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I got there early to catch Viney, Nicholson and Couch out on the oval practicing hitting moving targets out of defence. No surprises Viney's kicking had a lot more penetration and accuracy than the others whose disposal still needs work After an extensive warm up the boys began a match simulation exercise where the ball would be marked on the half back flank with the objective of getting the ball forward. With resistance only in the form of four or so defenders as opposed to ten rebounders, the team in possession were able to move the ball effectively the majority of the time, except for Davis (won't get a game until disposal improves), Nicholson, Tynan and Gillies who all turned the ball over at times much to the displeasure of the coaches. There was a key focus to play on at all times and there was lots of ball movement through the middle and switches to the fat side. Dunn really impressed with his run out of defence, he looks incredibly fit and seems to have gained a yard or two in pace. Thereafter, the group split into blues and whites for separate drills. Down the other end of the ground there seemed to be a kick out type drill. Whereas the end I was watching had a 6 on 6 exercise deep in defence where a group would try to move the ball out by hand under lots of pressure form the opposing 6 players. As expected the bigger bodies thrived with N Jones and Viney the standouts, consistently being able to rebound the ball cleanly by hand. These two seem to be a level above all other midfielders with their pace, size and tenacity. Others who impressed were Strauss who showed good pace and was willing to back himself, Dunn again used his bigger body to break tackles and McKenzie was the standout chaser and haggler. The final drill was end to end match simulation with 15 or so a side plus interchange. Watts, Dunn and Terlich were all used a lot in defence when switching and were all good by foot, throw in Jetta, Strauss and Nicholson and there's going to be a lot of competition for those roles as rebounding defenders. Dawes and Pedersen both took good marks presenting high up the ground at the ball carrier. Rory Taggert had a period he would rather forget where he dropped a simple mark causing the drill to restart, only to be used again in the next passage where he kicked a shocking wobbler out of bounds. Also the forward pressure was much improved, Dawes always impressed me when he was at Collingwood in this facet and he seems to have brought that intensity along with him as they were consistenly pressuring and forcing errors deep ind defence. All in all a solid session with Dunn, N Jones and Viney the standouts.

If you are with vodaphone - anywhere in the greaterMelbourne metropolis

Correct. I know he is a mate and yes I stick up for mates, but every thing he has done at Melbourne has been for the club. He improved our footy department, he has chased sponsorship and membership for us, he helped get the foundation off and running and still seeks new members, he is helping develop Casey, he works after business hours giving tours of the new facilities, etc, etc, etc he bleeds for the club. I am sick to death of some of the snide comments from some on here who want to throw him under the bus. We are all in the trenches together and I hope to God we stick together. This is not directed at you Fifty-5 it was just an opportune time to post it in reply to your post.

that probably explains where Kero got her dirt from and why it dried up 2 fools on a vendetta 1 down 1 to go

I think that Craig was a very good identifier of talent at mid to late picks. Names such as Whelan, Bruce, Bartram, Garland, Brown and Rigoni were all excellent gets at lower end picks. He also picked some gems in the rookie draft, including Walsh, Ward, Jolly, Robertson and Junior (I'm not 100% if Craig selected the last two but I think he did). He probably let himself down a bit at the top end of the draft, which unfortunately are the picks you really need to get right. Lamb, Bell, Smith, Bate, Dunn, Morton and Maric were all top 21 picks. His big gets in the top 20 were Thompson, Frawley, Jones and Grimes. Any recruiter over a period of time is going to have their hits and misses, but on the whole I would say he performed well later in the draft but probably could have done better with some of the early picks. What cannot be measured though is the impact of development and I think it would be fair to say that our development wasn't at the level of the top clubs in the AFL. A recruiter is always going to look a lot better with a strong development system.

Got there at half time. Family day for the players it seemed. Miss McKenzie taking some photo, all families getting handout folders. Chris Dawes' old man to boost match day pie sales. On field I watched a drill or two before they went into a full ground match practice with whites v blues. The blues featuring most of the starting players. Except Dunn, Watts and Strauss in white. The drill primarily seemed to be about ball movement. One team would bomb it to the their forward line and then let the other work it out under pressure. Bit messy especially at the start but picked up a bit. Byrnes and Dawes working nicely up forward. Dunn controlling the white back line. Toumpas made a couple of errors early. Most of the class players got involved. Howe seemed to roll his ankle and from my vantage point it looked like he did it trying not to take a hanger! He had Tynan in front of him and instead of flying over him try to reposition to out body him. Seems to roll his left ankle. Might of been better just taking the hang! Got up and walked to the sheds after being assessed. Promising to see Clark and Trenners running but not with the main group. Big Gawn was also on track and then after training did some kick to kick and leading with a staff member. Moved and kicked well. I'd think he'd be within reach of getting back to the main group and playing VFL practice matches if not nab. It's very hard to judge how far the other 2 are away but at least they are running.

