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Our membership is destructive? What have we destroyed? It looks to me like the wool-dyed members of this club have done nothing less than save the club by sticking by it during its malaise. As for the 'destiny returning to our membership' - if I am following that as 'bitter people turning into good people' then that will happen when the club consistently displays a brand of football becoming of its members: - tough - relentless - resilient - and bravely optimistic. I don't know how to properly describe the members and supporters of this club, but 'beyond reproach' comes to mind.

Hey now, there is wriggle room in my approach - if his form is good enough as a mid, play him as a mid. It's revolutionary thinking...

That was good. Missed the first but watched the entirety of Vanders' game which was pretty assured against a FReo team that looked a bit worried with our pressure. The best bit was Vanders looked like playing a high HF role through the wing which suits him if he can't be given a full shot in the guts. I still don't want him playing forward but he did look pretty solid I will admit. As for the team - I don't mind what they were doing out there - they were screwing up a bit but also getting Freo to do the same. Intensity is where it starts, execution is where it ends. Hopefully that is sharpened before GC.

The first steps have been taken (again, as my signature suggests), and 'bitter people' and 'good people' are the same people with different mindsets. Unless you think those 'fair share' should be spurned rather than rehabilitated. I am optimistic about 2015 but I don't hold expectations out of line with what I know of football. That isn't bitterness.

Have a look at my sig and you will see massive improvement and change - but it still left us with 18 losses... We could have the same and it not mean making the finals. That's the overtrodden, oft-repeated, and unescapable (except for one apparently) truth.

Yes, that is a righteous attitude. But I will add that the pessimist has been right for 8 years... Sometimes optimism and realism are not mutually exclusive.

This is a Demonland ritual to have a largely optimistic thread about how many games our terrible team is going to win followed by WYL tar brushing all and sundry as modern day Neville Chamberlain's, followed by critiquing of WYL's position, and followed swiftly by the Chamberlain's lamenting the 'discussion' as brick wall head banging. Routine is comforting...

You should make your point more elegantly - and I understand completely the last eight years have seen a great deal of support leave the club. But, as hardtack alludes, those that are no longer members of the club have to look long and hard at the definition of the word 'support' and whether it applies to them. My support isn't the reward for winning - winning is the reward for my support. Thankfully about 30k people think like that and the club still stands.

And that is not a chicken and egg scenario; our forward line may be terrible, but our midfield is terrible and they're the ones who have to get the ball to the forwards to see whether they are terrible or not... I hope we find out about our forwards in 2015 but it will take more quality and quantity of Inside 50s than recent seasons.

Clint, our biggest weakness is our midfield. We rely on two clearance players, two dynamic movers, and two accumulators that find the ball at will. And they are two players - Jones and Tyson...

You think that I find it acceptable to only win 4 games based on the fact that I support the club financially? I don't find it 'acceptable,' I don't even find your dismissiveness of the 30k people who keep this club going through the toughest times 'acceptable.' You want to wait to sign up? Fine. But don't patronise those that 'save you a seat' by hanging around to pay to see all the recent nonsense.

Double grabbing is a confidence issue, he has displayed in his good career so far that he can be a strong presence and a strong mark and he seems angry in match sims and I will postulate that it relates to his frustration with his own confidence in his approach at the footy. If he gets over the mental hurdle - look out, he is a very good player at his best and astronomically important to us winning more than a handful of games.

The AFL changed the rules on us at the last minute when we were trying to get value out of Moloney and Rivers. Initially, the AFL said that teams will get a 'net' pick of the value of players lost to players gained. We took Byrnes in FA to bump up the value of the remaining pick. When the AFL made a 'rule on the run' during the first FA period about their being 'band less' players (ie worthless) - both Moloney and Byrnes fell in the category somehow and we got a third rounder for Rivers when we were expecting a 2nd rounder for the balance of all three players coming and going.

Who was Alistair Clarkson when he was playing? Would you have allowed him to be an 'onfield leader'? He would have been anyway. You are judging the players' leadership ability based on their talent. Doesn't work like that.

Not really, you have been saying that we would have taken Brayshaw had we only ND2 but if we only had ND2 we would have taken the best mid in the draft and that would have been the bloke we took at ND2. Petracca was all the talk as ND1 until the last few weeks when the Saints started to do some backpedalling PR about the importance of Key Position prospects. I don't think we would have left Petracca on the board - he was always going to be ND2 whether we had the next pick or not.

The thing that 'changed things' was the Saints taking McCartin.

David Parkin, Stan Alves, Alistair Clarkson, Nick Maxwell, and Brendan Bolton all stressed recently at a recent coaches conference that onfield coaches were important. Bolton intimated it was a competitive edge that Hawthorn had as Sam Mitchell and Luke Hodge were extensions of the coaches box.

That'll get it back on track...

I am quite enlightened about how much football has changed in the past few years... But the ball still needs to go forward, and players still need to do something with it when its there and someone has to get it there in the first place. So while a player might have a number of roles in his head, he still needs to know what to do when put in the place on the ground they spend most of their time. First year players are by definition behind others with knowing what to do in 'any position.' As for all players doing stoppage practice - that would be because stoppages happen all over the ground. There is no position foreign to a role in a stoppage.

If he is only going to play forward for Melbourne in the AFL in 2015, why bother playing him in the middle for Casey? Play him in the same role for the seconds so that when he steps up, he knows what is expected of him. That is what I would say if I was a decision maker at the club. As someone who wants the best for Aaron - it would be best if be played in the middle at Casey and if there happens to be a spot in the rotation for Melbourne available and his form is good enough - he should play there. Let Bail, JKH, Kent, Howe, and/or Watts play this amorphous 'half forward' role.

I don't like it when mature age players are thrown into a role that they were not recruited for excelling at. I have seen him play in the guts. Half forward is such a difficult place to play. That is all I am worried about from his perspective. He comes in as a HF plays 50 mins gets 2 touches and nothing else and we are all calling him a failure. Setting recruits up to succeed is what we are all about from what Roos and co. are saying. I don't believe that involves playing Vandenberg out of position in his first year. As Vandenberg relyed to me, there have been no roles given to the first year players - they learn the basics, the gameplan, the non-negotiables, and if they are good enough in the VFL, they will play a similar role in the AFL. Also, someone said that he could play midfield for Casey and then forward for Melbourne... THAT is setting a bloke up to fail.

He wouldn't be ready to be in the middle for extended periods IMO. Too much he doesn't know, hasn't refined, and too many miles he needs to go in his legs. It's the reason I hope he doesn't play much AFL this year.

He may be 'happy' to do it, but it is certainly not the role he played for Ainslie nor one he was recruited for.

Yes, we were. Very, very wrong.

Trapper and Col were handy...