Apart from the bleeding obvious, EVERYONE in the media has written us off.

It’d be so cathartic to smear egg on their faces

Nah.

Its actually not that big of a deal of we dont achieve success. This year should be seen as starting point of a quick rebuild. There will be teething issues this year with completely new structure in coaching and game plan.

And honestly, who actually cares what the media think. They dont define how club success should look like.

One of the main reasons I hope we have success other than the last two seasons being absolutely horrible to watch, is that if we have a decent or even good season, we are more likely to attract some talent.

Couldn’t care less about the media’s opinion.

Longer we are at the bottom, longer players don’t want to come to us and we become St Kilda.

I think it's fair that the media has written us off.

We've lost 26 of our last 38 games which is a success rate of 31%. On what planet are we entitled to some respect and high hopes from the media going into a season after two back to back failures? Add into the fact that we traded 3 clear best 23 players from last year and we're already down Bowey and Viney for likely half the season or more. Can Steele, Mihochek and CJ go some way towards offsetting the loss? Time will tell.

We're a rebuilding club IMO and behind closed doors I don't believe King has any expectations on making the top 10. I could be wrong, but if he was aiming for finals then he would've dug his heels in by keeping Trac at the expense of a tremendous draft package that is designed to pay off in the future, not 2026. He also would've given Oliver one more chance by gambling on that bounce back year that's been due since 2024.

I hope like any other that we surprise the world with a 12 win season, and play a final in late August at the G, but my mindset is on the future as that was the message I interpreted during trade week. King's building us for a crack at the future, not 2026.

I don't expect to win anywhere near 12 games this year.

15 minutes ago, GawnOfTheDead said:

One of the main reasons I hope we have success other than the last two seasons being absolutely horrible to watch, is that if we have a decent or even good season, we are more likely to attract some talent.

Couldn’t care less about the media’s opinion.

Longer we are at the bottom, longer players don’t want to come to us and we become St Kilda.

Plenty of losses inside of 20 points speak of an encouraging year but preserves our low level on the ladder and hence a high draft pick, which we make be able to turn into 2 picks

It’s the fast food generation…we want everything yesterday!

The media's opinion doesn't worry me, either. And as @Bring-Back-Powell said, even if I did think there was a plethora of careful, rational analysts out there, what evidence would they have to suggest we were going to be finalists this season?

The reason I think we need to show more than just the odd glimpse here and there in 2026 is because I get the sense the era of the AFL being broadly supportive of 10 Victorian teams, which began some time after 1996, may be slowly coming to an end.

For a long time, I'd always thought we were a middle-sized club simply lacking the sustained success to cement that position. Straight after 2021, I thought my gut had been proved right. We suddenly had 70,000 members, were getting strong crowds (that's one area where I do worry about the media and think their continuation of a "fairweather" narrative that is rarely supported by simple numbers is dangerous), and seemed to be going OK financially. The crowds have remained OKish, but the rest has fallen away dramatically. The membership drop has been extraordinary, and the recent discussion on here about the club being of very little interest to potential sponsors is worrying.

As St Kilda and North have shown, you could afford to be a Victorian club and go through really rough patches in the Demetriou and McLachlan years, probably in part because it would have been gross hypocrisy to say "North Melbourne, you haven't made a final in eight years and only 20,000 are turning up to games - you need to merge" and at the same time say "Gold Coast, you haven't made the finals ever in your 15-year history, and you only get 10,000 people to your games - here, have some more money". Can you still afford to be down in several areas - performance (and list management), membership, sponsorship, attendance - for a long period of time today? Maybe. I hope so, but I'm no longer sure.

We need to go better than some expect to give the non-rusted-ons hope and, eventually, to give the AFL a reason to put us back in "prime time", which leads to more sponsor interest and more financial security.

If we dip into a sustained period of below average performance, I don't just worry about losing, I worry about our existence.

Some success is really important from a confidence point of view with the younger players coming through. Get some wins and they’ll gel into a tight supportive unit.

2 hours ago, The Taciturn Demon said:

If we dip into a sustained period of below average performance, I don't just worry about losing, I worry about our existence.

North will fold first unless it does a deal to sell a few more home games.

Their balance sheet is papered over by leasehold improvements which have little value in the real world.