To start with only Mitch, Trenners, Sellar and Clisby weren't in the main group (Mitch did the warm up with them!) once the balls came out he went back to running laps. Gawn dropped out once they pushed past a short-ish kick just to run/sprint as well. Couldn't tell what was wrong with Sellar, was pushing laps out well, and Clisby hurt his hammy last week. Howe rolled something. Bit proppy but walked back to AAMI at least! Roh Bail dropped out of drills ¾ through to do some back and forth movement stuff through cones; didn't seem to be too injured! Drill wise the boys looked good, Tommy McDonald seems to be developing as a leader, was always talking and pushing blokes to work harder. Plenty of voice from the whole group, seem to enjoy being together and workin hard!! Aaron Davey and Nev Jetta stopped after 1 hour and walked back to AAMI, only as they played Saturday. Flash looks in high spirits, training with a smile! And his skills and touch are back!! Not the highest intensity session, but lots of working the ball around the defence, keeping off and switching when opp press hard! Watts and Dunn look to be go too guys with this. Also tries to get players like Blease/Nicho/Barry to get possession in a mis-match ( happened to Dawes twice) where if they can mark with a taller/slower FWD on them. Turn and burn!! Still some work to do in clearing the backline, but dunns long bomb up the middle will be a feature again!! Happy to answer any Q's anyone has

I think Neale Daniher did very well seeing we were broke for most of his time at the club. He tried his absolute hardest but thats just my view.

People have taken the urine out of him since he made his debut.Sure he looks a player. But it'll take one timid marking contest for people to go "Oh yeah, that's right, there's still that thing." Big arms doesn't mean he's grown bigger balls. Prove me wrong, big boy.

Essendon NAB Cup Team Rd 1 B ? ? ? HB ? ? ? C ? Goddard ? HF ? ? ? F ? ? ? Foll ? ? ? Int ? ? ? ?

Nope. I'm actually half way through the longest, most subtle trolling in Demonland history.

I saw him in person at last Wednesday training. I said at the time he had everything to be a very good player. He has the body, speed, marking and kicking ability. It will not be his body or ability that stops him.

Ladies and gentlemen...your number one draft pick is now a man. Look out AFL!

You can create smoke through rubbing two sticks together without fire. I watch Survivor.

He was probably one of the first football people to contribute to fan forums such as this. I respect him for his contribution to the MFC and wish him well.

i gave peptides to the coaches who don't play but not to the players who do play yeah, sure ....makes sense and i only injected vitamin C and vitamin B nothing else like you really really need to inject vitamins. there is no other way and billing $10K a round of injections is cheap vitamins......right pup must be wasting his time with swisse flogging a months supply of multiviamin pills for $20

I am glad to hear that Dunn is taking a leadership rôle in defence. He does have talent but IMO has lacked guidance and focus: presumably Neeld has laid down the law and demanded, something previous coaches have not done, specifics from him and he has taken up the challenge. Good luck to him. If Lynden makes the grade it is as much kudos to Neeld as to him.

The Luke Molan pick can't be a bad pick (in theory) because injuries intervened before he had a chance to establish himself. Luke might have only been rated as a pick in the 20's but what if he had gone at say pick no.26 and didn't have those awful injuries? He might have had a reasonably good career if injuries hadn't of intervened. We might all be quite happy with that outcome. We will never know. Adam Goodes went at pick 43. Simon Black at 31. Paul Chapman at 31. There are many examples like this. I've read the threads about Lucas Cook on this site and 'At the time' most people were reasonably happy with our choice. Much the same with Gysberts. Whitfield could do an ACL in his first game for GWS and then re-do it on his return and never have much impact at AFL level. If that happened would he end up being a poor choice? Incompetence can't always be used as a reason if there is a huge luck factor (re the Draft). It's a bit like the Lotto numbers. We all get it wrong but not because we're incompetent. (hope that comment doesn't attract the probability types ) I'm not sticking up for Cameron nor condemning him. The Luke Molan example is a poor one for a few reasons. Not the least reason being that the Draft is a glorified lucky dip and always will be (unless they raise the draft age quite substantially) In most cases, we have to wait until a player is in the system for at least 3-5 years before we can properly evaluate that player. If injuries stop a player from playing at all then how can a proper evaluation be made of that player or his Draft choice? The truth is it's impossible to make a proper evaluation in Luke's case. At the moment most of us are very happy with Hogan, Toumpas and Viney. I hope we are all ecstatically happy with these 3 choices down the track.

