Rodney (Balls) Grinter

Couldn't agree more. I personally don't see why the AFL haven't just slowly kept winding back the number of rotations in order to open up the game in general, as opposed to these convaluted running within 5m of the player when kicking over the mark etc. Pretty simple stuff I would have tought, stop most players running up and back following the ball in a big pack, creating speed within the game through more ball movement. The additional space that it would create in forward lines would probably also mean less double/triple teaming of players due to the freeing of the oppositions player that would create. Full forwards taking makrs after leading into space. I really yearn for a return to thay style of football.

The opposition to the potential MFC training facility at Yarra Park by some of the local residents assioation has been well highlighted in this thread and is certainly something that the club will need to work on/with. However, it was also interesting listening to the Glen Bartlett interview that one of the things he said is that there was actually a shortage of playing feilds in the area. What I'm reading into that is that is that the MFC needs to build support and alliances with some of the local sporting clubs in the area to them behind the proposal. That kind of local community support would help ballance out the disgruntled resident types by demonstrating real mutual comunity benifit. I recon it's a case of watch this space.

I agree with others views such as @binman and @Lucifer's Hero that a meeting place for members/fans/supporters is important. If we segway to the other thread about rebuilding the MFC as a great club again, then great club's are based around people and I think that bringing together all our people and building a sense of belonging is vital to that. I hear the sentiments of those like @Sir Why You Little that not all MCC members are the wealthy toff types and that stereotyping and segregating MFC supporters is not the way to go. Thus a truely universal social facility that brings together MFC & MFC/MCC members under the one roof would be a good outcome. I 've never been an MCC member myself, but for most of my life I've been a MFC member - presently an interstate one. When in my youth a real highlight of our home games going to the footy was attending the 'Demons Club' (I think that's what it use to be called) in one of the function rooms in bouls of the old Northern stand. I recall it having a bit of a mix of MFC and MCC supporters, they put on a good spread of nibbles and it was a great family atmosphere. In my view that's the kind of thing we need to rebuild as a cultural institution of the MFC and it would be good if that could encompass all of the Redleg Club (which I recall as being more of a MCC crowd, but could well be wrong), Demon Army, standard rank and file MFC members together in one spot. Perhaps that's actually the kind of thing which could provide the value to some of the MCC members to join as combined MFC members.

I actually see the PJ started initiative to recruit new arrivals and emphasize the clubs identidy with the city Melbourne as similar to the memership drive that Essendon went on in the 80s to build a bigger membership base. I forget the details of the Essendon strategy, but what I do nominally recall is that they hadn't been a huge club in the past, but that during that membership drive they set out to change that by doing things differently to what the other old power and power clubs of the day were doing. I see the aforementioned PJ initiatives as being the niche's that has been identified that the MFC can try to exploit and make work for us.

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.

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...

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.

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.

I like how he pretty emphatically stated that the moment he got the job he became a 100% Melbourne supporter and didn't really give much attention to any other clubs. I think the stench of the filth of his Collingwood days has been hanging around Pert for many Melbourne supporters (I count myself in this boat to some small extent). Something that I try to think of whenever the thought of Pert as a filthy ex Collingwood person enters my mind is that Pert is Roosy's mate from Fitzroy and helps the black and white [censored] go away. Anyway, Gary Pert is our man now, his heart beating true for the Red and Blue and we need to get behind him and by extension the club as Demons supporters.

To me I heard it more as the later, that we shouldn't be aiming to mimic any of the other clubs. There wasn't any Collingwood this and Hawthorn that, this is what those clubs do well and we want to become like that... History is obviously part of the uniqueness of a club, but I agree it can be overemphasized at times. On reflection, I actually think PJ started the ball rolling in the right direction on this topic, but Pert has made the right impression on me as well.

“I don’t want Melbourne to be more like any other club. I want Melbourne to be more like Melbourne – it’s a great club with a great history, but we need to re-engage the people.” I love it. I know in some respects these are just cheap words, a bit of a throw away line and that the real test is can it be turned into actions that make a lasting positive difference, but I do really like the sentiment and substance behind the statement as well. Time to rebuild some pride and respect back for the MFC and stop living in the shadow of the 'power clubs' of the AFL.

It wasn't that long ago that we would be limping over the line to crack the 30K mark in July or August or whenever the cut-off date is. Great work MFC and Demons supporters keep them coming. Always good to welcome new and returning members on board the D- train.

Agree and plus this - https://www.sen.com.au/news/2018/12/03/are-hinkley-and-pyke-the-coaches-under-the-most-pressure-in-2019/ Now, I don't think Goodwin has show any signs of wanting out/go home, but if we don't get this extension right, then the hungry crow eaters could well come a knocking on his door.