Laidley is gone

Dean Laidley has resigned as the North Melbourne senior coach as of today.
And I for one, am pleased with the decision.
Even though North this year, have been wrecked with injuries, they have played their worse season I have seen for a long time. Yes some blame goes to the senior players but I feel that is where the coach should have stepped in and got more out of them.
North lack discipline, hard ball gets, consistency and a game plan. I thought, Laidley, at the beginning of his 7 year reign, would bring with him the hardness of how he played for North. This has not been there for the last 3 seasons. His selfishness has shone through more in this and last season where his feelings are over ruling the goodness of the team; prime example is leaving Daniel Harris out of the team for most of the year because they don’t get along. Harris is our only consistent hard ball getter and tackler.
So what happens from here? For the rest of the season, who will step up to interim coach?
Darren Crocker? He was a great defender in his day, and our backline currently is playing ok…well the younger players are like Urquhart and Thompson are.
Darren Bewick? Has been in charge of our forward line….hmm, we have no forward line and that has been a major problem this year.
Anthony Rock? In charge of the midfield. Well that would be the hardest job as our midfield keeps changing because of injuries.
My choice? Good question. Crocker for his hard ball defensive style or Rock for his Collingwood experience and therefor discipline? I think I lean towards Crocker to get us through the year but not to be the Coach next season.
Coach for next season I would love to see John Longmire come back and bring with him the discipline and hard work that Paul Roos brought to the Swans. Other candidates would be John Blakey, David King or Ross Smith. From the Senior coaches, of course we would love to have the hard nose Mick Malthouse to come over but I don’t see Collingwood letting him go.

Crocker has been announced as interim coach
A little spill about Laidley here

Note I just reread this ramble. It come across that I didn’t like Laidley as a coach. That is not true. It just was time for him to move on and North to get a fresh face in the caoching role. Laidley did very well early into the gig. He had to break the senior players out of Pagan’s Paddock and introduce a different style of play. He did very well at this. But it is not working now and his focus just seems to be lost with North. At another club he would bring something very useful but I think North have got as much as we will get from him.

Round 12 Dream Team line up

After the team listing being released yesterday, I had little choice but to make another trade. Say goodbye to Krakouer who was the worst pick up of mine as I picked him up after he made a lot of money and then played very very ordinary. And that made room for the most pick fwd there is in the AFL Dream Team…Lance Buddy Franklin.
Yes, he is only averaging 78 but he has one of the smallest standard diviations and you know he will come good soon.

So my line up for the split round (I have split rounds..not enough footy for 2 weekends):

DEF: S Gilbert, J Geary, S McMahon, P Burgoyne, R Houlihan, J Grimes, J Petrenko.
MID: J Bartel (capt), T Lockyer, N Dal Santo, R Griffen, H Skipworth, B Muston.
FWD: S Johnson, N Reiwoldt (vc), M Pavlich, S Higgins, J Ziebell, D Thomas, L Franklin
RUC: H McIntosh, A Sandilands
Now Pentrenko could be another dougnut but with Drummond out for a week, I’ll just have to cross my fingers.

AFL/DT Round 11…done

I know..its almost round 12 and I am only just getting to round 11 wrap up.
Its my rambling so back off
Round 11 was the worst round for the Kneejerkers Dream Team. Where I thought at the beginning of the round, I was going to have 1 doughnut, Petrenko than falls to the emergency list. I was at 2 dougnuts. Then more strife, Ziebell out with gastro and Drummond does a leg in 1st quarter. This makes my 1 doughnut turn into 4 dougnuts.
Scraps in with a score of 1488 and to my surprise I won my game in my main league and even in the secondary league! This makes 4 wins in a row and a leap to 9th place.

Can’t afford to have so many doughnuts this week so trades are a must. Moss is gone and then who do i drop? Russell or Krakouer? Both have been going down hill with averages of 70.
Who do I pick up? You’ll have to wait.

AFL Dream Team – Round 11

Being offline has not stopped me from putting together a Dream Team for 2009. Made it harder and I have had to do it all via my i-mate mobile phone, but the Kneejerkers are back for their 2nd year.
The line up at the start of the seasn look good but very early long term injuries decimated my team and many…many trades were used early.
Its round 11 this week and I am already down to 5 trades left to get through 11 more rounds.

This week I used up a trade to ditch the useless T Tuck for the Hawks because there was no way I was missing out on B Muston for the hawks. 1st 2 games scores himself an average of 116.50! But this trade has still left me with a doughnut in the midfield.
The Chad going down with a calf injury hurts but I should be fine this week. My backline is also weakened with Gilbert going down with an injury to his ankle.

So far in the Home Brews II league, I have just the 3 wins which places me 11th but I have the 5th highest point average so I am confident I will make the finals this year.

So the Line up this week is:
DEF: J Drummond, J Geary, S McMahon, P Burgoyne, R Houlihan, J Grimes, J Petrenko.
MID: J Bartel (capt), T Lockyer, R Griffen, H Skipworth, B Muston and a doughnut.
FWD: S Johnson, N Reiwoldt (vc), M Pavlich, S Higgins, J Ziebell, D Thomas, M Brown
RUC: H McIntosh, A Sandilands
No my strongest line up. Petrenko and Brown are the weakest links but we shall see how we go.

I. Am. Back

After 3 months of no internet access, no internet provider, not even a working phone line, I have returned!
That is right folks, your…well…I’d like to say favourite…bah, why the hell not….your favourite rant/raver fishmalt drinking, footy watching and funny looking bloke is back online!

