and I'm not entirely sure what Tapscott's role is supposed to be - or indeed if he even has one.

 

Toumpas hardly blew the lid off the place, but that's ok because it's not his job to walk in and dominate straight away. He probably shouldn't even be playing seniors yet, but we may as well give him a few weeks to get his feet wet no matter how nervy he is. Then a bit of mix and match between resting, playing for Casey and back into the seniors for the rest of the season before he unloads in 2014 and demands a trade to the Crows in 2015.

 

By the time Blease came on the damage had well and truly been done but at least he had some run in him, even if he was playing on Planet Blease as usual and showing no interest in anybody other than himself. That's why we love him, insane individualism can be a problem if left unchecked but I just like the idea of SOMEBODY backing themselves rather than running around looking terrified. More of the same please, hopefully with the fitness to go for a full four quarters next week.

You may have your own favourite moment of the game, but quite frankly I'd like to stop thinking about it as soon as possible thanks. How about the bit where it looked like Mitch Clark had either done his knee or broken his ankle? I was sitting right above that, and when his hand hovered between knee and ankle while he stood there looking gone for all money I honestly almost had a tear in my eye at the injustice of it all. That he first managed to get up and hobble off and then actually come back on in the fourth quarter

Not entirely sure what bringing him back on proved when the emphasis of the match at that point was not getting thrashed (FAIL) rather than kicking goals, but if it proved something and somebody got to do a resurrection gag somewhere then whatever. On the other hand if we find out that whatever he's done has been aggravated by that pointless cameo then I'll piff a brick through the Megastore window.

Just so many classic moments to look back on. Find a mate who follows Port and ask him to borrow the tape sometime. Download a dodgy torrent of it just because you can. Abuse Dwayne Russell for his commentary even though you didn't hear a second of it. Just don't forgive one of the saddest, most pissweak performances of recent times. And now, we drink a toast to the future - Hemlock Gatorade for all.

 

Stats Corner
It might have gone wrong almost everywhere else, but at least we got a quarter of our goals via crumb AND were only outscored by a point in the first five minutes of the third quarter. Shame about the rest.

2013 Allen Jakovich Medal Votes

Struggling after the first two. Grimes leads the Seecamp but watch for a midfield related DQ in coming weeks. Sucked in to anybody who took the NO ELIGIBLE PLAYER option in any of the minority awards, you have officially done your fictional cash. Unless Grimes gets DQed, because the way they're going nobody else in the backline is likely to pocket a vote anytime soon.

5 - Jack Viney (LEADER: Jeff Hilton Rising Star Award)

4 - Jack Grimes (LEADER: Marcus Seecamp Medal for Defender of the Year)

3 - Matt Jones

2 - Mark Jamar (LEADER: Jim Stynes Medal for Ruckman of the Year)

1 - Jordie McKenzie

Apologies to N. Jones, Howe and Clark. That'll do.

MFC Facebook Comment of the Week

It's back by popular demand, for as many weeks as I can bear to trawl through the self-loathing and shambolic spelling of player names before it all becomes too much to bear.

Considering that there's - at the time of writing - 1014 comments on the game thread, another 269 on the Neeld/Grimes press conference and god knows how many in the quarter-by-quarter updates you will forgive me if I miss some solid gold. There should be a five comment limit, because some people are ruining it for everyone (i.e me) but treating it like they're in a live chat and somebody is actually listening to them.

Showing every one where somebody made a horrible spelling mistake (and yes, there are probably 2000 in this post alone. Start your own blog and whinge about it) would take about five years but here's my favourite - making his second of what's sure to be many appearances...

Then there's that old chestnut, the opposition fan who tries to crack a gag but ends up coming off like a 14-year-old wanker. There is a special place reserved in hell for fuckwits who think they're elite members of society because they can troll other team Facebook pages.

Also note about 500 people doing the "Give us the 500k back, we obviously weren't tanking" gag as if they were the first. It's clearly become the new calling umpires yellow/green/orange maggots. And snow jokes are really bringing the house down.

 

I have the feeling that there will be a lot of material to pick through this year, and I haven't got the time to go through all these clowns arguing with each other to find them so if you happen to see a belter feel free to send it to me via Twitter and I'll try to include it.

Crowd Watch
For want of anywhere else to write this can we please, please, for god's sake end this horrific audio/visual experiment with the trumpet player? I'm sure he's a top bloke and all, and like Cale Morton he probably teaches kids to read in his spare time but unfortunately like Cale Morton we've also got a shithouse record when he's played.

To be entirely fair if he's appeared at every MCG home game since Round 1, 2009 it would give him a record of 14-2-24, which at 35% is a better career winning percentage than all of Matthew Warnock (MFC portion of career only), Morton, the SME, Grimes, Petterd (RIP), Bate (RIP), Jones, Garland, Bennell, McKenzie, Frawley, Dunn, Watts and the list of worst records runs out at 30.91% so god knows who else.
 
I don't need those helpful stats to know that brass band warbling doesn't have even the slightest effect on the actual football played, but his mere presence just seems to be taking the piss now. Yes, I'm interested in 'match day experience' (not really, but I suspect other people are), but what's this contributing to it? Being stereotyped at posh ponces is great considering some of the alternatives you could get, but at some point in the next few years our membership/support base is going to contract severely when all the people who were roped in by the 50's and 60's 'move on' and there's only so many wedded for life losers like me left. When You Jr. refuses to participate because we're shit then the whole place will sadly ebb away. It's time to thank Captain Trumpet for his loyal service, give him a life membership if that's what it takes and send him on his way. There's only so much on-field humilation I can take without adding to it off-field.

