What many here fail to realize is that it was the MFC's failure when Neeld was appointed, not Mark's.

Neeld had applied and failed to get many senior coaching positions (Richmond, PA, Adelaide) but got ours because we failed to conduct a proper interview process which would have exposed his weaknesses. But we wanted to avoid "death by powerpoint". Mark did nothing wrong and merely wanted to test himself at the highest level. And he didn't have the greatest administration backing him up and was surrounded by newbie assistant coaches in the main.

I didn't like Neeld from the beginning, never struck me as a leader of men, but I wish him all the best at Essendon and beyond.

  On 27/10/2014 at 10:18, daisycutter said:

good luck finding a reality bus at the hangar

And here is the interview caught on video...

  On 27/10/2014 at 23:48, billy2803 said:

Am I the only one that's hoping Essendon's next announcement will be welcoming Barry Prendergast to their recruitment team?

And Cameron schwab as CEO

Mark Neeld was a terrible head coach and set this club back many years. However, he won as many games in 2012 as the supposed messiah did this year, with an inferior list. I wonder when Roos will be subject to the same level of scrutiny.

  On 28/10/2014 at 01:18, poita said:

Mark Neeld was a terrible head coach and set this club back many years. However, he won as many games in 2012 as the supposed messiah did this year, with an inferior list. I wonder when Roos will be subject to the same level of scrutiny.

So we didn't improve under Roos?

I wish Mark luck. He is going to need it.

Neeld's legacy may yet be important, in the sense that he made outright war on parts of the playing group he saw as unfit to lead the culture of the club.

Some of those tough calls may have been right. But there's no doubt he really blew the handling of it.

I get the feeling he thought that senior coaches had a lot more power, a lot more command, than they really do.

  On 27/10/2014 at 09:35, m said:

Give me a break guys, talk about looking in the rear-vision mirror and hitting the tree.

I can tell you from a personal level, Neeld was out of his depth 1 month in at this club - he personally told me. If you think that the win/loss impact of Roos (who according to the associated avatars on this forum has more nous than any coach going around) was $equivalently different from what Mark Neeld delivered, then shoot me down. The guy had his reputation, his career and his income smashed in the experience at MFC and just for your info, he was on pretty low $. Maybe that's all he deserved I hear you saying.....get a life, move on and leave the poor bloke alone. If you want to blast me, maybe focus the replies on Lyon and co who decided he was the man for the job.

I'm out, you guys are a pack of rabid drifters - and if you need to learn the definition of a drifter, read some Napoleon Hill

He told you he was out of his depth 1 month into the Job? Really? I doubt that, but whatever.

Sim[ply Neeld turned out to be what a lot of Senior coaches are, good assistants. There is a list of them as long as your arm.

Sick of people ignoring the facts because they did not like him and blaming the ones who appointed him, Yes, there must be blame on any coaching panel or person who selects a coach for the job and it does not work out.. that's a no brainer. but people tend to ignore that fact that Neeld was a highly rated coach in waiting, was courted by another couple of clubs and when appointed it was widely recognised as a great selection.

hindsight is such a wonderful thing, a good exercise would be to go back and check Demonlanders initial posts when Neeld was appointed, and then how many of them applauded the selection and now how many of them join in the boring chorus of people who blame the people that put him in place.

  On 28/10/2014 at 01:25, rpfc said:

So we didn't improve under Roos?

Do you think we did? 6 games under 40 points, never kicked 100. Not all that impressive. I saw improvement but it was at the margins and not a quantum leap many, including me, hoped for.

  On 27/10/2014 at 23:59, hardtack said:

And here is the interview caught on video...

That Elvis clip....weird. Like, really weird.

Was tempted to show it to my kids, but I was too embarrassed to admit that I came from the same decade.

  On 28/10/2014 at 01:18, poita said:

Mark Neeld was a terrible head coach and set this club back many years. However, he won as many games in 2012 as the supposed messiah did this year, with an inferior list. I wonder when Roos will be subject to the same level of scrutiny.

In 2012 we beat Essendon, GC and GWS x2. At this stage, both GC and GWS were being smashed every week. This year we beat Carlton, Adelaide, Richmond and Essendon, all of which were finals contenders this year.

All jokes aside....
This appointment may work if Neeldy has learned something from the Melbourne experience.

He said at his final presser he wouldn't have done anything differently. Surely he couldn't have believed that. I could think of at least 4 things off the top of my head that he should have done differently or not done at all(appointing the two Jacks captain, excluding the senior core from the leadership group, playing Collingwood's 2010 game plan without Collingwood's cattle and bringing in Gillies, Byrnes, Rodan etc.to replace the players he had burnt earlier). I hope with a bit of time off he will have had a time to think.
I did make some jokes to start off with as that era just brings back so many negative emotions. It was genuinely horrible to go to the footy. In the end, laughing was and is a defense mechanism towards that bloody horrible time. I felt bloody horrible for the bloke at the end. He truly looked like his self belief had been thrown back in his face. He did contribute to that a bit but it would hurt to have that happen.
Largely, I think he should feel some resentment towards Hollywood Boulevard. I viewed him as a political appointment to validate CS/CC's criticism of Dean Bailey.

Anyway, that ship has sailed. Good luck Neeldy.

  On 27/10/2014 at 23:59, hardtack said:

And here is the interview caught on video...

