Leaderboard

http://www.melbournefc.com.au/news/2017-06-29/roos-views-from-the-outside- Quite a lengthy interview with Roos. Far too many interesting comments to quote. But in summary he is still very loyal and invested in the Dees and barracking for us on Friday night. He is very complementary of many people at the Dees and genuinely delighted for everyone especially those that have been there a long time. A nice little complement for Goodwin and the coaches, many of whom are Goodwin recruits: "The game day stuff, I reckon he could do with his eyes closed, with all due respect, and he’s got a great coaching group around him.”. Goodwin's game day tactics have been enormous for us winning quite a few games - maybe that is what Roos saw when he recruited him to be our coach! What I really liked about the interview is that it is totally selfless. At no stage does he try and claim any credit for our performance - it is all praise for the Board, Club, Coaches and Players. Not many people could resist that temptation. Roos is quite an awesome person! And like others, I will be forever grateful he came to the Dees.

For those who saw it, that post and the replies that followed are gone and the offender permanently banned.

It's not without possibility, but it still upsets me though that after all this, the focus is still on how the victim reacted to being punched. It's part of a much broader cultural issue and I thought you would get that. @rpfcdid a good post on this on the very early pages on this thread. I want to be clear. I give Clarry the benefit of the doubt on the dive, but ultimately it's irrelevant. I don't care if Oliver did a triple backflip with pike - Schofield threw an elbow and got away with it purely because everyone decided they weren't happy with the way the victim of the elbow reacted to it. I reckon it stinks to high heaven.

Heard various media today and the general consensus is that Clarry is a stager with no ifs and buts about it. Apparently a new form of low life. There is also an expectation as well as anticipation that the Swans will punish him for it tomorrow night and that Schofield is basically a saint. Hope he puts a 40 possession game and sticks it right up them and then tells them to fark off if they want an interview.

Me at start of year - yeah, I'd be happy with 7 - 8 wins. Me now - I WANT TO WIN THEM ALL!

If you don't know, it's not to late! Go and be free!!

Agreed, no risks with these 3 please. All serious finals contenders need a fresh and close to injury free list come September. Jones and Watts are critical for our structure and game. I am not so sure about Hogan unless he can come back into the side and become a weapon. However, we don't need a forward line that revolves around him. We need him as a contributor. In regard to injuries, it is this time of the season that needs judicious and sensible decisions around team selection. Most players are suffering from physical and mental fatigue, so it is not the time to take risks when players are already sore. Hopefully our depth and list quality will get us through the coming month. The balance between winning games but not risking players is going to be all important. It's like walking a tightrope.

This. The tear in quads is always the rectus femoris, the long muscle which goes over the hip and knee joints. It's usually recovers very quickly to allow full speed sprinting, but is held back by being the prime mover in kicking. The thing in Jones' favour is his resilience, so we can be sure his healing rate is about as good as a 29 year old's can be.

I am in the minority - I like Hunt behind the ball, breaking the lines. Whilst I have no problem with him pinch hitting for small periods of time forward I don't like him in the tightest and most congested part of the ground. I believe his best value to the team is his running where he has some space to do so- off half back or the wing.

What a circus. How hard was it to say 4 weeks 2 days ago. Anyway, common sense prevails for once.

Deserved four weeks. Good bloke or not, he whacked someone for no reason on the footy field and knocked him out. You do the crime, you do the time.

I heard a few whispers late in his time here that some of the players weren't huge fans, but for the first time in hearing stuff like that, I honestly didn't care whether it was true or not. Some supporters said his gameplan was outdated and boring to watch - didn't care about that either. The only thing that mattered from his time here was setting us on the correct path. It wasn't a lone effort (see PJ), but between them they assembled a team that can get us moving forward. A recruiter who hasn't made an error yet, a modern, energetic coach who knows who knows how to motivate, support and develop his players, putting in support staff of appropriate experience around to assist said young coach, and backing and developing existing resources already at the club to deliver what was required (Mahoney et al). To say Roos saved us in my view is unfair to every other member of the club who busted a gut to get us going again, but to me he was worth every cent and we have a lot to thank him for. It was fantastic to hear him referring to the club as 'we'.

On Lynden Dunn and Paul Roos Lynden produced a beautiful torpedo down the middle of the ground from the kick out- Roosy was fairly disappointed that he neglected to tell any of us he was going to do that.

Historically speaking, every time the Doggies have won a flag the MFC has won the next three.

Walking the beach break nothing in my head the whirl of cheroot smoke riding my tread and two sooty oystercatchers coming my way low on the wave and I call out to them ...Hey who's in and they waggle their wings like two big W's and I see its Wagner and White for Garlett and Salem and exhaling I say thanks but what does that mean and almost lost in the waves is the sooties cry ... Hunt goes fooorwwarrd... And so I stop take of my clothes and walk into the surf Byrons lighthouse is blinking on the horizon.....

