The fact there is even a debate about what constitutes tanking means it is a joke. Vlad certainly didn't think we 'tanked' and even congratulated Scwhab for 'staying the course' with our season.

Are posters here seriously saying we set out to win no more than four games from round 1? That crap and there is no evidence of that whatsoever.

You are all pointing to the benefit gained - that is also a crap argument. Its like saying we robbed a bank with $10m and someone else robbed a convenience store for $30.

There is simply no difference if you don't field your best team for whatever reason it is arguably tanking.

What about GWS last season in round 23 resting I think 8 players against Gold Coast?? When the number 1 pick was on the line??

Maybe we should ask ourselves if any of this would be an issue if we hadn't 'list managed' in the first place.

I would also ask why Cuddles' needed to reinforce after the Port win that we needed to get a certain amount of wins. I want to know when this 'magic number' had been decided. You can't tell me that he had just worked it out in that last week.

Maybe instead of playing this game of 'woe is us', we should accept that chapter as a dark part of our history and learn from it. Regardless of the penalties, it's clear as day that it was the mother of all c**k ups and has set us back 5 years by decimating the club's culture (which wasn't great to start with).

It's funny, while I agree that one is not the same as the other - the NBA fined the Spurs $250k for resting their big three against Miami in a regular season game and really don't care about when teams tank every season. Which is really going to be quite something this year with a kid from Canada called Wiggins who is said to be the reincarnation of LeBron...

Riggin' for Wiggins they are calling it.

And yet the Freo equivalent gets fined...

Wiggins practising his throwaway hook shot !!

Maybe we should ask ourselves if any of this would be an issue if we hadn't 'list managed' in the first place.

I would also ask why Cuddles' needed to reinforce after the Port win that we needed to get a certain amount of wins. I want to know when this 'magic number' had been decided. You can't tell me that he had just worked it out in that last week.

Maybe instead of playing this game of 'woe is us', we should accept that chapter as a dark part of our history and learn from it. Regardless of the penalties, it's clear as day that it was the mother of all c**k ups and has set us back 5 years by decimating the club's culture (which wasn't great to start with).

Maybe. But then Carlton did it, Collingwood did it, West Coast did it. Why when we do it does it [censored] our culture and set us back 5 years? Maybe instead of accepting this as a dark chapter we own it and not give a damn!

Maybe we should ask ourselves if any of this would be an issue if we hadn't 'list managed' in the first place.

I would also ask why Cuddles' needed to reinforce after the Port win that we needed to get a certain amount of wins. I want to know when this 'magic number' had been decided. You can't tell me that he had just worked it out in that last week.

Maybe instead of playing this game of 'woe is us', we should accept that chapter as a dark part of our history and learn from it. Regardless of the penalties, it's clear as day that it was the mother of all c**k ups and has set us back 5 years by decimating the club's culture (which wasn't great to start with).

When a Club finds itself well behind the other clubs in the list, & the whole competition does these 'Shortcuts', then you will fall further behind if you don't follow their lead.

but you have to do it well, smartly.

not the way we did it.

What they are doing this week, by resting Fyfe, Ballantyne, Mundy, Daweson, Johnstone, and Suprr, is player management against a what should be an easy win.

BUT, Freo deliberately lost a game to gain an advantage (secure a home final in 2010). That is tanking, regardless of picks.

So do StKilda get in trouble for playing Kosi? He is not in their best 22, but they are gifting him a game to get his 200th and bid farewell.

So they aren't fielding their best team.

Tanking?

When a Club finds itself well behind the other clubs in the list, & the whole competition does these 'Shortcuts', then you will fall further behind if you don't follow their lead.

but you have to do it well, smartly.

not the way we did it.

until your last line I thought you were talking about essendon

Maybe. But then Carlton did it, Collingwood did it, West Coast did it. Why when we do it does it [censored] our culture and set us back 5 years? Maybe instead of accepting this as a dark chapter we own it and not give a damn!

* this did not cause our culture problems, we have been unable to develop our kids for at least 12 years now... but it certainly didn't help either, because the way it was done hurt the players. anger & resentment was caused.

... how is it that when Carlton tanked openly, throughout the Kreuzer Cup season, their ex-players & playing personnel were right behind the club???

we played "Open Misere`",,, rather than just "misere`".

IMO the AFL didn't like this, with all sorts of gambling going into AFL coffers, & the AFL's own integrity being questioned. they Used Us as an Easy-Target to get,, & send a message to the competition.

list management is happening again this year... but in a more subtle way.

.... also clubs are realising that a Complete youth rebuild from ground zero up, is fraught, without good strong leaders to support & guide the young kids.

we played "Open Misere`",,, rather than just "misere`".

nutshell, nicely put

I hear a lot of talk about Carlton, Collingwood and West Coast on here. Of those three, only one has been a premiership team and a consistent finalist. The Eagles and the Blues will both miss out this year and have been flaky to say the least.

Let's look at the best clubs two clubs of the last 10 odd years: Geelong and Sydney. Do they ever put the cue in the rack at any stage of the season? Even when Sydney were rebuilding in 2009, did they just give up? Geelong has had one outlier season of 2006 but has dominated like no other club before.

Sorry JnrMac. I don't believe your Freo comparison is an apt one. Why? Because even with those players out, I bet you dollars to donuts that they will beat St. Kilda at Docklands. Their position will essentially not change. Some of their players will be fresher but at the end of the day, they will walk into Etihad confident they will beat the Saints. Melbourne in 2009 were dropping players to get a negative outcome. They thought they might be half a chance if they played their team on their merits but if they made those changes, they would lose. Big difference.