My fear is that the big clubs are just salting away their dollars each year and incrementally they will pull ahead. The money goes somewhere if it can't go into players...marketing, media, exec salaries etc

Of course we could be saved by their stupidity ie. West Coast

Edited yesterday at 08:111 day by Diamond_Jim

We are definitely at the start of a 3-4 year rebuild. The older guys we've got in are foils for the kids to develop.

These are the guys who will still be here in 2029, based on age. Thats a talented group from Tommy sparrow down imho

3 hours ago, The Taciturn Demon said:

The media's opinion doesn't worry me, either. And as @Bring-Back-Powell said, even if I did think there was a plethora of careful, rational analysts out there, what evidence would they have to suggest we were going to be finalists this season?

The reason I think we need to show more than just the odd glimpse here and there in 2026 is because I get the sense the era of the AFL being broadly supportive of 10 Victorian teams, which began some time after 1996, may be slowly coming to an end.

For a long time, I'd always thought we were a middle-sized club simply lacking the sustained success to cement that position. Straight after 2021, I thought my gut had been proved right. We suddenly had 70,000 members, were getting strong crowds (that's one area where I do worry about the media and think their continuation of a "fairweather" narrative that is rarely supported by simple numbers is dangerous), and seemed to be going OK financially. The crowds have remained OKish, but the rest has fallen away dramatically. The membership drop has been extraordinary, and the recent discussion on here about the club being of very little interest to potential sponsors is worrying.

As St Kilda and North have shown, you could afford to be a Victorian club and go through really rough patches in the Demetriou and McLachlan years, probably in part because it would have been gross hypocrisy to say "North Melbourne, you haven't made a final in eight years and only 20,000 are turning up to games - you need to merge" and at the same time say "Gold Coast, you haven't made the finals ever in your 15-year history, and you only get 10,000 people to your games - here, have some more money". Can you still afford to be down in several areas - performance (and list management), membership, sponsorship, attendance - for a long period of time today? Maybe. I hope so, but I'm no longer sure.

We need to go better than some expect to give the non-rusted-ons hope and, eventually, to give the AFL a reason to put us back in "prime time", which leads to more sponsor interest and more financial security.

If we dip into a sustained period of below average performance, I don't just worry about losing, I worry about our existence.

4 hours ago, joeboy said:

Apart from the bleeding obvious, EVERYONE in the media has written us off.

It’d be so cathartic to smear egg on their faces

3 words: we’re no good.

Hopium and copium are not going to help us. We need talent and games into talent.

Going to be a long year if you're expecting success this year.

Give me games into kids, team cohesion, 4 QTR efforts and enjoyable footy.

We are bottom 6 at best and that's ok. 2027 I expect us to be right back in contention for finals and we'll be fun to watch again

Get games into kids, bed down a game style and learn to fight out every game to the death. Finish bottom 6, recruit well and the wheel should turn quite quickly. Over the next few years we should get Kalani’s brother/s in, Aaron Davey’s kid in and maybe a couple of other F/S. I think we’re going to be a strong team again soon.

Scraping into 10th is like eating a Mars Bar when you’re hungry.

Edited 15 hours ago15 hr by Roost it far

18 hours ago, GawnOfTheDead said:

One of the main reasons I hope we have success other than the last two seasons being absolutely horrible to watch, is that if we have a decent or even good season, we are more likely to attract some talent.

Couldn’t care less about the media’s opinion.

Longer we are at the bottom, longer players don’t want to come to us and we become St Kilda.

100% it needs to be a quick rebound. Playing an exciting brand of footy, with a health 8-10 wins and a few major scalps. Stability in the boardroom; content and harmony in the playing group.

The onflield performance is only of the equation. We have enough cap space to offer Butters a massive contract.

We are bottom four at least, and probably bottom 2.

I would be shocked to see us anywhere near the top 10. I would dearly love to be shocked.

Edited 14 hours ago14 hr by Robbie On Skates

New coach and a new style that hopefully our players can stick to each and every game with minimal fall back on old habits when things aren't going our way.

I've never played footy in a competitive situation so I find it difficult to understand why this happens when it's drilled into the players each and every day, someone enlighten me that has more experience in the area please.

