Devil's Advocates Dinner 2016

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The annual Devil's Advocates Dinner took place last night hosted by Dr Turf and with headline guest speakers Rod Grinter (fresh from appearing the night before on Open Mike) and Jade Rawlings followed by an entertaining auction conducted by Phil Kingston of Gary Peer Estate.

The Doc was in fine form and good humour and both guest speakers were entertaining in the question and answer format.

Balls was far more open among friends and the legal fraternity (especially since the statute of limitations rules out any possible repercussions from the events he discussed) than he was with Mike Sheahan and the Foxtel viewing audience and threw an informative light on some of the happenings during his illustrious career of 134 games including the time when Terry Wallace embedded some of his teeth which infected his forearm and put him in hospital (Wallace played the next week but his voice is now at a higher pitch) during the time he somehow found himself out suspended for 6 weeks over the incident, the 1987 Preliminary Final (which we shoulda won), a pre season trip that landed him in hot water and the coaches who he played under including RDB, John Northey and Neil Balme. He spoke of his great friendships with teammates of the era including Garry Lyon, Jimmy Stynes, Brett Lovett during a period in which the club was relatively successful without pulling off a premiership flag.

Rod is the President of the MFC Past Players and officials and he spoke of the initiatives this group has undertaken such as the Ron Barassi Club (which recently honoured the great RDB on his 80th birthday and is setting up a fund to look after former players who might be in need). In the near future the club will celebrate the 60th anniversary of the 1956 premiership - details available on this site. (I hope to be able to put together and post a tribute to 1956 before the event).

Jade Rawlings had a superb career at Hawthorn before being hawked around to the Bulldogs and finally spent his last playing season with his brother Brady at North Melbourne. He has had a brief stint as a stand in coach at Richmond after his friend Terry Wallace was boned (it was really Wallace's night after the Grinter interview but readers here should know that Plough was once a Demon fan). In fact, Jade has worked with a number of sacked coaches at various clubs including Melbourne where he worked with Mark Neeld who he said was afflicted by a number of unfortunate setbacks during his brief time at the club. Rawlings is very positive about the club now under Paul Roos and soon to come under the coaching mantle of Simon Goodwin and strongly defended the club's defensive set up and personnel - they all have a purpose and we will be a strong club in the end as a result of what is being done with our inexperienced team of today. He went through most of the players in the team and their futures at the club and ended on a note that we can expect Chris Dawes, Jack Grimes and Jack Trengove at least in the 25 named (including emergencies) for Saturday's game. My only disappointment was that Max Gawn's name wasn't mentioned in discussion which I suppose reflects the fact that we've already become accustomed to the fact that he's one of the dominant ruckmen in the game today.

Phil Kingston was in great form and raised a good few grand auctioning off some club goodies. He was so good in his role that he proved that even members of the legal fraternity can be dummies.

Kudos to family lawyer Ralph Glezer who organised the night.