I agree with the Master to an extent on this. It's time for us to just accept what happened. If we sit around moping about how our entire situation is everyone else's fault but ours, we will never succeed. Garry Lyon (God forbid) summed it up pretty well when talking to Bomber Thompson on Footy Classified. We can complain as much as we like about the process but we wouldn't have found ourselves here had your club acted ethically (paraphrase). This applies to us and the tanking investigation. Accept it, own it and move on.

Edited August 30, 201311 yr by Guest

This thread is tempting me to start channeling Ben-Hur.

I think this has been argued concisely and correctly so far in this thread, and those that want to go on with it beyond that won't ever get it, so it's not worth the aggravation.

We tanked, we got punished, it's over, we move on.

Never again.

Now we build a culture.

If you build it, they will come.

Colour it how you wish.. Freo are pulling the carpet out from under themselves. We have the old chestnut about the players still playing to win and they will. So The "trying to lose" is a crock of shlt. its about empowering ( or not ) your team to have its best chances. Clearly Freo arent, they dont care. Its irrelevant to the season , but the fitness of players in finals is. Thats their carrot, a different one to us but they are playing to gain something.

Its exactly the bloody same in my books

Hear hear! You either go hard or go home ....

So is the definition of tanking 'purposely not winning' or 'not doing everything in your power to win/not trying to win every game'? If its latter, Freo should definitely be looked at.

'anything', that is trying not to elevate your clubs position on the ladder, in that particular round,,, is going against the "spirit of the game"....

trying to manipulate any outcome or situation, other than winning the 4 points on offer 'from that particular game' is wrong, & the league should try to fix the situation to stop it happening.

Sue, I don't see why 55's point is so weak. It's all about intent. Freo may lose, but it's not their *intention* to lose, that is just a likely by-product of their strategy to rest players. Clearly our intention was to lose. Anyone who wants to argue the point about the MFC wanting to lose is either being disingenuous, or is just thick.

In the same manner that it's not the MFC's intention to make Casey bow out of the finals in straight sets, but it will probably happen for a third year straight as a consequence of MFC's injury management decisions. Are we going to say Melbourne/Casey are tanking now?

I did say 'a bit weak'. I don't disagree with any of the above. Just making the point about timescales which does relate to intent.

A lot of the focus before was about the effect on gambling (at least that probably drove the MFC-AFL settlement) and from that point of view dropping your 10 best players is unsettling. But as I have long argued, punters should add 'strategic desire to win' to their betting considerations and not whinge.

There's a massive difference but it won't surprise me if many here can't see it.

This is the entirety of the matter.

Fremantle is not trying to not win. Their motive is not to try to lose Round 23. Our motive was to try to lose certain games.

I did say 'a bit weak'. I don't disagree with any of the above. Just making the point about timescales which does relate to intent.

A lot of the focus before was about the effect on gambling (at least that probably drove the MFC-AFL settlement) and from that point of view dropping your 10 best players is unsettling. But as I have long argued, punters should add 'strategic desire to win' to their betting considerations and not whinge.

The part that's the same is that both are taking action with the aim to win in the future - Freo sooner than Melbourne - I agree with that. The part that is substantially different is that Melbourne DELIBERATELY WANTS TO LOSE in the present to enable this, whereas Freo doesn't care if it wins or loses in the present. In the words of the great Robbo - I'd like to be "flabberbasted" people cannot see this difference, but really I'm unsurprised.

I'm on record that I strongly supported the Melbourne approach - and I still don't have a personal moral problem with it. But I was wrong - I now believe it did have a substantial detrimental affect on our club's culture - greater detrimental affect than the benefit we have received in Tom Scully morphed into Jesse Hogan and Chris Dawes (or however you want to exactly cut it).

The AFL however DOES have an understandable problem with teams deliberately losing - they even instituted a rule against teams deliberately scoring a behind for the opposition to gain advantage of possession.

It's not in the same league as tanking but there should be some penalty applied to Fremantle for not playing games on their merit because what they're doing absolutely does affect the integrity of the competition.

Imagine if St. Kilda was one of the teams with 9/10 wins and a chance to make the top 8.

Fremantle's conduct in picking a second rate team might give St. KIlda an unfair bunk up and allow the Saints a free passage into the finals to the disadvantage of the other contenders.

As a poster said above, there are hefty fines for this sort of thing in the US and this is one American example worth following.

It's not in the same league as tanking but there should be some penalty applied to Fremantle for not playing games on their merit because what they're doing absolutely does affect the integrity of the competition.

Imagine if St. Kilda was one of the teams with 9/10 wins and a chance to make the top 8.

Fremantle's conduct in picking a second rate team might give St. KIlda an unfair bunk up and allow the Saints a free passage into the finals to the disadvantage of the other contenders.

As a poster said above, there are hefty fines for this sort of thing in the US and this is one American example worth following.

IMO clubs have been starting to take many liberties with the game over the last 15 years or so.

& the commission has let them go. the game is changing too much, & it needs to reigned in a bit.

the integrity is suffering at the hands of 'whatever it takes'.

No one has addressed the GWS issue from last year? Now we know its Vlads love child so they won't get punished but they clearly tanked to claim the number 1 draft pick

Where is the outrage?

the outrage jrmac ? couldn't hear it under the din of Demonising !!!

My conspiracy theory for today is that Vlad is suggesting Simonds Stadium as an option for the qualifying final venue to stick it up Freo for picking a second rate team to play St. Kilda today.

Fremantle has pulled out two more players with Chris Mayne and Garrick Ibbotson also to miss the St Kilda game.

Maybe the AFL could trial the NBA rule whereby you cop penalties if you don't play your best players.

San Antonio Spurs fines 250 grand.

http://probasketballtalk.nbcsports.com/2012/11/30/league-fines-spurs-250000-for-not-playing-stars-vs-miami/