The Taciturn Demon

The football itself gets significantly better every year - everything around it gets worse. The clock can't just tick down as the ball rolls around a car park.

That was poor. Need to get Gillard and Goldrick back as soon as they can. Backline very ordinary.

D-grade comedian.

Backline is really struggling. Forward line is really struggling. Kate Hore or bust at the moment.

Geeze. Not how we want it. As Harford said, we want to be putting handball chains together, not getting into an endless arm wrestle.

GRAND FINAL TIME! I actually laughed out loud when I read this. Either a complete fabrication or outrageous arrogance from Buckley.

Well put. I'm not sure if it's five years, but I think a sudden rebound is extremely unlikely. Sustained competitiveness is all I ask for.

If there were leaks they were pretty good red herrings.

Hope nobody took the $1.05.

If ancestral memory is a thing, Kalani White's face is suddenly tingling.

Oh my.

Spot on. I reckon they're doing a decent job of getting balance into their list. Spargo makes sense.

God, Barrett is an insufferable [censored]. (By the way, the "If..." "Then..." format has been incomprehensible for ages, but he seems to have taken it to a newly idiotic level in this case.)

I remember saying a while ago in defence of Salem that what many posters see as his weaknesses are quite possibly things the Goodwin regime asked for and applauded. Now, Salem may be incapable of playing any other way and so much of the criticism could still be valid. But I'm keen to see how he goes under a different coach.

I would argue Essendon played the game in the stupidest, most over-the-top way possible and are still paying for it 12 or 13 years later.

That would be amazing. Isn't $520,000 pretty unspectacular remuneration for a senior player these days?

Second would be fab. I doubt it would be that high, but they're talking top of the first round for Draper, so anything is possible.

Me neither. But they HAD to go big. Their list is a shambles.

This misses lots of clubs and stops at 2020, but I still found it really interesting: https://thecityjournal.net/data-journalism-2021/afl-memberships-through-history/

This makes sense to me. Telling players "You're going to be delisted... now go and play finals for Casey..." seems like awful management.

Yep. I don't think she has a vendetta against our club in particular and don't expect serious football reporters to be nice about clubs to spare supporters' feelings. This is a silly one, though. Not only is it incorrect, but what would the alternative have been? Let him coach til the end of the season, attend the B&F and THEN pull the trigger? That would have been incompetence of the rarest kind. If they'd sacked him after the final round, would he have been more likely to attend the B&F? I think probably LESS likely, if anything.

I'd love to know what St Kilda are doing, because that's a spectacular result for a team with a genuinely shocking list and a decade of mostly terrible seasons behind them. I can see why North supporters would be hopeful. Although, I'd be more hopeful as a Richmond supporter, and they had a big drop. We flirted with fulfilling our middle club potential and then supporters were confronted with the stark reality that not only was the vaunted "dynasty" a mirage, but that sustained success was completely out of the question. From 70,000 to 58,000 in two years looks to me like the response of a supporter base that feels their excitement was completely unwarranted. Interesting that our home attendances actually went up.

There's two ways the club can go here. One is to seriously look at ideas and suggestions like @poita's above. Be creative. Be fun. Think seriously about what Melbourne fans want rather than what's cheap or seems inoffensive from a corporate point of view. The other is to do what we've done before: blame the supporters. It doesn't work on any level. First, even if the message was getting out to all Melbourne supporters, very few people are shamed into turning up or buying memberships. Second, the message NEVER gets out to all supporters. And the people who hear it over and over again are the die-hards. Wagging a finger at the people who go every week, in every weather, no matter how badly we're playing or how ludicrous the company line is... it's such a bad policy. Of course, the most important thing for building the member base is going deep in finals multiple times in a row. I hope that happens in my lifetime.

HA HA HA HA! That's incredible. That's something I'd expect from Fremantle.

Wow. That's embarrassing.