Whispering_Jack

I also have a lot of VHS tapes (of wins only) from the 80s to the present. Not many recent wins though.

I know how much Redleg loves his racing videos but this has piqued my interest. If I kept videos of all of the shows, sports including footy I tape on iq, I would run out the 100% of space allocated very quickly. Is there a way to save certain material from your iq onto another drive or are you stuck with what Foxtel allocates? [No abuse please - I know nothing about Foxtel. I just press buttons and watch the shows - thank you]

Devastating for the good folk of San Francisco and their supporters. I'm off Yankee imperialist sports for now. Back to the more gentlemanly pursuit of cricket and, once the tennis is done and dusted, the footy.

A great interview from Crash Craddock in the Herald Sun - How Ashes star Mitchell Johnson bounced back to become an Ashes hero Lessons there for every sport including AFL.

I know he did it in the white ball game and that doesn't necessarily translate into test success but last night's effort must strengthen Faulkner's claims for South Africa. I think he should be right there for the next time that Watson's calf or hammy inevitably twinges of strains.

Let's not knock Romsey which was in Melbourne's old country zone and spawned player John Reid who played for us briefly in the early 70s before crossing to his father's old club Footscray. Reid's younger brother, Bruce, was an even better player who Melbourne sought keenly in the mid 70s. Bruce Jr. eventually was cleared to play for the Bulldogs and ended up at Carlton and played over 100 games in total.His sons are Ben Reid (Collingwood) and Sam Reid (Sydney) which goes to show that we should have treated Romsey with a lot more respect and simply refused to let the Reids out of grasp all those years ago as it would have given us a couple of ready made key position players under the father/son rule as well no doubt, as a herd of alpacas.

I understand that a prominent Melbourne supporter is also returning to the jurisdiction at the weekend.

With Lindsay Fox as Prince for life and building a private swimming pool on crown land adjacent to the royal palace. All hail, Prince Lindsay!!! Come to think of it we could do with some hail right now.

Thanks but I managed to escape via the freeway where they haven't set up border controls yet. I'll be back by the weekend for a wedding and to check out how the republic's growth industries (weight loss clinics and dental implant technology) are faring.

How are things in Bonbeach bub? I tried walking there from the Independent Republic of Frankston and Boganville the other day but got stopped at the border and wasn't allowed to cross for lack of a passport. They're taking this succession thing too seriously IMO.

Never in doubt and I knew that one of the clubs I support would be playing in a final against the Hawks in 2014. Now for a win in that one and a double up in September

Davey Warner playing second fiddle in to Aaron Finch in an ODI. I'd like to see that!

What was it like last night sharing a cell at the Southport watch house with the winner of the magic millions, Redleg?Former Gold Coast Suns footballer Campbell Brown arrested after Magic Millions

Great. I have to get up at sparrows tomorrow and then drive back to Melbourne across the state line from Frankston to get to work. Or perhaps just tape the game and watch later (which might be better because I can fast forward some of the parts).

History repeats in the women's ashes test. England scored 201 on the first day and had the Aussies struggling at one stage at 5/37 before recovering to take a first innings lead of 6 runs. Poms are at 3/18 at stumps.

And another one for the history books is the fact that, despite the loss of our first pick in the 99 draft, our selections that year were outstanding so in terms of on field personnel, the salary cap sanctions had less effect than they could well have had on the club. And as much as I am a fan of Mark Jamar, I think Jolly's contribution to two clubs after he left us was far superior. In hindsight, it would have been great if we read the writing on the wall when the centre bounce ruck rules were changed and turned White into a KPP (although I think a brief attempt was made without much success).

