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Prompted by the nicknames thread and for an off-season laugh, who can you see similarities in from the listed players? I'll kick it off with Christian Petracca and Hymie from Get Smart.

It's a curiosity to me now though, not a matter of anguish because it was just another fork in the road to where we are now and I'm happy with that.

Our position is we don’t close threads just because someone thinks we’ve finished talking about a topic. Closure is only for if the thread needs to be shut down in order to maintain the code of conduct or protect the site.

Daisy?

Are people really disturbed that we are playing round 1 at home on a Saturday afternoon?? Perhaps they would prefer Hawthorn's twilight game in SA, North's Sunday evening game over in the West or the Saint's 1.10 pm game against Gold Coast on a Sunday lunch time? There's no pleasing some people.

Surprised they could string so many coherent sentences together.

Port is not a good start to the season financially. We will probably lose money or barely break even. Last year the majority of our Home games at the G were against i/state teams or small Vic teams both of which are terrible for our Revenue. Add to that our two Home games in NT and our revenue from Home games becomes rather meagre. In 2019 we will be relying on the QB vs Coll games to top up the coffers (ANZAC Eve is Away). Oh, and please no more gifting Carlton and Essendon 4 - 6 Home games each at the G. It is not their home ground. Let them play at Marvel!!

You’d expect a professional AFL writer to be aware that the club intended on picking Billings, not Kelly, which turns the debate on its head. It’s not as though it’s a well kept secret. That information is in the public domain and has been for years now. Again, maybe my expectations of people who get paid to research this stuff is too high. Or maybe they are being deliberately obtuse. Either way, it’s poor journalism.

The Giant Cromulon.

Just revoke their license to operate . . . can we do that?

Fair comments by those that suggest a crowd of 25K+ will break even/make money. But this for the majority of the season from smallish crowds vs i/state and small Vic clubs is not financially beneficial. But, my comment re financial impact of Home game opponents was that if the majority are vs 1/state or small Vic teams we are being disadvantaged. Imagine the difference to our bottom line if we played Ess, Hawth, Rich or even Carlton at Home at least once each season. Anyway, I feel we have earnt the right to host those clubs at the G. Will eagerly await the fixture to see how we fare. I bet Carlton do better than us at the G and they aren't even a tenant! Ditto Essendon but to a lesser extent.

So boring having Carlton and Richmond open the season every year.

Round one, 2019 Thursday, March 21 Carlton v Richmond at the MCG, 7.20pm AEDT Friday, March 22 Collingwood v Geelong at the MCG, 7.50pm AEDT Saturday, March 23 Melbourne v Port Adelaide at the MCG, 1.45pm AEDT Adelaide v Hawthorn at Adelaide Oval, 4.05pm ACDT Western Bulldogs v Sydney at Marvel Stadium, 7.25pm AEDT Brisbane v West Coast at the Gabba, 7.20pm AEST Sunday, March 24 St Kilda v Gold Coast at Marvel Stadium, 1.10pm AEDT Greater Western Sydney v Essendon at Spotless Stadium, 3.20pm AEDT Fremantle v North Melbourne, Optus Stadium, 3.20pm AWST ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ What an absolutely horrendous round of footy. The geniuses at City Hall have done it again. No idea.

I actually don’t see how it changes the analysis for the writer at all. We started with pick 2 and turned it into Tyson and Salem (give or take) and could otherwise have had anyone in the draft other than Boyd. That is the benchmark against which an unbiased assessment of our loot that year should be made. I think the assessment is ok relative to how others have been graded other than we don’t get enough credit for Harmes and Jetta which I think could have bumped us up to an 8. Having said all of this, it matters little. We have a great list now. The subjective assessment of our take in a particular year is really meaningless overall. It’s awesome that we don’t need to pin our relevance to the draft anymore!

I'm not so sure it will. Remember we are now out of pokies so that revenue is gone. Sure, winning games will bring out our demon fans but not i/state fans and we need big crowds to boost revenue and to keep Home games at the G which means a decent number of opposition fans. Home games vs Port, GWS, GCS, Freo, StK, North, Syd, Brisb just aren't going to fill the seats and help us financially (and fund things like new facilities). We have now earnt the right to get a decent fixture that will help us financially and our Home game opponents is a key part of that.

This is the biggest downside to me. The MFC needs to capitalise financialy during any period of sucess and gate takings are one good revenue stream. A game against practically any Victorian team would draw a much better crowd than Port. Yes we get to play other Victorian teams over the course of the season, but generally Rd 1 draws a bigger crowd in it's own right. MFC supporters need to get to this game on mass and create a cauldron like atmosphere, to make sure we get half a dozen cheap free kicks like Port did at their dung heap this season , just to make well and truly sure we get over the line. Get the win and hopefully we build the crowds throughout the season.

