Blind_turn

“we are really close” MFC President Steven Smith, AGM, 16 December 2025. To appreciate the complexity of making Caulfield our home base, it is worth understanding how the Jewish community’s “One Scopus” project plays an integral part. A link to the project is provided here: https://www.projectgeneration.org.au/one-scopus/ Here are some facts in the public domain: 1. Mt Scopus College purchased a 7-hectare strip of land on the western side of the Caulfield racecourse in December 2024. 2. The price was $195mil, allowing the Melbourne Racing Club to pay down debt. 3. Importantly, the settlement terms of the deal were an 18 to 24-month settlement period. This means that Scopus do not even take possession of the site until mid to late 2026. 4. The reason presumably for this extended settlement is that Scopus needs to negotiate a sale of its existing 10.6-hectare Burwood school campus to neighbouring Deakin University to fund the purchase of Caulfield. 5. I cannot find any publicly available information on the progress of this Burwood transaction. Based on a review of the Scopus project, the narrow footprint of the land suggests that Scopus will need to position its football/cricket fields inside the racetrack. See the image below, where I have highlighted the Scopus land acquired in blue and indicated the size of a standard oval with white circles in various parts of their land parcel. For reference, I have highlighted in red the proposed location of the MFC home base and ovals. It illustrates how the mutual benefits can play out for both parties. However, it highlights how our ambitions for a new facility are linked to a much broader endeavour that involves both Scopus and various levels of government.

I recently ventured out to the Kennedy Community Centre to check out Hawthorn’s new training base. I then did some work to see if I could roughly answer three questions: 1. Would a Hawthorn (or Essendon) sized training facility fit on the south-east corner of the Caulfield site? Yes. The footprint of Hawthorn's main training and administration building is about 9,300 sqm, adding car parking etc, it fits on our site. We, of course will have our ovals inside the racetrack, so there is the added cost of a tunnel. But the walk from the buildings to the ovals would "only" be about 200 metres. 2. How much would it cost, how would it be funded? Hawthorn states on their website that their facility cost $113mil. Below is a table of what I think our new development would cost and assuming we could garner the same level of government funding, what the club need to come up with. There are two things worth noting in the above comparison: a. We will not own the land, so unlike Hawthorn, the club will have an ongoing lease cost that we will have to fund each year. b. The reason the above numbers are less than Hawthorn’s is that they had to build an additional grandstand on their second oval for their women’s program. We will continue to use Casey as our second campus. 3. When could we realistically expect to be in the new home base? Optimistically, late 2028, more likely late 2029.

Sorry if I'm breaking the thread of this conversation, but I didn't want to start a new thread and didn't know where else to put it. But I just ran across a photo of Melbourne around the time when we were last winning premierships and I thought it put this Saturday in some context:

Now Collingwood get a [censored] load of cash!

I hope a whole bunch of our players are serious targets for other clubs. It's a great problem to have!

From The Age: "while pacy former Crow Jordan Galluci should appeal to clubs such as Melbourne seeking outside run." I wonder whether he really is on our radar? A Victorian, originally a high draft pick and does seem to have outside run characteristics.

Good news for our own plans?? https://www.richmondfc.com.au/news/836673/state-government-announce-funding-for-punt-road-oval-redevelopment

Thanks Nev, great work! So proud of the club's history with indigenous Australians. May it grow stronger over time.

Thanks binman for starting this thread and to everyone who has contributed so far.

I know it's not about the Dees, but it's worth observing how Sam Mitchell does a player review: Mitchell Reviews Worpel

Gidday rjay, I'm not potting the coaching structure, I'm just sharing a factual observation. If it was as simple as the number of coaches you had per line - why stop at one? Quality is the key and I agree that a big part of an effective inside fifty is just as much to do with the mid-fielders as the forwards. With the prospect a reduced coaching rosters (along with all other areas of the club) Melbourne like all other clubs will have to think very hard about how they apply their human capital in the years to come. Anyway, can't type now - the game is about to begin - Go Dees!

Team Forwards Coach Adelaide Ben Hart Brisbane Jed Adcock Carlton Cameron Bruce Collingwood Brenton Sanderson Essendon Dan Jordan Fremantle David Hale Geelong James Rahilly Gold coast Ashely Prescott Greater Western Sydney Brad Miller Hawthorn Scott Burns Melbourne North Melbourne Brendan Whitecross Port Adelaide Nathan Bassett Richmond Craig McRae St Kilda Brendon Lade Sydney Steve Johnson West Coast Jaymie Graham Western Bulldogs Ashley Hansen Source: Wikipedia as @ June 2020

Hi Mr Onion, I can't immediately answer the Greg Williams question. As for whether he or someone else bombs it in - I suspect most of us ponder whether its our forward line structure as opposed to any great shortfall in the players delivering it into the 50. That is probably one of the thing I miss about not going to the footy at the moment - it is only live that you can observe how the better teams set up. Even when the footy's back on TV you cannot look forward of the play to try and get that insight.

I agree with you tiers - I'm not being critical of Clarry. He knows, the coaches know and we all know that he can be an even more damaging player if he kicks a little more. Hopefully that will come with more experience and players giving him a chop out. What it does highlight (again we all intuitively know this already) is that we need more classy outside finishers to feed off the likes of Clarry, Viney and even Brayshaw.

Below is a chart of the average kick to handball ratio of AFL players who have played over 100 games in recent times. (Thanks to the great work by Tony Corke @MatterofStats) Clarry has only played 83 games so does not appear on the original chart, but I have added him in to give us all a sense of his relative kick to handball ratio: