Jarka

You may be on to something...

Oh yeah, I'd much rather to not tank and be in our position than Carlton's...

Crap, ran out of popcorn...

Brad Green is the best choice imo, but it just highlights how badly the club stuffed up the leadership group in the first place. McLean would be an inspired choice (and definitely a brave one) but I'd prefer him to work his arse off all year to redeem himself, mind you I think he'd do a great job. None of the current v.c.'s scream out 'pick me'. Edit - It's a pity it's not a public poll

What the AFL are going to do is to make it cheaper for clubs like Melbourne to field a reserves team if they wish.

Oh dear, Y_M is going to be unbearable, we'll never hear the end of it

West Coast wasn't able to get their hands on the number 1 pick even with Chris Judd as bait, so no, Brown is not worth the number one pick.

That would be the best case scenario for the club, take an absolute gun with the first pick plus 3 other handy first rounders, then reload the team adding Grimes and Maric as well. Added to that they should be able to throw enough cash around with our upcoming retirements to lure a big name in the psd.

No, we weren't doing alright. We were finishing middle of the table, it's just that this competition rewards half of the teams with finals so average teams get it. If you wanted a realistic evaluation of where we were at then you had to look at our finals results, which were quite simply terrible.

We've been a basket case for several years now, you just had to look at how insipidly we'd drop out of the finals in previous years. Any time a club applies just a little bit of pressure and we'd fold. We need to clear out the majority of our 24 plus players and rebuild the list. First pick this year will help but we probably need to back it up with the first two picks the following year as well.

I disagree. Green was played out of position by Daniher because we had no genuine midfielders and he and others like Bruce were forced to assume a role not suited to their style of play.

I love these threads

Bailey is trying o do his best with a sub-standard list, as Paul Keating once said, "it's the recession that we had to have"

Agreed RR. Reach Youth is an impressive outfit however in comparison to BHP it might as well be one of those sausage sizzle stalls out the front of a Bunnings.

Nah, trust me, he was always going to go home.

Don't hold your breath

Actually footy_minister your post has reminded me of another experience with the club. About 18 months ago I contacted the club about a possible partnership, I was with the CBA in Home Loans at the time. The offer was to advertise in our magazines that if any MFC fan took out a home loan or refinanced to the CBA then I would give them a special discounted rate, discounted establishment fee and we would pay the MFC a 'spotters fee', normally around $1,200 to $2,500 per deal depending on volume. Basically the deal would involve no work from the club, just advertising in the mag and perhaps adding a flyer in their membership drive, we were prepared to pay all the costs. We had done similiar campaigns with other organisations and the general return was about 5 - 10 deals a month, giving a minimum return of around $6,000 per month, $72k per year. Small bikkies when looking at our total income, but not so small considering our profits... The offer was looked at (I won't give a name) and the guy told me that he'd get back to me. After a couple of months I had no response, got in contact again and the some story, he'd get back to me. I gave up in the end, they obviously weren't interested.

Yeah, widely accepted rule in sales, if a customer gets good service then they'll tell someone about it, but if they get poor service they'll tell everyone.

Now that's funny

Heh, that's funny, I think I won by a mere 10 points which just rubs salt into the wound. What happened was that I was so busy with work and family that I completely forgot to update the team, so for the first 3 weeks my scores were crap. Still not great though, around 300 off the leaders.

Correct, add Matty Collins from memory

I was Bassett's player sponsor, and yes he did break his pelvis but the reaosn why he wanted to leave was that he was frustrated with playing in the reserves on grounds like Richmond's Punt Road oval. He felt that he was better than that and Adelaide had basically guaranteed him senior playing time, something which we didn't do. I don't blame the club though because it showed that he didn't have the mental strength to win his spot, although I believe it was just an excuse to go back to his home state. Pity, he's a very good player and we could have used him over the last decade.

I'd be very happy with this

Wow, just wow. This thread is a perfect example of what's stopping this website from turning into a great one, at the moment it's just good and after reading this thread it's laughable that I've been accused of having a 'vendetta' against the mods... Anyway, back to the topic... I've had experience with our 'marketing department' in the past witha similar situation. Previously I was a player sponsor for Nathan Bassett and Nathan Brown for several years. With Brownie I had opted for the upgraded sponsor version which cost about $5.5k per year, so I was a fair contributor to the club. My step sister lived in Warburton at the time, a fairly poor area and her two kids were enrolled at the local primary school which was suffering badly from a lack of funding. So a few of us decided to do something about it and try to raise some much needed cash, one of the projects was to arrange a raffle. There was also a Carlton and Collingwood supporter involved so we decided that we were going to get a signed jumper from each club as part of the prizes, the idea being that if you won the jumper then you'd 'donate' it to one of the kids in the class. Collingwood and Carlton bent over backwards to help out supplying a jumper and getting the players to sign it. I contacted the club and made my request and the response was positive but in the end nothing happened. In the end I bought a jumper myself, took an afternoon off work to go down to junction oval, spoke with Brownie after training and got some of the lads to sign it. My request was not from someone off the street, I was well known in the club at the time, but it just goes to show the difference in attitude compared to the 'bigger' clubs. I didn't make a big deal about it because I felt it wasn't needed, it was just a small insignificant matter, except for winning a devoted young fan at the grass root level... To be fair this was the previous administration. On the flip side I've also had some wonderful service from within the club. Cameron Schwab spoke to me for half an hour after a draft trying to work out the best player for me to sponsor, in the end he insisted I take Brownie over some of the other higher profile kids because of his attitude. A decision which turned out to be wonderful, Brownie is a great bloke and did his utmost to make me feel comfortable and constantlt went out of hsi way to speak to me and my guests. Janette (or is it Janine), the receptionist, also constantly went out of her way to help me, often with very minor requests. She provided a fantastic service, I cannot speak highly enough of her. So in summary sometimes they get it wrong, but sometimes they get it very right. It probably depends on how busy they are when you make your request, and I know first hand how busy those guys get. It's not a normal 9 to 5 job, they work bloody hard and they are always undermanned to keep the costs down.

Yeah, must be tough for him, but of course the 500k per year would have nothing to do with it.... Seriously though, we as a club need to learn to honour our champion players. This is something I think the club has lacked over the last twenty years or so but there is one thing worse than that and that's when a champion player goes one (or two) season too long. It doesn't help the player and it doesn't help the club, take a look at Gehrig this year with the saints. The other side of the argument is that we should be more lenient with our club champions, to give them a bonus year for the efforts. It's a tough issue to deal with for both parties. Initial stages it appears that Neitz has got it wrong pulling on the boots again, but the club is in the business of winning premierships so we need to get the balance right without giving in to our emotions too much. Perhaps a good outcome would have been for Neitz to have retired last year but be employed by the club as a forward coach for an extra year or two who also trained with the group...