titan_uranus

Statement from Don: http://www.melbournefc.com.au/news/2013-06-14/from-the-president

MELBOURNE president Don McLardy has resigned. The Demons boss stepped down at a club board meeting this afternoon. Vice-president Peter Spargo will serve as interim president. Board member Geoff Freeman, who has been struggling with his health, remains the front-runner to take the position long-term but is yet to commit. Freeman will travel overseas in the coming weeks and decide if he wants the job. The Demons have embarked on a review led by John Trotter into reshaping the club's board. McLardy took over as Melbourne president during Jim Stynes' battle with cancer in February last year. He endured 18-months of on and off-field failures headed by the AFL tanking investigation. Poor crowd projections, payouts to key staff and revenue shortfalls see the Dees facing a $5 million black hole over the next two years. McLardy's departure comes just weeks after the sacking of chief executive Cameron Schwab. McLardy and new CEO Peter Jackson fronted the AFL Commission today to outline a case for emergency funding. The club will confirm McLardy's resignation at a press conference later today.

HUN reporting: Melbourne president Don McLardy stands down

Has this been confirmed? Anyway, HUN reporting that McLardy has resigned: http://www.heraldsun.com.au/sport/afl/melbourne-president-don-mclardy-stands-down/story-fni5f91a-1226663852725

No, it's not that simple, and that's my point. Our plight is not as simple as saying 'if we'd picked X instead of Y, B instead of A, we'd be much better'. That's not true at all. Drafting choices are but one of the many things we could have improved over the last 6 years. To me, it's not as important as a lot of the others.

Thanks for the stats. Wasn't having a go at you, I was having a go at those who continually say that we're where we are mainly because we picked the wrong players.

Evans has shown he is consistently average. Good on him for his effort and the fact that he can hold his head high right now, but in the long run I'm not sure I see any future in him. For anything McKenzie does at the stoppages, he lets himself down in what he does elsewhere. As BH said, players like him aren't common in 2013, mainly because the game doesn't suit them. You cannot afford to carry players these days who can't provide anything offensively. What's worse, McKenzie has a clear aversion to kicking, always looking to handpass. He needs to learn to kick, and he needs to learn to be more damaging when we have the ball. Right now, he's not giving us enough. If you need someone to define soft to you, you probably need to watch more football. Needless to say, Strauss suffers from that curse. He doesn't attack the ball, he doesn't get in and under packs, he doesn't attack contests with conviction, he doesn't tackle hard, or hit players hard. Pedersen is really weak for a man with his body in one-on-one marking contests. He reminds me of Paul Johnson in that he has a body but can't for the life of him use it. I don't think either BH or I wrote Fitzpatrick off. My view is that he has enormous upside and that with more games under his belt we will hopefully get to see if he is going to make it long term. I'm not holding high hopes, but I'd like to see more.

Agree with all of this except for Tapscott and Davey. Outside of strength and a long kick, I don't think Tapscott brings enough to the table, and I think Davey still has a year or two of being a forward pocket/HFF at least. The rest of it, including your core, I agree with. And it's that core that gives me a bit of hope.

No Adelaide, North Melbourne or Gold Coast? GWS is in there twice too. What the stats do show, though, is that those who wish to jump to the 'we've drafted so poorly' statement would do well to reflect on the facts. Yes, our drafting could clearly have been better. But the more relevant discussion should be around what we did with the talent that walked through the door.

Well that's weird. I would, but I think that's been done already. The offending line has been removed from the post.

The report button is to the left of the 'Multiquote' button. If you hover your cursor above it, it lights up.

It's nowhere near as bad an article as people are making it seem. The lack of research into contractual status kills it, but if you ignore that, and you just take it as an assessment of our list (i.e. a list of 'required players', a list of 'not required players' and a list of 'not sure yet'), he's got most players where you'd expect. It's not written for MFC supporters, it's written for non-MFC supporters to give them what sounds like a nice appraisal of a list they otherwise wouldn't know anything about. He's missed Gawn and Terlich, but I can't remember the last time a journalist went through all 44 players in an article. It's clearly not the best article, but for what it is, a simple analysis of a list, it's not as bad as some make it out to be.

You don't really need a staff member to tell you that.

