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The club is all over Prestia and is quietly confident. The fact we traded out next seasons 1st round pick is of little consequence. We can trade 2017 first round for a start. If Prestia says he wants to be traded to Melbourne, he will be a Dee in 2017. Our performance this season is very important for Prestia and perhaps Hogan, but I also hear that contract negotiations for Hogan are going very well and he could be signed to a mega deal before round 1. Fingers crossed!!

Titus O'reilly has his say... Some fun defences of Dustin Martin Over the last few days we’ve heard some fun and creative defences of Dustin Martin threatening to kill a woman. Let’s look at these as like the incident, they’re hilarious! “He’s unlucky, we wouldn’t even know about this if he wasn’t a footballer.’ Quite possibly true, although you could argue if he wasn’t a footballer and his work found out about this incident he’d be sacked. I should mention that’s not me arguing that, I’ve spoken to employment lawyers and a head of HR for a major corporate and they all said that was the case. He could also have been referred to police and been charged. But it’s a fair point that if Dustin wasn’t a well known footballer this could have slipped away like so many violent episodes that go unreported. That really is just pointing out how prevalent and underreported violence against women is, it’s not a defence. Really, all you’re pointing out is how spectacularly stupid he is. “He wasn’t actually going to kill her.” Considering he can’t remember what happened due to his consumption of alcohol not even he knows what he could have done so this is a pretty big assumption and therefore a poor defence. “The guy was smashed and can’t even remember it happening” Is that a defence all of a sudden? If it is then everyone would just say that, whether it was true or not. If you are the type that drinks to the point you can’t remember anything and you threaten to kill people, you’re not arguing a defence, you’re arguing you’re a threat to society. “We’ve all made mistakes. Don’t get on your high horse.” We sure have all made mistakes. I bet very few of us have threatened a stranger in a restaurant with a chopstick, while telling them you’ll kill them and hitting the wall behind them though. That’s not a ‘mistake’ it’s assault. “She works for Channel Seven and wanted a story.” Yeah, this woman went out that night just trying to bump into a crazed, alcohol-fuelled footballer and get them to threaten to kill her. Women are so manipulative and they play such a long game! She then appeared on TV not showing her face and not revealing her name. What a publicity seeking trouble maker! Let’s side with the person threatening to kill people though. “People are overreacting.” Yeah, that’s what people have been doing about violence against women for so long, overreacting. I long for the day were our problem is overreacting to this scourge. We are so far from overreacting to violence against women you’d need NASA’s New Horizons probe to get there from where we are. Even 12 months suspended is therefore not enough for me. You threaten to kill someone you’re out of the game, this isn’t some borderline case. “Hodge only got two weeks, other players got this and that.” Personally, I think you’re on really shaky ground if the AFL’s appallingly bad record on punishments are the centre plank of your defence. What you’re actually pointing out is the whole problem. Footballers have never had the incentive to truly change their behaviour because deep down they know it’s not career ending. The sad thing is they’re right. Watch how quickly that all stops when one of them actually gets the punishment they would get in the real world. “The public humiliation is punishment enough.” It’s really not. In fact, the public condemnation has been weaker than American coffee. Brendon Gale said he was a ‘goose’ and Richmond football manager Dan Richardson described the incident as “a bit of a hiccup”. In fact, Dusty has received a fair bit of support from people, despite the fact hethreatened to kill someone. In conclusion, I’m resigned to Martin receiving some weak punishment like twelve weeks suspended (I’d loved to be proved wrong). But Richmond and the AFL, let’s all remember the next time you ape support for ending violence against women that when actually tested to underpin those words with action you didn’t.