Home game at the 'G to kick off the season. Don't give a stuff who it's against, I'll take that every day of the week. It will also be great for Weideman to kick his first bag of 7 in front of the hometown fans. Dees by 10 goals. I can feel it already.

How that rubbish mob Geelong get that Friday night slot is beyond me!!!

Nick Riewoldt.

Not a Dees player but this one always gets me

It has to be said HOW THE FARRRCK DO CARLTON get to open the season??? Someone must have Goat photo's Deescraceful

Its so simple, if you don't like a thread don't go there. If you don't like music or a tv program, don't tune in or turn it off.

Also, this was the draft between two eras; the Toumpas/Scully/Trengove/Watts/Morton with top 4 picks in the six drafts previous versus Petracca/Brayshaw/Oliver in the top 4 in the five drafts since If top 12 add: (Clark trade)/Cook/Gysberts versus Weideman/(Weideman/Oliver trade - 2016)/(Lever trade - 2017) If top 20 add: Tapscott/Blease/Strauss/Grimes versus (Lever trade - 2018)

It seemed to me at the time that we couldn't split the top 10, so we played it safe and took two players, instead of one. It turns out Kelly became a star, but plenty of top 2 picks have been relative busts. Still the right call at the time.

Sheeds was a regular where I worked....he was always great with the fans and a lot of fun. I had him sucked in one off season when I said that I had seen an opposition player going into a clandestine meeting with him across the road. He was most relieved when I told him I was only joking but it was pretty obvious from his reaction that he was there for that meeting. I just didn't know who it was with. One of my favourite Sheeds stories though is about his first season at GWS. The story comes 2nd hand from one of the players who was there at the time and may well be apocryphal but it's a good one. He really was the front person (Williams did the hard coaching yards) and initially didn't really know the players. Phil Davis (one of the co captains) walked up to him at breakfast to introduce himself and Sheeds thought he was a fan and started signing an autograph for him. I know he gets a lot of stick on here but he is a good bloke and very good for footy. He does a lot of work pushing the game all over the world. He believes our game is the best in the world and he is probably it's greatest ambassador.

I suppose it is better to play Port Rnd 1 on a Saturday and get 40,000 rather than a Rnd 14 Sunday twilight match and get 23,000.

I wonder if we were scared off Kelly by his frame and outside strength, given we had selected Toumpas in the mini draft year and had decided to prioritise what we hoped would be a generational KPF in Hogan? Then again, Billings was of a similar variety to Toumpas. I guess we just got it wrong. Having said that, Tyson served us well in 2014 and gave us depth in 2018 when we needed it during Viney's absence. Salem is a beautiful user and an improving defender that could (in time) also legitimately roll through the midfield, so even though GWS got an undoubted star, we got two good players for one. Where our list was positioned, IMO, we made the right calls on Hogan and the Tyson/Salem trades. The thing about Sheedy is he's so clearly blinded by his hatred of Melbourne that I wouldn't trust a word that came out of his mouth. He was also a representative of GWS at the time. I remember you writing this at the time, Ron and I remember saying a similar thing then.

If we are serious about expansion, Carlton membership is what we have to surpass. Won't happen in 2019 but 2020 is a possibility. Shame about the prelim performance.. probably cost us 2-4k of new members immediately signing up. The other impact of the low key first round fixture is on reserved seats. No encouragement to sign up to a season of reservation as we all know there will be plenty of seats.

The real story here is the AFL scheduling a train wreck for the opening game. It will kill the Blues season from Day 1. I can hear the post mortem now; "...what were they thinking..."

Yep, draft best available and trade for need.

Underwhelmed. Wrong magpies

Well we won't be getting an 80,000+ crowd for the season opener although we at least aren't playing away from home. We might get 35k up to 50k to the Port opener however on the back of winning 2 of 3 finals in the just completed season. Hopefully we get a couple of decent blockbuster home games before the QB clash ... it should be noted that we will be the away team next season in the ANZAC eve game against Richmond. Our crowds should generally be on the improve as long as we maintain our winning form so our financial concerns have dissipated somewhat anyway in that regard. What we do need is a big spike in prime-time games on free-to-air TV ... which is related to the potential sponsorship dollars moving forward. We are now ready for the big stage but we're fighting against the endemic thinking that rewards the Victorian clubs with huge memberships and extra-large supporter numbers.

