deanox

interesting point. and i think this statement is where we differ. i would rather see a 16 team competition with 16 healthy teams with even supporters bases, income and draw, making the competition a good game of footy. good recruiting, good coaching, and the best players will then bring you success, not any of the other business nonsense we've been talking about. the afl, and you presumably agree with them, would rather see the overall health of the afl increase making money (for someone), even if its at the expense of certain teams. i am of the opinion that the afl is there to manage the league responsibly and look after the clubs. the clubs should just be there to play football. i dont care about the health of the league. i couldnt care if overall membership is down slightly, or if players have to maintain the same payrates for 4-5 years (god knows they dont need an increase, and their demand for an increase can only come about if revenue increases anyway). as long as the competition is an even and fair competition, because i want to watch elite sport, not business.

i've been saying the same think all week, but everyone just keeps telling me that either 'success will get us a better deal' or 'bums on seats will get us a better deal' but in all honesty i cant see how we can achieve either of those things without getting the better deal in the first place (and fwiw i proved that the success will get a better deal is a falsity).

one of you is incorrect, or maybe im reading the posts wrong...does anyone know which is correct?

the midfield for me has 2 wingers (who are flashy outside skilful types), 3 in the guts and 2 on the bench (those 5 need to probably have 1 outside skilful midfielder, 3 in and under and a tagger... im not sure about the allocation of a genuine all round gun. if the individual players are good enough at what they do you will find that they all become stars. we have jones and mclean in and under. i think sylvia will become a combination player if he gets his body right but probably more outside. moloney might crash and bash, but i think he is more of an outside player, in that his strength is his long kicking, not his ability to win the ball in the clinches. junior is first dibs atm, for his year or two. what this thread has really hit home for me is that we are lacking any real class and pace outside the midfield. TJ had the class, but was inconsistant, and while he had the agility to avoid the tackles, he didnt have the pace to break the lines. im not sure if i have seen enough from anyone on our list to suggest they could be that player. although i think petterd and bell posses the qualities required to become this player (but do we want to move them out of the backline?). we dont have a genuine tagger on the list. godfrey wasnt a genuine tagger, but now we have lost him also. i think that could be bartrams job, but if we start to move bartram, petter and bell into the middle who plays back? wheelan? or will he be injured...

what about nothing but the 150, and melbournefc underneath it? remind everyone who's 150th season it actually is... otherwise i would like to see us continue to use our traditional jumper in every game we are allowed, and auction off the jumper to whoever wants to pay the most the other weeks ala the light blue smarty at carlton. if we are forced to change our jumper for 2-3 games a year, sell it to pine-o-clean for 100K, and we'll wear green with a freakin tree on the front. it sure beats selling a home game interstate...

it appears to me that an afl membership is really just an mcg/td membership, with the option of spending a bit extra money to ensure your club gets something...

i think that the game is a sport. it always has been and thats how it grew strong. yes it needs to be run like a business but i think everyone involved needs to remember that at the end of the day we want to watch the highest level of competitive sport, not the highest level of business. make money, enjoy the spoils, but no at the expense of the integrity of the competition (which imo has long since gone...)

have we ever had a development coach before??? now we have two lol

you said what i thought. we could get 50 articles a year from this website alone, but who is going to edit it, design the mag, coordinate the project, organise the sponsors and advertisements and pay the printers. thats before distribution...

mcc membership also gets you into the cricket and concerts etc though doesnt it?

wouldnt that be the first line of attack? lol im going to go out on a limb here and use the example of brad miller. he looked like being a reasonable footballer with leadership potential until he was talked up by everyone, elevated to the leadership group and made one of the faces of melbourne (ie on the membership cards) which is when he started to struggle. i agree with you hannabal, good leaders will rise to it, and i think brock will be a good leader. but i dont want to cruel him under an unneeded burden if we dont have to, and i hope the footy dept can sit make and make a decision about whether they think he will survive with the title or not. on another note, did they wait until February this year to announce if neitz would be captain again? i wonder if that suggests they were thinknig about changing it last year?

i think i only got one, i cant really remember (which suggests to me it didnt happen). i do know that they only send 1 per household, regardless of how many memberships...

got my gold membership in the mail last night, but my dads still hasnt arrived...

i agree 100%. richmond doesnt want to play home games at the dome. WB want to play home games at the dome. it suits everyone to switch it around. i think that afl just like the power...

exactly right... for me saturday games are always the perfect situation - footy was meant to be on a saturday as far as im concerned, and saturday arvo at the g is the best time for it. but i do play rugby, and its easier to swing work around (sunday morning, or a weekday shift) than it is to move a rugby match!

i am a bit dissapointed with the sunday games - i work sundays part time, but no doubt i will work something out, hopefulyl get to all the homes games. fox doesnt bother me because i have foxtel at home bit i can understand peoples frustrations... i highly doubt those channel allocations are accurate however given that they chose the channels about 7 weeks in advance, not for the whole season...i really cant see why they cant make a decision closer (ie a month) but im sure its all too hard for them...

i agree with you point. if the afl wont give us good time slots and exposure (or at least equal) we dont have the ability to grow our brand, meaning we rely more on the afl to help us along. i cant believe the afl truly wants a 16 team competition with the current 16 teams, because they dont look after the sides equally...