At 3:55 on Tommy Mac Donald "Yeah, he got drafted as a forward - I didn't see the potential myself...if he does it two weeks in a row I'll give him credit. Yeah if he kicks five again, I'll be the first to shake his hand" Lol cracks me up does big Maxy.

#omacmyths. Fair dinkum you need to take your bias glasses of. This is is completely untrue. I just watched the replay. Only one of petrie's goals, his fourth, involved omac, when he was too strong and outmarked him after a quick kick from the centre. His other goals were from marking mismatches - a point richo made - and one of them frost did not impact the contest when he should have. Not aggressive enough in the air? Have you been watching the last few weeks? He has been smashing packs and routinely doing huge spoils. It must be so annoying for you that the selectors dont share your opinion of him.

No we don't want it wet they play better in the wet. I was there last year at the SCG and it poured all-day and they played true wet weather football while we tried to play our play on at all cost game . We turned the ball over and gave them easy goals. SO NO RAIN PLEASE!!

If they want to use Hunt forward, then I'd use him in the Jeffy role where he can use his pace to get over the back and score some easy goals. I don't think any player in their back line will have the pace to go with him.

Life is too short for regrets . But hopefully not too short to see Howe and Frawley turn green.

"With finals all but assured," Wow, I cant believe this. Someone tell this guy we are 2 games from 12th spot, smashed by injuries and anything can happen. Yeah we should make finals, but saying it is assured is pure insanity.

You're new here, aren't you?

I think it's about time the AFL started looking at alterations to ground surfaces - particularly to keep pace with the frequency of rule changes. I'd like to see some grounds with a 2m elevation from one to the other. Maybe a hump across the half forward and back lines. Turn another ground into a velodrome type set-up with berms so the faster players can use them to run high and evade tacklers. I also have some thoughts on things such as artificial breezes caused by huge fans at either ends of some grounds which could counter-act some of the one-sided umpiring we regulalry see. Just a few thoughts.

Belief. The team has it. It's Friday night - another opportunity to make a real statement. I would not be the slightest bit surprised if they pull off another remarkable victory.

Heh, yeah. Hey, remember when our best ever junior player got punched - twice - and it was his reputation that got soiled? LOL yeah I remember, hilarious stuff!

That's all well and good but right now I only care about the short term...like, this Friday night short term.

Getting 500 miles ahead of ourselves. Let's make the finals first. We win 4 games in a row and suddenly there's talk of prelims and premiership. We are 2 wins above Freo in 12th. It's great that we are winning but it's way too early. I'm excited, but have seen many false dawns over the years. Remember Vossy saying 10 or 12 years ago we'd win a flag in the next few years? People here wet themselves en mass. I know I did.

I compiled the list below of all grounds dimensions. I didn't know a lot of them and was quite surprised by some of them. For instance the MCG is virtually the 3rd shortest ground in the comp but the widest. The Gabba is virtually the same dimensions as the SCG. Domain, Blundstone and TIO are virtually the same length which is 20 m's longer than the SCG & Gabba. Simonds is 26m's narrower than the MCG which is more than the difference between the shortest and longest grounds. I've done my best to verify the accuracy of these measurements. I even rang some of the venues. They all might not be 100% accurate. The AFL website has them on there but some are definitely not correct and I verified that with some of the venues. AFL Ground Dimensions MCG 160 x 141 Etihad 159.5 x 128.8 Simonds 170 x 115 SCG 155.5 x 136 Spotless 164 x 127.5 Adelaide 167 x 123 Domain 175.6 x 122.4 Gabba 156 x 138 Metricon 160 x 134 Manuka 162.5 x 138.4 Aurora 165 x 135 Blundstone 175 x 135 TIO 175 x 135 TIO Traeger 168 x 132 Cazaly 172.5 x 149

