Melbourne's Choice

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Melbourne did the right thing in sticking with Neeld. Now it must run the ruler over the entire club.

This column doesnt have the space, or inclination, to list the innumerable mistakes made by the diabolical Demons over the past several years. But the club board, counselled by a seasoned chief executive, actually got one right on Monday when it pondered the wreckage, inhaled deeply and didnt sack Mark Neeld as senior coach.

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The club’s first major step will be to appoint a head of football. The coach will report to that person, who, in turn, will report to Jackson. Melbourne, thus, will be adopting the same set-up as Hawthorn, Geelong, Collingwood, Sydney, Richmond and, indeed, most clubs.

About bloody time.

Shows how our club had been run by a bunch of amateurs for way too long.

I read that this morning, decent article.

Ita almost unbelievable that this has gone on so long

The board have overseen this joke and should be held accountable but we all know that they wont be

Show up to the AGM and watch the amazing appearance of proxies the members havent owned this club for a long long time

Two vulnerable targets at the moment by a hysterical media.

The ALP and the MFC.

Fmd.

And HH just keeps clapping and saying 'Right on!!' - any chance you can think objectively for a minute??

  On 09/06/2013 at 02:10, jackaub said:

Ita almost unbelievable that this has gone on so long

The board have overseen this joke and should be held accountable but we all know that they wont

Show up to the AGM and watch the amazing appearance of proxies the members havent owned this club for a long long time

I don't quite understand what you're implying. A proxy has to be signed by a member, so if the members in question have been bothered to sign a proxy and send it in, they will be the members are are represented. If not enough members turn up and vote the other way they either don't actually care, despite posting their rage on demonland OR it is just a case of a minority group yelling they loudest and therefore being considered the majority.

Given how many people on here are calling for change, if be surprised if there isn't a big turnout of members and members with proxies at the agm.

This is a fantastic article, and it's spot on. It takes each argument against Neeld and provides a fair counter. It is unbiased, doesn't attempt to make Melbourne a laughing stock, nor attempts to make Melbourne sound any better than we currently are. Well-written, balanced and fair analysis.

Can someone explain to me how sacking Neeld now and replacing him with a current employee (and not replacing that employee) adds to the costs of the club?

If sacking Neeld provides hope and therefore extra attendance then there IS a financial incentive to replace him.

IMO Jackson is waiting to make one off significant changes to the FD and Neeld will go in that change. It's a good plan as it makes the statement that whilst he was a significant part of the problem he was not the whole problem. I note also that there are calls for significant changes to the Board.

  On 09/06/2013 at 02:54, Baghdad Bob said:

Can someone explain to me how sacking Neeld now and replacing him with a current employee (and not replacing that employee) adds to the costs of the club?

If sacking Neeld provides hope and therefore extra attendance then there IS a financial incentive to replace him.

IMO Jackson is waiting to make one off significant changes to the FD and Neeld will go in that change. It's a good plan as it makes the statement that whilst he was a significant part of the problem he was not the whole problem. I note also that there are calls for significant changes to the Board.

Surely the salary of a senior coach is higher than that of an assistant or other FD member, meaning that anyone who steps in to the role as caretaker is entitled to a pay rise?

Niall also addressed the argument that sacking Neeld now provides 'hope'. How does that work, BB? At the end of the year, sure, I understand, and agree with the idea, that moving Neeld on and replacing him with a new coach provides us with hope for 2014. But replacing him now with a caretaker doesn't give anyone hope. It will fill me with dread, in that the rest of this year will be totally a waste as we just play out time waiting.

The Board will change. The FD will change. Our administration will look totally different. Once those changes are made and are able to take effect (a matter of months, not days) we will be in a position to properly assess Neeld. The evidence overwhelmingly suggests he won't be here in 2014, but that decision will be made after PJ has a proper administration put in place at this club.

  On 09/06/2013 at 02:44, titan_uranus said:

This is a fantastic article, and it's spot on. It takes each argument against Neeld and provides a fair counter. It is unbiased, doesn't attempt to make Melbourne a laughing stock, nor attempts to make Melbourne sound any better than we currently are. Well-written, balanced and fair analysis.

well said.

  On 09/06/2013 at 02:54, Baghdad Bob said:

Can someone explain to me how sacking Neeld now and replacing him with a current employee (and not replacing that employee) adds to the costs of the club?

If sacking Neeld provides hope and therefore extra attendance then there IS a financial incentive to replace him.

IMO Jackson is waiting to make one off significant changes to the FD and Neeld will go in that change. It's a good plan as it makes the statement that whilst he was a significant part of the problem he was not the whole problem. I note also that there are calls for significant changes to the Board.

uhm pay rise for the current employee, plus you still have to pay out Neeld for next year when you will have a new, different coach from outside the club who will be paid more than Neeld plus the costs of the actual hire process.

I read the article and found it balanced and without bias. As much as I don't like the current situation and the coach even less I can see why we should be patient and put all the processes in place. First priority is to set up the Footy manager who Neeld will report to then look at contracts and making offers to players to stay then worry about coach. If he is told at round 18 he is not required next year then he may walk who knows.

As a frustrated supporter who feels powerless I just want something, some action that shows that someone in the club actually cares and shares our pain. To that end sacking the coach comes up because we want something to happen. Maybe waiting and ticking of the boxes in order is a more prudent approach. Kennet is correct in a way, that waiting till October/Novembers board meeting may be too late in the correct sequence of getting the club back on track.

The Age has 2 or 3 footy journalists who like to write fair, but still critical, articles. And yet they are the some of the least known or heard from scribes in town (for obvious reasons of course)

  On 09/06/2013 at 02:54, Baghdad Bob said:

Can someone explain to me how sacking Neeld now and replacing him with a current employee (and not replacing that employee) adds to the costs of the club?

