I will say this. If Chris Dawes has a good year the side will improve dramatically.

Clark will be good we already know that.

BB I'm kind of with you but like most on here probably the last 6 years have made me very cautious at setting the bar high. My mates have been asking me where we will finish and I am very non commital, because I have been bitten before.

I can see 8 wins without a great amount of improvement on last season's output and realistically expect at least 10 because of the trade and draft period outcomes. The 8 is a distinct possibility and a number of factors will come into play and to be honest the ball is really in our court.

I have said on another forum I think we can make finals but if we dont it fo rme is not automatically a failed year. if we ended the season around 12th with

• 10 wins
  
• unlucky to lose 8 (by unlucky I mean within a goal)
  
• never beaten by more than 4 goals
  
• ran out games strongly
  
• showed hardness throughout the team
  
• clear indicators the youngsters were stepping up for sustained improvement
  

That for me would be a pass, all I want by the end of next season is no longer having to be optimistic about when and where the improvement were coming form but for it to be obvious it was upon us

10 wins

• unlucky to lose 8 (by unlucky I mean within a goal)
  
• never beaten by more than 4 goals
  
• ran out games strongly
  
• showed hardness throughout the team
  
• clear indicators the youngsters were stepping up for sustained improvement
  

That for me would be a pass

Agree with the last 3 points, but your first two are in my opinion completely unrealistic. Lose 8 games by less than a goal? Be interested to see if any team has managed that. One or two "close" games in a season, sure, but 8??

Never beaten by more than 4 goals? Once again, has any team, ever, done that in a season? Even the best will have the odd off days, and the less-than-best probably quite a few. There are going to be 60 point losses this year - just hopefully fewer of them.

For me, I feel that the year is going to play out in terms of luck and injuries. Losing Mitch Clark this year was iMHO catastrophic. If he takes time to come back, Dawes has an injury (or ongoing injury issues), Viney gets heavily crunched and misses 6 weeks, Sylvia breaks something (again), etc. etc. I for one would not be all that confident that we'd suddenly shoot up the ladder.

If on the other hand, the stars align, everyone plays to or approaching their potential, most players are available most weeks creating a real competition for places, sure, the sky's the limit!

It is just too hard to tell. The list is savagely different. Which i like.

But will they gel?

I agree, finally change, but how long until the structure settles and the team gels?

For the last couple of years, with an unchanged list, there has been the typical pre-season hopeful "over estimation" of our abilities, when there had been no changes to the list. These hopes were rapidly deflated once the NAB games started, and completely crushed in the home and away rounds.

What I want to see, is not even honorable losses, but quarters or halves where Melbourne dominate play. I have not seen a period of play in years where an emerging player took the game by the scruff of the neck, and consistently threatened to tear a game apart.

There were glimpses from Mitch Clark last year of "wow" moments, and next year I will be very, very happy to go into work and here people saying things like "Melbourne lost last night, but did you see Toumpas/Viney/Jones in the second quarter?"

Let's just all pray that we make the top 8, because I don't want to loose any more hair.

U guys r off ya head if u think Dees will make finals. We will improve a lot tho. I say finish 12-14.

We have been very disappointed before, this, we will need a tremendous amount of luck to improve or position dramatically .

We need Gawn to start starring, Trengove, Grimes, Blease.Watts to start to become wonder boys, to move up the ladder sufficiently to start threatening..but we have recruited well- we have players whom will really help these young recruits strive for perfection...but it will take 3 years for us to be right up there IMO.

This year was pretty disappointing, Clark's injury and Jarrah's unavailability hurt a lot, fitness was poor, confidence in the team was down and so was their skill and of course our playing list depth was also pretty poor.

A lot of our players had shocking years even by our own poor standards. We have to expect that we now have sufficient forwards to carry us though the year with minor injuries and still be functional. We should now have a mid field outfit able to get first purchase of the ball at stoppages and more importantly contribute more goals. In defense we have lost rivers but picked up a few handy players who could do well. I believe this team is far better balanced that the teams we had a couple of years ago when we took it up to collingwood. For those who believe in the money ball theory, its about how many goals can we get out of each of our players and how many we stop the opposition from scoring. Looking at the old foxtel reruns of this season the stand out stat for Melbourne was the cost of turnovers, if we can halve this we will be in my opinion a 5-6 better side on that alone. All the other areas that we should see improvement should get us a lot more wins in the coming years. I think my vote for a top 8 spot is ambitious but achievable.

Agree with the last 3 points, but your first two are in my opinion completely unrealistic. Lose 8 games by less than a goal? Be interested to see if any team has managed that. One or two "close" games in a season, sure, but 8??

Never beaten by more than 4 goals? Once again, has any team, ever, done that in a season? Even the best will have the odd off days, and the less-than-best probably quite a few. There are going to be 60 point losses this year - just hopefully fewer of them.

For me, I feel that the year is going to play out in terms of luck and injuries. Losing Mitch Clark this year was iMHO catastrophic. If he takes time to come back, Dawes has an injury (or ongoing injury issues), Viney gets heavily crunched and misses 6 weeks, Sylvia breaks something (again), etc. etc. I for one would not be all that confident that we'd suddenly shoot up the ladder.

If on the other hand, the stars align, everyone plays to or approaching their potential, most players are available most weeks creating a real competition for places, sure, the sky's the limit!

