titan_uranus

Absolutely, it can. But I think it's fair to say there's a difference between insulting her intelligence or professionalism, or quality of work, and her personal appearance, which has nothing to do with anything.

Correct. After her articles through the week, she has painted only one picture, and she can't now be seen to be equivocal. As B-H and I have both said, she has hitched her wagon to our guilt, and she will stay there until the end. She has no other choice.

We also have no proof he's a bad coach with no plan. As the off-season has so far shown, 2012 was about Neeld getting to assess the list, work out who he wanted and who he didn't, and where they should be played. It was about the very beginning of his plan. The cull has been made (and may still continue), the holes were identified and, to a certain extent, filled, and now we can begin another pre-season of getting our players fit enough to play AFL. You'd have thought that after we got rid of Martin, this might have been self-evident to many... Rodan - midfielder Byrnes - HFF/FP Done.

Patrick Smith, in his article today, said the following: 'it has been a dogged and expansive inquiry which has unearthed damning evidence that Melbourne had made draft picks a priority ahead of victory' So the allegation seems to be that we had draft picks as a paramount priority. How can this be a crime? How can wanting to secure the long term viability of your football club be something the AFL wants to punish? If this is all the AFL can hang on us, then they surely can't punish us, as to do so would be to say that clubs must always take the short term view in each season.

She's merely referring to the idea she tried spouting that there are or were 'factions' in the club which 186 brought to a head, and which might still be causing problems. She's already touched on it. She has no more evidence to back it up, so she didn't go into it. You have no more evidence, or any evidence, or even a brain. So shush.

My gut feeling is that she will be OK as she will be able to rely on what could be called a defence of 'contextual truth'. In other words, if she makes one claim which is true, then the ones around it which aren't can be 'justified' by the truth of that other one. I don't think this is a certainty, though.

She's getting worse. She says we're 'pathetic and disgusting'. 'Pathetic'? Really? Caring about our long term prosperity is pathetic? I would have thought taking a view to your future is nothing short of responsible, Caroline. Then she says McLardy 'issued a plea for natural justice'. Like we're completely inundated with evidence and with nowhere to move. I didn't read the statement as a 'plea'. I saw it as a demand. She's made up her mind that we'll be 'harshly punished' and that Schwab and Connolly will be sacked. She's certainly hitched her wagon to that one. Next she rambles on about how the AFL was incompetent. Nice. Glad to see you have the ability to focus your attention somewhere other than us, Caro. Apparently it's not surprising a player has lifted the lid on the secret. Of course, she seems to think that that player knew it all. Maybe, Caro, that player's perception of things was slightly different to reality? Maybe, Caro, that player picked up on the same vibes that the rest of the football community picked up on. Maybe, Caro, that player is simply bitter. Apparently we're all 'rabid'. I'm going to give her the benefit of the doubt here and assume she used it in it's 'fanatical' sense, rather than trying to claim we all have rabies. Still, the word 'rabid' is not exactly nice. We're all as devoted and adoring of our club as any other supporters, but I doubt the supporters of Richmond would classify as 'rabid' in Caro's world. She then admits that putting players in for surgery and losing heart in a game aren't bad. Which is nice, because she then claims we had a plan that lasted weeks! Wow! Weeks! And here I was thinking that the board at Melbourne made decisions to last for a few hours at a time. She laments players being prevented from having more on-field success. Wrong, Caro. What we did was attempt to set our club up for the long run. Players don't want one or two wins here or there in 2009 when we're plummeting towards 16th anyway. They want a premiership, and that is what we were attempting to get them. You idiot. She repeatedly calls it 'fixing' of games. Incorrect again, you sloppy hack. To 'fix' a game is to predetermine its result. Which we clearly didn't do, given that at the final siren we were winning the f*cking Richmond game. We didn't 'fix' anything. To not have winning each game as the first priority is not to 'fix' the game. Finally, she tops it off by slamming us for not being able to retain Scully, a notion she hinted at earlier. Apparently, the AFL setting up GWS, giving them a massive budget, and allowing them to poach players was our fault. This piece, like all the others in her saga so far, is poorly written, unfairly biased, prejudicial, rude, unjust, and potentially defamatory. She may well be proven right. But as it stands, she is balancing everything on one thing: a directive to tell the players to lose. If that's not proven, and the whole thing falls apart, I cannot wait to see her get run out of town. Which would be good, because I don't know if I'll ever want to read any of her drivel again. Who's 'pathetic and disgusting' Caro? You.

The board is saying what it needs to say. We've been dragged through the mud all week. When the AFL gets around to finalising its investigation, we deserve to be able to reply in a formal, proper, fair manner. Demetriou's stance as depicted in The Australian is a huge help to us. He seems to have suggested that he only accepts the narrow definition of tanking (i.e. telling players to lose). Which makes sense. The AFL doesn't want tanking. It wants to be able to support its clubs and it doesn't want there to be an issue. The AFL wants its clubs to take a long term view, as it wants long term prosperity. That's why they give high draft picks to the worst clubs, FFS. I am increasingly of the view that we will only be in trouble if the AFL finds a directive telling players to lose. And I am increasingly of the view that Caroline Wilson is drawing long bows between what she has found out and what she wants the situation to be. People need to calm down and look at the facts. The facts, as yet, do not show that anyone at Melbourne told players to lose, or not try their best. The facts so far only show that we had meetings discussing the value of the PP, and the impact it would have on our attempt to get our 13th flag. The facts show that players sensed something was up. Wow. No sh*t. So did everyone else in the world. Let's all calm down. For now, at least, the facts still haven't ended it for us.

