Chook

Congratulations on your first post! I'm totally for re-igniting the MCC/MFC relationship and think it would be great for not only the Clubs' financial situation, but also their identities. With the strong support of both Casey and the MCC, we may be able to develop a strong supporter base - something which every successful AFL Club needs. This would be great news if it went ahead.

It was just a suggestion. I still don't want to change the rules. If the rules had to change, that's what I'd suggest.

Well, that's interesting. After seeing her, I suddenly feel like i should go to the bathroom and have a quick "row, row, row."

Perhaps for a rushed behind, the player cannot dispose of the ball within a rectangular radius as wide as the two point posts and 1.5 times as long. I personally don't have an issue with judicious use of tactics, however, and would like to see the integrity of the game maintained. I wouldn't change the rules.

Here's what I think. Yze_Magic sees the last ten years of Melbourne's mediocrity and finds the need to blame somebody. Cameron Bruce certainly has faults, many of which Neale Daniher valued - or at least didn't try to weed out. Since Daniher was at the helm of some of Melbourne's most promising - yet ultimately unsuccessful - teams of recent times, Yze_Magic feels that he is blame for the problems that we now face. The fact that YM probably grew up during these years only adds to his frustration. Old enough to have seen the unfulfilled potential of David Schwarz, Shane Woewodin, Travis Johnstone and others, yet not old enough to have seen Melbourne's real Dark Ages - the seventies and eighties, Yze_Magic feels robbed of success known by other Clubs during his formative years. Who's fault is that? As always in footy, the coaching staff bears the bulk of the responsibility for the Club's on-field performance. But since Neale Daniher and his coaching staff are now long gone, blame falls to the only ones still at the club - the players. But even those have become few and far between in recent times. Indeed, of the list that made the 2000 Grand Final, only six (James McDonald, Matthew Whelan, Paul Wheatley, Cameron Bruce, Brad Green and Russell Robertson) remain. In reality, it is in these six that the Daniher legacy lives on. Cameron Bruce is arguably the most talented of that group. He is certainly the most highly-paid. But for whatever reason, he hasn't been able to perform as well as has been expected of him. This has been particularly true since his career-defining first four weeks of 2004, a month in which he shot to Brownlow-favouritism on the back of three electric performances against Hawthorn, the Dogs and Geelong, before being sidelined for six weeks as a result of a shoulder-crushing Brent Guerra tackle. This brief flicker of hope in some ways epitomizes the entire Daniher regime, in which as often as we were spectacularly good, were were also at times astoundingly bad. When we were good, we played fantastic long-kicking, attacking football. Football that would often see us kick very high scores. Yet when we were bad, this same unaccountability gave way to a torrent of opposition scores. In 2005, we traveled over to AAMI Stadium to play a game of football. When it had finished two hours later, not one Melbourne player needed to wash his jumper, least of all Cameron Bruce. In the midst of a seven-week losing streak, none of our leaders changed their ways. Not Neale Daniher, not Adem Yze and certainly not Cameron Bruce. The same kind of fooball that had led us to win ten of the previous twelve games had now seen us lose four in a row. Yze_Magic would have seen this and remembered it. Now, in 2008, Melbourne is a different side. Yet every week that YM watches Cameron Bruce play for the Melbourne Football Club, he sees the same player that kicked eleven goals in three weeks from the midfield. Yet he also sees a player who never failed to go missing when it counted. He sees this player and thinks of the ten years that Neale Daniher had to change Bruce's ways - to turn his disposal from a weakness into a weapon. YM sees this player given the Captaincy and now another Best and Fairest, and worries. Could his poor disposal and softness in the clinches now affect those whom he leads? The Melbourne Football Club has the opportunity to turn a number of young players into anything it sees fit. Yet while Cameron Bruce is leader, there is still a chance that it could repeat the mistakes that have dogged it for almost half a century. Cale Morton, for example, could become the next Robbie Flower. However, given his physical similarities to Bruce, he could also develop all of the same flaws that have caused Yze_Magic so much frustration all these years. In Bruce, YM sees two things; all the unfulfilled potential of ten or more years of Neale Daniher's regime, as well as the potential for another ten years of softness and disappointment.

Hey, that's catchy. Why don't you put that in your sig?

Congratulations to Cam Bruce on winning this years award. Minor recognition to Bailey's Babies for tipping the victory.

What time does it finish? When will we be getting any info on it?

Top-10: 1. Cameron Bruce 2. Brad Green 3. Brad Miller 4. Paul Wheatley 5. Paul Johnson 6. James McDonald 7. Brock McLean 8. Colin Garland 9. Cale Morton 10. Simon Buckley Best Clubman: Brad Miller Most Improved: Brad Miller Best First Year Player: Cale Morton

He'd be good to get if we decided not to go with Watts as our first pick. I still think we need to improve our ruck and midfield stocks in this draft. So if we went down the Rich/Naitanui path, then Schoenmakers might be a good pick-up if he's still around by the time we get to our second or third pick.