How much did the Bulldogs beat Essendon by in 2000, a late goal from Chris Grant from the boundry? Of course teams have done that in a season. Has a team in the bottom half of the lader ever done that? I doubt it

Agree with the last 3 points, but your first two are in my opinion completely unrealistic. Lose 8 games by less than a goal? Be interested to see if any team has managed that. One or two "close" games in a season, sure, but 8??

Never beaten by more than 4 goals? Once again, has any team, ever, done that in a season? Even the best will have the odd off days, and the less-than-best probably quite a few. There are going to be 60 point losses this year - just hopefully fewer of them.

For me, I feel that the year is going to play out in terms of luck and injuries. Losing Mitch Clark this year was iMHO catastrophic. If he takes time to come back, Dawes has an injury (or ongoing injury issues), Viney gets heavily crunched and misses 6 weeks, Sylvia breaks something (again), etc. etc. I for one would not be all that confident that we'd suddenly shoot up the ladder.

If on the other hand, the stars align, everyone plays to or approaching their potential, most players are available most weeks creating a real competition for places, sure, the sky's the limit!

Sorry Bing but what I was trying to say is we don't just fail next year if we lose more than we win there are other things which come into play.

In short what I want is for us to be a side who when we start making finals regulalrly are not just there to make up the numbers, earlier this century we made it regulalrly but never threatened seriously. Thats where I see sides like North are at and I don't want to be that!

I've fallen into this trap the last few years... not so sure I want to go down the "Optimistic path" again. I'll wait and see how we go in the first few weeks of 2013 before I develop any expectations.

Personally i think Neeld and the FD have done a great job at bringing guys into the team. I hope that 2013 brings us a vast improvement so quality players actually want to come to Melbourne during trade and restricted free agents periods. If we could pull in a A-grader at the end of next year with Hulk Hogan coming in, things will be looking rosie for the Red and the Blue

I don't think we'll make the 8 this year. That said, I think we will finally win the respect of other teams in the competition.

Mitch Clark's return is pivotal too. He needs to be ready for round 1. Cannot wait for a forward line with Clark, Dawes, Pederson and Byrnes in it.

Mitch Clark's return is pivotal too. He needs to be ready for round 1. Cannot wait for a forward line with Clark, Dawes, Pederson and Byrnes in it.

Add Hogan in 2014 and we have one hell of a forward line

U guys r off ya head if u think Dees will make finals. We will improve a lot tho. I say finish 12-14.

12-14TH what's good about finishing there? 7 or 8 wins for the year. I think we need better than that.

We (the supporters) deserve better.

Finishing 7-10th is satisfactory.

U guys r off ya head if u think Dees will make finals. We will improve a lot tho. I say finish 12-14.

You say we will improve a lot...but how is 14th a big improvement?

Cannot wait for a forward line with Clark, Dawes, Pederson and Byrnes in it.

Wonder how often we'll see that though. Think Clark could take a while, and even getting back to pre-break level could be a bit of an ask.

I've fallen into this trap the last few years... not so sure I want to go down the "Optimistic path" again. I'll wait and see how we go in the first few weeks of 2013 before I develop any expectations.

Yep. If we win more than we lose in a year I'll get excited again. Until then I'll watch with a jaded eye.

12-14TH what's good about finishing there? 7 or 8 wins for the year. I think we need better than that.

We (the supporters) deserve better.

Finishing 7-10th is satisfactory.

eight wins would be a 100% improvement.

Have you forgotten that in 16 games last season we were not even competitive?

eight wins would be a 100% improvement.

Have you forgotten that in 16 games last season we were not even competitive?

Eight wins gets us back to where we were under Bailey. We need to play finals, and fast. Anything less is failure. Our club has been at the bottom of the ladder since 2007 and we can't last there too much longer. We play finals, or it starts getting even more ugly.

I think the changes to our list are great long-term but I would suggest there's a bit of pain to go through yet. I think we'll start to see some good footy in the latter part of this season. While a new list is reason for optimism it's also a step back in the short term as far as team chemistry and game plan comprehension goes. Having said that, I'm really looking forward to 2013.

• 10 wins
• unlucky to lose 8 (by unlucky I mean within a goal)
• never beaten by more than 4 goals
• ran out games strongly
• showed hardness throughout the team
• clear indicators the youngsters were stepping up for sustained improvement

I also think the last 3 points are good one's and should happen. We will get beaten by more than 4 goals, hell North made the finals this year and what did Hawthorn beat them by? We should hope to be competitive in every game but if a seriously good team turns it on for one game I don't think that is an instant fail, especially considering where we are coming from.

As for losing 8 games by less than a goal the closest we have gotten to this in recent memory is when we lost 4 games by less than a goal in 2007 (also had a 11 point loss to the pies where we were close).

I think if the three bottom points happen, we dominate games for periods. Win 7-12 games and are competitive and in the game at 3 qtr time in over 75% of our matches that is a pass mark.

Eight wins gets us back to where we were under Bailey. We need to play finals, and fast. Anything less is failure. Our club has been at the bottom of the ladder since 2007 and we can't last there too much longer. We play finals, or it starts getting even more ugly.

Eight wins gets us back to where we were under Bailey. We need to play finals, and fast. Anything less is failure. Our club has been at the bottom of the ladder since 2007 and we can't last there too much longer. We play finals, or it starts getting even more ugly.

Eight wins gets us back to where we were under Bailey. We need to play finals, and fast. Anything less is failure. Our club has been at the bottom of the ladder since 2007 and we can't last there too much longer. We play finals, or it starts getting even more ugly.