On the other hand I enjoyed the gimmick where our team refused to run out until all the good bits of Enter Sandman had played. I was hoping this guy might turn up and clean house, but alas it was not to be.

Considering the moderately wild scenes at the end (by our standards) the crowd where I was were pretty well behaved during the actual abortion. There was the odd exasperated cry and indecent remark, and I apologise for calling the umpire all sorts of names for 'pointing the wrong way' only to learn that we'd actually given away a 50 for stuffing up the interchange like a bunch of rank amateurs, but it was mostly stunned silence and laughter. To any MFC players reading this you should forget the abuse and realise that when your own fans start laughing as we're being thrashed (by Port) that's when things have gone too far and grudging resignation has set in.

I'm pleased to report that the first walk-outs of the season, in our section at least, came at the 24 minute mark of the third quarter. Made sense, you can't put a premium on beating the crowds on the train or getting your car out of the carpark even when there's just (allegedly) 23,000 people there. It certainly made more sense than those who stayed until the end of the third quarter, sat through the entire 3/4 time break then upped and left when Port kicked the first goal of the last quarter 30 seconds in. Did you feel as if some sort of belting Essendon '92 Chris Sullivan Line style comeback had been thwarted by that goal? At least you got to see the ad about recruiting people to become members one more time before it's banned for being unrealistic.

As for the end of game antics I can't see myself ever being the sort of person to haul off and yell abuse down the race, mainly because I'd be going "YOU'RE ALL FUCKED, except you did well, and you tried hard, and you were played out of position" but it's about time our fans unloaded some good old fashioned feral. To my shame I did even indulge in some passive aggressive booing, not because I thought it would change anything but because it felt like the best way to join in the mass register of dissent.

There's nothing like some open feral action to split the fans, and to nobody's surprise a civil war soon broke out between the "we've had enough, let's have a riot" and "support everybody no matter what" factions. I've got a foot in either camp (but not the far-right "let's ring the club up and abuse the receptionist" faction populated solely by dickheads who live in Josef Fritzl style basements) but don't you find it interesting that the same outsiders (and some of our own) who love to gag about how we're all Scotch College graduates with engraved thermos flasks are quick to jump on "Disgrace! Shame! Terror in the Grandstands!" bandwagon?

According to the Herald Sun we could "boo for Australia", which is something to remember the next time they do some AMUSING snow gag. The quicker they shut the gaping hole in their paywall so I'm not even tempted to click on their articles (and replace 'heraldsun' with 'news') the better. Mind you, the link above does get absolutely everything else right.

Next Week

To open the Big Book o' Footy Cliches for the first time this season it's not so much what they did this week (i.e stuffed it up) but how they respond on Saturday night against a side who a) had a good first up win and b) had a week off. There's no way the Bombers will play like the Jamaican Bobled Team again like last year, so while I'm not expecting a win (EVER AGAIN) if they can't put together some sort of cohesive performance where it looks like more than six or seven players can be bothered then coaches, players and administrators alike can slurp my plums.

Not that I will see any of this live considering I'll be at a wedding while it's on. The upside to that is that I won't have to watch the Bombers take their horrible revenge for ruining their 2012 season live, the downside is that even if the result isn't ruined by some poon grabbing the microphone and doing a celebratory rendition of "See the Bombers Fly Up" I'll have to wait until after midnight to even start viewing it.

It's almost pure stupidity to believe that in this day and age I can make it through the night without having the scores blown to me even if I turn my phone off entirely and stay away from televisions (unless I can get away with watching it from first bounce to last, emerging only at the end of every quarter to cut cake, do the Nutbush and whatever else it is that one does at a wedding), but the only other alternative is to be the shittest guest ever and keep ducking out to listen on the radio so I'll try my hardest to avoid having my night ruined until I get home and start watching live on delay.

Either way I'm sure I'll still be moved to mash my keyboard in some way. It will be an interesting experience if I watch already knowing the result, because it's not something I've ever done before. Not once in the Demonblog era or before. In the meantime feel free to fashion your own home version of Demonblog by writing something featuring the words 'farce', 'shambles', 'farce shambles', 'deestress' and 'get stuffed'.

Anyway, how are we going to get out of this hole? I'll assume that the posted injury list is relatively accurate:

IN: Dawes, Magner, McDonald, Trengove
OUT: Sellar, Gillies, Dunn, Tapscott

If McDonald isn't fit substitute for Macdonald (which is in no way confusing), and if Clark doesn't play I'll throw Sellar an enthusiasm free lifeline based on his pre-season and that tap to Jordie.

Will we win? We will not, and nor will we against West Coast a week later but if we don't get it right by Round 4 and somehow manage to lose Carnival of Hate II: Hate Harder to GWS and $cully on the MCG then the gates of hell are going to tear open.

Was it worth it?
Even when you follow a pox team the world is still a better place during footy season.

Final Thoughts

When footy gets me down and I can't handle being around opposition (or indeed our own) fans I walk home. Takes an hour but at least it leaves some time for thought collection and kicking of inanimate objects. Ironically the only year since 2008 that I've lived too far away from the G to walk was the year that was, compared to most, a bloody glory era (2010). Perhaps it's time to pack up and shift 'the Towers' to Melton and see what happens.