Of course I want a fairytale story of it all clicking together and we crush everyone but I'm a realist and I know I will be disappointed more often than not. I won't be putting a number on wins but I will be putting plenty in expectations that things will be different.

Edited 13 hours ago13 hr by AzzKikA

All we 'need' for 2026 is to be respectable enough to have the multiple valuable free agents give us consideration as a team already coming back up, rather than on the way further down.

We're likely to have one very brief but very real opportunity to cash in on having a cluster of young stars coming through before our current veteran crop retires. Just like the gypsy woman said 2028 premiership.

I would liken it to the unexpectedly early premiership win by Hawthorn in 2008. They absolutely had planned a longer rebuild but a couple of young guns developed incredibly well incredibly quickly, and they snagged a surprise trophy while the likes of Crawford were still giving the team some steadying.

Consider that in 2006, aside from Franklin with 31 goals from 14 games, their other top-5 scorers were Mark Williams (the undersized marking forward, not the beloved though definitely insane coach), Ben Dixon, Trent Croad and Shane Crawford.

Also worth noting that there were a lot of players in that team who were not stars, just effective, good quality role players who committed the to the system, which allowed the individually gifted players to have their best chances to break games apart.

Picture Tom Sparrow grinding out a handball from a pack and then making the second effort laying a block so Harvey Langford can break free and roost it from 50 out.

If we see that kind of thing a lot in 2026, then it is a successful year, and a wild tilt at '28 is something even reasonable people might believe in.

Anyway, here's a curious reference point - how would people feel if our 2026 report card resembled Hawthorn's 2006?

afl.com.au

2006 Report Card: Hawthorn

Are the building blocks in place for the re-birth of the mighty Hawks? <b>Matt Burgan</b> writes that they might well be, in his assessment of Hawthorn's 2006 s

Contrary to many above, I'm both optimistic and desperate for us to have success this year. Essentially because I see this season as year 3 of a MFC program to refresh and re-position our list to play the current style of footy. The goal is to bounce back into serious contention while we still have some genuine and experienced A-grade champions on our list.

My view for Goody's last 2 years was he was trying to re-engineer our team to play quicker, more attacking footy, with our recruiting we were looking for dash and delivery, BUT our aging Aces in Trac and Clarrie were holding us in our old style, and Goodwin was unable to evolve their games or make the new game work around them (and others).

King has inherited a team thats been working to implement his (King's) preferred style for several years, so while the outside view may be that we're a while off, I see that we're very close and with the off season changes, we have no excuses.

Edited 9 hours ago9 hr by PaulR

I couldn't care less what the media or the football public think of our chances, but clearly there are financial and football implications from having another garbage year.

Memberships and sponsorships are clearly going to be well down compared with 3 years ago, and we're more likely to be shunted into crappy time slots with minimal TV coverage if we're not playing decent football.

It's pretty tough to be asking third parties for funding for new premises if you're not even attractive to your own fans.

9 hours ago, Roost it far said:

Get games into kids, bed down a game style and learn to fight out every game to the death. Finish bottom 6, recruit well and the wheel should turn quite quickly. Over the next few years we should get Kalani’s brother/s in, Aaron Davey’s kid in and maybe a couple of other F/S. I think we’re going to be a strong team again soon.

Scraping into 10th is like eating a Mars Bar when you’re hungry.

We need to keep making shrewd draft picks and recruit young talent to go with the kids above

19 hours ago, Hellaintabadplacetobe said:

Give me games into kids, team cohesion, 4 QTR efforts and enjoyable footy.

Wonder if you'll still be saying that when we're 0 - 6.

We say it every year, who cares what the media thinks.

There's always a bit of fun proving them wrong though. I'll be happy if we win a few more games than I expect. I have us at 7-9 wins. 10 would be amazing, any more than that us a stretch.

Rome wasn't built in a day, even it feels like it fell apart overnight.

I think players seem to learn attacking gameplans quicker than defensive ones. For that reason, if we are looking to be more attacking under King, I think we will get the main gist of the gameplan fairly quickly.

That is what I am hoping anyway.

2 hours ago, bing181 said:

Wonder if you'll still be saying that when we're 0 - 6.

Absolutely if they give us all I mentioned. It's not about wins n losses for me this year.