I believe we have three men with Melbourne close to their hearts who should immediately be given the job of reviewing prospective coaches:-

1. GARRY LYON - does not want to coach but loves Melbourne and undoubtably knows the game.

2. GERARD HEALY- ditto.

3. MIKE SHEAHAN - has a great relationship with the above two and hasnt got where he has without knowledge.Barracks for Melbourne,may not want to do it officially for fear of journalistic integrity, but garner a response.

Does anyone believe there is somebody currently at Melbourne with the capacity to do the job of appointing a coach.These men will bring with them innate understanding not just criteria needing to be met. Criteria ,I'm sure Gardner the modern man he is,would love to tick all the right boxes,but does he know which boxes are right?

grant thomas, i no everyone hates him and its not a realistic option, but i love his arrogance

Good points with the names mentioned above, maybe chuck in Robbie Flower in for good measure. I sincerely hope that Garry Lyon has some sought of influence at the club next year.

grant thomas, i no everyone hates him and its not a realistic option, but i love his arrogance

Good idea, last time he had to choose a coach, he chose himself

I think the Board might be a good start.

With that list of extras we would be a good chance to get a free plug on radio 693, the footy show and Herald Sun.

How could i forget Flower ,put him on the list and i would be more than confident the right man would be chosen

Good idea, last time he had to choose a coach, he chose himself

Will Gary Lyon be pushing for his old friend Connolly?

If so, get him the hell away from the selection process.

I agree that we need to bring someone else to help the board along.

Afterall, a lot of the board members don't have a background in football, so they might need a guiding opinion.

But why would we get a journalist to help us out?

And I heard Grant Thomas moaning and bitching about Gardner and the fact that he has a lot to answer for. Gees, he has become a sensative soul since he had to leave Saint Nick... His opinion doesn't matter much either.

I believe we have three men with Melbourne close to their hearts who should immediately be given the job of reviewing prospective coaches:-

2. GERARD HEALY- ditto.

Wouldn't let him in the front door. His colours are red & white.

I understand connoly and healy are tight.he also said Melbourne and connoly would be a good fit.i agree with you connoly must not coach melbourne.I also believe healy is a pragmatist,and if officially asked would be egotistically driven to make the correct decision.

Sheahan is a journalist ,but he knows the game.He isnt Caroline Wilson or Hutchy he has the respect of plenty of men who have played the game hence his ability to interact with them. Ex Jockeys arent the best punters and sometimes you dont need to have played the game to best analyse it.

I could not think of 3 worse people to be deciding on the future of our great club.

The board will decide, because we have voted for them. If they need help then they will seek it as they see fit.

who ?

The people we elected to the club will do for me. From what Ive heard Gardner and his minions will seek the objective input of those they consider knowledgable and insightful in this regard. that sounds like a plan to me.. a pretty fair one too.

I dont want anyone like Healy or Thomas near this procedure. If Sheahan wants to input then he can run for board.

So far the people in charge seem have shown they know how to orchestrate things and have equitted themselves quite well ( save a few needless comments by PG ).

We wanted things to happen...

well they are happening. Im happy to let them continue.

I guess i could be wrong you guys are swaying me a bit though i still struggle with confidence in the board,pulling plants is one thing ,growing them is another.Nothing Gardner has said regarding the football department has shown any signs of initiative.I am not talking the bricks and mortar but the personal.

Basically I do not rate his footy acumen for appointing a coach nor appointing people to choose the coach.

Put these three people in a room (lyon,healy,sheahan) and their mutual respect of each other and the responsibility of the future of the club would see a very good outcome.Their collective ego would not allow failure.Healy loves melbourne his passion is obvious and a tad regretful.

Keep in mind..Gardner and Co havent had a real crack at organising the football dept yet.. a little tinkering perhaps. But his is their first full on effort. Im quite hapy to see what they will do.. Just because they arent doing it in a hysterical , headless chook manner doesnt mean they arent doing stuff. I mean.. do you really expect a call from Paul ? ....neither do I !!

who ?