Watts going on with the cryptic comments. It's been Dunn before. Howe are we going to get to the bottom of this? Blease explain! Are we all Rohan up poo creek when we should just Bail?

I heard a rumour that Dustin Martin is such a bad boy that when he asks the trainers for a drink he never says 'please'.

I can see him as the Go-To man across half back, but have doubts about his ability to defend tall against the high ball. Just wont attack an aerial contest in the required fashion. Brilliant distribution skills by foot, but needs to be fed the ball by others, or read and intercept Rivers style.

With the first round of the NAB Cup a three x 20min games, it gives the chance for nearly the entire list to have a go. The Suns played O'Meara last year against us. Why on earth would you not play Hogan, when the likes of Clark will be absent? The kid is more than ready for a small stint in the NAB. Give him a taste when it means little, like the Suns did with Jäger.

Let him play. I want to see him play. Give him a chance to feel like a demon and be amongst the boys.

He was kicking on the run at Friday training, and looked like Daniel Rich compared to Spencers efforts. He really is a very good kick, and has excellent skills for a giraffe. On the subject of giraffes, i swear Fitzpatrick is only 150cm tall to the base of his neck. Damn its a long neck....

Just remember that he's looking for a way out the protects the AFL. If they could screw us and do that they would. Sucks to be them that they can't and maybe they have to cut a deal, but that doesn't make us friends. Not by a long way.

After Melbourne picked Molan in 2001: The father of the family he was billeted with died of cancer a few months after he was drafted. Molan broke his leg playing for Sandringham in 2002. He missed five weeks early in 2003 with a cartilage tear In mid-2003, in the one incident, he broke his collarbone, received concussion and ruptured his anterior cruciate ligament. Delisted at the end of 2003, he was drafted back as a rookie, but cut at the end of 2004. Recruited to Frankston in the VFL in 2005, he broke his leg in a practice match. Then managed no more than four consecutive games in two seasons due to chronic hamstring injuries Retired, he's still only 29. Is anyone suggesting that Cameron (or Daniher) could've anticipated that? Wonderful hindsight.

He did something that has only happened twice in 48 years. He got us into a GF. That is a fair effort IMO That result is something the other umpteen people who coached the dees cannot claim. He was better than a lot and i do not see it as a fail

Gotta be camera trickery. He looks bigger than Chipper.He is gonna shut some mouths this year. Can't wait. ...we've checked his urine, right? (I kid..kinda)

As fun as it'd be to have a look at him running around in a match, it's a practice match, we need to practice kicking it to new key targets in Dawes and Pete O'File, players that'll actually be there in round 1. Key position needs more drilling that bringing a kid off the bench to a flank.

Who says playing him is the wrong thing to do?Gold Coast will have done it twice, indicating to me it might be a good idea at least. The beauty of the NAB Cup is you can give him a taste of AFL level and are not locking him in to 2 hours of footy. He could play between 1 min and 2 hours!

We should not accept a guilty verdict just so the AFL "Look Good" Harden Up please. We fight for our own integrity. The AFL's is in total dissaray if todays papers are even half right.

Makes you wonder with the season looming and this going on, it would be interesting if players had to suddenly quit or give up taking any type of supplements due to them being in the 'grey' area. Could it possibly mean that some players from rival clubs may be suffering withdrawal symptoms early in the season. Could be an easy win come round 2 against Essendon.

On closer inspection you might find that the 9 clubs (or 7, reported elsewhere) are reported to have "vulnerabilities" to organised crime. That's not the same as those clubs being involved in the use of illegal substances. Without naming anyone (and I encourage all posters not to name anyone), I can think of two players who have (or have had) family members in gaol for drug trafficking offences, another who has been in gaol himself for a separate serious offence and a few players who have been reported as frequenting nightclubs with "colourful" identities. I could imagine that all those players would be considered by law enforcement agencies as "vulnerable" to organised crime - but it doesn't mean any of them are necessarily involved in anything illegal or untoward. In other words, the way it's being reported is a beat up, although those "vulnerabilities" would definitely exist.