i'm pretty sure my essay which pointed out that the big teams get the good draws and the small teams get the bad draws has nothing to do with how you perform on field. its only about money, not about winning. and for us to get bums on seats we'll need 10-20 years of success...

point taken but the problem has more detail than that. WC for example, play 12 games at home, 10 interstate. of the 10 interstate it is possible that they play all 10 in melbourne. they wont, they will play 5-6 in melbourne and roughly the same amount interstate. given that melbourne is also the home of the finals, it is somewhere where teams frequent. in a way it is a home away from home, especially if you are playing 5 or 6 games a year there. sort of how hawthorn made tasmania theirs this year. collingwood, in the example i gave above played only 3 or 4 interstate matches each year. in the two seasons i quoted, they played 2 games at FP each year. im not sure if thats a reoccurring theme, but do they spend more time in adelaide than other interstate venues? (i can confirm 21 games at aami, 19 at scg, 16 at subiaco, 12 at the gabba, 5 at TS, 4 at the wacca, but this is a difficult stat given teams and how long they've been around). what i am saying, is that travel will affect teams different, and if travel occurs more than every second week, chances are you are more used to it than teams that travel once a month. and if you only travel once every two months, well its probably more of a novelty than a chore...

mine said 9 consecutive years this season (making this season my 10th) however i (and my dad, who pays for it!) are sure that i have been a member longer than 9 consecutive years...

you make a good point. we appear to be overhauling a lot of things at the end of this season. could some of it be in relation to the overall change? maybe not directly, but it definitely is indirect. for mine, the logo is a logo, its a little boring but if thats the image we are going for whatever. what i dont like is the lower case e. it makes me cringe. maybe it will grow on me...

so what you are saying rhino is that we need to win lots of games, and a number of premierships over the course of 10-20 years to change and grow our supporter base so that they come to matches so that we get a fairer draw so that in turn we have a chance of winning a premiership? rhino i am not disagreeing with you about bums on seats. my comments were regarding the line of thought that success on field will yield you a better draw. it wont. only bums on seats will. i am saying that to get bums on seats we need sustained prolonged success at the top of the ladder. but i dont believe that is as easy for a club like melbourne, who get a raw deal from the afl regarding the draw, as it is for a club like collingwood, who get an easier run. perhaps the afl could even it out by saying, collingwood get bigger crowds, so they get their 18 games in melbourne, but they play last years top 8 teams twice, while the mfc can go interstate but can play the lower ranked sides. ? perhaps that will balance it. but atm it is not a balance. it is not a draw. it is an arrangement that suits the afl, which severly disadvantages some teams andlets others prosper. you cannot argue that the draw doesnt have an effect on our performance. this year maybe not, but it was ruined by injuries among other things. but for a team to win a flag, it is the little 1 and 2% things that counts, and an extra game in melbourne is an amazing difference. an extra 3 is worth god knows how much. this year it was the difference between 2nd and 8th on the ladder...and the difference between 8th and 13th.

we have stopped selling four points every year. our contract is over and im pretty sure we havnt renewed it...last year the afl made us play a home game interstate just because, and the year before we had to play home games interstate because of the commonwealth games. did collingwood have to play any home games interstate because of the commonwealth games? i bet not. the afl could fixture a dream draw for everyone. they choose not too because it doesnt make them the most money.

i understand what you are saying rhino but it is a vicious cycle. you say we need to win more to get a more favourable draw? but having a less favourable draw makes it harder to win more. if the draw was even i could agree with the reward those who perform argument, but as it stands the team that has the easier draw has more chance of being rewarded the following year. in 2004/05 collingwood finished 13th and 15th respectively. in 2006 collingwoods first interstate game was round 7. and they only played 4 interstate games for the year (subiaco, FP x2 and stadium australia in sydney (probably to try and get a big crowd in sydney). between 1995 and 2000, collingwood didnt make the finals once. they finished 10th 11th 10th 14th 16th 15th over 6 years. (in 2001 they finished 9th as well...) in 2001 they only had to go interstate 3 times (FP x2, subicao). 3 out of 22. which is interesting. because i seem to remember us having a fairly decent 2000. i think we won a lot of games and perhaps played off in the premiership. that year we had 5 interstate trips plus the 'home game' we had to play at the gabba. rhino. even when we have won games, we havnt been rewarded as you and others are claiming. collingwood had had 6 horrible years but had a dream draw, while we, who had won games, as you said, were rewarded with nothing. until the draw is made equitable all of these arguments mean nothing. the rich get richer, the poor get poorer, and certain clubs have more of a chance of winning the flag than others do. it is not about on field performances, it is about making the afl money, when it really should be about equality for all teams, regardless of financial position. if anyone wants reason why we chouldnt get the CBF money from the AFL then here it is. up to 19 games in melbourne vesus 15 games in melbourne. whos members get better value for money? whos sponsors get more tv air time? whos sponsors get advertising in the home city? what chance do we have to compete with that?

plus the other perth game and brisbane in brisbane. every year we play all the sides interstate while other clubs never get on a plane. i wonder if collingwood would have finished top four if they had the draw we get every year? and those years we crashed out of the finals? i wonder how we would have gone with 3 extra mcg games? people can claim it doesnt matter, but it does. i wouldnt care if it roated around a little bit and evened out over 5-6 years, but it doesnt. and until it doesnt we are always disadvantaged in the premiership race.