It's an extreme point, but the point is, when you're in the position of the victim and someone with power over you threatens you, you've got no way of knowing if they're serious or not and the feeling of intimidation doesn't change. I grew up in a pretty rough area. I lived really close to school, so sometimes I used to walk home on my own. One day when I was about 9 or 10, an older kid started walking behind me. I started speeding up a bit, he started speeding up a bit. He followed me for two or three minutes, swinging a can on a chain, before he caught up to me. He asked me if I'd ever been bashed before, I said no. He said this was going to be my first time. I just stood there, shaking my head, teeth chattering. I begged him not to and started backing away slowly, but I was too terrified to run. He started edging toward me and I thought I was gone. I pissed myself on the spot. He then laughed, and went "I'm just joking, kid" and walked off. I ran home as fast as I could. I didn't think his joke was funny. I had never been so afraid in my life. Did I go "hey, it's fine, he didn't actually bash me?" Did my parents take that view? Fuck no. I was terrified of walking on my own anywhere for months afterwards. Months. Would I have been that much worse off if he'd *actually* bashed me? Maybe, but in my mind not much. The psychological damage was hard enough to recover from. Furthermore, I felt like a real dickhead for pissing myself, and for being scared of some guy who actually didn't really have any intention of hurting me, but how the hell was I supposed to know that at the time? He sure looked like he meant it. Threats of violence aren't akin to actually inflicting violence, but psychologically they can have a similar effect.

This thread is already really long and I haven't had time to add my thoughts, but since stuie seems to be taking everyone on all on his own, I thought that I'd just say that I have agreed with every word of his that I've read so far. Short summary of my views which I'm too tired to really debate: Martin is out of control and anything less than a sacking is getting off lightly It is in absolutely no way, shape or form the woman's fault for provoking him or such You're contributing to our culture of excusing violence if you think it is in any way, shape or form her fault If you think she should have gone to the police and kept her mouth shut in public, you're woefully naive about how much interest the police would have in this kind of matter If you started a post with "he shouldn't have done it, but...", you've said all I needed to hear and I read no further All violence is bad and is a problem, but male (domestic) violence against women is issue #1 at present. That isn't devaluing the issues others face or mean others don't need/deserve support, but this is the most prevalent issue and therefore the most urgent issue

32 minutes since Stuie has contributed to this thread...

BBO, I actually know her old man. I'm more than happy to put in a good word for you if you wish? In all seriousness, if you can get a poster of Tayla, I'm happy to get her to sign it. FWIW - he is an absolute gentleman and a scholar, was still running around having a kick himself in 2015. Has nothing but glowing reports of everyone at the MFC, from admin staff to players. Did mention that Howe was a fantastic bloke, but other than that he speaks a lot of sense.

You can relax now. Jake Lovett has penned a two year deal with the Casey Scorpions. He was the second son of a gun to sign with the club in recent days after Todd Vander Haar. And to top it all off, James Freeman, 189cm (son of former Saint Peter) has also joined the club from the Dandenong Stingrays. He kicked 33 goals in the TAC Cup this year.

Whilst it's a given he did not commit murder, you are definitely diminishing the seriousness of what Martin did by posting hyperbolic rubbish curry

I wonder if I sent a death threat to the Prime Minister, whether the police would go "hah! It's okay, he didn't *actually* kill the Prime Minister..."?

Got to say, I agree with the basis of what Stuie has posted here. Maybe not how he has said it. He might let his emotion and personal experience run wild at times, but he's bang on the mark here. Whilst obviously not being there for the incident, it appears that Martin must own total responsibility for what happened. Too many footballers have got off lightly for bad behaviour in the past. I'm somewhat happy that the police have taken it out of the hands of the AFL and RFC, they see it as too hot a potato and are more concerned with perception than effective action. As a human, I'm concerned with what happens to both the woman involved and what happens to Martin. Both deserve support. Think of the worst possible long term outrcome for both individuals and ask youself if that is acceptable. As a witness to domestic violence against women by men, I'd say the woman should be given as much help and support as possible. My experience is that women (and children) usually come off the poorer in these situations.

