DEES WO'ES GROWING FOR O', 5 YEARS

MELBOURNE FOOTBALL CLUB mid season 2005

Dear Sir, As a fiercely loyal & long suffering ‘Demons’ supporter, I feel compelled to express my total support, for the route travelled thus far by the DANIHER / CORCORAN TEAM, on our quest to build a new & resilient, robust & powerful Melbourne football club. I am also concerned, as I can see this crossroad before us is a make or break affair that could see all the ‘blood sweat & tears’ of the last handful of years wasted. Obviously I don’t know if you see what I see, so I decided to write my thoughts to you for your pondering. I’ve been watching Neale develop this side with pride like it’s his 2nd family; I feel were very lucky to have a man of this integrity & commitment at the head of our family.

Having admired the current LIONS team, & 03/04 watched the developing SAINTS, it concerns me that our list/ squad (tried players) is still a long way short of these two teams, the LIONS we know there strength, but the SAINTS are yet to mature. Add to this PORT, CATS, getting stronger &EAGLES, PIES & resurrecting BOMBERS could soon see us kicked in the pants again. We, in my opinion have had a blessed run this year, especially the first half, playing sides that took us lightly & usually they were without key players due to injury / suspension. I’m not selling us short, our sides been magnificent, & I wondered about our odds of pinching a flag. But I think with the state of our supporter base & our recent seasons histories, hypothetically if we finished 1st or 2nd & then next year with the same list finished 8th or 9th you could lose them, like the Dogs. My guess is this squad will mature 06/07 & in the process will lose ‘Neita’, Peter Vardy & our current leaders will be 27ish. This will leave us with a leadership group of fine footballers & nice guys that butter wouldn’t melt in there mouths & couldn’t make a soft boiled egg quiver. Its not my intention to be insulting as I have the utmost respect for our boys but in the interests of all, players, coaches, staff, supporters, the club must be more rugged & ruthless with our opponents.

I believe this years National Draft is going to be very good & I beg you to trade hard to get 2 early picks, top 16. I’ve watched Sandy play a few times & I think there’s some players but the ‘fishers’, ‘jamars’, ‘smiths’, ‘armstrongs’, ‘johnsons’, ‘lambs’, ‘hunters’, ‘carsons’, are all 30 to 60 senior games away from winning finals, & you cant play them all at the same time with our young guns. If you had the chance to get Judd, would you trade hard to get him, I hope so because we need 1 or 2 dynamic players, as we’ll soon lose ‘Neita’. We need a couple of ‘Match Winners’ to enhance our quality players & we need 1 or 2 enforcers with good disposal skills..

I know you guys are very good at your craft but I had to let you know my thoughts, and I also know that an outside observation could be very useful or frustrating, hopefully you can see I am trying to be constructive & I wish us all the best results we could expect for our Blood, Sweat & Tears… PS.. I’ve had these thoughts since Rd 7.

DEE’S FOREVER!!