Rodney (Balls) Grinter

I thought it was basically a regurgitation of the Wheatly interview. But that's ok, I like what he had said to Wheatly and the HS article probably just reinforced and reached a larger audience.

T Mac was one of the few that could keep up with Nick Riewoldt when he was up and about. Nice to see the tables turned a bit on his role/position.

To be honest, I haven't seen the video and didn't watch draft night either, but from past experience and what I'm hearing it sounds like it could all be done a whole lot better. If the AFL and TV producers can get some more exposure and advertising sales out of it then why not and let's face it, there is probably a market for it at that time of year, when some people are probably craving some more footy action and/or if you are a struggling club as we have been in the past, it's probably one of the football highlights of the year. By the sounds of it though, probably less focus on draft night proceedings/machinations and more emphasis on player highlights, bio's etc could be more like what's required. It could actually be a good opertunity to provide a bit of airtime and public reconition for the TAC/underage comp level coaches etc.

I guess depending on how old he was when the info was uploaded, he may not be as tall as Jimmy.

Yeah, ooops, ok, my mistake. Let's hope he's a mature minded underage player then. With the elite sporting background of his parents, that's probably a fair bet too. We could have ourselves a real bargain in this instance given that we have the opportunity to put some good development into a great athlete whilst he's still effectively an underage player, prevent him from going into the draft. Effectively as I understand the rookie promotion selection (which isn't very well) we could pick him up with our last draft pick providing he is nominated for such prior to the draft? Really does go a long way to explaining why we didn't go for any project ruckman in this year's draft.

Do you mean Vanders or Hore Dazzle?

Maaan 100 days. That is sooo long.

Hey, we're an hour behind up here in Qld (though some would say it's 9 years 364 days and 23hrs behind), so it was around 10:30pm, just on my bedtime.

Yep and just watching it again, T Mac actually kicks for goal from right on 50. http://m.melbournefc.com.au/video/2018-08-27/rd-23-all-the-goals

The MFC has had some great sucess with mature age recuits in recient times and just looking over our list at present, I count 12 mature age players on our main or supplemtry lists as of the post season recruiting period. The list (largely per my memory) is per the below; Austin Bradtke Bayley Fritsch Mitch Hannan Marty Hore Declan Keilty Corey Maynard Joel Smith Timothy Smith Aaron vandenBerg Corey Wagner Josh Wagner Guy Walker Interested in people's opinions on: 1. Who would be the best player on the list based on AFL performance to date; And; 2. Who has the potential to become the best recruit over the entirity of their career Arguably, Michael Hibberd and Neville Jetta could be included in the above list, but I've excluded them from the discussion on the basis that: A. Whilst Michael Hibberd was originally got his break in the game as a mature age player with Essendon, he was recruited to Melbourne as a well established, many would say elite player; B. Neville was originally recruited to the MFC directly from the elite U18 system in WA and whist he was relegated to the rookie list for a period, he never truly left being listed by the MFC and that environment. Answer away...

Selwood loosing his shiit and giving away that free kick to Melksham was soo very enjoyable to watch as well. Jack Viney's the tackling machine's effort that whole game was absolutely sensational. Has set a new standard for a player comming back from injury - take note Jake Lever!

The @Clintosaurus just beat me to it, but Frosty's 65m barrel out of full back into the centre square which goes coast to coast for a goal (one of the finals, Vs Hawthorn I think); And a few more that come to mind: Frosty evades players at center half back and drills it onto Tommy Mac's chest for a converted shot on goal from about 40-45m out Vs GWS final round; Frosty spinning away and then burning off Franklin was a rare moment of joy after quart time of that game. Max Gawn snaps banana/checkside from the boundary X 2 Vs Essendon and then points to the twit Bummers fan that was mouthing off; Max Gawn, sublimely taps it down the throat of our midfeild for practically perfect out of the centre clearance goal Vs the Dogs second time we played them. We might even have got two goals in a row with this play. Lewis's 2 X snaps from 50m Vs the Crows in Adelaide. The huge bumps on our opposition in Hawthorn and Geelong finals from Nev, Vanders, Lewis and was it Hibbard? Bernie's awesome hip and shoulder on Daisy Thomas. ... in fact practically the whole game Vs Carlton!