FORTUNE FAVOURS THE BRAVE by the Oracle Apart from the AFL Tribunal side show, all of the talk this week has been about injuries and how the Demons are going to deal with their third successive six day break. The theory is that things might not work out so well in the light of the absence of a significant number of their more valuable players and the weight of fatigue as a consequence of the team's recent heavy workload. But I'm not worried in the slightest. You see, I follow the patterns and rhythms of life and Melbourne's form line is pointing extraordinarily more towards an upswing this week. The Demons had an ordinary game last week by most measures but they disguised it well with that magnificent, withering finish capped off by Tom McDonald's great goal that gave them their last-minute victory. The rare win out west was one for the ages because behind the victory stood the fact that the team lost in many key performance areas and yet, it was still ahead on the scoreboard that mattered at the end of the night. The Demons did not dominate as they did the week before against the Bulldogs. They did they win the possession count but only barely won the clearances (even with the return of Max Gawn) and they had less inside fifties than the Eagles. What they did do is the thing they are now very good at - they imposed great pressure through strong football. We all know that fortune favours the brave and it was thanks to the bravery of the team led by Jack Viney that the team got over the line against the Eagles and I expect them to end the financial year in the same vein on Friday night against the Swans. THE GAME Melbourne v Sydney Swans at the MCG Friday 30 June 2017 at 7.50pm HEAD TO HEAD Overall Melbourne 92 wins Sydney Swans 111 wins 2 drawn At MCG Melbourne 49 wins Sydney Swans 42 wins 2 drawn Last 5 meetings Melbourne 0 wins Sydney Swans 5 wins The Coaches Goodwin 0 wins Longmire 0 wins MEDIA TV - Channel 7 Fox Footy Channel Live at 7.30pm RADIO - SEN THE BETTING Melbourne $2.08 to win Sydney Swans $1.78 to win THE LAST TIME THEY MET Sydney Swans 12.14.86 defeated Melbourne 4.7.31 in Round 13, 2016 at the SCG The stronger-bodied Sydney Swans strangled a young Demon team that couldn't handle the conditions when torrential rain hit the harbour city. The Swans applied an AFL-record 155 tackles, kicked eight goals to two in the second half and Lance Franklin's four goals matched the Demons' entire tally for the game. THE TEAMS MELBOURNE B: Michael Hibberd, Oscar McDonald, Neville Jetta HB: Jordan Lewis, Sam Frost, Jayden Hunt C: James Harmes, Dom Tyson, Bernie Vince HF: Billy Stretch, Cameron Pedersen, Christian Petracca F: Clayton Oliver, Tom McDonald, Alex Neal-Bullen FOLL: Max Gawn, Jake Melksham, Jack Viney I/C: Tomas Bugg , Mitch Hannan, Josh Wagner, Mitch White EMG: Dion Johnstone, Jack Trengove, Sam Weideman IN: Josh Wagner, Mitch White OUT: Jeff Garlett (hamstring), Christian Salem (hamstring) SYDNEY B: Nic Newman, Heath Grundy, Nick Smith HB: Zak Jones, Dane Rampe, Jake Lloyd C: Isaac Heeney, Josh P. Kennedy, Callum Mills HF: George Hewett, Lance Franklin, Kieren Jack F: Gary Rohan, Sam Reid, Tom Papley FOLL: Sam Naismith, Dan Hannebery, Luke Parker I/C: Oliver Florent, Jarrad McVeigh, Lewis Melican, Dean Towers EMG: Jordan Foote, Jeremy Laidler, Callum Sinclair IN: Zak Jones, Jarrad McVeigh OUT: Will Hayward (foot), Callum Sinclair (omitted) FRIDAY OFF OUR MINDS Melbourne has been a stranger to Friday night football for far too long, having been completely deprived of the lucrative prime time home fixture for five years - and for the good reason that the team was simply not good enough to showcase its wares in front of national television audiences on the sport's biggest night of the week. The most recent Friday night games have generally turned into disasters for Melbourne like the "bruise-free" match against Carlton or the time the Hawks crushed an embarrassing, lifeless Demon combination into complete submission. That effort was probably the last straw that caused their banishment from the Friday scene by the AFL from 2012 until now. The Friday night wins have been few and far between, the most recent being the time they got their act together against the Bombers in 2011 under Dean Bailey but that was an Essendon home game. You have to go back a lot further to the last Friday night MCG home win which came in round six, 2006 when Melbourne scraped home by a goal in the rain against an inaccurate Geelong. A fortnight later that Demons beat Hawthorn there by 75 points as the "visiting" side. Ironically, the Hawks' list at the time included two youngsters in the early stages of their careers - Buddy Franklin and Jordan Lewis. Both were missing through injury that night and both returned the following week. The rest is history for them and the Hawks but coincidentally they will line up on Friday night in opposing teams. Both sides pinched narrow victories in their last up starts and both have strong midfields (Demons are ranked equal third in the competition for clearances: the Swans are ninth). Franklin is the one true game-breaker among the two sides and he will be extra dangerous for fact that last Friday night he was held goalless. That doesn't happen very often. But Melbourne doesn't rely on any one individual. The strength of the team comes from its evenness and a statistic that does not lie - Demons are the AFL's highest disposal team in 2017, averaging 412.3 per game. They have won the disposal count in 12 of their 13 games while the Swans are ranked 13th in this area. The consequence is that for the long-awaited return to the game's centre stage on Friday night, the world is going to see plenty of the red and blue on the wide expanses of the MCG. With Max Gawn back to start the dominance from stoppages, I'm tipping a Demon win by 10 points.