Excellent Bob although I'm sure that Gutnick would argue that he was aware that we were about to be investigated for salary cap breaches and self-disclosure saved us from an even greater penalty. However, if it's possible for there to be some connection between the events of 1999 and what happened to us in 2007 and beyond (and I agree that there is) then even more so, it's possible that there is a nexus between recruiting and list management issues of the mid 2000's and what happened later in the decade and in the years that ensued. It's mostly a matter of your viewpoint and how much weight you want to put on things. Most of these things are up for debate and I'm sure good clubs will analyse their past and come up with solutions to improve their performance. The good thing is that I believe that this is what happened with Roos at the Swans and the succession of power after he left gave that club the opportunity to win the 2012 flag under Longmire. If he can do the same with us, I'll be happy.

I assume that getting a wildcard effectively means you have to go through the playoffs away from home every week until the Superbowl if you're good enough to get there. Tough ask for the 49ers.

That building you're inhabiting for the moment seems to be a magnet for former Melbourne people. Didn't it once host another ex-Demon who excelled in three games under RDB during the halcyon days of 1981?

I'd like to try again to take personalities out of this debate and not make this a blame apportionment exercise but rather to look at cause and effect over time to see if we can understand why our decline was so rapid and then so long-lasting.To a significant extent, it's true that the team that we saw on that night in September was coming to the end of a cycle with Neitz, White, Robertson and Yze perilously close to the end, others a lot closer to being finished than would have been anticipated and a few more about to suffer injuries that affected their careers at the club. My point is that others have been in that place but prepared their clubs better for the inevitable (Roos and his FD at the Swans being a case in point). In particular, it's important to plan for the succession in leadership and for the loss of key players (after all, they didn't exactly become veterans overnight). In our case, we knew those four main players mentioned above were on the way out but what was done to replace them? Our recruiting and list management were abysmal in the years leading up to 2006/7. We actually had a premiership ruckman in our grasp and let him go for a late first round draft pick, then took 3 players all 192cm in that draft. In the three years 2005-7 we traded only one player into the club, Byron Pickett who, whilst briefly effective, was already 28 years of age and finished after a year. These were the years when we should have been developing players for our midfield and forward lines as well as developing leaders and a strong culture. The fact is that we didn't (and that itself was due to many factors including the club's financial position), and in my view, that can't be written off as purely due to the end of a cycle. This does not mean that the coaches who followed get a free pass. Both of them failed badly but my point is that clubs need to be on top of planning not only for the short term but for the longer journey as well and in that respect while you might consider it to have been "fair to try to extract one more good year out of that group", I think that the reality was that the horse had already bolted.

There used to be a television series entitled The Naked City that finished every programme with the following narration -"There are eight million stories in the Naked City. This has been one of them." Many of those stories were sad, brutal and/or violent but the show was acclaimed for its realism. That which you might regard as sad is to me the reality, as brutal as it may seem to you. Every year we see young men and women aspiring to reach the pinnacle of their sport and every year we see the majority of them fail. Tynan, Taggert and Gysberts are among the failures and their stories are sad but real. Whether it was injury, lack of ability or lack of will that caused their downfall, the fact that they failed to make it onto the big stage doesn't make it any less real or my assessment any less honest or any less applicable to Melbourne than any other club. As for Prendergast and Moloney, I can only say that their stories are the saddest of the lot and I feel absolutely nothing for them other than that I hope for the sake of others around him that Beamer has shaken his alcohol issues. Your final remark, which I find to be offensive and disgraceful, is what you should really feel sad about. Cheers

