Weren't you just last week saying you were fully supportive of where Roos has this club going..

There is a fair argument for H_H to be banned on match days

For his own good as much as anyone else's

Weren't you just last week saying you were fully supportive of where Roos has this club going..

Ill support Roos as its only been 23 games, but he was extremely underwhelming in season 1

Any official news on Max's knee?

I feel more than a little dirty in saying this but I hope those goat-rooting, drug abusing red & black prix win by in excess of 120 points next week

God I hate North

Matt Jones sums this club up at the moment.

The bloke runs hard to position, has a good turn of pace and can find the football. And then he either drops it, kicks it to the opposition or misses a handball from 2 metres away.

The sooner we get rid of those types, and there are many, only then will we begin to turn the corner.

Melbourne have two types of players:

1) Can get the ball or is hard at the ball but can't kick.

2) Can't get the ball or is softand can kick.

Nathan Jones, Tyson and Vince are probably the only ones who can regularly do both.

EDIT: I'll add Jetta and Dubn into that category too.

All teams do! The good teams let tge blokes who can get the ball and cant kick, to get it to their mates who can!!

We dont do this!!

Read the vfl player reviews..... Sums up our list..... A lot of these guys have been in the system for 3+ yrs are struggling.....

Are we all relieved that we didn't lose by more to the Nth melb 2nds.

We've fallen so far that we don't even see it anymore. We are world record bad and I fear this is too far gone to come back from. How do we claw back when we bleed talent every year to FA?

One op draft pick every year topping up the the bottom of the list while the cream of the list leaves at the other end. Meanwhile the constant hammerings ensure any "culture rebuild " gets destroyed at every turn. This club is in a death spiral. Roos will come and go but we are witnessing the death rattle of the country's oldest football club. Bottoming out in time for the compromised drafts, timed with FA and the worst club admin in history was the sporting worlds perfect storm.

The club needs to realign the goals to save itself. Forget rebuilding for a premiership. That involves chasing talent in the draft. We don't have time for that.

We need to rebuid for mid table. Only then, once the club is stabilized and SOME respect retained, should we then look to climb up the ladder.

Rebuilding for a premiership is a bridge too far, which this vicious cycle will never allow.

First, aim to be an AFL standard team again. Has to be the only goal. Forget top four. Not even in the same stratosphere. Aim for 50:50 seasons

The club needs to realign the goals to save itself. Forget rebuilding for a premiership. That involves chasing talent in the draft. We don't have time for that.

We need to rebuid for mid table. Only then, once the club is stabilized and SOME respect retained, should we then look to climb up the ladder.

Rebuilding for a premiership is a bridge too far, which this vicious cycle will never allow.

If we don't we are dead in the water, as per your previous post and I fear that's what we are. Finishing middle for a few years then dropping back with no premiership success to generate new members.

We have to have a go at it or we whither and die.

Chasing elite kids will kill this club. Every year will be one 18 yr old top pick in, one 26 yr old top 5 player out. One step fwd, two back. Can't survive like that. We need to chase senior players, so that the kids we already do have can win some footy games and the senior players will be more inclined to refuse FA

Only way to break this cycle

I've been working tonight so have only seen bits of the game but noticed a post on Dom Barry and being scared. I think it is unfair to label him that but there has been no doubt when he first arrived and I watched him at training that he really didn't know what to do when faced with a player coming the other way. The physical part of the game was foreign to him.

His reports from Casey consistently say he gets around the contest but doesn't get into it. It's why his stats are low. The coaching staff must be confident they can turn him around, that's the only reason I can see for him getting a new contract. I'm not convinced they can. I hope I'm wrong.

Chasing elite kids will kill this club. Every year will be one 18 yr old top pick in, one 26 yr old top 5 player out. One step fwd, two back. Can't survive like that. We need to chase senior players, so that the kids we already do have can win some footy games and the senior players will be more inclined to refuse FA

Only way to break this cycle

Catch 22 'Munga' , and it's slipping away from us. If Roos doesn't turn things around we are shot.

Munga, you're absolutely spot on. I think it is why Roos will trade our top picks and people here will go absolutely mental about us giving up '10 year stars'. What we need right now is a very good player that is slightly under 'Pick 2' kind of stardom, about 5-7 years in, and a couple of solid Bernie Vince types for picks in the 20s-40s.

We will get torched for a couple of years on 'value', but we can always go back to the well in a few years when we are mid table again. Plenty of 200 gamers come from picks outside the top 10 and there's no reason we can't find a few ourselves.

