titan_uranus

I'm not saying we shouldn't draft at all, obviously. What I'm saying is that I don't subscribe to the view that if we don't get a stack of high draft picks that we can't improve. There is a lot we need to change within the cub that will assist in pushing us up the ladder. Improvement from within may see players like Viney, Toumpas, Trengove, Watts, Blease, Salem, Gawn, McDonald become those A-grade players that you think we will get with high quality draft picks. Take as many PPs or father/sons as you want, but without a strong culture, leadership, good coaching, and everything else I mentioned, also no premiership. It is not all about drafting. Obviously pick 1 is better than pick 100, or even pick 20. But the point is, I do not believe that the correct approach to fixing this club is to rely on more drafting. It may be helpful, maybe very helpful, but without that internal change, it won't be sufficient. And I'd rather see us focusing on those internal things than once again sitting back, waiting until November, and hoping that the kids we take will change this club.

Rubbish. Hawthorn, Collingwood and Geelong's (and Sydney's) premierships were built on the back of hard work, strong culture, good coaching, leadership, and talent from the entire list. They most certainly did not come from a couple of talented players drafted with PPs or from Father/Son kids. Obviously they helped, but your statement distorts reality wildly and ignores the multitude of other important factors. I did word it a bit strongly when I said I was sick of people talking about it, but my general point is that I am over Melbourne supporters continually focusing their attention on the draft and considering it the be-all-and-end-all of any potential improvement. It's obviously important, but it's not going to get us there on it's own. If it was, we'd be there by now. It's definitely true that new draftees can have good first years (and second, and third). But I don't think you can go from that to saying the entire list improves simply because of one player. This is the kind of warped logic that is not useful to us at all. We will not become a good team until we have 22 decent players, plus more for depth. Draft picks, whether used in the draft or traded, don't get us those 22. Furthermore, as we've seen in the past, bringing in talent is for nought if you can't develop them, if there is an insipid culture which doesn't help retain them, or if you can't provide them with a future. Ergo, whilst we may well become a good team without quality draft picks, we can't become a good team without internal change.

No idea. It's an interesting team. Pedersen is a better backman than forward, but if he plays back he mightn't be able to be the second ruck. Meanwhile, with Waite out, we won't need Pedersen, McDonald and Frawley all in defence. They have Casboult and Henderson - McDonald to one, Frawley to the other, Pedersen maybe to play third defender with pinch hitting in the ruck? Dunn to play forward with Dawes.

Poor development does not mean 'every player is doomed to fail when they come to Melbourne'. Jones clearly has improved whilst he's been here, as have plenty of others (e.g. Garland, Jamar, McDonald, Dunn). But the point perhaps is reinforced looking at it like this - even if we took players higher than they should have, they were all still rated to go about where we picked them (save for the abominations, like Cook and Gysberts). For example, even if Blease at 17 was a touch too high at the time, it would be fair to put him around, say 25. For a pick 25, Blease hasn't been good enough. The players we have taken haven't met their subjective draft position value, but they also haven't met their objective value (where there is a difference). With the reports at the time suggesting that almost all our picks (again, with the abominations the exception) were easily justifiable at the time, the focus comes down to whether or not they were given the best chance of fulfilling their potential at Melbourne. I think it's patently obvious they were not. Bad development was not at the fringes - it was, and remains, at the core of this club's malaise.

I'm am so sick of Melbourne supporters continually talking about the draft. It's been finally recognised the last week or so, but this is the attitude that contributed to this club's demise. This constant perception that 'oh, we'll just get some new kids, then we'll be right'. Even if we draft the next Lance Franklin this year, we will go nowhere until we improve across our entire list. Let's start focusing on internal change, not external change.

This thread is an embarrassment. As I said earlier, I'm ashamed that there are MFC supporters who are so ignorant, rude, insensitive, stupid, and disgraceful.

