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Okay Max. Less words and more actions thanks. We've been hearing too much words for the past two years.

Just so inane and cliche responses. We all know they have to perform next year. What do you expect Max to say when asked a question? "No comment".

As fate would have it I was at the G when Port played us the first year Jack was playing for the Power and his family were sitting right behind us. In the last quarter we had some friendly banter with them as they were all in Port gear and we were playing terrible and went on to lose. The whole time I didn't know it was Jacks family until the siren went and his dad asked me if I knew who he was! Really nice bloke, as were his family. I shook their hands, wished them well and let them know that I hope Jack does well at Port because we all knew the Demons were not a great club and he clearly had a tough time there. I truly hope Jack is in a better place. We were a terrible club back then and neither he nor the other players deserved what Connolly, Neeld and Schwab had done to the place

Have read the article and think it's about time that the media take note and exercise some 'duty of care' of their own when reporting on issues of a personal nature to players. Some of the stuff on Clarry and Joel Smith has been ridiculous. The same story rehashed multiple times over with a different headline just to get a few extra clicks. It's money for jam for the media outlets, but has a meaningful impact on the people at the centre of it, that they are selfishly profiting at the expense of.

Yep, when all is said and done, more is said than done. No talk, just walk.

Who put you up to creating this thread? What secret agenda are you running?

Like Nick Daicos only better - we’ll be getting a steal!

Just because we’re paranoid doesn’t mean they are not out to get us.

true story ... you won't believe just visited mil in nursing home lounge room, big tv screen with dvd playing bee gee's songs belting out "Ha, Ha, Ha .... Staying Alive" cross my heart, dinks

There needs to be an investigation into this. There were so many Carlton fans in the Demons only Priority 1 section that I was sitting in. If this isn't an AFL conspiracy then the Demon fans that gave their barcodes to Carlton fans should have their memberships stripped.

A story about jack I attended and was in the preseason team photo a few years ago. The process is mobility impaired and elderly people are photographed first and the rest of us follow. It’s about one minute for each photo! And after it’s all done players and coaches disappear usually quite quickly. So you spend very little time with players or coaches. On this day, a young mobility impaired person was photographed early and stuck around. Jack watts obviously knew him quite well and after the photo shoot came over and had a great chat to this fellow. All other players had left. In my view Jack was bog that day. Badly treated by Melbourne when young. Beautiful kick and clever ball user. Wish him all the best.

He never left it. He was drafted as a rookie and remains there, with the promise of elevation to the senior list next year (much as what happened with Disco Turner this year).

It’s just sad that his time, was the wrong time. The Club was a mess, searching for an identity. if he was on our list now, he would be a very big and creative cog forward of Centre. i was always sad it just didn’t work out.

I could tell you, but then I'd have to deactivate your Demonland account.

Good to see there's no paranoia there WCW! The tribunal has a long history of not suspending players in final series particularly if they a stars and if they are part of big teams. The most notable example was Barry Hall punching and decking a player in the PF 50 yards off the play and being cleared. Swans won the flag that year by a kick and Barry kicked a vital goal in the last as I recall. That tribunal decision won the Swans the flag which was fantastic for AFL footy in Sydney. AFL involvement? I say no but many will disagree. That GF was balanced by the one they lost in 2016 when the umps carried the Dogs to a GF and you just have to watch the umpiring in the PF they played against GWS to understand why #freekickdogs became a hashtag. The umpiring in the GF was the only time I've ever thought the umps had an agenda but if you believe that then there is little reason to follow footy I think so I reject it. But that game made that difficult. But in the end the Dogs win was probably good for footy too. And WCW the tribunal decision to clear Maynard (and I share your feelings on that topic) didn't impact us at all unless you argue that him being cleared affected us in the next game, but I don't think that is the case. Anyone who questions our effort in the Carlton loss just didn't see the game.

I feel triggered.

Some rewriting of history going on here by some posters? There are only four posts other than yours in this thread! Might as well name names.

It must be something about this game and team that we love that people who I assume are in fine mental health suddenly exhibit extraordinary paranoia when discussing football issues. Whether it's discussing free kicks, umpiring, the MRO/Tribunal, the AFL media, or the fixture I am consistently amazed at how many posters seem to believe that somehow the MFC and its players are victims of bias and/or corruption. I can't decide which threads exhibit the most paranoia. What say the rest of you?

Like I said, the usual suspects will go on and on about Max and his mouth. Imagine the outrage if he just ignored the question at a public function and walked away. Media would’ve loved that. I was more concerned about T Mac’s pink suit, he does pink well though.