We're completely stuffed if we expect Tyson, Salem, Hogan, JKH and even players like Tom MacDonald to rescue us at this point. They need help and time and, whilst we might pick another young star this year, this time next year we could well lose Nathan Jones and drop another two steps back. My worry is that until we stop the bleeding at the top end of our list age-wise, we are never going anywhere.

Oh for god's sake. We are not shot, we are not finished, we are not a basket case.

We have experienced, successful, insightful, capable people involved at the club, led by Roos and Jackson. It's a process. The year was garbage, but nothing like the garbage of the last few, and heavily compromised by the blight of (serious) injuries to a handful of the key players we needed to help take the off-field work on-field. Add Hogan, Clark, a fit Trengove, full pre-seasons into Kent, Riley, Jamar, Garland, Gawn and Dawes ... oh what might have been. People forget that we started the year with a makeshift forward line, and the only ruck we could get out there was Spencer.

I also don't think people should underestimate how catastrophic it was to lose Clark - we'd been without him for so long it's easy to forget, but he was pretty well the one player we had who could have made a difference just being out there.

anyone got any news on Gawns knee injury?

U can always watch a replay tomorrow and pretend!

Who knows we might even win!

Or you can play it backwards to watch us come from behind to acheive a draw!

Oh for god's sake. We are not shot, we are not finished, we are not a basket case.

We have experienced, successful, insightful, capable people involved at the club, led by Roos and Jackson. It's a process. The year was garbage, but nothing like the garbage of the last few, and heavily compromised by the blight of (serious) injuries to a handful of the key players we needed to help take the off-field work on-field. Add Hogan, Clark, a fit Trengove, full pre-seasons into Kent, Riley, Jamar, Garland, Gawn and Dawes ... oh what might have been. People forget that we started the year with a makeshift forward line, and the only ruck we could get out there was Spencer.

I also don't think people should underestimate how catastrophic it was to lose Clark - we'd been without him for so long it's easy to forget, but he was pretty well the one player we had who could have made a difference just being out there.

I think you're in denial mate. We have far too many players who are state league level at best and the ones who do have talent are either too soft or too slow/injury prone. This is going to take a long time to turn around and when we are handing out contract extensions to guys like Terlich, Riley, Bail, Spencer etc before we absolutely have to and have contracts with guys like McKenzie, Matt Jones etc still to honour it shows just how putrid our list is and how far off mid-table let alone top 4 we are.

Oh for god's sake. We are not shot, we are not finished, we are not a basket case.

We have experienced, successful, insightful, capable people involved at the club, led by Roos and Jackson. It's a process. The year was garbage, but nothing like the garbage of the last few, and heavily compromised by the blight of (serious) injuries to a handful of the key players we needed to help take the off-field work on-field. Add Hogan, Clark, a fit Trengove, full pre-seasons into Kent, Riley, Jamar, Garland, Gawn and Dawes ... oh what might have been. People forget that we started the year with a makeshift forward line, and the only ruck we could get out there was Spencer.

I also don't think people should underestimate how catastrophic it was to lose Clark - we'd been without him for so long it's easy to forget, but he was pretty well the one player we had who could have made a difference just being out there.

One of my favourite golfing quotes is 'It's not how, it's how many'.

It doesn't matter why we are cr@p, the fact is that we are. The fact is that we keep losing and will keep losing senior players until we turn the ship around. It doesn't matter how many games we lost that we should have won etc, we didn't. And we're 17th, about to lose a key defender in his prime and gain another 18 year old with not much onfield leadership.

Next year we will lose Cross, Jamar and potentially another free agent or two. We just don't have seniority on the list to keep bleeding experience like we currently are.

I think you're in denial mate. We have far too many players who are state league level at best and the ones who do have talent are either too soft or too slow/injury prone. This is going to take a long time to turn around and when we are handing out contract extensions to guys like Terlich, Riley, Bail, Spencer etc before we absolutely have to and have contracts with guys like McKenzie, Matt Jones etc still to honour it shows just how putrid our list is and how far off mid-table let alone top 4 we are.

This too. I was astonished by the timing of those extensions. Who would care if we waited another month?? Not like they'd have suitors bashing down the door.

I look fwd to the day when I don't look fwd to the end of the season and the off season.

So I've been watching the replay (aside from the 3rd quarter), some very positive things out of it.

Kicking goals! What a concept! I really hope that this was a bit of a preview for next year, turning defense into attack and playing with a little flair.

There's still so much to work on though, our skills are still so far off its laughable. But there's hope with the likes of Kent, Michie, and Tyson. All played well and at this stage will be together for round 1 next year.

Interesting Fitzy has showed a bit in his last couple of games, it'll be interesting to see if he remains at the club. I personally hope so.