Now that I’m back, I am taking a fresh look at the site, have some ideas of some changes but ultimately I intend to bring it back to life.
Three months of not being able to rant, ramble or review a thing has driven me nuts. And could have I picked a worse time to go offline?!
AFL begins again and North Melbourne are bombing out, NRL is chock full of drama, Dream Team injuries and early trades are common place, government bungles are still here AND the Indian government are accusing Australia of being a racist country and want Australia listed on their dangerous tourist destinations.

The reason for why the longtime offlinenessness (it is a real word)? Way back in 2007, around the time here in Australia, the majority voted for change and in that time my wife and I, put a deposit down on a house. This house was bought of the plans so it had to be built. It was a stage 2 development and we had to wait until stage 1 even begun let alone finish. There were months where we lived with my folks waiting for the house to be built and boy, wasn’t that a hoot. Then 2009 came along and the house was in our grasp, only to have it vandalised and delayed. Then one fateful day, late February, the dream became real and we finally moved into our new home! Much joy was had and Numfar did the dance of joy.

But of course we didnt factor in the fact that Telstra are idiots who have neglected to lay down the phone lines in the neighbourhood. So 3 months later, phone line is finally put down, phone was hooked up to house and net was once more enjoyed. So here we are today.

Happy times are here and rants will appear. So stay tuned as I revamp this little place I like to call Fishmalt. I am sure there will much joy, rants and a different look but overall, a place where I can ramble away.

AFL Dream Team is back!

That’s right! Dream Team for 2009 has opened!
This has taken up most of last night, trying to put the ultimate team together for 2009. And you know what…it bloody hard to get the balance right and not overload the Kneejerkers with North Melbourne players.
I managed to cull it to just 5 (Harvey, Petrie, Hale, Thomas and 1st round draft pick Ziebell). Im quite surprised at the number of Port players I have and how little Hawthorn and Geelong players I have….damn salary cap.

If your keen to battle the might of the Kneejerkers, jump on Dream Team and join league 655560 (Fishmalt).

Cousins becomes a Tiger

That is correct.
Ben Cousins, Brownlow winner and ex West Coast (and ex drug addict), has joined the ranks of Richmond as of today’s AFL Draft.

But what does this mean?
Well I personally think it is a great move by Richmond. Ben Cousin’s skills and experience will be a great lift to the Tiger’s midfield……as long as Cousins stays clean.
A self confessed drug addict playing for any team was always going to be tough to convince the sponsors, that it is a good idea and good for the team.
Good luck to Ben, I hope he does stay clean as he was always a great player to watch on the field and well done to the Tigers for taking a stand and picking him up.

I heard that Dean Laidley was keen to approach Cousins, would have been nice with Shannon Grant’s retirement, but Mazda (major sponsor) shut it down.

Bring it back to the people!

Carn the Roos!
Hail Brayshaw and Arocca!

Why? Because they have taken another great step in cementing the North Melbourne Football Club’s future.
First it was Brayshaw telling the AFL to stuff the Gold Coast relocation, then it was changing the name back to North Melbourne.
And now!

ALMOST 10 months after joining North Melbourne as its chief executive, Eugene Arocca celebrated yet another off-field triumph on Wednesday night when the club was returned to its members.

That’s right. North Melbourne is now back in the hands of the members! No more trying to satisfy the shareholders greed. Now it is back to focusing what is best for the club and its members.
Hooray!

They even have a vid of the announcement HERE

What’s that Skip? How good was that Pie?

Well. As if the North Melbourne Kangaroos can’t confuse people enough, they go and win against the 3rd place Collingwood Magpies
And what a win!? A quiet 1st half to by the Shinboners which gave Collingwood a 13 point lead at the major break.
And then the 3rd quarter started and so did North Melbourne!
I have not seen Firrito play a better game…and of course that was the 1st time I have benched him in my Dream Team (of which he outscored 6 of the 7 players). Petrie once again played a MVP game and would have earned the full 3 points for the Brownlow.

This game had it all for me, beat Collingwood AGAIN!, get back into the Eight and signs of some consistency.
Bout bloody time North…..but now of course you will probably be beaten by Melbourne this week because you are expected to win.

North Melbourne 17.12. 144
Collingwood 14.12. 96

What’s that Skip? You forgot how to play for four quarters?

I have followed the North Melbourne Kangaroos since I was about 10ish, been a member for 7 years. I have seen them win premierships (’96 and ’99), watch them demolish teams, watch them be demolished by teams but I have never been so angry with them as I am with their performance in the last 3 weeks.

To have a 25 point lead at the end of the 1st quarter, have a 16 point lead at the start of the final quarter and then to lose in the last 10mins of the game. What the (insert as many expletives as you can think of here)?
North Melbourne played better than the Saints the majority of the game but again they failed to play the full 4 quarters of the game. Harvey and Simpson can not carry the whole team and other experienced players need to step the fuck up!

I have to agree with the Dean Laidley, players have to step up or get out.

Just when you think they can be contenders for the final eight (specially after last weeks win over the Hawks) they go and pull this crap.
The start of the game, they were pin pointing their kicks into the 50, and then they go and bomb it in willy-nilly in a state of panic in the last 2 quarters. Grant had a decent game so hopefully his form is coming back. Gibson, wow, we finally have a great defender but he can’t do it on his own. The midfield, well, what the fuck happened there? Last week we were charging in for the ball, making hard tackles so what happened this week? Yes Simpson (32 disposals) and Harvey (29 disposals) did their job but where was Thomas, Riggio, Harris and even Wells. Clearances! We are defiantly missing McIntosh in the centre and even up forward.
For the 1st time ever, North, you have shaken my faith in you. The most Frustrating Team in the League title goes to you.

North Melbourne 9.15 69
St Kilda 12.12 84