The people we elected to the club will do for me. From what Ive heard Gardner and his minions will seek the objective input of those they consider knowledgable and insightful in this regard. that sounds like a plan to me.. a pretty fair one too.

I dont want anyone like Healy or Thomas near this procedure. If Sheahan wants to input then he can run for board.

So far the people in charge seem have shown they know how to orchestrate things and have equitted themselves quite well ( save a few needless comments by PG ).

We wanted things to happen...

well they are happening. Im happy to let them continue.

I'm a bit like you. Why bring in commentators/journos to pick a coach? What does that say about who's running the club? There are professional ways to do this and that's not getting our favourite sons or who ever to do it.

A tad condescending belzebub .Forgiving gardner the point he is not calling me i find his behavior of the last three weeks erratic .He also seems to be interested in lifting his own profile more than the clubs.The dude is in advertising i dont trust him.its just a gut instinct

And I heard Grant Thomas moaning and bitching about Gardner and the fact that he has a lot to answer for. Gees, he has become a sensative soul since he had to leave Saint Nick... His opinion doesn't matter much either.

He likes to go the presidents of footy clubs doesn't he?

Still, it made me feel all warm and fuzzy when he attacked ours and thereby all but ruled himself out for a job at MFC

Maybe your years of study have resulted in self assessment rather than observation belzebub

erratic ? whats been erratic. if anything I see it as purpose driven. please keep in kind the media will never show you the whole picture and often what is reported are no more than long sound grabs. I personally didnt car emuch for the comment re the supporters but other that that he's said and done what you d expect a person in authority to do.

Other clubs have had ( well even we have in past ) officials who are only to happy to do strange things.

What we have here is a board that had a task at hand. Thye had to appraise things at the beginning of the year on the basis of interacction with the football dept and other intereted concerns. From this they formed a path forward with deteminable and measurable outcomes.

Then ..... then we have a series of unfortunate events , whose totality even Snickett would be salivating over. As a result we have a forced re-evaluation of the staus quo. The board has taken a rather pragmatic things are better to happen sooner rather than later approach.

They planned for change and change has resulted. Arguably the timetable is going to catch a few off guard and some fastish thinking on feet will be occurring probably at the present at the MFC.

Only a foolish board/group/company would continue down a predeterminded track even when the track and all the signage has changed on them.

Erratic ?

well open to hear evidence

i just think Gardner got carried away with our win against Collingwood.When asked wether robbo had the right to comment on the coach he said if you can kick 7 you have the right to say what you want.He also was positive with our younger players etc.One game later the coach is gone.I believe he was only being passionate as we all can but on impulse from a leader this breeds eraticism.

Daniher should not be there next year but a president should possess a certain amount of diplomacy that insures a long serving coach not leave mid year.It hampers the playing group just as it did when balme left.To me at Melbourne nothing is learned and nothing has changed.

How has his commenting on the coach changed..It really hasnt. He has all the while said there would be a review. He never to my knowledge bagged the coach or put him on notice. He never even did the good ol' public..."the coach has our 100% suport etc. He has said all things wil be looked at. Imsure he emmitted positives when dealing with the players. Do you know if he categorically told any of them... " look its ok...no ones under review, no ones position is imminently combustable " . He has probably told them much the same as he espouses in his letters to memebers and ramblings on the website that things are going forward etc etc etc..

There was going to be a review. There is a review.

It would occur when it was all over red rover for the season...and lo and behold...its all over.

What the board ( and by association PG ) has said and intimated hasnt changed one iota. What has chnaged is teh timetable due to events that they were unable to predict. Indeed events they had been told unlikley by the Coach at the beginning of he year.

But if you see this as erratic....fair enough.. we will differ.. thats fair enough too :-)

Gardner said he would wait till the end of the season to review the coach.He didnt ,he manipulated Daniher through inuendo.Gardner said at the weekend that the club had a dilemmma in the fact that they weren't sure how to handle things now that the chances of making the finals had ended.If they were to inflict upon Daniher a youth policy for the remainder of the season ,Danihers question would be"would i still have a job next year if i do so"This is basically how Gardner put it.