I think I’ve missed something here. Is there a longer interview where Max actually states he’s putting his teammates on notice? The clip posted above shows Max answering a couple of questions about our ‘culture’, does it not? Mates organising catch ups through WhatsApp is what I got from it but it won’t stop the usuals coming out with the “we are sick of talk, yadda yadda yadda “ I swear this happens every time Max answers questions in the off season.

Reid, Walter, McKercher, Duursma Hawks: Watson Dogs: Sanders Dees: Caddy or Curtin GWS: Windsor, (Caddy taken) or Curtin Geel: Curtin/(Caddy taken)/ O’Sullivan/ Wilson/ Leake Ess: O’Sullivan/(Windsor, Caddy taken)/Wilson/Hardeman Adel: Wilson/O’Sullivan (taken) With an Ethan Read bid some where. Rough attempt at amalgamating your mail with Cal Twomey’s. If the Hawks and Dogs picks start to filter through before the draft the focus will switch towards our choice. Curtin seems the hardest to place, could go 5, 7-13. Us and GWS might prioritise needs, so my guess is the Cats grab him.

Harley Reid, a highly anticipated draft prospect in the AFL, is almost certain to play for West Coast in 2024. Rival clubs are racing to offer the Eagles an out-of-this-world deal to trade the No.1 draft pick and get first access to Reid, who is seen as a clone of three-time Norm Smith medallist Dustin Martin. The Eagles have not had any proposals from other clubs that were yet to catch their eye, despite several being interested. The picks only trade period ends on Friday, leaving only opening draft night on November 20 for a deal to go through. North Melbourne and Melbourne have been the key players offering at least two deals to get a trade done with the Eagles, including an offer of pick 2 and two of their late first-round selections (15, 17, or 18) for 1 and 23. Melbourne have also come hard for the pick, putting forward 6, 11, 42 and a future first-rounder for just pick No.1. Both deals have not made the Eagles move, making it more likely than unlikely that the wooden spooners will hold onto the pick. Tongala prodigy Reid is almost certain to head West, having long been touted as the best prospect in this year's draft. Reid will automatically sign a three-year deal instead of the previously normal two-year contract under the new CBA rules, giving West Coast strong bargaining power should he request a trade back to Victoria. This will be the third time the Eagles have used the No.1 pick, having previously picked up dual premiership player Drew Banfield (1992) and former All-Australian ruckman Michael Gardiner (1996). However, the Eagles are likely to buck the minor trend unless they pull a shock move and pick Tigers utility Daniel Curtin with the first pick in the draft. Curtin is almost certain to be picked inside the first half a dozen selections and was invited to the first night of the draft alongside Subiaco forward Koltyn Tholstrup.

AFL is Rigged is a doozy. @Queanbeyan Demon post in there is a ray of light.

Curtin could become the best player of the draft so unless we get Reid, keep our picks and draft Curtin + best available midfielder at 11

Gameday thread involving Collingwood or Geelong.

Lovely kick. If he was taking some of those set shots this year we wouldn't have gone out in straight sets.

He's more ANB then Hibberd..

Poor Jack he came to us when we were at our worst, our player development was so poor that we burnt a number of kids, Jack included, he could have had a much better life if he had joined us now. Sad that he has had such a terrible journey to redemption. Good luck Jack.!

Recorded and now watching from 7-112 (Maxwell could have been out 3 times in the last 10 minutes!) Did listen to the broadcast throughout the night and fell asleep (again) when we needed 60 off 60 (or thereabouts) The innings is certainly one for the ages and high praise indeed from Sachin Tendulkar, describing the knock as the best he's seen at ODI level Edit: Just finished watching 'The Innings' ... truly amazing and when considering that his whole body was cramping, quite incredible!! I've never seen anything like it although there are parallels with the late Dean Jones' double century in Madras in 1986 Glenn Maxwell take a bow!

I am never under control

Ain’t nothing wrong with that, aye.

Essendon, J Hird, Zero votes. It was an absolute disgrace by the umpires, but on the other hand Essendon are still sooking it up about umpiring every single game 20 years later. These things affect the psyche of a whole fan base. Anyway, fun times laughing at Essendon aside; The key issue is that the AFL is not governed properly. There is no clarity of process or transparency of decision-making, which is only made worse by pretensions of transparency and good governance. It is entirely clear to everyone that dozens of small and large decisions which have material effects on clubs' fortunes are made by executive order and heavily influenced by shady dealings and personal connections. It is a bit like the ubiquitous conspiracy-theory culture in Malaysia. It worse than, say, Egypt because in Egypt every level of authority just walks around being openly corrupt and impulsively oppressive, so everyone just knows to keep their head down or get beaten. In Malaysia there are all these layers of pretense about being a modern democracy with a functioning parliament, so everyone gets told 'here are the rules', which they then try to follow but get shivved in a bureaucratic back alley and suddenly discover that their farm has been owned by a palm oil company for the last 20 years and they have to hand it over and owe back-rent. Hence, every superstition, conspiracy theory and paranoia you can plant will grow beautifully. To put it in formal language; The Australian Football League is a superficially quasi-Democratic institution which in substance operates on a hierarchical patronage system kept in check by the non-dynamic loyalty framework of it's ritual clans. (The AFL pretends to be well governed, but is actually an old boys network, and the only thing keeping it together is that fans rarely switch clubs, so it is not feasible to bleed smaller clubs to death)