The Age, December 8: "Richmond's Dustin Martin threatened to stab a fellow restaurant patron with a chopstick after she told the drunken Tiger to stop acting offensively at a Chapel Street eatery on Saturday night, according to a club source. Martin was sitting at the bar with a friend and, it is understood, was drunk, loud and offensive." Foxsports, December 8: "KEVIN Bartlett believes the club should ban star midfielder Dustin Martin for 12 months after his drunken outburst in a Chapel Street restaurant. AFL.com.au: "Dustin Martin 'deeply embarrassed' after drunken night and chopstick threat ... "Regrettably, I was intoxicated and that in itself is completely unacceptable," Martin said. I think it's perfectly reasonable to draw the conclusion that "Martin was drunk". If Martin wasn't drunk, it's even worse for him because he therefore threatened her in full awareness of what he was doing.

i don't think it shows anything clearly and i'm surprised you claim it did it also has no chronological context. i.e. was the filmed at start, middle, end of confrontation

And here lays another misconception that you too are perpetuating. No one needs to prove use. The WADA code emanates from the idea of 'intent"

There is an entire thread devoted to WADA. I like the sounds of Jake and Christian and even Bernie using their foot skills off half back, a real improvement on previous seasons.

Oh please......After 30 years in the Police Force....Yes I can look after myself.......but at my age keyboard strokes are all I have left If everybody just minds their own business this type of behaviour will continue.....Someone has to step up and in this case it was a woman....I don't think she is gloating about it and I think that it took a lot of guts to do what she did. She could of taken this a whole lot further if she wanted too and had him charged but it appears that the apology was sufficient. Sometimes you just have to do the right thing.

They're was even a photo of her in that post...Pretty simple really. Interestingly we will field a very different team next year if Frost, Trengove, Petracca and Salem all get on the park, not to mention Melksham and Bugg. That's over one quarter of the starting 22 as fresh faces.

I can't believe it was that difficult to understand!

Trouble is you relate this story as if it equates to the Martin situation, when it most likely has nothing to do with it in terms of similarity. There's no indication that the woman in Martin's case was at all 'smug' and it's reprehensible to imply it. As for the woman approaching Martin, why isn't her business if she was affected by the behaviour and thought it loud and obnoxious? Good on her for not being backward in coming forward. Maybe the restaurant hadn't done anything. Maybe the staff were also intimidated by Martin's behaviour. Maybe most of the staff were women. Either the restaurant (or previous places) had been serving too many drinks to Martin, or his friends had been ignoring his drinking (or worse, buying him drinks). One is a failure of RSA, the other is mates not caring and not "looking after their mate".

This year was our 15th year since we began as project for an IT course I was doing during Round 7, 2000.

Why do you have to always go that little bit too far Stuie? we all know your thoughts on the matter. Curry is actually right. The idiot didn't kill this woman or injure her physically. As i said if he was full of disco biscuits and sake it is lucky. But it also is what actually happened. The one thing i do know is this dustin will have no memory of it at all, so he is a very lucky fcukwit... but he deserves to go down for it...

There's no room for excuses and but's if there is to be any improvement to this problem. He threatened to kill someone and physically intimated them. To then say "oh but he didn't actually kill her" is to dilute the issue just like others have done in saying the woman should have not said anything. The post immediately previous to yours saying that that poster only cared he might miss the game against the Dees should give you an indication of the depth of the problem this country is facing.

That's never stopped them inventing propaganda.

The AFL can act on the basis of 'bringing the game into disrepute' or whatever they call stepping outside the AFL code of behaviour. If there is a criminal act involved it rightly should be handled by police. It should not prevent the AFL from standing up for its (hiccup) principles.

Been referred to the Police so being a footballer shouldn't matter now...

And we will be served platitudes, and crocodile tears from all with the power to actually dish out a punishment, because martin is a high profile AFL player. There is a reason why the major players take so long to come out and say something, and that is because they need to find the right way to "spin" the incident/punishment, like he is being nailed to the wall by them, while he walks away with a puny ban/fine. I'm even more sickened by the reports that people are afraid to report him, because of his "connections" Low life scum then, obviously?

