Axis of Bob

If you don't care about anything else then stop ruining every other thread with the same rubbish. Keep it to the threads specifically about what you do care about. Let those who are interested in that topic discuss it in peace. This thread is about Heath Scotland's assault charge, not whether or not the MFC is playing well at the moment.

I can deal with that, rpfc. Hopefully the standard of posting on Demonland improves, in which case it's a small price to pay.

Incredible. How did you manage to get another thoughtless sledge of our club into a thread about an opposition player being charged for assault? Surely more interesting things about this thread could be thought of, such as how will Carlton deal with this from both a PR and playing point of view. Will Scotland be suspended, fined, sacked .......? Surely in your many years on this earth you have developed a second trick to entertain us all with. Surely ......

Hmmmm, good question. I'm not sure. Firstly it would depend on where Viney will be bid for. If it means that we get early enough that we can pick up Viney with our second round pick then it makes it interesting. Otherwise no way. I suspect that I wouldn't, purely because one of the platforms one which Neeld would have been selected would be based on culture transformation. But I'm not sure.

It depends what his role was and how well he played it.

Interesting bump. I don't think that it is to do with a culture that has been created by tanking, but rather it is a culture was present independently of tanking. By this I mean that we have a culture of flair and attack, playing to instinct, rather than a defence first, team structure culture. This is demonstrated by the hard time that many players are having adapting to this new way of thinking in the new game plan. I also think that it would not have been allowed to happen by the players if a different culture was present in the club at the time. But what it does show, several years down the track, is how irrelevant the results of a few years ago are. I don't look back at the game worried about our tanking, but rather I appreciate our new co-captain, Jack Trengove. As it turns out, our benefit from this has been delayed even more, with our pick 1 now becoming two first round picks this year. However it is more likely that this would have been anyway, while pick 2 (Trengove) was the bonus that we received.

hardtack: There we go. Good stuff. Although I believe you to be wrong, I appreciate that at least you attempted to back up what you were saying with something that made it look like you had thought about what you were saying. The first quote was a cheap shot from me. I accept that. It was my emotional release because I didn't want to do what I ended up doing, but old dee's comment about constructive criticism eventually pushed me over the edge. The rest of what I was saying was an attempt to get old dee, and other posters clicking in this thread to continue their bitchfest, to consider that this was not constructive. I was hoping to use his own words so that he would better recognise this. I was hoping that this wouldn't take as long as it did. This thread has been anything but constructive, so I hoped that, as old dee had a look/think through this thread, he would recognise this and perhaps Demonland would be better for it. Unfortunately he then continued to ignore this. I showed that this was the case and was hoping that showing him that he had not answered the question would prompt him into reflecting on the thread. I did this several times to prompt. He did not do so, so I changed tack, removed the subtlety and made it far more obvious what the point was that I was trying to make. The final quote you had was drawing the logical conclusion to this point of argument (and, as an extension, of the common thread of Demonland) that old dee's inability to find anything constructive was a symptom of a greater issue on Demonland - ie, that there is very little constructive thought, but rather a degeneration into mindless denigration of the club at every turn. There are, of course, exceptions but they are unfortunately few and far between. Hopefully this explains my side of this.

How am I not contributing thinking to my posts? I am backing everything up with quotes and reasoning of why I'm doing it. How is this not contributing thought? Show me where.

How about responding to this, which I have asked you no less than 4 times in a row. This is the fifth. Or else, maybe you would like to continue doing this: If people were being constructive, rather than simply sitting in a circle and (mindlessly) trying to show everyone how they are angrier and more depressed than everyone else, then this board would not have degenerated into the shallow mothers club that it is becoming. Contribute some thinking to your posts (and this goes for nearly everyone in this thread) or STFU.

You ridiculed someone for daring to consider that this mindless, unconstructive bitching about the club was bad for the club. You said that unconditional support was not good for the club. In fact it needs constructive criticism. So show me the constructive criticism. Was your comment about constructive criticism a joke? And I mean the sort of joke that you're thinking of, not the one I'm thinking of.

I agree that Gysberts looks very good. For him it is just a matter of getting the running and natural maturity into him, because he has incredible hands in close as an extractor and is a natural footballer. But he may not be the sort of midfielder that will single handedly take us to victory unless he improves his running. He'll certainly need friends in the midfield. One thing that I think our midfield lacks is running power. It was exposed on the weekend with West Coast and it is interesting to note that our best runners are not necessarily our best midfielders. Trengove and Jones are, but after that we have flankers and talls. That needs to change. Grimes is a top runner and Howe is good. Viney is good. Does that mean that we need several strong runners in the midfield, or maybe throw our eggs into a basket with one star to make it easier for the others?

That's great. Well done. Now that you've amused yourself, show me where the criticism has been constructive.

Show me some. Would you recognise it?

Show me where this has been constructive.

