Chook

Apparantly Green's been dropped, which I can't say is a huge shock. Davey's in also, so I hope his (reputedly) improved fitness can propel him back in time to an era when small forwards roamed the G and took down lumbering giants left and right.

He was near-best on ground against Collingwood in Round 2, so he played at least one good game early in 2010.

Five senior coaches in six years. Bizzare!

That raises an interesting question. Do you have to be the biological son of a 100 game player in order to be elegible for father/son, or is it sufficient to merely be a son by law (ie adopted)?

Thanks all for the info!

Billy Stretch's father was a little before my time. How would one describe the way he played? And how does young William play?

Likely OUTS for this round include the following: A. Davey, J. Macdonald, S. Blease, B. Green, J. Bennell, J. McKenzie, C. Morton (Omitted), C. Sylvia, N. Jetta, L. Jurrah, D. Nicholson (Injured) T. Scully (Hip Pocket) Very different side.

The irony is that Rocky has that vision after Mick dies. Micky was too much of a curmudgeon to say he loves anyone.

Interesting article. If what he's saying is true, then it's lucky we got a refund for the light-bodied Tom Scully.

But the point is that we need established stars to show our young'uns how it's done. How will picking up more young players help us fix our cultural problems?

Brendon Goddard!!!

I noticed a time when Clint Bartram was the only one willing to run back when the Eagles got their umpteenth quick break and took the initiative to match up on DEAN COX of all people. Seriously, how does that even happen? Until more talented players are willing to do the work that Clint Bartram does, he will remain in the side.

If the Cats won again this year, they'd be set for about seventy years of no flags. In a system which is geared around performance equalisation, that's just unbelievable.

This is an interesting approach. I would never do it, but never changing your team would quickly become a very effective message. I'd love to know what exactly it would do, however, because it could backfire badly.

If something like that happened to me, I'd come out breathing fire. Not everybody would, but you'd think that at least a few of our players would react this way. It doesn't seem that any of them have, which indicates that they are not greatly affected by recent events, at least from a performance perspective.

Fremantle supporters strongly believe that the best thing that ever happened to their club was that Chris Connolly and Cameron Schwab moved on. Is it a coincidence that Freo's coming along and we're in the biggest hole we've been in, possibly ever?

Jamar, Moloney, Magner, Jones, Bate is a very physically strong midfield and it will be very difficult for the young tigers to counteract that. Our forward line is better than their backline, and our backline is better than their forward line. That spells a win for the Dees.

Hawks were afraid to win that game. Geelong were absolutely brilliant, and completely got into the heads of the Hawthorn players. As a Melbourne supporter, it was great to see the Hawks make fearful mistakes at the hands of their bogey side, just as has happened for years at Melbourne Hawthorn games.

". . . Workmanlike." - Neal Daniher, c.2005 ". . . Competitive." - Dean Bailey, c.2007 ". . . Professional." - Mark Neeld, c.2012

Therefore you are biased and your opinion on the matter should be taken with a grain of salt.

Boo. Bad post. Nobody should wish death on another Club.

Whatever it takes.

Mark Neeld placed too little emphasis on our own players. He kept going on about how good the other side was, but he never said anything about how he went about curtailing the opposition's effectiveness. He seemed content to let them do their thing and cut us up. He called them "slick," but he refused to do anything to slow their ball movement. He put no sand in the smooth West Coast machine, and let us chug along like a broken old engine. Not good enough. Last week he also mentioned how great the Lions midfield was, but he never tagged Black. He never moved Frawley onto Rockliff, and he never rotated anyone interesting into our midfield. How can you criticise our players' lack of effort when the coach gives them no in-game impetus to change. If I'm playing, and I see my coach make positional changes, I start to feel like my coach still believes the momentum can change. If the coach does nothing, then I do nothing. Nothing changes if those with the power to change things do not exercise that power. I was one of Neeld's staunchest supporters last week, but his unwillingness to make positional changes in two consecutive games illustrates that he hasn't learned from his mistakes. Dean Bailey didn't learn from his mistakes either, and look where that led him. Similarly, he kept Bate as the sub two weeks in a row. No coach ever does that, particularly when the sub actually show something in his limited time on the ground. 10 possessions in a quarter in round one, and yet he puts him on the bench again, despite bringing in four new players and having a 32 year old play the entire game, and Jordie McKenzie (who nearly missed the whole pre-season) too. Worrying signs from a man who I'm quickly falling out of love with. My concern for Neeld is not based on our losses, but on his seeming unwillingness as a young coach to learn from his mistakes, or to change things. Change is good. In the AFL, nothing successful remains stagnant for long.

