William

What surprises me about this thread is for some years many on this list have been berating the MFC management for their incompetence and for making a sequence of poor decisions that have cost the team plenty. Bosses, coaches, assistance coaches, etc have all been vilified here. Now, suddenly in relation to Clayton Oliver, the same MFC bosses are the all wise making rational decisions that are best for the club. Since when? My surmise is that this is another bad decision - one of a long sequence.

I am disgusted by this MFC decision. Not even a 'bag of chips'.

No he is a human being like you and me and we have derived gratuitous pleasure from his work for some years. He is not an inanimate object.

That is the only sensible thing to do. Apologise and take him back. As I wrote the other day, he is a mercurial talent of the type we don't see often. I note all this speculation about (rumours) of his appalling off-field behaviour etc. From what I have seen (watching training) he is a really hard worker and seems to get on well with the playing group. He doesn't appear to have a toxic presence at training. So I am sceptical of all these culture arguments for giving a brilliant player away for nothing and humiliating him in the process. I also note that Geelong seems to be able to accommodate all sorts of eccentric personalities and the coach gives the players plenty of latitude to be themselves. I suspect the new MFC coach is old school authoritarian in approach and that era has passed.

I think it extraordinary that the MFC would contemplate letting Clayton Oliver go for a massive net loss (3rd round pick return against a large part of his contracted salary) and then celebrating that we still have no 7, who to be fair is barely up to AFL standard these days and would struggle to get into other teams as a mid-field player - slow, cannot kick, and the days of battering rams being in demand are over. All this talk about culture and bad apples - as far as I can tell, Clayton Oliver is just a young kid with some issues, but he wanted to stay and he looked good towards the end of last season. But he has mercurial skills that most of the rest of players do not have. There are a lots of young kids with some issues who just need some leadership put around them to function. Clayton and Christian Petracca are our generational talents who still can play better than most despite their own shortcomings. MFC is mad to let them go.

There are push and pull factors operating in any situation like this and all those slating the player and accusing him of all and sundry should reflect a bit on those factors. First, family and WA = pull. Second, it might be about the poor internal workings of MFC (push) which have delivered repetitive failure since 2021 that were dominant. I would blame anyone for securing a better working environment if that was the case.

I think the notion of club loyalty - playing for the jumper and all that rah rah stuff - is worth interrogating. First, the culture when one played for his/her suburb and the jumper was tattooed to the back is long gone. Clubs treat the players as ‘livestock’ to trade at will when they perceive gains are to be made. Coaches are sacked at will - I didn’t want Goodwin in the first place but he was poorly dealt with in the end. New Presidents and CEOs who have no history of supporting the club (for example, Roffey, Pert) swan in because of some corporate network connections and suddenly pretend they are ‘Dees for Life’. I could go on. Second, I wonder how many people on this forum who are denigrating Christian Petracca have had the scale of internal injuries that he incurred during that Collingwood encounter? It was a serious injury to multiple parts of his body and he would have been in agonising pain. But he still, ill advisedly, went back on to play in his No 5 jumper which I suggest tells you about his commitment. Then he was hospitalised and in serious condition and the ‘Dee for Life’ President couldn’t even be bothered communicating with him as I understand. Commitment goes two ways. I do think that he needs to adapt to the new style of game and improve his kicking - perhaps by taking more time - and that might justify swapping him to another club. But justifying getting ‘rid of him’ because he is arrogant and doesn’t love the jumper is a preposterous sentiment in this modern age where the love of $s and image outstrips everything. He is just part of that culture that dominates the sport.

I agree with @binman. There is an undercurrent on this forum against CarolIne Wilson’s journalism that is unhealthy and obsessive. I have detected the same bias against Kellie Underwood, who may not be everyone’s cup of tea but is a pioneer and very knowledgeable. Both women have carved a path in a shockingly male-dominated sport and environment to their credit. They also expose the deficiencies of many of the male commentators and journalists in our sport.

An interesting red and blue situation has arisen in Newcastle. 'Why would we bother?' Knights coach shock as candidate w...The early withdrawal has thrown a spanner in the Knights' coach search.Basically, for those without subscriptions to the Herald, the story is that the Newcastle Knights sacked their coach recently after a series of poor performances. First resonance with MFC. Then the preferred candidate who is proving to be very successful in the UK league is being forced to undergo a ‘process’ where a series of current assistant coaches are also being interviewed. The well-performed senior coach who has the inside running has now indicated to the Knights more or less that it is insulting to make him compete against unproven assistants and that he will not consider the position. The pressure is then on the Knights to truncate the process and just announce him already. Second parallel with MFC maybe.

Yes, it is a first world problem at the top of those type. But you missed my point which was about relativities when choices are available. Irrespective of the remuneration, if a person has a choice between inner city location or Casey as their workplace, they will be biased to the inner city location, other things equal. So MFC is disadvantaged by the Casey arrangement in my view. It also doesn’t help our women’s team who are forced to play there.

His point was not about the current list. His point really bears on the mismanagement of our club by the Board. I wonder how many of DL people have tried to drive to Casey in the morning and back again in the evening or midday from anywhere towards Melbourne? I regularly drive that route to further destinations and it can sometimes take 2.5 hours just from the airport to Cranbourne. And then at the sports ground it is always windy and pretty unappealing. If a person had a choice then a club that insisted (for various reasons) on going out to that wilderness several times a week would not be chosen. MFC Board should immediately abandon Casey and move its operations back to the City while they work out a better outcome.