You're right. You can't just have failed at recruiting year after year. The talent pool is big enough at the picks we've had that you could take any one of the players reasonable to go at that pick and get a decent player. The common thread is not the individual choices, but the club they came to. There is almost nothing to be gained from these sorts of comparisons. Left-field picks are criticisable, like Cook and Gysberts. Otherwise, our recruiters took players that were expected to be taken around where we took. Our biggest recruiting issue has been trends. We took players in batches - in the late Daniher era we took a few too many stocky bodies (Bate, Dunn, Bartram, Jones, Moloney). Then, we overcorrected under Bailey in looking for the more skilled players (Morton, Blease, Strauss, Gysberts). Those kinds of trends are much more worth debating than individual picks.

Read autocol's post. Then compare it to angrydemon's. Two starker contrasts you probably could not see. I'm ashamed that people like angrydemon are Melbourne suppoters, tbh.

Collingwood did not want to move away from black and white, so they settled upon their white jumper with black stripes, which solves their problems. If you think wearing white 'makes us look weak and reduces morale' then you obviously don't watch us play. If you did, you'd realise that our ineptitude is what makes us look weak and destroys morale. Wearing white has nothing to do with anything. It only angers people like you who personally don't like it. The other 99% of the AFL world could not care less.

Carlton was disgraceful on Sunday night. They were no better than we have been this year, if not worse. This is the kind of game a full-strength Melbourne could win. If Dawes plays, we get closer. But no Jamar, Garland and Hogan still means we're running at below 100%, and 100% of Melbourne is not much.

Terrible news for all involved. Hopefully Mitch is able to start the recovery process, and work towards a better life.

Not every player at every club wins contested footy. Some players play more uncontested footy. At Melbourne, they weren't able to do that because we demanded they lift their contested play, partly because we didn't have any midfielders who were much good at it. Trying to compare us to the Suns or Giants is ridiculous. They had tonnes of first round picks all playing and growing together, with an ability to scoop leaders and talent off the top of the competition (e.g. Ablett, Ward). We brought in one or two picks per year (not 8 or 9 like GWS/GC) and asked them to immediately become really good players when they weren't able and had no one to help them. No, I don't have three players I support. I'll get interested in the draft later in the year. Regardless, why is it that if I don't know who the gun kids are in April that I have to back the clubs underperformance (why did you put that in capitals? Are you trying to say I think the club isn't underperforming?) or that I sit in the cheap seats (what the hell does that have to do with anything?).

Watching Essendon v Carlton is showing me two (and a half) things. First, Essendon have to be a premiership threat this year. They were a kick away from beating Hawthorn last week, a team that 7 days later pantsed Fremantle. Their ball movement is fantastic, they don't have many holes in their list, and they have the genuine A-graders you need to get to the top. You don't have to like the team, the club, the drugs stuff, Dank, Hird, Thompson, whatever, but you have to give the players credit for sticking through it all and playing top-notch football throughout. Good on them I say. Second, Carlton is awful. Some of their play resembles Melbourne. They go backwards and sideways because they have no idea how to progress the ball forward when under pressure, their skills are sub-par leading to unpressured turnovers, and they have a misfunctioning forward line. I don't think we are good enough to win next week, but I can see it being close. The 'half' is that Malthouse, Neeld, Watters and Buckley all had similar ideas of how to build a team, and over the last few years that's seen Melbourne, St Kilda, Carlton and Collingwood either fall apart or stagnate worryingly despite copious talent. Buckley's changed his tactics this year, but otherwise, the common thread is hard to ignore I think.

Right. Because you wanted them, that must mean they were the choices that should have been made. Palmer's career is done, crap player. You've written Salem off after 0 games. Atley is just going OK at the moment (obviously better than Cook but at Melbourne Atley would be a failure, another 'skinny kid'). We have players to play Talia's role, so we don't really need him. As for Wines v Toumpas, see every other thread/discussion/waste of time we've devoted to that. Morton and Gysberts were talented juniors who came to a club that couldn't give them the environment to let them flourish. Instead, we played them too early, too often, in roles they couldn't handle for their age/development, with no support, leadership or proper coaching. That's the real issue.

That's a huge problem. The way we treated Watts (the QBD debacle), Trengove (youngest ever AFL captain), Grimes (not really the leader we made him out to be), Morton (how many positions did we try playing him in?), amongst others, has severely contributed to our demise.