West Coast have won 4 premerships in the past 30 years since 1988, including at least one in each decade. Only Hawthorn has won more premirships in this time. West has never spent a prolonged period that I can recall languishing around the bottom or out of finals. Outside of Collingwood they are probably one of the most finacially dominant clubs in the competition and I feel they have used this position, along with being one of only two Western Australian sides to their advantage over the years. Other than Hawthorn there really isn't another side that deserves some time in the wilderness than West Coast. Adelaide are just Adelaide, South Australian's etc and it's probably also mainly that I'm still smarting from their undeserved flag in 1998 and loosing Scott Thompson to them that I'd be quite happy for them to struggle for a period as well, but not to the same extent as Hawthorn and West Coast.

Yeah, ok, kinda makes sense. I was thinking that every club got some allocation of GF tickets regardless of their team playing and that he was after one of those. Personally I'd have little interest in going to a GF and buying another clubs membership just to watch a random GF.

You may well be right, I haven't watch him that closely, other than noticing that we pretty much completely shut him down in the final we played them. I thought that he must have been a bloody champion, because he played for Hawthorn. I guess it fits the media's narative pretty well of the Hawks regeneration of their list with a crop of guns comming through. I don't care if we don't get him then, but it would be good if someone picked up, just to derive Hawthorn. Who are their good young players then?

Luke Breust or Jack Gunston are ones that I'd like us to get from them at the right price i.e. cheap as chips - free agents or a pick in the 70s if the opportunity arose. Perhaps even someone like James Sicily might present as a free agency opportunity for us or someone else in a few years time. I don't even care if he ended up at Brisbane, Gold Coast, North or someone like that, it would be good if someone could turn the tables on Hawthorn and rob them of their mature tallent.

Agreed. And on a similar note, whilst I didn't pay close attention to how it all played out, the way one of the Adelaide clubs was spruiking that they would poach back the SA born players off the Queensland clubs with low draft picks was pretty ordanary. I thought it was pretty [censored] weak that the AFL didn't respond strongly to that, particularly when the whole comp has put so much capital into getting the club's going in the expansion states. The extra suplemental super trade period is another chip away at equalisation and the draft. Their supporters will hate it, but clubs like Hawthorn, Geelong, Sydney, West Coast and Adelaide really deserve to do their time proping up the bottom half of the ladder and anything that makes that possibility less likely is just pure evil.

Just check out the below link: http://m.hawthornfc.com.au/news/2018-11-21/our-list-by-the-numbers I count 8, possibly 9 of their best 22 will be 30 or over sometime in the next 12 months, then there is also a fare bunch of them sitting in the age group just below that Luke Breust (28), Liam Shiels (27), Jack Gunston (27), David Mirra (27) ,Jonathan Ceglar (27). Even $cully is 27 these days, with a pretty clapped out body. No wonder they were so keen to off load Mitchell, Hodge and Lewis, they are facing a playing list armageddon. When you look at the list of players they have (or don't have) comming through, the cupboard looks pretty bare for the Hawks and makes it look even more strange trading Burton for Wingard. Talking to a Hawks supporter I know the other day, he was quite disappointed by loosing Burton, because he though that was a player they could build their backline around. Addmitedly, not all the Hawks over 30s will retire at the end of this season, but their output will certainly start to wane and it's hard to see any of them being there any more that another two or three years. This will really test the mastermind Clarkson - I think they are in for a long hard road to rebuild as they will not have much to trade their way back into the game with other clubs and I just hope that free agency doesn't become their savior either.

As I understand it Hawthorn also have the oldest list with the most number of players over 30 years old, so I'd say that has the most to do with it. The aging nature of their list is a problem in it's self and I'm really hoping that they fall off a cliff over the next two years ... but don't quite hit the bottom too hard.