There are plenty of managers who would recommend staying beyond 2015 (not 2014). First, we'll be able to offer him more than any other club, so financially there is a strong incentive. Second, he's going to be the apple in every Melbourne kid's eye because he'll stand out like a diamond in the rough - meaning his sponsorship and marketing value improves here relative to other clubs with other young stars. Third, 2013 should (hopefully) represent the bottoming out of this club, meaning that it's all upwards from here. Fourth, adding in potentially ND2, and/or a FA, and/or a trade, he'll have N Jones, Viney, Toumpas, Grimes, Trengove and M Jones to deliver the ball to him - with time, and with hopefully one or two more mids, that's a decent amount of supply. That's how I'd spin it, anyway.

Upset of the round could be the Suns, or the Dogs even (if Collingwood play like they did on Monday, they're beatable by any team not called Melbourne). Don't think the Crows can get a win in their current form at the G, but Richmond is exactly the team you'd back to beat West Coast in Perth and back that up by losing at home to Adelaide.

Rates McKenzie and Blease too highly and Sylvia, Davey and Byrnes too lowly, for mine. Otherwise, a relatively fair analysis. Can hardly believe I just wrote that regarding a Robert Walls article.

45, they're referring to getting 40,000 to a match in Melbourne against an interstate club.

To use a line of reasoning you love to employ - is 61 better than Davey? That argument, to me, rests in Davey's favour.

You spoke to a couple of people who help out over the summer, and they told you, at a VFL game, what is going on currently in an AFL side. Right. Though I am sceptical of your 'source', you're probably right in that Clark mightn't play again in 2013. The way Misson phrased things this morning hinted at that: “When he’s going to be back, we’re not 100 per cent sure, but we’re conscious that this is really a career defining rehab for Mitch,” he said. “We can’t put a time on when he’ll be back, but we’re really confident that he’s going to overcome this injury and be back to full capacity. Hardly positive to say we're confident he'll overcome it.

Can't - he's contracted till the end of 2014, thanks to a typically awful MFC decision at the end of last year to give him two more years. To get him off the list we need to trade him, which isn't going to happen (no other club is dumb enough to want him).

I started a thread on this point the other week. Mainly got howled down by those saying 'but GC was full of top-end talent, we're not'. In part it was circular reasoning, and in part it was MFCSS. In part, of course, it's true - their list is better than ours. And we don't have Ablett. But what the Gold Coast's development from 2012 to 2013 has shown is that a team can indeed go from a 0-14 start to a 5-6 start, running with Hawthorn and Geelong for three quarters, and clearly being a decent, if only mid-table, AFL side. That doesn't mean it is necessarily going to happen to us, but it means that hope is not necessarily misguided, and a lot of what some on here talk about in terms of needing 2 years, 3 pre-seasons and time may well in fact be fair.

You're slowly descending into insanity, WYL. All I did was point out the inconsistency in your own argument ('I'm not nostalgic, but remember the 90s!!'). How that equates to me having 'given up', I don't know.

FYI, here is rpfc's wonderfully comprehensive Contracts Thread. OOC at the end of 2013 - Watts, Sylvia (UFA), Davey (RFA), Taggert, Gawn, Tynan, Fitzpatrick, Nicholson, MacDonald, Sellar, Jetta, Davis, Rodan, Gillies, with Magner, Couch Clisby and Stark of the rookies

Your assessment of Tapscott is flattering in the extreme. He's been the sub the last two weeks due to a lack of input before that. He's not adding anything to the side right now, whether he has potential or not. Fair assessment of McKenzie v Couch and Magner. I wasn't aware of the age difference. I see what you're saying about height of mids, but if we're playing a mid because he's a few centimetres taller than other mids in the off chance these mids need to be spoiling their opponents, we're picking players for the wrong reason. In terms of the drive of these three players, I haven't seen anything to suggest that Magner and Couch lack the drive McKenzie has - their continual good form at Casey suggests they're busting the door down trying to get called up. His stopping work has been commendable, at times he's shut down some great mids. But in 2013 I don't think he's played as well as he has in previous years, and I don't think that he is adding much to the side. I would like to see what Magner and/or Couch can do in the AFL side. Simultaneously sending McKenzie to Casey to get him to be more offensive kills two birds with one stone. In the end, it may well be the case that none of these three are long-term AFL players. I'm certainly not in the position right now where I think any of them are.

WYL, this is why so few people on here can't stomach reading your continual bantering. You undermine your own argument within the very argument itself.