Whatever any of us intend for the medium term, and obviously that could still eventuate, no one could have intended this for the short term. Our level of uncompetitiveness in various areas against St Kilda and GWS, coupled with our total lack of competitiveness against West Coast, is nothing short of troubling. I don't usually agree with the sky-is-falling-down style posts, but I agree that Roos and Jackson should prove that they are actually here to fix the Melbourne Football Club by committing further. To be sitting on two year involvements suggests, obviously, that they might leave soon, and it is patently clear that we are nowhere near any sort of pass mark for this club by that point.

Another thread on drafting. Lamashtu posted recently about how this thought process that if we'd only taken the right kids and everything would be better is the exact reason we're where we are at right now. Our strategy was to take our draft picks, bring in talented kids, and have them pull us up off the bottom of the ladder. The argument that we stuffed up our recruiting and that this 'says it all really' is indicative of the attitude that the MFC ruined this club with, this idea that 'oh, let's just stack the list with talented kids and wait a few years, then we'll be fine'. Let's focus on some of the more pressing issues, that can actually be fixed (theoretically, anyway): our attitude, our lack of being a team, our skills, our efforts, our game plan.

Mumford destroyed Spencer today. Not even close to a contest. Spencer was woeful. I've never seen anything in Spencer to suggest he'll be any good at AFL level, and 2014 has strengthened that view.

Over the last 8 years, there have been plenty of games that we've lost, badly, after which I come on here to debate. For a lot of them, I tried as hard as I could to be optimistic, to point to the positives and to focus on those who were debating things rationally. I've never seen Demonland, and certain posters on here, as despondent as they are now. We had a bad coach. We fixed that. We still can't play football. We had a bad CEO. We fixed that. We still can't play football. We had an awful midfield. We tried to fix that. We still can't play football. What is standing out so far this year is the ineptitude of so many players. There is a distinct lack of skill across the board, a disgraceful inability to execute the basics. This is Grimes' 7th year of AFL. He still can't kick. It's Spencer's 6th season of football. He is still appallingly bad as a ruckman. It's Fitzpatrick's 4th, and he still looks like he has just finished school. We have Byrnes, Bail, Evans, Terlich and M Jones who, along with Spencer and Fitzpatrick, almost certainly wouldn't be getting games at any other club. We have defenders like Pedersen and McDonald, who can do certain things but are very limited in their skills. We have talented players in Watts and Howe (along with others like Blease and Strauss) who are far, far too inconsistent. I think the one thing that has been consistent in our 8-year slump is that we do not play like a team. We play like 22 individuals trying to play their own roles. We don't gel. We don't work for one another. Our communication is poor. Our feel and sense of where players are going to be is non-existent. Our confidence in our teammates to do what needs to be done is zero. We drop our heads too easily because we don't have that faith and that sense of being in things as a team. We are a group of individuals who aren't very talented and for whom mistakes destroy confidence, and since we make a lot of mistakes, we lose that confidence too quickly. http://www.melbournefc.com.au/video/2014-04-06/rd-3-paul-roos-postmatch-media-conference FFS. If we had taken Kelly, he'd stink (because he'd have no midfield support, he'd have no one to kick to, he'd have no leadership, and he'd be asked to be doing too much too soon). Then you and everyone else would be saying 'why did we take another skinny kid?'. Our recent drafting has been fine and is not even close to being relevant in why we're despicable right now.

He responded to the criticism of Watts by noting the entire team is down on efficiency and it's raining. Valid points. Your 'criticism' was to have a go at his favourite player. He wins.

Oh dear. Watts is loose in defence. 5 man forward line. How does taking someone out of the forward line make it easier to score goals? Third consecutive senior coach who thinks that a loose man back is a good idea. It never works for us.

A winning score today might only take 6 or 7 goals. Remember, they've only got 2 goals so far.

We need as much run as we can get; Spencer, Fitzpatrick or Georgiou have to be the sub.

How many Melbourne players from the last 10 years are flawless, such that there are no grounds to make fun of someone for naming them as their favourite? Nathan Jones? David Neitz? I mean, there aren't many choices. Let's leave people alone for having their favourites and debate real issues.

We have to be. 8 points in a low-scoring game. We may only have 1 goal but they only have 2, and for every turnover we've had they've had one as well. A lift in the clearances and some cleanliness inside 50 will help.