Crazy talk. To lose money on an MCG home game you need a sub-23k crowd. We'll get 45k-50k imo.

Every game will be a danger game as we become the hunted. To be honest, I don’t care who we play, when or where - as long as we win lots and lots of them. The commercial side will look after itself if we do that. Quite possibly, an opener in March against Port will draw a lot more people than a cold afternoon or evening in the middle of winter against the same mob.

Your right. It's OUR home ground. The rest are just tennants and those team supporters have trouble understanding that - especially the "filth".

4 Cox Plates. Dont think that will be beaten for a while. She went around the outside too, so ran further than the others who were all on the inside as well. We are all blessed to witness such greatness. Why not indeed Macca. Im sure they havent ruled it out.

Just hurry up and release the whole bloody draw, I want to start making some travel plans for 2019. Does anyone know when the AFL are releasing it?

Two schools of thought on the round one fixture vs Port. Positive side: - home game to start the year (always what you want) - against an interstate team provides greater opportunity for a win - potentially fly under the radar a little bit which can be good early in the year Negative side: - shafted commercially to start to year makes us less attractive to sponsors, 1pm timeslot is a dead timeslot on pay TV - though an interstate team against us at the G provides a great opportunity for a win, I would prefer kicking the year off against a tough Melbourne team to get us in the big game frame of mind. A loss could also get us front and centre for a bollocking from the media - AFL (and us) have missed a really good opportunity to build on what a great round one we had last year. Great crowd, two Vic teams, traditional rivals, we played two ripper games and a final with 90k+. I would’ve thought Cats v Dees Saturday arvo/night would be a great thing to build on

It’s at the G which is great but fair dinkum I’m still pretty deflated by this. Bloody Port.

Nadal and Federer. A top spin forehand across court from Pro Dee and then a backhand slice down the line from Binman.

The latest from Knighmare - phantom draft who I usually have a lot of time for but I don’t believe he’s thought this out very well - AFL Phantom Draft: Rounds 1, 2 His picks for Melbourne are:- 23. Melbourne Ned McHenry (VIC) Height, Weight: 176cm, 71kg Profile: McHenry is this year's premier forward pressure specialist, leading the Under-18 Championships in tackles and pressure acts as a small forward. An elite endurance athlete, McHenry can also push up the wings. 28. Melbourne Sydney Stack (WA) Height, Weight: 177cm, 72kg Profile: One of this draft's most exciting and impactful players. A prolific ball-winner and tackler who hits the ball at speed and accelerates away. As well as those profiles read, I can’t see us taking two smalls with these picks given that we have Charlie Spargo, Jeff Garlett and Jay Kennedy Harris and will at least be considering taking Toby Bedford further down the line in the draft as a NGA player. Here is his assessment of Bedford ~ Melbourne *bid on Bedford likely to come 30-50 Toby Bedford (VIC - Melbourne Next Generation Academy) Height, Weight: 176cm, 65kg Profile: Line breaker who often runs the ball 30m at speed before disposing of the ball. Prolific tackler with his application of forward pressure among the best in the draft. Knightmare would therefore have us picking three players between 172 & 176cm. with our first three draft selections. I don’t think so.

I disagree in the sense of I only see Townsend as a pressure forward and he has Bugg covered there. Bugg is more versatile though I agree with you there

LOL Spargo is nicknamed 'Chuck'... I've always had the thought of this lookalike.

He also played very well against the Giants in round 23 and was good against West Coast in round 22. Weideman averaged the 11th most contested marks for the season for players with at least 10 games. It might not be enough for you, but it's enough for me. He's 21 and miles off his peak. His upside is enormous.

I agree with you. I think this was an opportunity for the AFL to showcase an up and coming powerhouse and they've fluffed it. Wasn't the talk that Pies wanted us in round one? They can see what's happening and wanted in. Instead they've given them the Cats and we've all but missed out. The Pies will make money from their home game, will we?

This year bought hope along with it expectation. Mine was, round one versus another 2018 top eight team. We didn’t get it I move on. However I am entitled to give an opinion. Your entitled not to agree with it. Your positivity often helps me balance out my negativity. Cheers.

??? !!! Leave the numbers alone. Hurrah moving from #48 jinxed him!

Brayden Preuss - The Preussmeister General Steven May - Skullcrusher Kade Koladashnij - MGA Austin Bradtke - Tallboy Guy Walker - What a Guy or WAG Looking forward to announcing the official nicknames for our new draftees on draft night.

Jones: Chunk Preuss: Goose Oskar Baker: The baby maker Mitch Hannan: The cannon