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At a time when we as a club are clearly on the nose, Brodie's comments, especially his lack of ill-will, were almost life-saving. They show that the club communicated the situation to him clearly throughout, even if they can't clearly communicate what's going on internally to their fans. I still think we missed a golden opportunity this year by the late-in-season decision not to play him and to go smaller than any side in the history of the modern game up forward, but that's a knock that the match committee will have to take into next year. But Brodie's comments also show that no matter what rumours and innuendo surround Goody, the facts are that the majority of players like him or at very least respect him to want to keep playing for him. All our big name players have signed extensions under him and only our peripheral players have wanted to move on. That's way different to Bevo. Thank you Brodie for restoring the faith with your words.

I read the Herald Sun this morning and the MFC has nominated Kynan as a Father-Son recruit.

He wanted to play finals with us, yet we selected a bloke we wouldn’t even bring on for a few minutes. Clearly a FD decision. You could easily argue that cost us a PF.

Just to be clear, Andy aka @Demonland doesn’t owe anyone anything. He pays to run this site so that sad MFCSS suffering losers (like me 😂), can spend too long chatting about irrelevant things relating to our football club. He has a job and a family and a life outside of this forum, as do the rest of the volunteers who run this site (shocking I know!), and he shouldn’t have to take any risks to his livelihood or his personal lives to satisfy the need of busy bodies. If you want to discuss rumours, innuendos and highly contentious issues freely, go to BigFooty or better yet start your own discussion board. I’ll be sure to pop by and write loads of content with the words culture in it.

I love David King now

I am going to argue that ****house goal kicking cost us a PF.

There is absolutely - without a shadow of a doubt - an opportunity to really use recent events, the Maynard incident, double straight sets and arguably a few other things to galvanize the group this pre-season. Drive them hard. Goody will need to be careful in how he chooses to use the 'theme' as it can grow tired really quickly - maybe save the good stuff for finals, but the theme has to be prominent throughout the year and really build a story around it. End of the day, clubs look for an edge. We were 7 and 2 points away from a PF. That is nothing - so every penny counts.

AFL is way more rigged. We don't even have home and away games v every team. Teams never travel to certain locations & instead play them at their home venue (i.e. Collingwood to Geelong). It's beyond a joke.

Because he had kicked more goals then any other player in the last couple years and you give him 4 years to get him to your club

Luckily one day we’ll all be dead and not have to worry about it any longer.

Clayton Oliver no good then? How about two time brownlow medalist Lachie Neale? Or brownlow medalist Cripps? Versatility is nice to have, but if you're a gun midfielder then why would you ever play any other position. Talk about impact, Sanders is the best performed midfielder in this 2023 draft class. He won the Larke medal for best player in the national championships. He's a ball winner, he's got burst of pace, classy agile mover, good kicking skills, strong overhead, hits the scoreboard, leadership qualities. There's no reason why he won't make it as a good AFL midfielder. He's probably the safest bet in this whole draft class and looks to me like hell carve out a Joel Selwood type career. If JT and the recruiters decide Leake is our guy, then we'll all support him and hope he's a star. At this point in time, he's a lesser player than Sanders and hasn't shown much as a midfielder yet. Pick 6 is a lot to spend on a flanker sized intercept defender when there's potentially a superb midfielder on offer.

Thoroughly impressive speaker these days Grundy. Very polished with true authenticity. I never used to like hearing him speak but he’s really a breath of fresh air. He knows who he is, and will be a massive asset to Sydney. I hope he goes well.

In fairness, chook, not just injuries but combination / clusters of injuries Petty Melksham Frittata Brown McDonald could not have been worse and we only failed by a couple of shots in both finals.

He actually said Melbourne’s training is brutal and it’s at a level he hasn’t seen from other teams and he countered it with that it would be difficult to sustain that level of intensity throughout the year. He wasn’t wrong we dipped for a period mid year and started to build strongly after the Brisbane win, anyone who doesn’t think we were into it up to our necks before Petty and Melk went down is trying to rewrite history. Lucks involved and you make your own, but from August onwards despite what he says now in hindsight Kane Cornes had us as favourites, Cam Mooney had us as the team to beat, Brenton Sanderson had us as grand finalists and most pundits had the Pies second half of the season pointing to alarming heading into September Could of, would of, should of I know but IMO the window ain’t close to being closed