Mystery?

So Hunt becomes the hunted?

houli will get booed (among other reasons) for his thuggish action and it's impact on lamb

You can't help but have mixed feelings about the changes - on one hand it's strange a Kent, Kennedy or a JKH aren't selected, but on the other hand Goodwin has got it right more than he hasn't and you can't help but back him on these selections.

Aaaaannnnndddd Schofield isn't playing anyway. Flogs

That's hilarious. And these front runners can't defeat a team they depict like this. Wet Toast are on a fast train to nowhere ( as we saw last week).

When isn't it? Weed could be a smokey . With a name like yours I expect it is

it's a sneaky number because it just sneaks in between 36 and 38

An interesting historical question which have more to do with cricket or just a lack of co-ordination when the grounds were first built. Perhaps the best question is why wasn't Etihad built to the same size as the MCG?

Jones was kicking off both feet at training/rehab yesterday, he will be trying to convince them he will be right to go against Carlton I am with the Club, if September action is realistic this year why risk rushing Watts Garlett and Hogan

Don't know which leg. It's not really an injury you can carry and get away with. I reckon all our players are kicking more on the non-preferred this year. Seems to have been a focus pre-season.

I get what you're saying but the phrase "entitled to lose" is an ugly one. Especially when being applied here because we are every chance of winning this one, short break or not.

I think we should go like for like. Therefore, barring no other injuries I'd like to see the following based on recent VFL reports: In: Wagner & Kennedy Out: Salem & Garlett Kennedy always seems to be high in pressure acts judging by the comments and I think this will be important against the Swans. Wagner had a slow start to the season but I think his best is very good. Not in the same class as Salem but a very capable replacement. I'd start Tmac forward and Frost on Buddy. However, I'd be willing to move Omac forward and Tmac back if Buddy was getting on top. Though it will take a team effort to stop his output. B: Jetta OMac Hibberd HB: Lewis Frost Hunt C: Vince Oliver Stretch HF: Petracca TMac ANB F: Kennedy Pederson Hannan R: Gawn Tyson Viney Int: Harmes Wagner Melksham Bugg Still a good enough side to beat the Swans, but it will be tough with consecutive short breaks. I'm tipping Swans by 10 points but I'm confident with the sides new found ability to dig deep we could steal another win here.

Just a reminder that we only have to reduce the list by two players this year because Lumumba has already picked himself as the third.

Here are two interesting articles on what it takes to win a Finals/Premiersip. Crows: Are they 'tough enough to contend'? http://www.afl.com.au/news/2017-06-29/too-nice-to-contend-pyke-isnt-buying-it I have no doubt we are 'tough enough' - we have shown it over and over again, reaching its peak vs Eagles last week. Giants: Stevie J says they need to find the killer instinct: https://www.foxsports.com.au/afl/greater-western-sydney-forward-steve-johnson-says-the-giants-need-to-find-their-killer-instinct/news-story/14491f4c31ec8ddf9c1ca7b42e16aa0b The Dees haven't yet found our 'killer instinct' as we let a few teams off the hook earlier this year. I doubt it will happen again! I think we are not far from Stevie J's description: “When you’re a good team you want to be a ruthless team that plays for four quarters because that’s what it takes to win finals,”. We are a good team and over the last 2 weeks we have played fierce football for the full four quarters. It is just a matter of time before we become ruthless and regularly put teams to the sword. If we keep that up and we make the finals we will be very dangerous and one of the more feared teams. Who would have thought: A dangerous and feared team! Bring on September!

Character references during sentencing are generally from a friend or family member who have known the accused for their whole life. Turnbull wouldn't have even known who Houli was until he shook his hand when he and Houli attended a function together earlier in the week. Turnbull's speech would have also been written by someone else, it's quite pathetic that an excerpt of the speech was allowed to be admitted during the hearing. The system is in need of a massive overhaul and restructure (but we already knew is).

Roos can be as biased as he likes. The more positive press we get the better. Not sure why anyone would want it any other way.

Possibly some good news, just heard on Triple M, they were talking about big Paddy and his concussion issues at St Kilda, JB was asked about Gus, stated that he believes that Gus will be back playing in a few weeks. The Dees have been upping his full contact drills at training, hopefully it turns out well and we see him back. Personally I think he's a gun, just needs a good run of games together to get used to the pace again.

It's like a school of ducklings walking casually into the path of a steam roller. I want to save them but it's too late!!