It's an argument that hasn't been properly fleshed out. What exactly is wrong with tanking? As we've all established the actions we took all had legitimate positive impacts on our long term prosperity. What is wrong with a club taking a long term view? In the end, the 2009 Premiership wasn't affected at all by our actions. There's no reasonable argument to say that we gave wins to teams who were in contention for the flag. We would have lost no matter what we did. Of course there is the integrity argument, in that it's similar to match-fixing, but in my mind tanking is clearer, more justifiable, and easier to spot than a player/coach doing something secretively with no outward justification in order to make money. I don't know. I feel I'm just saying stuff to try to defend the club. Oh well.

Today Caro steps it up: http://www.theage.com.au/afl/afl-news/jobs-on-line-dees-warned-20121101-28mx2.html She talks of employees being told they'd lose their jobs if we missed the PP. She talks of Connolly advocating the importance of getting the PP in the 'vault' meeting. She talks of people invoking Stynes' ailing heath as a motivation to lose. It's about time she added some facts to her otherwise shoddy articles. Now it's time to see how many of them turn out to be true.

It's got a 'heritage' theme but it's their regular away strip. In fact, read this: "The heritage guernsey will be worn as the Club’s new alternate strip when Essendon is the away team against St Kilda, Melbourne, Port Adelaide and Richmond." So, this really should no longer be an issue, I guess.

You win some, you lose some. Hunt = win. Folau = lose.

'Full'? 15 is 'full'? Also, prove that was said. Oh, you can't. I will give our club the benefit of the doubt when faced with accusations which are based on evidence which is flimsy at best. I am more than happy to say that I do not believe we 'deliberately decided' to tank. If the evidence suggests that this actually happened, then so be it, and I will condem our club for being incredibly stupid for doing so. But as it stands, I do not believe this to be the case.

'Openly discussed'? Do you know what 'open' means? It certainly doesn't mean a meeting behind closed doors. Then you say that no one thinks she's wrong. Of course people think she's wrong. She has evidence only of a meeting taking place, where supposedly priority picks were discussed. That is all she has. Nothing else. She's putting two and two together and deciding that we must therefore have decided to tank, and then tanked. She doesn't have the full story, she doesn't have any solid evidence, so she should stop making blunt statements implying she knows we deliberately lost games or deliberately tanked, and just provide the facts. This isn't an opinion piece.

Your 'only question' just changed from whether the players were complicit to whether what the club did was within the rules of the game. Good stuff. Do you have any evidence that the club wanted to lose? Or do you, like everyone else, know two things: one, that we engaged in routine things like experimentation and player management, and two, that there was potentially a meeting where we potentially discussed the ramifications of the priority pick? I'd suggest the latter. Which is why I'd suggest you just shush for a bit.

Law suit is immature? Right. So if we get treated wrongly, unjustly, potentially illegally (none of this has happened yet, I'm just saying what could happen), then the answer is to not sue the AFL because that would be immature?

Really? Do they? I don't think so. The question is not whether the players were complicit. They weren't. The question is not even whether the players were told to lose. The question is whether the managers/board/coaches/etc. wanted us to finish with 4 wins or fewer, and did anything in pursuit of that goal. I'd keep explaining, but your basic and simplistic view on things probably means your next post will be the same as your previous one.

She also used the phrase 'deliberate losses'. That has not been proven, and potentially is not even alleged.

Caro is wrong about Viney. From the AFL's own website: 'If a bid is made, the club that nominated the father-son player must use its next available selection if it wishes to retain its hold on that player' Thus, if we are stripped of 27, we will just use our next available selection. Go away Caro.

Everyone knows my views on Dunn. I'm holding out hope that he wants too much from us and walks when we don't give it.

He's saying that we don't get home games against Essendon because then there is the problem with how Essendon's home jumper clashes with ours, but their 'alternative' jumper also does. This isn't a problem anymore, given they have the grey clash strip now, so there's no reason for us to not be playing Essendon in home games.

You spelled 'terrible' wrong. 1. As it stands, you can't prove we did anything other than what other clubs have done for ages. If we did, then you'll find out in due course when the investigation reveals what happened. 2. No. Hyperbole. 3. Who are you worried about? Bruce? He was giving us little. Moloney? Even less. McDonald? One mistake. 4. A combination of poor drafting, poor development/coaching, a terrible environment for a player to try to become elite in, and the players themselves not being capable of stepping up to AFL level. 5. This question doesn't even make grammatical sense.

You said this: The fact that it is pick 4 is a comment on how crap we were. I agreed. Pick 4 is only 4 because we were crap and got 3. The AFL gave us 3, so they gave us 4 too, because they'd agreed to after Scully left. The fact it is compensation is only relevant to the fact that we had two picks. They are where they are because we were crap in 2012.

I was the original poster. I said that the AFL gave us pick 4 because we are crap in 2012, so to take it off us for what we did in 2009 is discordant with the reason we have it in the first place. So you've agreed with what I've said. Thanks.

And why was it pick 4? Because it was to be taken after our first round pick, which was pick 3, which we had because we were [censored]. Same diff. Be that as it may, if our club decided that we were going to experiment or whatever with the intention that we would attempt to ensure we finished the season with 4 wins, then that's still tanking. Tanking's probably only ever going to occur in the middle of the year. Most clubs would start out a year hoping for the best, then as the season goes down the drain, begin to consider the draft. Good.