It's not necessarily any of the topics that are off limits it's what they invariably devolve into that can be problematic. It becomes a minefield for moderation, which admittedly might be overly cautious but at the end of the day the moderation is tiresome because you will have a long post from someone which is 98% fine and then do you prune a potentially problematic part out or do you delete the whole post and then you get irate people complaining about being moderated and censored and on and on and on. Our mods aren't paid and they don't have the time to police every post and I had to make the difficult decision that these topics were not going to be discussed here because I don't want to have to face the consequences because someone wants to vent their frustrations and potentially libel someone or post a rumour that is damaging to the club or player or official. Wayne I get that you're not happy with the decision and the censorship but I've made my decision. You are not privy to some of the reasons for the decision and I cannot disclose them. I apologise that this has upset you. I hope you can forgive me in time when we celebrate our 14th flag and you can still celebrate it here.

Hard not to like the guy. Shame he's no longer a Dee.

The fact that Brodie Grundy (and Luke Dunstan, for that matter) have left the club with nothing but praise for the people and club says so much more about the culture of our club than any of the vague platitudes that Goodwin and Pert gave for 45 minutes last week. Brodie seems like a first class human being and I hope he dominates at Sydney next year (except when they're playing us)

It's not quite the same, but Essendon in 2000 was so upset by not getting into the GF in 1999, that they went through the whole 2000 season where they won 21 out of 22 home and away games (and the pre-season competition which they also won) without once singing the theme song after a win. In the team's view, winning a H&A game was not good enough. They didn't consider themselves to be winners until they won the Premiership, which, of course, they did.

‘Us vs the world’ is an overly emotional motivation strategy, that worked better with previous generations. These days it seems like coaches take a ‘growth mindset’ mentality, and don’t try and make everything feel so dramatic. They recognise that people get burnt out by feeling like the world is against them - as it begins to become a self fulfilling prophecy. I think the ‘us vs the world’ mentality is a huge part of the problem for the Bulldogs under Beveridge. There can be less opportunity to find joy in the process.

John Northey had an 'us v the world' approach in the late 80's. It dragged us from the depths to be a contender.

Yes good news if he’s nominated and MFC accepted. He’s not top 20. Maybe not top 50. But he’s a late pick or a steal as a rookie. Huge engine. Determination plus. Plays like Libba. Needs some physical growth but he’s a goer (like his Dad).

Not only rigged, but definitely a nepotic boys club with zero transparency or accountability

Quality character Grundy. No bitterness. Pity it didn't work out. I hope he does well at Sydney as long as it’s not at our expense.

Well unless Brody lied in his interview yesterday, that is what he said. I am not a polygraph machine.

I hope that anyone upset about "club culture" at the moment is also not upset about the recruitment and retention (in 2024) of Ben Brown.

She might be a boxer and she might play physically but she doesn't seem to have basic self control issue, like many of the AFLM players do. Lashing out with a fist is likely more an issue with emotional regulation than boxing skill.

I'm very sold on Leake at 6 and Windsor at 11. i think that's a great outcome

Sir Alex Ferguson (Manchester United) used it as continuous motivation and mind game for his players throughout the 90's and early 2000's. In England particularly, you either love or hate Man Utd, a bit like Colonwood in Australia I guess. The media scrutiny is immense and it's something that some players don't particularly deal with well, so Ferguson would take the heat of the media off the players by playing mind games with the media and other managers, and then privately build an us against them environment in the dressing room. At times it boiled over on the pitch with players like Roy Keane who was fearless and confrontational with opposition and also referees. Overall I think his management style produced results as they were successful over a long period and his leadership methods are the stuff of legend really.

Yadda yadda. He said last year we were training better than anybody else and were the team to beat. The truth is no one, especially him, has a clue.

Thank you for that comprehensive response. I can't say I was happy at the time, but that frustration was short lived! I understand the decision you made and I support it.

It would be good to have a discussion here about whether 'us against the world' works - I like it and hope it does. Perhaps with some examples, in the public domain or personal experiences. And how a team goes about making it work. Fire away, 'Landers! 🙃

I’m swaying towards Schoenmacher as pick 11 if we take a mid with pick 6 and O’Sullivan is off the board. 194 not considered KPD but looks to me like one who has some brutality about how he goes about it and love that left foot

Even sadder, I was one of the OGs who migrated from the old platform and was a test user on this site when @Nasher was building it back in the day. He of course will deny this, but we are both much older and wiser now 😅

The problem is that some posters are happy to stay in the lane of only what is in the public domain, but many others don't. You've seen it, we've all seen it happen in every one of these threads. So unless you want to volunteer to monitor every one of these threads 24 hours a day 7 days a week, there is just no other way to prevent these conversations from steering into the wrong lane and getting Andy into trouble. I would rather not see Demonland have to close down, and I am sure you wouldn't want to see that happen either.