No left foot. It's a huge risk for WCE to ignore the substantial offers being made for pick 1. Read between the lines...@rjay

Forgot to add in the stands at the MCG.

Buying finals ticket threads.

I would assume that this is the same for every single club whether on a forum, on social media or in a what's app group.

From Fox Footy Melbourne (Pick 6) and Geelong (Pick 8) will also consider Curtin should he slip to the latter stages of the top 10. But both clubs are also keen on Sanders.

I cried myself to sleep back in that era too. To his credit he has been very honest - party, party party

Also there is a 20% (or 197) points discount for f/s. So I think if a bid comes after 56 we pay zero points to match and just need a list spot. I doubt we will be willing to take a points deficit into next year, which would devalue our first pick. So my gut says we are only going to only take him if after pick 56 (ie we won't match a bid earlier than that). Unless we trade out 42 for a future pick plus a late pick (I think it would need to be in the 50s) which covers the points.

Every time I see footage of Kynan I see someone who can run, hard at the contest and tackles well for his size. I like his work in close too. To me he projects as a small defender if he can make sure his DE% is up to par. I like the idea of someone with Pig level intensity starting their journey back there. The timing could work well for us as McVee should be looking to move up the ground by the time Kynan could be ready if his development is on track.

Harsh

Extended highlights. Massive props to the person that's been putting all these draft videos together. This one is slightly different in that the video is broken down by skillset eg. Marking, contested work etc..

Some rewriting of history going on here by some posters. He actually got it together by 2016 & had become a really key player. Unfortunately he turned up for the 2017 pre season in poor shape & Goodie lost faith in him & his fate was sealed.

Probably useful to post this here - it's a universal truth of all codes. " Ange Postecoglou’s mature response to referee decisions shows up Mikel Arteta’s immaturity Spurs manager's post-Chelsea comments were a rarity – like Arteta, he is not a fan of Var but was still able to swallow officials' mistakes There was, all told, nothing much that Ange Postecoglou could argue with when it came to the decisions of Michael Oliver and his team of officials on Monday night in one of the great Premier League games of the season so far, although his post-match analysis was welcome nonetheless. There is a great interview with Brian Clough from his 1970s heyday when an anxious looking John Motson gets taken apart by the great man over television’s treatment of referees. Motson points out that the pundits in the studio with the benefit of replays do not always criticise the officials – sometimes they praise them too. “I’m not interested whether it proves him [the referee] right occasionally,” Clough says. “The point is that he [the referee] makes his decisions in five seconds, or two seconds, or one second, in the heat of the moment with 22 players and 30,000 people shouting and bellowing. All I’m saying is that you don’t make that point strongly enough. It should be over-emphasised how hard it is to referee a match.” It does take people in football of stature to stand up for referees because, simply said, they cannot do it for themselves. They have no militant fanbase upon which to fall back upon, and no scope to do interviews because, as Clough rightly pointed out 50 years ago, the only interest in them would be when they foul it up. And it is a hard job – so hard that more than 48 hours on from Mikel Arteta’s tantrum on Saturday night he was still not prepared to say which of the three possible infringements on offer he thought should have stood against Anthony Gordon’s goal. Even when managers are not sure why they think the referee might be wrong – or indeed if he is – they still have the confidence to embark on these remarkable diatribes, and none more so than Arteta this weekend. Football has been diminishing the authority of its referees and assistants for so long that Postecoglou’s intervention was vanishingly rare. He said what so many of his managerial brethren must know in their hearts but find so difficult to articulate. That the referee’s job is made almost impossible by the pressures of players and managers. Not to mention an expectation that Var can solve everything. What is it about these managers – Jürgen Klopp, Jose Mourinho, Arteta, and many others over the years – that makes them do it? One suspects that it is often reluctant, prompted by an irrational fear that if they do not do so then it might beget more decisions against them. A notion that the only way to control fate is to rail against the day’s referee to ensure the next one is more compliant. What is it about the club issuing statements in support of their managers in meltdown, as Liverpool and Woolwich have this season? Again, one suspects it is not a task they relish but feel obliged to do. Doing nothing would leave some kind of awkward misalignment between them and the man on the touchline so they take the path of least resistance. One presumes that then someone is deputed to email a list of complaints, or conspiracy theories, to Howard Webb, and he is in turn obliged to make a solemn phone call to “discuss” it. So the whole dismal dance plays out. ‘You have to accept the referee’s decision’ – Postecoglou It took Postecoglou – who was himself booked on Monday night for leaving his technical area – to break that cycle. “You have to accept the referee’s decision,” he said. “That is how I grew up. This constant erosion of the referee’s authority is where the game is going to get – they are not going to have any authority. We are going to be under the control of someone with a TV screen a few miles away.” Easy to say of course, when one is, for instance, in a pre-match press conference ahead of a big game against Manchester City on a good run of domestic results. Just as Arteta did on October 6 when, in the aftermath of the Var errors in Tottenham’s win over Liverpool, he said of referees, “we need to give support and understand that mistakes happen”. Those principles did not survive their first contact with a referee’s decision he did not like the smell of. Postecoglou, by contrast, swallowed it after a 4-1 defeat at home to one of his club’s biggest rivals. Perhaps he considered himself fortunate that Destiny Udogie was not given a red card for what turned out to be his first yellow card – that tackle on Raheem Sterling. Postecoglou is not a fan of Var, as he has said many times since he arrived in the Premier League this summer, although he tends not to blame the people whose job it is to operate an imperfect system. In case it needs repeating, Var was brought in as a response to television’s coverage of football, not to the game itself. Referees and their assistants had been getting decisions right and wrong since the ball had laces in it and the half-time norm was a restorative Woodbine. The difference in the 21st century was technology that could prove the case within seconds to a global audience who were consequently better informed than the men running the game on the pitch. That was why Var came in, and of course because television loves a new gimmick to sell its package all over again to subscribers. Either way, the spirit of what Postecoglou said was pure Clough – the kind of stern good sense that will stand the test of time, and there is a good chance that others will be quoting it in 50 years. Although hopefully by then, someone will have got Var to a point where we can all tolerate its existence. *read VAR for ARC, or any slow mo replay in the AFL context.

