Ollie fan

Exactly

What an interesting quarter! For months this site has been full of posters complaining about our game style, saying it should be like Hawthorn -fast and attacking. I don't know if PA can keep it up but so far they are absolutely stifling Hawthorn. How? Contest and defence. Good defence will NEVER be a bad game plan.

Paul Simon: "a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest.." As I understand it, this was the point on which Lawrence ended up running the actual trial and on which he lost. And thank goodness for that! Otherwise we would have had him marching around town when elections were approaching, telling us exactly how bad he thinks the Melbourne football club is, creating back page news every day: great for the club, eh? For whatever reason, Lawrence is apparently determined to get on to what Speed called a highly credentialed and competent Board (or similar words), where no doubt he would throw his perceived weight around until he has achieved his own ends or brought the whole club administration down. If you want that, good on you. I don't.

If you didn't hear this, you didn't listen. It was apparently the remaining issue in the case and Lawrence lost, thank goodness

You mean, one of the 4 out of the last 5 premiers that didn't make the finals the following year? As opposed to the one club that did make the finals?

If you think the forward game plan is unchanged, you haven't been watching the games.

I completely disagree with the posts that say fans will leave if we play "boring" footy. I believe that if we win games, fans will attend.

That "poll" is ridiculous. Who votes? What do they know? Do they want to help Melbourne, or are they perhaps from other clubs who want to damage us? I have seen some terrible clickbait but that is a new low.

"There will be debate about that" - exactly. It is not clearcut.

No. I just listened to it properly.

PS The list in 98 was nowhere near as good. Apart from anything else, both Lyon and Schwarz had both suffered major longterm injuries.

With a list that was arguably better than the 21 list. It was a shocking waste, due to overinsistence on handball.

Neil Balme is apparently a great bloke and a great manager of people. However, his record as a coach was poor, and I am STILL bleeding over his waste of the 1994 talent. Gutnick fired him, we had an interim coach, and then Daniher was appointed and straight away got us to a prelim.

Finally had the chance to listen to the Speed interview. Very interesting to hear from a highly intelligent, respected and experienced administrator with no axe to grind. Key takeaways: as we all knew, Kate should have stepped up sooner, she didn't, she has paid the price. The board is highly competent. Lawrence wanted to have the opportunity to add to the media garbage by public bashing of the club and his perceptions of its failings, creating a media s...storm; he wasn't allowed to, thank goodness. The reviews should be kept private: cue Hawk the Demon et al screaming in a few months about the club trying to hide its failings, despite Speed giving excellent reasons why the findings should NOT be publicly released. And finally, maybe Pert should be part of the review team, maybe he shouldn't, there is no clear answer. Will the whinging stop? No way!!!!!!

This is true. Everyone can laugh at him now but he did save the club. He also got Neil Balme sacked as coach and replaced by Neale Daniher, with immediate excellent results.

I think Hore has a role.

I was talking about last year - we didn't even have Billings. The whole point of my post was about hindsight.

As always, hindsight is a wonderful thing. He was not in our best 22 last year and very few people thought he was -I still don't see who he would have replaced. So he didn't get a regular game and wanted to try elsewhere. All perfectly fair enough, good luck to him.

Hate to tell you this, but at that stage, we did have a home base. It was called the MCG.

That you won't affect you. You are the most non-fan imaginable. You have never posted a positive thing in this site. AS for the idea of a "full external review", usually they either do whatever it has been hinted to them that they should do, or alternatively come up with c..p such as changing the logo or the mission statement, in order to justify the inevitably exorbitant bill. Despite what everyone wants to say at this whinging time of the year, until about two months ago with three serious injuries to our three best multiple AA players, we were generally going ok and in fact were the most successful club in the league over the last five years. We DON'T need to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Yes, look at the team and particularly the functioning of the forward line, check to see if there really is a"culture" problem (whatever that is) and if there is, work out strategies, but then can we get on with preparing to win the 25 flag, please??!!??

With the email about the reviews and the response already, it is completely clear what we can expect. Everyone who has been complaining will attack the outcome of the review unless it gives them exactly what they have been wanting. Otherwise it will be "sham "bias ", etc

Very good considered post.

Good point!!!!

You might be right about this but of course, those involved in the court cases include Peter Lawrence.

He might not but I sure do.