6 & 11, for me , like to see any two of Curtin, Sanders, Leake, O’Sullivan, (Darcy) Wilson, Windsor or Murphy.

I tend to agree, I met him a couple of time, and he's just a lovely person. I for one will miss him at Melbourne. I hope he does well at Sydney Just not against us!

Yep, providing all of that happens before the earliest current selection being utilised has been utilised.

If he is nominated and no one bids on him the AFL rules provide the following :- 8.8 Father/Son Rookie Pre-Selection (a) Subject to Rule 8.8(b), where an eligible Father/Son Player has been nominated in accordance with Rule 8.4(b) and is not selected at a National Draft or Pre-Season Draft Selection Meeting, the Club with whom he is eligible as a Father/Son Player may include him on its Rookie List prior to the Rookie DraftSelection Meeting in accordance with Rule 10.4. (b)Prior to the inclusion of a Player on its Rookie List underRule8.8(a), the Club must provide to the AFL written evidence of the Club’s and Player’s agreement to be listed asaRookie. That agreement must specify that the Player can and will only be listed on the Club’s Rookie List if he is not selected by any Club at the National or Pre-Season Draft Selection Meeting.

The Cripps suspension followed by a AFL pardon and the Cripps Brownlow medal set the tone of hypocracy and corruption in 2023. The disgraceful behaviour of the AFL ignoring the welfare of Brayshaw and rigging the tribunal so Maynard could play in the finals was the last straw for me. Remember what MRO goon Michael Christian(pies player) blurted. He basically threatened to resign if Maynard was suspended. Christian would have sent May straight to the tribunal and got 4-6 weeks if he had knocked out either of the Daicos bro's. The AFL is definitely rigged not to mention all the money going in and out the rear door of GW$ Swans and Suns. Is the AFL ever audited or is it the same as the church and treated differently to the rest. How much did Gil McLacklan pay himself every year? 5 million maybe more? Do the clubs have a say or are they too frightened to speak up. CEO's are just employees. Grossly overrated office clerks.

In my experience, men that could play tell everyone within earshot their sons are better, those of us that were not so good tell our sons that we were better and definitely braver. Saw Kynan play, has ability...congrats to all.

Firstly, VIC based supporters can’t complain about a round “zero’ road trip given we’ve opened the season in Victoria 34 out of 38 years (including 2024) since the comp became national in 1987. And in one of those road trips there wasn’t even a crowd in attendance which nullified the home ground advantage. Secondly, Sydney ain’t exactly in the middle of nowhere. A 10 hr road trip or a $250 return flight makes it pretty achievable if you want to see the game live.

I know others aren't thrilled with this, but I personally can't wait because it means I can immediately start the season with a game! Really important to me given I suspect I won't the same flexibility to travel next year and I'll still be based in Syd But sucks for a lot of supporters who would otherwise be able to attend our first game of the season of course

I am. I’m very wary of any player that can’t have an impact unless placed in a primary midfielder role. This is exactly why I’d choose Leake over Sanders - Leake has demonstrated an ability to have a critical impact wherever he has been positioned on the field. Just pure footy ability.

Look just because you seem entirely motivated by and obsessed with "Money, Money and Money" doesn't mean everyone else is, you're projecting. Lamb not signing Brown at all because he low-balled him and therefore no 2021 flag. Is that hard to work out?

O Mac was actually a very good kick.

Unbelievable. The guy got us 2 facilities we sold for millions, I think in the order of $30m and personally threw in $2.7m of his own and you are having a go at him, for not begging the members for money, for a facility, that several previous and post MFC Boards have promised and to this point have failed to deliver. Wow!

I think it's unfair for you to project avarice onto Ben Brown who is one of the most ethical and giving AFL footballers going around. If he thinks he can go on to to fulfil his contract and make a contribution then I'm inclined to trust him. What exactly should Tim Lamb have done differently? We secured Brown on a very reasonable contract and at a low trade price and he was instrumental in our 2021 flag win. I'm not sure how Lamb can force Brown to retire especially when we have to pay him under the 2024 cap anyway. We've got 4 remaining list spots and we've already made 3 changes. That's reasonable. We can take Kynan Brown if we rate him sufficiently - let's see what happens before "wetting your pants".