JTR

Had the morning free today so went down for a look. I didn't stay for the whole session, but here are a few notes of what I saw: No Dawes, Rodan, Bartram, Garland, Barry, Viney or Sylvia. Jones, Tapscott and Byrnes were doing laps. They were later joined by Clarke for some handball drills. After this Clarke did a bit of kick to kick with Leigh Brown, mainly with his left foot. Seemed to move ok, but when he had to break into a gallop to get to the ball he looked pretty ginger and limped quite a bit. Hogan, Tynan & Evans did handball drills for about 30 mins, walked a few laps, then left. Hogan is a big lad for 17! Main group did some warm up excercises and run throughs before splitting up in pairs for 10 x 200m sprints around the boundary. Pairs were: Grimes/Howe, McDonald/Nicholson, Trengove/Magner, Blease/Bail, Watts/McKenzie, Dunn/Frawley/MacDonald, Couch/Jetta, Fitzy/Pedersen, Spencer/Gawn, Taggert/Strauss, Seller/Davis, Davey/Cheynee Stiller** Each player was encouraging the other on, and trying hard to catch the pair infront of them. Neil Craig was standing at about the halfway point of the sprint encouraging those who were falling behind. A few notes: • Grimes and Howe look REALLY fit • McDonald is a machine. Always a step ahead of Nicholson • Trengove, Blease & McKenzie started falling a few steps behind their respective partners after about the 5th 200m • Magner pushing really hard in the 9th/10th sprint and actually caught up to and passed Nicholson. • Gawn pulled up halfway through the 4th sprint with Spencer. Looked to have aggravated his hammy. Went straight off for some rub downs/stretching before leaving. • MacDonald fell a few steps behind Dunn & Frawley after the 4th sprint, and paired up with Spencer after Gawn left • Pedersen was left behind by Fitzy in the last 3 or 4 sprints. He looked stuffed! • Davey in the last pair for the first 9 sprints. Really blowing hard. In the last sprint he was put in the second last pair and was passed by Sellar & Davis. After the sprints they had a bit of a warm down and some stretches before getting their boots and and splitting up in pairs for kick to kick. As I was leaving they started doing some fairly high intensity match simulation drills. Will leave the reporting of that to someone else though as I didn't see much of it. A few players broke away into a smaller group and didn't participate. I counted five - Spencer, Fitzpatrick, Taggert were three. The other two I couldnt identify from a distance. Training days

Gold Coast obviously rate Martin more than they do Viney. Maybe we got wind of this, feigned a bit of interest in Martin and told them if they nominated Viney at #2 we'd pass and use #3 for Martin?

Thanks for that. That link wasnt loading for me earlier for some reason. Still, I do think the way he answered the question in his presser yesterday was a tad curious!

Sorry to raise the Cloke issue again... I didnt see Mark Neeld on Insider so am not aware of everything he said. I did see his media conference yesterday though. Am I reading too much into the following: Question: With Mitch Clark missing you've struggled to take a mark inside 50. Re Travis Cloke, you sort of refuted last night <on Insider> that he was a possibility to come to Melbourne. Can we confirm that? MN: That interview was done a week or so back with Pickers. Off the top of my head I think I was asked the question "have we offered Travis Cloke a contract", and the answer is no. We have not offered Travis a contract at all. After the whole $cully saga, I tend to get a bit suss when questions start getting picked apart and answered in specific ways. For example we may not have offered him a contract (the question asked), but we may well have made him an offer that he is yet to accept/decline (not the question asked).... ?

Nit sure if you have already seen it, but footage is at very end of this clip. http://www.geelongcats.com.au/cats%20tv/tabid/7942/contentid/447241/default.aspx While you are watching, have a look at Vineys effort at 1:04

FWIW... I have recently attempted to get the company I work for to step up and get behind the MFC. Sent a nice email to our CEO, told them about the club, mentioned the statement it would make to get behind us after the previous sponsor saga ... etc etc etc. Unfortunately that didn't work out as the business has some significant commitments elsewhere. . Anyway, during this time I had a chat with 'a relevant person' at the MFC to let them know what I was trying to do. During the conversation I was told there should be some good news "in a few days". That was last Thursday morning and obviously Webjet was announced that night. Would it be drawing a long bow to assume that as they already knew Webjet would be announced that evening, the "in a few days" was about something else?

Just another opinion, but my favourite spot is Q49 - Q51 of the Olympic stand (as close to the front as possible). Seating is right on the wing, just to the left of the MCC and right behind the interchange. If you prefer sitting in the shade rather than having the sun in your eyes, then it is much better than the Great Southern. Only downside of that though is it can sometimes get a bit chilly! Being a newer stand it is also much cleaner than Great Southern and I could swear the seating has more leg room. Also very convenient escalators which take you all the way to the top!

Yep. I got mine a few weeks back. It was glossy covered magazine called Heartbeat - season 2010. About 40 pages long and has articles from the Pres, the CEO, the coach, one about the departing James McDonald, the China trip, a season review... etc Brad Green is on the cover, arms crossed, in the new kit and looking straight down the barrel!

Links are now on youtube.. Interesting stuff!

I've won the office sweep a couple of times, but no more of the bigger online ones. I think in that first year I was completely uncorrupted by factors such as "team x doesn't travel well", "team x has this player out so probably wont win" ...etc etc. Just picked based purely who (in my uneducated opinion) was in the best form. If both teams were going ok I went for the home team. Nice and simple and it seemed to work! :D

Hi all. Long time reader, first time poster. I moved to Melbourne (from NZ) in early 1999. Spent all of that years season without a team but managed to decide that I didn't want to go for Collingwood, Carlton, Essendon, Richmond... etc. Basically the teams of all the bogans that were trying to 'recruit' me. In 2000 I decided I better find myself someone to go for. I kind of liked the way Melbourne were playing, enjoyed watching Jeff Farmer, and loved the theme song, so found myself watching them most weeks. Entered an online footy tipping comp that year and God knows how but I managed to win it! Got 4 tickets to each week of the 2000 finals series. Melbourne ended up playing in 3 of those 4 weeks, so I decided it must have been fate. :D