Rodney (Balls) Grinter

Absolutely. I'm sure that it's been said before, but where do Adelaide get off thinking that two first rounders for Lever is anything like market value? Two first rounders is what they parted with for Dangerfield and good as he may be, Lever is no Dangerfield. Granted the Crows had a weaker hand with Dangerfield being a FA, but with Lever being out of contract, they don't exactly have a strong hand either. Adelaide themselves were not prepared to part with two first round picks for that Carlton bloke (Bryce Gibbs was it) last year either. Get real Crows, take it or Lever leaves for nothing.

Generally agree, but $1M per season isn't what it use to be and won't be in 3 seasons time at the end of his contract. Lever waited until the new EBA was out for a good reason.

Assuming we get this deal done and Lever goes on to have a distinguished career with the MFC , it would be very sweet revenge for loosing Scott Tompson to them all thoset years ago.

This is the AFL you are talking abut Biff. Do you really expect consistency and reason? (Just look at the 'clash' jumper debacle).

Sorry to be a party pooper, but my hope is that we don't have one in the next 10 years, because our top group of players are all so good they pepetually taking and sharing votes between them, that we tally well Brownlow wise as a team, but not well enough individually to have a winner. More interested in having a Norm Smith medalist, along with breaking his curse.

Well, if it's good for Max. But seriously, the Demonland auto-censor is seriously lacking in intelegence on occasions. Admittedly, there are times when my intended curse words have been picked up as such, but there are also some pretty benign ones that seemed to get picked up, even in completely benign context. Eg: Was a good coin toss for Josey to win today; Or We gave Gold Coast an absolute flogging last year.

Here with you on this one Maxy and happy with the outcome against Port on Saturday: "We focused a little bit on our start this week especially because our starts have been - excuse my language - sh--house," Gawn told Fairfax Media. http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/afl/afl-news/melbourne-focused-on-turning-around-shhouse-starts-says-ruckman-max-gawn-20170723-gxgv7n.html

I don't actually notice him that much in games compared to other players like Viney and Jetta, but he just goes about his game in a no nonsense, business like manner and gets the job done, week in, week out.

Surprised if he'd given us one prior anyways.

At 3:55 on Tommy Mac Donald "Yeah, he got drafted as a forward - I didn't see the potential myself...if he does it two weeks in a row I'll give him credit. Yeah if he kicks five again, I'll be the first to shake his hand" Lol cracks me up does big Maxy.

Another from same media conference: On the general closeness of the competition "you could be just about playing off for the wooden spoon and still have a chance of making finals"

Pleanty of good pickings from Max's latest media conference: http://m.melbournefc.com.au/video/2017-06-26/media-conference-max-gawn A personal favorite is, with reference to Jack Viney injury status "he'd just about have to have the shoulder hanging off the bone for him not to play Jack".

Have been super impressed with Hannan's continued improvement. He has some good tricks inside foward 50 and pleanty to offer around the ground as well. Thinking about some of the goals he kicks a fair few of them could be described as cheeky little cheap goals, but they all count for 6 points and previously we almost lacked for a player to kick those sort of goals and could dominate the inside 50s for little reward.

And the we ended up with Hibbard who has been huge for us, so I'm not that disappointed the Lever thung didn't work, you can't get them all.

I've never been an Oscar hater like some here, but in fairness, I haven't repeditively jumped to his defense either (pardon the pun). When you look at it though I think he has done a pretty reasonable job for someone of his experience all year and the claims he won't make it are hugely over the top. One thing which I think goes against defenders is that any error has potential to quickly end up as an opposition goal. When the side plays poorly and it's the backmans job which becomes so much harder. Nor does Oscar have the reputation to gloss over mistakes. Lewis kicked clanger of the year a few weeks back straight down the throat of Tom Lynch which resulted in a goal and at times Lewis can be a bit of a clanger king, but it doesn't get bleated about like Oscar. One thing which must also be helping Oscar at the moment is the presence of Hibbard and Frost (whom is becoming a great defender in his own right - did a great job on Tom Lynch a few weeks back, who is one of the best power forwards in the game). In fact our whole back six/eight is looking pretty tight at the moment and the continuity of personal must be doing wonders. But look back to the start oF the season and it's pretty much just T Mac and an O Mac with 14 or so games under his belt - I recon he actually did ok back then in the circumstances and the other question that begs is "What would we have done without him back then?"

Somewhat contradicting my previous statement, whilst I don't want to feel sympathetic to the EFC, my feeling is that the whole process was botched and mishandled by all parties including the AFP, the AFL, ASADA and WADA. I can't see any club ever self reporting and cooperating in the same wat the Bombers players did again. And where are the charges against Steven Dank ...or are those yet to come? I do wonder if there has been civil or criminal charges considered against him. That all said, I did watch a fairly convincing story from one of the investigative journalism programs (I think it was 4 corners) that layed out a pretty compelling case that many of the big players in the elite sports and athletics world are gaming the system with performance enhancing drugs by staying half a step ahead of the list of banned and detectable drugs, which did smell exactly like what Essendon were doing.

Will James Hird appeal the appeal?

One about Max, not by him: "He's all of seven foot tall and about ten kilos of beard" Some special comments from Alastair Lynch during game comentary. Long live the beard. Perhaps a few more of our players should do some beard work in the gym and put some weight on there like Maxy.

As an aside, the current Hawthorn coach is another that could be added to that list. Was not an out and out superstar, but a very serviceable player for us none the less.

Regardless of what he said verbally, his awesome fist away and body language certainly said " bounce it properly then ". Was a great bit of theatre in the midst of an enjoyable win against the filth. Added some nice icing to the cake along with Max's other non verbal statements that day.

Just love Big Maxy's persona and thought that he needs his own topic to make sure we never miss a giggle from the gems of humor that seen to pop out every second sentence. So here is one to start things off, as reported on the Fox Footy web news page: Via Hawks duo Isaac Smith and Josh Gibson during the night, Frawley apparently said Gawn’s head would’ve “gotten quite big quickly” if he had taken out the Leigh Matthews Trophy. Big Max’s rebuttal, however, had Frawley covered. “Old Chip Frawley, hey? Well Hawthorn has to play a 17-man defence because Chip doesn’t defend too much anymore,” Gawn said. I'm not sure it's right up there with his absolute best work, bid did like that it gave Frawley a well earnt sledging. So what else has the new mouth from Melbourne put out there?

With all the talk of us being such a young side this season, the addition of Melksham and Hibberd would increase the average age/games overnight. Not sure how significant that is though if they can't play at the required level, as adding Dunn, Garland and or H would have a similar statistical effect. When adding just two players has such a significant statistical effect, I do wonder if this stat/claim was over played a bit by the club this year?

Big Billy fan also, but Re your point on mistakes, might I remind you that he also missed that challenging, but quite gettable goal against North earlier this season. Not that I pin that loss on Billy at all and generally speaking, I agree that if there was someone from our side that I wanted to kick that clutch goal from a set shot, I'd be most comfortable with it being in the hands of Jack Watts, Christian Salem or Billy. From a set shot Billy is exclent, soaks up the pressure and calmly slots it through as cool as a cucumber.

I also like his attack on the ball and the man for a player of his size. I think only thing he lacks to stay in our top 22 on a consistent basis is a mature hardened body. I've noticed that he tends to string together a few really good games, then seems to tire for a few and loose his impact in games. Not a criticism of his, as there are often just arn't shortcuts to reach the stage of physical development required at the elite level. I liken his progress to that of Jack Viney and look forward to what another solid preseason might bring.