OK, I'm sick of sorting through the many threads of complete crap and have decided to start something constructive instead. Our overall structure of a side looks quite good if we project their quality into the future. A forward line of Clark, Watts, Howe, McDonald, Cook, Fitzpatrick etc has quality and potential. Our defence of Frawley, Garland, Davis, Sellar, Rivers, etc has some established quality and some potential too. Between these players we should be able to fashion high quality book ends in time. However, as has been noted, the problem is trying to give adequate supply to the forwards and restrict the supply to the defenders. The problem is the midfield. We lack the real top end quality, and we lack a depth of quality. We look at players like Moloney to lead our midfield, but in top 4 teams the midfield is being led by: Swan, Pendlebury, Mitchell, Hodge, Judd, Murphy, Selwood, Bartel, Priddis, Kerr, etc. These teams have two or more players who are far better than our best. Our midfield has some good young players. Our most promising are Trengove and Gysberts, with Jones probably starting to enter his productive years. I think Trengove has the chance to be a very good player because of his ability to find a bit of time in traffic. Gysberts should also be very good, but will need time to develop his running capacity. Jones has shown so far this year that his power running will hld him in good stead. Aside from that we lack. But what are we going to do about it? Thankfully we have a very strong draft hand coming up in a very strong draft. This involves the two fairly early draft picks from Scully. We are also committed to a high quality midfielder in Viney. We have a few different ways we could do it. Firstly we could look to fill other holes in the draft and move some of our more talented players into the midfield. These players include Grimes, Watts and Howe. This would have the advantage of giving us a more rounded team, but it would rely on our current list being able to give us a good enough midfield. Secondly we could look to trade one, or both, of those early draft picks for a top quality mature midfielder. This would involve spending both picks and money, but it would give us an immediate boost in the same way that Clark did for our forward line. Thirdly, we could trade for one of the 17 year old picks that GWS has access to. These would be the top players in next year's draft, as they are below draft age this year, in the same way as O'Meara and Crouch were this year. This could give us really top talent, but we would have to wait even longer for the player to become good. And fourthly, we could just spend our two early picks on the best two midfielders that we can. This will improve our midfield, but will it get us a star, or just two good midfielders? And it will take time for those players to make an impact. So what do you think we should do to achieve a premiership midfield? And, more importantly, why do you think we should do that?

Geez, some of you guys must be fun at parties.

We were so short of key defenders that we traded Warnock (because he couldn't get a game) and then switched Tom McDonald from a defender into a forward. Yep, key defenders is really the place that we are weak in. Maybe we could throw Talia into the midfield to win clearances for us.

I liked this. It felt so good that I Unliked it just so that I could press Like again.

Did the surgery teach him to kick?

Given that we were in the media spotlight, we had to act quickly on this one to be able to control the story. We can now control the message from the story as 'we are a club of high integrity and this is unacceptable - we're too good for him so we dumped him', rather than sitting on our hands for a day and then having the media find a different angle as they speculated.

Cox, Naitanui, Lynch. Then there's their actually key forward, in Kennedy.

The game plan, when done properly, was what you saw in the second half of the first quarter. It is a defensive game plan. It involves territorial dominance by reducing the opposition's ability to counterattack. We locked the ball in for long periods of time and had many repeat entries and turned over their kicks when they tried to leave their defensive 50. If we bring the ball back into the middle then a turnover is very costly. Keepping the ball wide means that we can defend the oppostion much more easily. Unfortunately we lost the clearances so badly that we couldn't get the ball forward enough to keep it there. Bailey counterattacked far more than Neeld and it was attractive, but turnovers would be very costly. Contested ball will be far more important for us now as we try to drive the ball forward to gain territory rather than run the ball like we used to.

I'd be very surprised if the full game plan was on display at the moment. He's only had a few games with this team, so he will have drilled in thee most important aspects of it. Once we have mastered these parts I'm sure he will add extra layers of complexity, one at a time. Think of it like school. There's no point telling someone to write an essay on Romeo and Juliet if they can't read or write. So you teach them basic literacy first. You then teach them important skills that they need to form a strong argument. Then you give them a structure to use to construct an essay. Finally, once they have every tool they need, you give them an essay to write. They you keep practicing. I'd suggest that the defensive gameplan is being heavily focussed on for the moment. While this is happening the offensive plan is being made deliberately simple (although probably a basis for the ultimate plan). Kicking the ball long to marking targets and minimising the pain from turnovers. Once the players have mastered the inital aspects of the plan Neeld may give themextra options to move the ball forward. Ross Lyon took a while, with a talented team, to get his side playing to his structure. He was canned after he took over from Thomas. He won 4 of the first 7 games with a team that had Riewoldt, Dal Santo, Goddard, Hayes, Rob Harvey, Ball and Leigh Montagna. Neeld is also a very structured coach. I'm not expecting fireworks early.

Yep, just the sort of outside player that will helps us win clearances.

"Anybody who says that they're great at communicating but 'people are bad at listening' is confused about how communication works"