BH see my comment above. If thay play round 1 it will be the best comback since Lazarus Both have had serious foot injuries Clark no running for 8 months and Trengove none for two months. When it is safe to start running they are both going to take 2 months to catch up.

Seven News last night suggested Bailey was holding out against an 'agreed outcome' - which suggests there might be a day or three to go. Sounds like they are shaping for negotiated penalties - although it's hard to see how a career coach could accept anything but 'no case to answer' or 'impossible to prove'. I'd like the latter for us and for the AFL to shut down tanking once and for all by introducing a ballot for the bottom four clubs and then for the middle six. Without a ballot there is still an advantage for lower clubs to lose in, say, the last month of the season. If there's a Cotchin in the draft and not much else then clearly the 'Spoon comes with an advantage for the theoretical possibility of tanking remains. So let's have a strong statement that while suspicions were raised the MFC was able to explain its experimentation by means of player development in the context of a punishing injury list (20-strong - or should that be weak) after round 18, 2009.

No, but we don't need it to either. The big difference with a schoolyard dispute is that the school rules are (usually ...) clearly defined. "Tanking" isn't, it's just a point on a line somewhere between two extremes: at one end we have leaving no stone unturned to try to win, a the other, we have deliberately manufacturing a loss i.e. match fixing. As such, as with much that's involved with the AFL, the teams rely on precedence and accepted practice to establish what is and what isn't permitted, both within the laws of the game, but also, within the spirit of the game. It seems to me that the "they did it too" argument is important here, simply because it's one factor in establishing where the point on that line is between committing an offense or not.

Well I guess that after reading the article, we are not one of the seven; otherwise she would almost certainly not have missed the opportunity to name us, as she did Collingwood.

He may not have been on the list, but he has been training at the club for years now...

Do what I did (and this was before the whole thing blew up)... don't pick any Essendon players.

There are better websites for getting it up.

How bad will the competitions integrity appear if there was a major drug and a major tanking/match-fixing controversy happening concurrently. Surely if the AFL can avoid that situation, it will.

The time has come and Gawn for that. The Dawes shut Also I hope the desire Byrnes within and we don't lay around on the Couch

They probably won't get a game, what, with their hanmstrings an all!

I don't want to seem like a CC apologist but I believe Molan was a Daniher decision and was the all in for a flag list management decision and the poor development that followed was really a club wide problem in the late Daniher into the Bailey years. He had his fair share of reasonable selections - Frawley, Garland, Davey, Jones, Grimes. I feel others like Rivers, Miller, Sylvia, McLean and Bartram could have made it in the right sides. I might be way off the mark but to me he was an average recruiter who then brought guys into a less than average team in terms of development. I think it's a big call to link him to any ACC dealings. I wish him good luck and seeing as though Richmond seemed to find some kind of steady period under his recent direction I'm always happy for them to resume shooting themselves in the foot!

AFL supremo Gillon McLachlan also said "Further, the AFL is not aware of any instance of suspected match fixing in the AFL competition". Isn't tanking, deliberately losing or throwing games a form of 'match fixing'? Just thinking bout MFC with the tanking claims.

Not anymore we traded him to west coast for pick 88.

Amazes me how little people on this forum know about the business of sport. Sponsorships are sought after by a Sponsorship Manager, and the CEO does not attend any of the meetings until its pen to paper time. Also, most deals are not renewed due to the sponsor companies budget constraints, or if the premise of the deal had been, such as brand recognition in a new market. Deals are signed for one or two years with both parties knowing their will be no renewal at contract end. Enough with the sensationalism sack CS bs, people around her bag Caroline Wilson for being a drama queen and then follow in her very footsteps

The mood was lightened?

Just saw "Flight" Great movie on many many levels Highly recommend.

Since the banning of certain posters has been raised here, let me assure everybody that we don't ban people here for no reason and in most cases the posters who are banned are multiple offenders with a record of being warned, often several times before a ban is invoked. I have no respect for Caroline Wilson and have criticised her for her appalling comments and views that in some cases border on the idiotic and vexatious. However, I will not permit posters to cross the boundary with tasteless, misogynist schoolboy smut that could for legal reasons see the site closed down. I'll also repeat that on threads that cover sensitive matters, our moderation standards will be tougher than normal and offending posts will be deleted and posters warned where warranted. Now let's stick to the issues of the thread please.