Get off the soapbox, please Dappa. I understand you have a vendetta against YM, but you're disrupting this thread more than he is. (EDIT: Now the two of you are even). Seriously, this is like Lex Luthor and Superman. Back on topic, I am absolutely stoked that we have the opportunity to pick up such a highly talented, athletic player. It's also great that he seems keen to come to us. I personally would prefer Daniel Rich, but no matter what, it seems like we're definitely going to pick up a few great prospects in this draft.

Maybe we should get him to 100 games and retire him. After that, we just take him to Norway or the Amazon and then start pimping him out to every tall woman with even a little bit of running ability.

I have huge faith in this guy. What do you get when you put an IQ of 180 in the body of Hercules? Stefan Martin who, in all his glory, will have all of us (even the women) jizzing our pants very shortly. Seriously, I've actually never been more excited about a Melbourne player as I am about big Stef. He's officially my guy. Everyone else just stay the heck away. He's mine.

Hopefully next year we don't face off against the top 3 clubs in the first 3 rounds. It was not a good start for us this year. Not that it mattered with how terrible we were.

Naitanui is actually a little bit of a hack as far as I'm concerned, and could become a gigantic blunder if he doesn't develop his footy skills and smarts. I still think Danny Rich is going to become the best player out of this draft, based on what little I've seen of him. Unfortunately, he's West Australian, so the "go-home" risk is probably a little high. I'm interested, YM, in why you think Watts won't play solely in the forward-line.

Yep. Fair enough. Since I said that, I looked at the tackle again. It was worse than I remember it. While tackling is an important skill, that particular kind is not what Melbourne players should be doing. I'm all for imposing yourself on the game physically, but only according to the rules of the game. I retract my statement.

If every Melbourne supporter had thirteen kids, we'd be doing pretty well. Get cracking, 'Bub.

If not fair, it was definitely great. I'd love for Cam Bruce to be able to tackle like that, that's for sure.

Yeah, my sarcasm-meter was not functioning very well. But I still don't think we should try to become Hawthorn 2.0. Emulating the Premier is not the way to go. Smart Clubs try to figure out how to stop the best teams. We've tried to become them, but ended up being second-rate pretenders, while every other club knows exactly how to stop us because they've seen the best teams in the competition play our style, only better, for the previous few years. That's why we need to focus on what makes us good, not what has made others successful. We are not Sydney, Hawthorn or Geelong. We are Melbourne. That doesn't make us better or worse, but it does make us different. That's why we need to find our own solution to our own problems.

Great post. I totally agree with all of that. For us to be successful, we need to play every game at the MCG, maintain a good relationship with the MCC, develop our membership base and grab a good, long-term major sponsor. On the field, our defence will be our major strength over the next ten years. We need to capitalise on that and accentuate it, so that we can actually win games through it. Don't move Colin Garland forward, don't trade Jared Rivers, play Colin Sylvia in the back-line as we did at times early in the year. Going forward, I'd love our back-line to read: Warnock Martin Frawley Rivers Garland Sylvia This would be a formidable back-six, one that we could really use as a spring-board for so many attacks. But for any of that to matter, we need to be able to survive financially, and selling our home games is, in my opinion, not the way to do that.

Yee har! There's gold in them thar hills! Ah heh heh heh heh heh! Excited enough? Do you reckon he'll get many games in Red and Blue next year, or will he be more of a late developer?

What he's saying is that had we had the first pick in every single one of those years, with a "pick the best key position player" mindset, we would only have picked up one good player (Lance Franklin in'04). To me it's actually a great post, and it highlights just how important it is to pick up the best player available, particularly early in the draft.

Come on, that's a little unfair. Did you read the two articles in Fan's post? People usually have good reasons for being messed up. I hope we don't have to pay him out, but let's not go ape-[censored] on him just yet. And Craig Cameron made a mistake, but had Chop played as well in '07 and '08 as he did in 2006, I would not have been too upset with what we're paying him. Unfortunately that wasn't the case.

As much or as little as some on this site like it, it's pretty likely that Cam Bruce will win this year's Best and Fairest. He'll probably stay captain next year, too. The reality is that he's highly regarded at AFL-level, despite his obvious weaknesses. I just wonder what would have happened if Brent Guerra hadn't wrecked his shoulder in '04.

Fix'd. We are on the right track if Nathan Carroll is delisted this year. Hopefully we don't have to pay for it, but either way, I'm glad we are going to have another open slot on our list come draft-time. The guy was pretty good in '06, almost All-Australian standard, so probably got a 3-year contract on $250 000, so that explains why we're paying him so much.