Ahead of his time in a way... Be right at home on Rage !!

  On 28/10/2014 at 01:39, Baghdad Bob said:

Do you think we did? 6 games under 40 points, never kicked 100. Not all that impressive. I saw improvement but it was at the margins and not a quantum leap many, including me, hoped for.

How many games did we get beaten by 100pts?

  On 28/10/2014 at 01:39, Baghdad Bob said:

Do you think we did? 6 games under 40 points, never kicked 100. Not all that impressive. I saw improvement but it was at the margins and not a quantum leap many, including me, hoped for.

I disagree - whilst I think our forward work needed a lot more improvement but you are taking one area of the game only. My eyes saw the overall improvement from the year before. You have rightly pointed out that there were 6 games under 40 points and never kicked a 100 points but omitted to put in the dramatic improvement in the points against column.

My eyes told me that we were in a lot more games for a lot longer this year than last.

  On 28/10/2014 at 01:39, Baghdad Bob said:

Do you think we did? 6 games under 40 points, never kicked 100. Not all that impressive. I saw improvement but it was at the margins and not a quantum leap many, including me, hoped for.

Well, I got more improvement than I envisioned. Our list was so compromised that even Cross, Vince, and Tyson were not enough in the middle.

To concede 7 less goals a game is a huge achievement in one season.

Is it a Quantum Leap?

Ziggy say 'Yes.'

  On 28/10/2014 at 02:12, nutbean said:

I disagree - whilst I think our forward work needed a lot more improvement but you are taking one area of the game only. My eyes saw the overall improvement from the year before. You have rightly pointed out that there were 6 games under 40 points and never kicked a 100 points but omitted to put in the dramatic improvement in the points against column.

My eyes told me that we were in a lot more games for a lot longer this year than last.

Yes, perhaps. In both seasons the game was played in our defense. In one season it just went back to the centre more. I just still find it hard to believe that with all the hype of Roos et al we scored less and with a much better list.

In both seasons I lost enthusiasm and wanted it to end. Let's face it, in both seasons we were uncompetitive and played awful footy.

I reckon any improvement was at the margins.

  On 28/10/2014 at 01:39, Baghdad Bob said:

Do you think we did? 6 games under 40 points, never kicked 100. Not all that impressive. I saw improvement but it was at the margins and not a quantum leap many, including me, hoped for.

The improvement would have been greater and our scoring higher if we weren't operating with a patchwork quilt of a forward line that was missing Clark and Hogan.

  On 27/10/2014 at 23:53, Baghdad Bob said:

What many here fail to realize is that it was the MFC's failure when Neeld was appointed, not Mark's.

Neeld had applied and failed to get many senior coaching positions (Richmond, PA, Adelaide) but got ours because we failed to conduct a proper interview process which would have exposed his weaknesses. But we wanted to avoid "death by powerpoint". Mark did nothing wrong and merely wanted to test himself at the highest level. And he didn't have the greatest administration backing him up and was surrounded by newbie assistant coaches in the main.

I didn't like Neeld from the beginning, never struck me as a leader of men, but I wish him all the best at Essendon and beyond.

Well said Bob. For all his foibles he does not deserve some of the cheap derision directed at him on this site.

  On 28/10/2014 at 06:56, Qwerty30 said:

Well said Bob. For all his foibles he does not deserve some of the cheap derision directed at him on this site.

Frankly, there are a litany of people, Demons even, that do not deserve the cheap derision that are directed at them on this site.

  On 28/10/2014 at 03:24, Grapeviney said:

The improvement would have been greater and our scoring higher if we weren't operating with a patchwork quilt of a forward line that was missing Clark and Hogan.

True Grapeviney but Neeld also lost Clark during a lengthy part of his tenure and Liam Jurrah missed many games through his wrist injury in Neeld's first season and then had that unfortunate incident with the machete in the second. There were lots of other injuries and of course, the negativity among some of the playing group referred to by m'kaaay would not have been helpful. He also didn't have recruits at his disposal like Tyson, Vince and Cross.

All in all the first seasons of all of our last three coaches have been nothing to write home about and it's a waste of time comparing them.

I just hope for our sake that Roosy's second trumps the others by a long way.

  On 28/10/2014 at 07:14, rpfc said:

Frankly, there are a litany of people, Demons even, that do not deserve the cheap derision that are directed at them on this site.

Well said.

Head of Devolopment what a joke. Mark Neeld didn't develop any of our players so what hope has he got at Essendon. What is going there with the signing of all these ex coaches Neil Craig, Mark Harvey & Mark Neeld and they still have hope of Mark Thompson they don't seem to have much trust in James Hird so why keep him he stuffed up the club.

christian petracca @cpetracca7 · 1h1 hour ago

When will people realise, Mark Neeld is a great person, one of the best mentors/teachers of footy that I know of. everyone makes mistakes!!

christian petracca @cpetracca7 · 1h1 hour ago

couldn't be happier for him

  On 28/10/2014 at 08:03, bing181 said:

christian petracca @cpetracca7 · 1h1 hour ago

When will people realise, Mark Neeld is a great person, one of the best mentors/teachers of footy that I know of. everyone makes mistakes!!

christian petracca @cpetracca7 · 1h1 hour ago

couldn't be happier for him

Ahh beat me to it! literally just about to paste lol

Good on the kid for going into bat for him. Obviously been a positive influence on him.