The federal court case is separate from the AFL investigation and the charges in the attached file. They also didn't fail to subpoena them to the Federal court as they never tried. There are three cases/trials here you seem to have confused. 1: The AFL charges for bringing the game into disrepute. This is what the charge sheet relates to. This was decided on by the AFl commission, there was no court involved and no subpoenas sought or issued. The charges were based on the interim report from ASADA and the AFL should have waited for the final ASADA report before acting. ASADA were not happy the AFL acted and this caused division between ASADA and the AFL. The AFL acted here to try and put a dampener on the whole thing in an attempt to cover it up as much as possible. 2: Hird and EFC took the AFL and ASADA to court to try and show that their investigation was illegal in an attempt to get the whole show shut down. They failed dismally and Hird then tried again and failed again. Investigation stands. 3: AFL tribunal sit after the issuance of infraction notices to the players. This is where subpoenas were sought and due to the nature of the tribunal they failed in this attempt. This was highlighted as a failing int eh process by the tribunal as key testimony could not be tested by the tribunal. These are three separate actions and have now been followed by an appeal of the AFL tribunal decision by WADA. I agree the government went too strong and probably should have stayed out of it all together but that is politics for you. That in no way lessens the wrongs done or justifies why they have been pursued for this long and this hard. You assertion that the players had no intent to take banned substances is also flawed. How can they show they had no intent? They intended to trust the club and to take what was asked, they did not go to their managers, or more importantly to ASADA to ask what was not banned. They were negligent in their responsibilities as athletes (I don't consider them elite as they are not compared to other athletes I know from other sports, just look at their drinking to see why). Only after months of injections did they do anything to even seem to attempt to ensure they were not cheating, and even then the form they signed contained an ambiguous substance that if they did 2 minutes checking they would have seen was banned. That points to a lack of intent to be sure not to cheat and a clear intent to follow the club no matter what. If the clubs intention was to inject banned substances (knowingly or not) then that was the intent of the players as well. There was a young gymnast at the last Olympics, or maybe the one before who followed what her coach wanted and didn't intend to cheat, but he intended to inject her with banned substances, and did so. She lost her medal and was banned for 2 years, she was 13 or so from memory. The coach was banned for life. It is laughable that adult footballers can not be held to the same standard.

Frost has shown freakish athletic ability and thats all so far, as impresive as his pace is, his footballing smarts are still a somewhat unknown quantity. To have him ahead of either Garland or Dunn in the backline is illogical. He's competing with the likes of Lumumba and Melksham as a rebounding defender, or Dawes/Pedo as a roaming forward/ruck...

But would have happened if he had not intervened? H_T If he had just said "nothing to do with me" A young Solicitor gave his life for trying to support a woman being bashed in the middle of the city on a workday. Sometimes you just have to do the right thing regardless. Sorry, feel strongly about the "See nothing. Do nothing" members of our society.

That's your answer? You do understand that it is not OK to threaten to stab someone in the face with a chopstick even if they taunt you don't you? Many people have been on the wrong end of unfair treatment, this never justifies threatening to stab them in the face, just accept that. The fact that the victim is a female just shows how weak a character Martin is. PS. Yes I would say that to his face. Men need to stand up to men that are violent towards women. I have done it and will continue to do it.

Nailed it.

There is a lot of victim blaming going on here. What justification is there to threaten to stab someone in the face with a chopstick? NONE To suggest she was ........lets say a [censored] or rude or smugly goading. SO WHAT! A real man would do one of the following, 1 Apologise 2 Leave 3 Smile and laugh it of. A real man does not threaten to stab someone in the face with a chopstick. That is the act of an insecure bully.

Ultimately it's Martin's responsibility. But there could have been some procedures in place that might have prevented it. 'Responsible Serving of Alcohol' is a farce if someone is allowed to keep drinking in any establishment when they are clearly drunk. That's what RSA is meant for.

Wow. Just wow.

I like what Goodie had to say to Jake even more. “He gave me a ring and could see I wasn’t enjoying my footy or reaching the potential that I had. I’d go around [to his place] for dinner often [and one day] he said ‘come around, we’ll have a chat’,” he said. “At the start, I thought it was just a normal dinner … and when we got there, he spoke about the possibility of coming to the club. He said ‘you need to ask yourself what you want to get out of your footy career? You need to find that passion and reignite yourself again’. “He said ‘I’m not going to pressure you into anything and it’s not going to [change] our friendship if you do come [to Melbourne] or don’t. It’ll still be the same – there will be no hard feelings, but I just want you to get the best out of yourself’. I'm very comfortable in trusting Goodwins read of the situation and hoping that he's on the money. If he is, then the trade will be a clear winner.