If sacking Neeld provides hope and therefore extra attendance then there IS a financial incentive to replace him.

IMO Jackson is waiting to make one off significant changes to the FD and Neeld will go in that change. It's a good plan as it makes the statement that whilst he was a significant part of the problem he was not the whole problem. I note also that there are calls for significant changes to the Board.

Neeld is contracted till the end of 2014. If we terminate him we will have to pay out the rest of his term on his contract which would have been $200k for this year and $400k for next year.

+ You will also have to take into consideration a pay rise for the care taker, the cost of the new coach, and staff he would like to bring and therefore costs of paying out the contracts of replaced staff aswell.

Yes sacking MN might cause an increase of memberships or attendances however the oppotunity cost of letting him go and paying him out + all the other issues + negative sigma for prospective coaches + impact on players does not outweigh the cost of letting him stay on till the end of the year and giving him a chance to prove his worth + players to finally have the wake up call to put some effort in.

PJ and board want to give MN a chance, the supporters seem to be happy with the the decision and the footy media (dispite not getting blood) seem to approve.

Now all we have to do is sit back and let it play out.

Sad how few posts there have been in response to this article compared to the endless sack everybody calls in other threads.

(This may be wrong as I've given up reading the other repetitive threads and maybe the article has been quoted there.)

Its an good article and balanced ( rare ) in perspective.. presents an interesting , if sad , analogy. Hopefully we're not as screwed as that other lot as they are just about to all but disappear off the political map.

As Niall summises in his calm but scathing analysis of what has passed for recent history of this club, we've got a lot of things wrong, time after time after time. Thats probably the most scandalous issue, that we continually get things wrong. Hopefuly PJ has stopped this.

That we have continually got things awry suggests that the problems that cause this are well and truly part of the fabric of this club. So who's been weaving this cloth ? If we dont change the weave and by association the weavers then in the end not much will change..

Much thats bleedingly obviously wrong about our club stares outsiders in teh face. Many are too close to have clear perspective and this is why PJ's value is gold. We may need more outside influence in designing the way forward.

Actually cancel the "may "

I have a feeling Peter Jackson may end up our best recruit in a while.

Why is this a separate thread. Niall's article is just one side of the story. He claimed he didn't have room to put the many mistakes that have been made. Last week one of the newspapers had the two arguments side by side. We know this was the keep him argument. It's okay if you think this way. Some in the clubd do. But many don't. It's already been expressed elsewhere.

  On 09/06/2013 at 10:45, Harrisonrules said:

Why is this a separate thread. Niall's article is just one side of the story. He claimed he didn't have room to put the many mistakes that have been made. Last week one of the newspapers had the two arguments side by side. We know this was the keep him argument. It's okay if you think this way. Some in the clubd do. But many don't. It's already been expressed elsewhere.

It's not the 'keep him' argument. It's the 'keep him for now' argument, and there's a big difference.

  On 09/06/2013 at 02:54, Baghdad Bob said:

If sacking Neeld provides hope and therefore extra attendance then there IS a financial incentive to replace him.

Having Jade Rawlings as head coach provides hope?

This guy's been reading my posts on here.

I particularly like this line:

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"We in the media have a strong vested interest in seeing the coach sacked or the leader toppled. It’s big news that attracts large audiences and unleashes our competitive juices."

There are many costs to consider when ringing in changes.

Wikipedia covers the tumultuous period after the merger vote until Joe Gutnick was voted out by the members who installed the Team Vision ticket headed by Gabriel Szondy. Look what happened in its aftermath.

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In the months following the 1996 merger vote, the businessman and Joseph Gutnick became president. He put $3 million of his own money into the club, and sacked Balme as coach midway through the 1997 season. In 1998, under new coach Neale Daniher, the club spent most of the season in the top eight and beat the eventual premiers Adelaide in the Qualifying Final. Melbourne also eliminated St Kilda, but lost to North Melbourne in the Preliminary Final. In 1999 Melbourne finished in the bottom three.

Partial Revival

In 2000 Daniher took Melbourne to the Grand Final, but the Demons were convincingly beaten by a rampaging Essendon. The members had expected a new era of success, but in 2001 it was same old story: Melbourne finished 11th. In 2002, although Melbourne again made the finals, Gutnick was voted out by the members.

In 2003 Melbourne plunged into a new crisis, winning only five games for the year and posting a $1 million loss. President Gabriel Szondy resigned and it seemed that Daniher's tenure as coach was under threat.

Of course, Daniher stayed on another four years and we made the finals in three of them before the wheels fell off.

I think that if you analyse the on field ills of our club today, many of them originated during those four years and were compounded in the years that followed. Neeld was given the job of cleaning up the mess but some believe he's just made things worse. On the other hand, his supporters would maintain he needs more time to achieve his objective.

Off the field, our problems have been ongoing for a much longer period of time so we can't expect quick fixes in that area. Peter Jackson has the tools to bring about change and I assume the expected announcement of the review into the board will mark another new beginning in the club's history.

There's never a dull moment.

wow, Gabriel Szondy

Theres a name i had completely wiped from my memory.

deanox is spot on (in his now deleted posts) - churlish name calling is not on. The offending post and discussion that ensued are now gone.

  On 09/06/2013 at 02:12, jumbo returns said:

Two vulnerable targets at the moment by a hysterical media.

The ALP and the MFC.

Fmd.

And HH just keeps clapping and saying 'Right on!!' - any chance you can think objectively for a minute??

For once I envy Gillard and the ALP. If only we had the support of 30% of AFL followers!