My point is that they are absolute puss at the moment and we are on the up and up. They seemed to really struggle to put bums on seats this season and I would have thought that would also have translated to their membership, but clearly it seems they have a fairly substantial base of welded on members/suporters. I really think it should be possible for us to climb above them, at least temporarily over the next few years, particularly if they stay mired in mediocrity or worse and from there you never know. We really need to get in early as a club, build momentum and translate that finals type attendance/support into memberships early.

It would look to be a fairly real possibility at the moment, but I actually hope GC do survive and go on to bigger and better things. I think there lack of membership numbers at the moment would be related to their poor onfeild performance, but also possibly another hang over from last season, when the didn't play many games at Carrara due to the Comm Games. I do think it would be good for the growth Aussie Rules footy in general in Qld for the Suns to be successful, because living in Brisbane, I know there is a genuinely strong presence of grass roots footy on the Gold Coast, although I also understand that top level teams from different codes have also successively failed and folded there. One differentiator though I think is that the other codes (soccer and rugby league) haven't had either the finacial resources or long term commitment to keep unfinancial teams going there more than a few years. If the AFL can hang in there long enough for the Suns to have some on feild sucess, it could be key to growth and more established presence of Aussie Rules in this part of Queensland, by being the dominant locally present professional team.

Interesting strategy, though I'd rather buy a GC membership myself for several reasons.

Some might be just interstate, 3 game members etc and not every member will want to go to every game (except during finals) but you certainly have a point. The problem of popularity and sucess I guess. The club's might need to look at preallocating particular games between its members, although games against interstate clubs wouldn’t be so bad. Still I'd like us to be in that position, because as some have pointed out, I see it panning out as a bit of an arms race in this respect at the moment, which could result in one of the lesser Vic sides be squeezed out of the,competition and/or being forced to relocate. At the end of the day, being an interstate member, the purpose of my membership these days is more or less altruistic, I just want to see the club do well ...oh and I want to be there when we win a flag, which is why I purchased one of the grand final garentee memberships at the start of this season. I do think that the strategy PJ started of trying to attract the new arrivals to Melbourne to the club is a good idea and an area where the MFC should have a small natural advantage through the name Melbourne. It would be interesting to know how much fruit this campaign might have brought us, but I think it's something that would require quite alot of nurturing of those being brought along to games, because you are not only trying to sell them the club, but also introduce them to the game it's self.

We at least need to get above Carlton. Must say, I'm a little suprised to see GWS now have more members than Brisbane as for a long time GWS had figures more like the Suns. Could easily change if the on-feild fortunes of these sides respectively change. https://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/sport/afl/afl-membership-ladder-tigers-set-to-reach-100-000-once-again-as-suns-bottom-out-20181207-p50ktp.html MEMBERSHIP LADDER Adelaide (77,504)* Richmond (74,110) Hawthorn (60,007) West Coast (59,800) Essendon (51,011) Fremantle (44,293) Port Adelaide (42,723) Geelong (41,034) Carlton (38,965) Melbourne (30,096) Sydney (29,046) North Melbourne (26,921) Western Bulldogs (26,855) St Kilda (25,500) Greater Western Sydney (13,814) Brisbane (12,974) Gold Coast (5894) * Includes non-financial "We Fly as One" members. ** Collingwood refused to divulge their figures

Talking personally, it's not that I have any professional concerns with him in that capacity and I agree entirely with your remarks on him leaving etc, doesn't really bother me and I thought the way he addressed that question in his interview with Wheatly was very convincing (as he was on most topics). It's more that because he was with Collingwood for so long and along with Eddy often had a very public and parochial pro Collingwood, stuff the rest of the competition stance on things it takes a bit to get that out of your head. It will be a bit different at Melbourne, because obviously we don't quite have the same power base as he had at Collingwood, but thinking about what I just stated, I'm somewhat looking forward to now having him on our side and for GP going in to bat hard for the MFC.