Garland is more than depth, I'd swap Dunn for Garland in your list. Dunn can play forward.

There is ample precedent from WADA investigations to suggest otherwise. I look forward to Jake suiting up for the first round in 2016.

To me there is a lot of arguing around three separate issues that are inextricably linked 1/ violence in general 2/ violence against women in particular 3/ How to get a safe outcome from a potentially dangerous situation - i.e. how do you deal with a drunk person ? So I will treat them separately - I deplore violence and I deplore violence against women in particular. Whilst I am generalising and it may not be so in the Dustin Martin case but I have seen attitudes by men towards women that are not replicated towards other men. And lastly what is the safest method of dealing with these situations ? Call management ? Call the police ? Try and defuse yourself ? There is no one simple answer and with no insight to the situation with Dustin we will never know.

And here is the problem. With respect i think you are the one making assumptions about so much of this. This stuff then gets added to and before you know it the real story gets lost. We perhaps should wait for the full story to come out (although the club and the AFL seem to be taking their sweet time about it). You say there is no evidence the woman was 'smug'. In an earlier post by Song he details what he was told by the owners of the restaurant. Maybe your statement isn't right. I have seen on numerous occasions people go up to high profile people and impose on them unreasonably. Not saying its the case here but it happens a lot. You also go on to say that the restaurant had served too many drinks to martin. You have no idea what they served him. He apparently had been at Stereosonic all day and there is a lot of stuff on offer there. You also don't know what his mate did or did not do. It's easy to be holier than thou and on the face of it it is an appalling act regardless of any of those circumstances. But perhaps we should wait to hear both sides of the 'story'.

Your opening paragraph is the same as saying "I'm not a racist but......". You devote 5 words to Martin and the rest is a rant about women. Your post has a misogynist feel to it.

Wow.......Maybe we should all just mind our own business and never become involved......Just close our eyes and pretend it didn't happen. I would hate to be in trouble and have to rely on you for help. .What a pathetic response.

Let's sign up Daisy and Hoges! Foundation privileges I say! Special rights hey PJ?

Seriously though, it's a silly thought this 100 goals business. There's absolutely no guarantee that he's even going to play full forward - he has such a fantastic tank that it's hard not seeing him player further afield in some games. And while he's obviously going to be an important cog in our forward line set up, I think it's more important that he be part of a line up that strives to score 100 points a game on average and to keep opposing sides down to about 85. That would be a very good outcome for us IMO.

Indeed... I have the DVD of the film... one of my favourites (along with The Bed Sitting Room)

Boy he can really roost the ball. Off both feet as well. Penetrating, accurate kicks is something we sorely lack. I can see why they're thinking HB as if he can carry the ball 20 metres and kick long he can get get it over the press and quickly into our 50, allowing our forwards to get one out, much like those couple of goals Brayshaw set up for Gartleltt against Collingwood (i think).

http://neafl.com.au/index.php?id=16&tx_ttnews%5Byear%5D=2015&tx_ttnews%5Bmonth%5D=12&tx_ttnews%5Btt_news%5D=5553&cHash=b1e8d75868d87b186cae6718bbf8c32c Not sure if this link works

Mate, in a thread celebrating Jake Melksham's arrival and potential for the club, that is all of 28 posts long, you've made the same OBVIOUS point 4 times... Find a new tune.

It's not about Hogan kicking 100 goals. From what have seen at preseason. The young group are so full of confidence and they are the ones who are driving the training quality. The intensity and game plan they now understand. The change in a few months is unbelievable. There is a real buzz around the boys at the moment. They all believe they can do anything, and will do what is required to make it happen.

I agree with Norm. Enough playing him forward. He needs to sit down back and use that freakish athleticism and power to shut down the big forwards. That frees Dunn to play the third tall/rebounder role, and he's a far better kick than Frost or Tommy.

Don't see how someone can return to somewhere they're not from