I have been one that wanted the senior coach to leave although I have always said it should be done in a way that preserves dignity and respect. I am not sure the way it has happened meets those requirements. I doubt it. But in any organisation where outcomes are team efforts and it is hard to individually assign productivity, the person at the top must take responsibility and that person is the senior coach in a football team. In that vein, the senior coach has overseen a trend decline over 2-4 years (it is difficult to trace the beginning of the decline) and the team is nowhere near contending. In a performance-based (win over loss) environment that is unacceptable and the top of the tree has to go. However, I also think the Board have reacted now to cover their own appalling failures. And, apropos of the quoted contribution above, the decision to part with the senior coach was probably made when the club worked out how many more members they were going to lose. And when the membership starts tanking so do the sponsors and the Board members might then get a bit uncomfortable while sipping their wines in the warm viewing areas on game day.

He is one of the most overrated ‘guns’ going round. Another SW unfortunately.

The best teams in the Newcastle (NSW) District League would be ahead of Melbourne if they were playing them today.

I E-mailed Membership yesterday as I have not received the recent E-mail Letters from the President and I wondered why. I had been receiving all game day information about ticketing for away games etc. I also indicated I will be assessing my Trident membership status at the end of the season, but that is not what this comment is about. Membership replied today (I have found the office staff are always excellent in dealing with queries) after they had investigated the reason for missing the President's communications. The answer was that I had (quote) "opted out of all marketing". That statement is true and reflects my antipathy towards relentless marketing and consumerism. However the point I am making here is that our footy club - the MFC - considers information from the President to the Membership about policy and/or performance (especially when responding to a crisis as now) to be MARKETING. That revelation set me back for a second and I think it reflects the way the senior officials see us plebs in the membership. Appalling.

I have not supported the appointment of the current senior coach since inception given his association with the Essendon scandal. As things progressed, I also didn’t consider him to be an astute tactician and was rather invariant to the dynamics of the game. He also seems to have set views on certain players irrespective of the perceived reality. I also have struggled to see evidence of the so-called ‘game plan’ that he talks about relentlessly in his learning this and learning that diatribes. I wondered whether the game plan was flawed and/or the players had not been educated sufficiently to embrace and execute it and/or the education had failed because the students did not have the capacity to absorb and implement it (even if the plan was in keeping with the ‘industry’ standards). Obviously as an outsider, we cannot easily discriminate between these different conjectures. But the last minute or so at yesterday’s game gave us some real-time evidence that suggests the players despite being well paid are really not that smart (in a football sense), which might help understand why it is hard to see the ‘game plan’ in action and why the disconnect should have been addressed by the senior coach eons ago. The two Saints protagonists displayed serious football intelligence in those few seconds while the Melbourne players looked like they were being blinded by headlights. NWM consulted the free kick taker, they worked out a strategy, there were signals to other players who understood and obeyed (and remember the Saints are a much less experienced team than MFC), and then the plan was executed to perfection. I was really impressed by their intellectual capacity to do that under pressure, not to mention their physical skills. What about MFC players? If they really were clever they would have flooded the metre in front of the 50 metre arc rather than concentrating in the centre area. What the hell was Viney doing on the wing as if it was a centre bounce? That told me that the players are not that smart in terms of understanding the dynamics and possibilities of the game. Which then suggests their poor performance over the last few years reflects a dissonance between the complexity of the game plan and the capacity of the players to comprehend it and implement it under pressure. Which means despite all the ‘love’ between coaches and players the two groups have not really connected. There has been ample evidence of that disconnect. But those last seconds yesterday helped me understand why.

I am hoping a new ticket will form for this year and the membership will finally realise that it is being scammed by these self-serving characters on the MFC board and turf them out and give a new team a chance. The status quo is destroying the club.

Dear JTR I don’t know your personal circumstances but I doubt that many members (if any) have travelled as far and as often and laid as much air flight dollars and hotel expenses as I have over many decades - year-in and year-out - to support the Demons every week. So show some respect to those who are at wits end and propose civic action to put pressure on the management who have overseen this train wreck but refuse to take responsibility.

The problem is defining what the ‘club’ actually is. No-one is saying you abandon your association with the Demons. But we are dealing with a situation where a self-serving board of insiders can’t even establish decision making leadership (they are all interim) and the senior coach is beyond redemption but no-one with authority will deal with that. Meanwhile, the membership diminishes and our credibility for future trades diminishes. That is why I am staying home again next week. We are being scammed by a few self-interested individuals that have ‘taken over’ our club who won’t take responsibility for the train wreck they have created.

As I indicated last week, I go to all the games (flying from NSW each week) but after the Carlton game and Goodwin scamming us with his press interview I decided to save the time and around $500 and stayed home. I am so pleased I made the effort to do that.

Commentator: Saints were planning their last move while Melbourne couldn’t even get their 6-6-6 right. That is on the coach.

Saints are back because their forwards can take marks and ours cannot (with exceptions). That last mark by NWM was beautiful.

JVR is putting in another doleful display in a game where the delivery to the forwards is fine and there is a lot of such delivery. He is rarely in a position to do anything effective.

This is the nub of the problem - the dysfunctional and self-serving management board. It was clear that Goodwin had run his course before he was reappointed. Part of the solution is to run an alternative ticket for the next board elections and really connect with the membership using the dissonance of this year as the momentum builder. We know there is massive dissonance because the membership numbers have fallen significantly and that fact can be expressed in significant dollars. We also have to stop the board approving dysfunctional ‘boys’ club’ contracts. For example, why was JV extended so long when it is clear he has limited capacity as the game evolves? Having said that I still favour asking the senior coach to leave (a few months ago :-)). Having him scamming us again with his weekly nonsensical commentary on our team’s failure in 2026 is going to be a step too far for even long-standing and loyal members such as myself.

No, we will approach the peak at the end of the season when we realise that the senior coach is continuing and 2026 will be worse than 2025.