There is a phenomenon whereby a person presented with a negative potential outcome and a positive potential outcome will choose the latter as being more likely. But we as Melbourne supporters have finally wised up enough to buck that trend. We've finally broken through the delusions which have blinded so many of us for so many years. We know how disappointing we'll be, but we're still just as [censored] off as ever about it. We're realists now, but that doesn't stop us from being jaded by our crappiness.

Agreed. Possession stats are said to be meaningless in modern footy, but that's only because teams so often wrack up heaps of do-nothing touches. Not so for the Demons. Therefore, bringing in players who can find the ball is critical. Jamar is fast becoming just as useless around the ground as he once was, and his taps go nowhere. Why, then, is he in the side? He can still take a mark, so he should be moved forward, with Martin moved into the ruck as our main man in the middle. Jamar is better as a forward than Martin, and Martin is better around the ground than Jamar, so it makes sense to switch their roles. Green can't find the ball to save himself, so he should be dropped in favour of someone who can. Sellar, too, has no ball-winning ability, so he should be dropped. He was only brought in to cover the extremely tall WCE forwardline anyway, so it's no big loss. The problem is finding someone who can figure out how to get the ball. Can Morton still do this? I seem to recall him providing options in his first couple of years and wracking up a few over 20 possession games. While he's probably gone backwards, I still believe there is significant upside to his game. Why not give him another opportunity? Bate should have played the whole game this week, and the fact that he wasn't selected on the back of his good quarter last week as a sub has me dumbfounded. It is actually an indicator that Mark Neeld is actually far more clueless about how to manage a football side than I thought he might be. It is a cardinal sin to make a player the sub two weeks in a row unless he is significantly underdone and can't run out an entire game. I refuse to believe this applies to Bate. Bennell is another person who simply has no idea how to find the ball. It appears that Couchy can pick up uncontested possessions (which we lack the ability to do), so he should come right back into the side. Tapscott should come in as a running backman to free up Grimes to go into the midfield and give us some vision and class where we need it most. There are probably four or five more guys who could come out of the side, but there simply aren't enough people pressing up from underneath to warrant many more selection changes than this. However, as long as there aren't any attitude or "buy-in" issues with Brent Moloney (which has been sugested), he is still worth putting in the team, particularly against Richmond, who he regularly plays well against. He still draws the harshest tag and can help free up another player (such as Trengove or Jones) to play a looser, more attacking brand of footy. In all, I am worried about our dearth of players who can effectively rotate through the middle, and I would be trying practically everyone in short bursts in the midfield, if only to see who has potential in this most critical of areas. Even James Frawley should be given a run through there, because at the moment his value in our defence is questionable. He has the physical assets to kill it in the midfield, and should at least be tried there. He gave away three goals from poor defensive play against the Eagles, so his form as a backman should be seriously questioned. I could write more and more and more, but my post is already TLDR. Mark Neeld does have options, and does have things to work with. I can only hope he is more creative than he appears to be. I was one of his staunchest defenders last week, but his press conference this week and (more importantly) his refusal two weeks in a row to conduct any positional experiments with our players has me worried about his inventiveness and creativity. Mark my words: Innovation is key to success. The game is constantly evolving, and trying to copy Collingwood of 2010 (as Neeld appears to be doing) is going to be just as ineffective as trying to copy Geelong of 2007 (which Bailey got sacked for).