As they stated, it wasn’t a phantom draft, it was a mock draft based on club needs, there’s a difference there. It was Sheehan who picked O Sullivan for us not the rest

Yes,and the club carries the cost in the next year's salary cap. I'm pretty sure it's not a decision taken lightly.

Last year some of the posters said Judd McVee had a poor season and should have been delisted, guess what he proved that he is a good player in the making. Judging players like Jed Adam, Matthew Jefferson and Will Verrall by their development season is like saying Max Gawn will never make it after 3 seasons since he had 2 reconstructions without a pre-season, give them another pre-season and they may blossom?

Great advice. If only they had a detection test for Ovarian Cancer, lost my mother in law in June to the silent killer (she only lasted 4 weeks from diagnosis) and have started fundraising to hopefully raise awareness/funds for the test (I won't share my fundraising link as it probably breaches posting guidelines and I don't contribute much here, although I visit daily for a read).

I'm not going to argue that the AFL is totally transparent, trustworthy and not keen on maximising revenue, occasionally by foul means, but mostly fair. However, the paranoia in here is beyond extreme. Gill doesn't set his salary level - this will almost certainly be set by the Board of the Commission using a number of internal and external benchmarks. Gill is not incompetent/inept/corrupt. For example, to keep the comp going during COVID-19 was an extraordinary achievement. Anyone who watched his press interviews during that time would have seen a man deprived of sleep and under tremendous pressure. Commercially and financially the comp is in the best condition is living memory. His management of the huge, self-interested and toxic egos in clubland is extraordinary. The list is long, but we can start with Triple Chins, Kennett and Cochrane. I wouldn't have any of them within 100 metres of my home, let alone pay me enough to work with them. Regarding the fixture, yes it's mostly %$&*)@, but I've yet to hear practical solutions to all the dilemmas the fixture throws up. Putting a bandaid on one wound simplely creates another wound elsewhere. Yes, the The umpiring standards, MOR and score review system is completely %$&*)@ and should be improved - no doubt about that and I cannot defend it. There is no doubt Goyder is incompetent and should not be the chair of a major sporting competition (let alone an airline) - and I cannot defend that. And finally, to say the AFL are the most corrupt sporting organization on the planet is beyond extreme. Anyone noticed the BCCI, OIC or FIDA lately? They place the corporate corruption and organisational toxicity and incompetence of the Federal Reserve, Fanny Mae and Freddy Mac, Credit Suisse and Bear Stearns in the veritable shade.

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