Once again, one quarter killed us. It'd be nice if next year we hold teams for 3 quarters and do the killing in one.

THE RECORD BREAKING DOG'S BREAKFAST ... by George on the Outer

The sign above the crowd (if that is what you call the gathering in attendance at Etihad) proudly advertised dog food. And it certainly was a dog's breakfast for football fans, and one of undesirable records for the Demons.

The irony of watching Brad Scott thanking the Kangaroos' supposed 40K members surely would have been lost on the lousy 17K Melbourne and North supporters who bothered to turn up to watch the game (it would also cause you to envisage how many Melbourne supporters would have turned up to watch their team if they were playing in the finals next week).

Something tells me that the Roos are heavily into creative accounting ...

Anyway, back to the game:

In the first quarter North had three goals on the board, before Melbourne even got the ball into its forward half, let alone into the 50m arc. But the Demons mounted some sort of comeback and had leveled the score at the first bell ...

Good signs?

Well the second quarter was much the same, except that Melbourne shot to a 13 point lead early, only to be overtaken by North later in the term and the scores at half time remained locked at 53 all ... more good signs?

Well it all went for a pile of Werribee deposit in the third (yet again) as North piled on 5 goals to the Demons solitary 6 pointer ...

Game over.

The final quarter for the year saw Nathan Jones and no doubt the coach reminding players that this was it for 2014; just another 25 odd minutes, so give it your all. In what has become familiar to Demon supporters, the players responded by allowing North to kick the first two goals within two minutes ... thanks again fellas!

While the Demons kicked five for the quarter, it was all too late. Even Tom McDonald scored a pair which brought his all time tally to ... two goals! Still not bad considering he was playing in the backline. If he could only kick as straight while playing down there ...

The next challenge was to get to 100 points, but opportunities were squandered again and again, with a 93 point score still being the best output for the season, but still miserable by any measure. It’s entirely possible that we did contribute more than 100 in this game, as a sizable proportion of the North goals came from absolute howlers from the Melbourne players.

Until we have players on the field who can kick straight or just kick, then we will see more of the same.

But that wasn’t the only record to be broken or extended or worse still created on the night:

1. Melbourne went through the 2014 season without winning a single home game;

2. The Demons failed to kick 100 points in any game in 2014;

3. They have never won at this stadium since it was re-named Etihad;

4. It is 8 years since they have beaten North at any venue;

5. Thirteen successive losses to North and an 8-0 score line at Ethihad; and

6. Nine straight losses for the Demons to finish the season ... what is the argument against a priority pick because I’m really having difficulty finding one.

Once again the stats sheet represented the best of our players. Along with Nathan Jones ( as usual) we find Dom Tyson, Daniel Cross and Bernie Vince holding down the possession numbers. It is a sad indictment to the rest of the side that these three players were not at the club last year. Three imports can have more effect on a game than the rest who have been here for a long time. Paul Roos has been able to up the output and improve the likes of Lynden Dunn, Neville Jetta and Cam Pedersen, but others such as James Frawley, Jack Watts and now Jeremy Howe have taken the "disinterested pills" and may find themselves in other colours next year. None will be missed as they have not contributed in any meaningful way this season.

And next season already looks like starting badly. Dawes will surely catch the unfavourable attention of the MRP with an elbow to the head of Swallow, and Max Gawn went down early in the game with yet another knee injury.

With such a portentious start to 2015, we could be in for more dog's breakfast games ahead, and the potential to set some new records for underperformance.

Unless we can start using the bean-counters at North to massage the numbers in the same way as they have done with their membership!

Melbourne 4.3.27 8.5.53 9.7.61 14.9.93

North Melbourne 4.3.27 8.5.53 13.9.87 19.9.123

Goals

Melbourne Kent 3 Dawes Fitzpatrick McDonald Tyson 2 Dunn Jamar Vince

North Melbourne Turner 4 Brown Wood 3 Ziebell 2 Adams Atley Bastinac Currie Dal Santo Mullett Petrie

Best

Melbourne Tyson, Jones Dawes Cross McDonald Kent

North Melbourne Turner, Swallow Petrie Brown Atley Thompson

Changes

Melbourne Christian Salem (ill) replaced in the selected side by Dom Barry

North Melbourne Nil

Injuries

Melbourne Gawn (knee)

North Melbourne Grima (quad) Hansen (hip) Adams (concussion)

Reports

Melbourne Nil

North Melbourne Nil

Umpires Justin Schmitt Jordan Bannister Brendan Hosking

Crowd 17,174 at Etihad Stadium