To me the season is not over until round 22,i think daniher should have been given the opprtunity to leave the club with pride.Gardner disposed of this scenario with thinly veiled political manouvring in the public eye.He forced Danihers hand simple.

I remember the distabilising effect Balmes departure had.Gardner said he would wait till the end of season to review the coaches post.He didn't and did this slyly.

To argue whether the end of the season is when opportunity is lost or when the round 22 finishes to me is stupid not semantics.Gardner knew what he was implying when he said "end of season" and never went back.Instead he got on the radio and hung Daniher out to dry.Daniher resigned as it was basically made public he was to be sacked at the end of the year.

Im so sick of the clowns we get on our board.Always erratic,impulsive though subtle at the same time.

We continue to act in a way that pidgeon holes us with teams like St Kilda.We never keep things in house we show no strength in respect and we never have success.

I believe Danihers time is up,but at the end of the season,show respest to a man who atleast was undenying in his love for his team for ten years.They backdoored him and they know what they were doing.WEAK WEAK WEAK

How am i supposed to have any confidence in the way forward when the past week shows me we may have gotten rid of an out of date coach but still gone backwards.

He didnt say he'd wait til the end of the season. he said they would wait til the season was effectively over, and it is.

If he and his board hadnt moved on these events then many would be asking why ??

How did they backdoor him.. they didnt sack him.. They simply annoiunced everything was up for review...including his job and maybe he'd like to present a case for it to continue past his current contract. Its Danihers decision not to enter into that procedure, not the MFC's decision not to allow him to.

All things considered I thought it ws handled most magnaminously. It could have been a bllod bath. It wasnt.

"To me the season is not over until round 22,i think daniher should have been given the opprtunity to leave the club with pride"

Therin lays for you the dilema. The board disagree with your intepretation. They win !!. and he was given the chance to leave with dignity...hasnt he ? No matter how you wrap it up he was always going to leave the club as being unsuccessful. This way everyone can get on with things post haste.

I admire Danners for his composure in this. Its a credit to him as a man of intergity. But he will have known full well once the wheels started falling off of this season that his tenure was dicey at best, and limited at worst.

If Danners had been so silly as to ask whether he had a job here at the end of the year , with full knowledge that a review of some sort would occur ( even before it was announced ) that gardner wouldnt have been in any position to say Yeah or Naye anyway !! How could he until all things had been looked into.

The business world has some tough and unforgiving procedures. Danners is street smart. He's also resilient. he knew how the game is played and I think he's done remarkably well.

The club ...and the game is bigger than one man, and so it should be.

I accept you think it isnt fair.

No matter how you put it they shafted Daniher.They did it publicly.It was preconcieved and sly.He told Daniher his time was up ,without exactly doing so..

This man coached for ten years and his time is up,but there are ways of handling things.They were deceptive and anyone who believes changing coaches midseason is good for a club(even if they see it as a business not a living breathing soul that effects people) is on a different wavelength to me.I cannot see this as a successful transition and fear time will prove me right.

This seems to be a period that slips easily into the pattern of the last 40 years of our club.Initiative means a change of pattern- we needed diplomacy instead we got the Melbourne Football CLub

If you belive Daniher jumped from the building im pretty sure if you find me the corpse there will be two gardner hand prints in his back.

Keep in mind...neither Gardner nor anyone else at Melbourne preciptated Neales Departure, he's managed it al by himself with less than illustrious results. He dug his own grave. Wether a grave or a building top.. he got here by his own accord.

Given that the want of many clubs is simply to slip the unwittinng victim a DCM and shut the door, Neale's been given the opportunity to keep his pride intact. Yes, there's a corpse, but there's no bloody mess to go with it; there could have been .

we'll just have to agree we view it differently

I dont believe a coach can leave a team mid seaon with dignity,especially after a ten year tenure.

I think daniher may have a slightly different interpretation of the word dignity than you at present.