Speculation about what Jack Watts or any other player might have done proves neither your theory nor mine. Hawthorn might as well have sacked Clarkson for fear (well founded as it turned out) that Buddy would leave the club. Bailey lost a #1 draft pick but what did that prove about his ability as coach? What will it say about Roos if James Frawley moves on at the end of the year?Psych tests? Whilst I don't discount them by any means, I've seen competing psychologists in court at odds over the efficacy of various tests, their evidence depending on who was paying for their testimony. Clubs employ nutritionists, people with lab coats and laptops but in the end, it boils down to what the coaches do and how players respond. The players you've mentioned in this thread don't promote your case one iota. Two coaches and five years have yet to turn Jack Watts into the hard edged player we wanted him to be. Roos is taking a different tack and let's hope it works but there are no guarantees. In an earlier post (#48) you mentioned Josh Tynan and Luke Taggert. Really? The last of the Prendergast legacy who both had games in the Casey twos in 2013 and neither were picked up by other clubs when delisted. Not even as rookies. Don't start me with Gysberts needing love, affection, lots of watering, a sunny spot in the garden and loads of mature to nurture him. Brad Scott showered him with love and exactly how many AFL games did he hand him before giving him the shove? The piece de resistance would have to be Moloney who wanted out before Neeld walked in the door. A model player who admitted to having an alcohol problem and was lucky IMO to get away with no weeks club suspension for "that" incident. Who wouldn't love a coach and play for his heart out for him for no result while suffering from a debilitating cold or flu after that? A player with so much class that he issued that "karma" tweet which you seem to regard as some sort of badge of honour but which I reckon, sums his character up pretty well. Brisbane, which made such a good fist of retaining its young players last year, deserves him. To sum it up from an historical perspective: Back in 1978 Melbourne appointed Denis Jones (a good player under the legendary Norm Smith in the 50s & 60s as coach). Jones tried to coach his team in the same style as his mentor. The problem was that Smith had six champions and 20 or so darn good players at any given time and Jones had one champion and half a dozen good players at his disposal. Moreover, the other clubs had long moved on from the old style of game. Jones lost the players because they knew his methods were wrong and had no confidence in what he was trying to do. Much the same thing happened with Neeld but he had a range of additional disadvantages and circumstances facing him. As I said when I raised this, my view might well be a dissenting one. Some players were no doubt not particularly charmed by his style and his approach. You never expect that in a list of 44 when only 22 get to play every week but IMO the problem was always that the style of game he tried to instil wasn't right for the players he had at his disposal and further he was too inflexible in his methods to adapt them to this playing group. I will however, take on board your comment when I next speak with some of our players (they're not "contacts" by any means) but I wouldn't expect them to be monolithic groupthinkers on the subject anyway.

One area where we improved immensely is in the immeasurables - the little 5%ers in the field, bowling changes and field placements working, a lot of little factors that worked for us and failed for them which saw us building in confidence as the series went on while their morale dropped. This was much the opposite in the northern summer when everything seemed to go right for them - winning some close ones and the draw when it rained and we were on course for a win. South Africa will be a new ball game. We need to work on our poor starts to our first innings and that might involve some changes in our batting order. What to do with Bailey? What happens with Watto and his place on the batting order?

What I'm saying is based on conversations with players and other mainly anecdotal evidence to the effect that he wasn't an effective communicator in translating what he was doing at training and talks with his players to an effective, coherent game plan. As with all coaches who carry poor records with them, there will be critics internally on a personal level as there were with Neeld's predecessors. I'm sure you can enlighten me with some examples of how his relationship with players were so different at Melbourne where he was a senior coach than at Collingwood and at previous clubs (TAC Cup and country) where he was reputed to be good with his players? Why did we play just as badly (and in some cases worse) under Neil Craig after Neeld went? Did Craig also have issues with his relationship with the players or perhaps there are some issues with the qualities of some of the players?

Permit me to be a dissenting voice on a couple of issues not because of the fact that there's a need to defend Mark Neeld/attack Dean Bailey but because there are some things that simply don't resonate with me. Firstly, the view that the players were flogged too hard in preseason training under Neeld. This flies in the face of comments from Neeld that the policy in 2012 and 2013 were to work to the intensity of 60% rising to 80% of the top clubs like Collingwood. This was said to be done to ensure that the players (especially the younger ones) were not subjected to potential injury from the stress and strain of moving too quickly into maximum workloads. The fitness programme was prepared by Dave Misson who is still at the club and working under Paul Roos. Moreover, looking at reports at the time on Demonland and in the media, I can't see many claims that the group was overworked other than in a few individual instances of players lagging at the back in basic running exercises and training routines. I heard no complaints from the (admittedly) small number of players with who I discussed pre season training both at the time and later in the year. Secondly, while I accept that by the start of the season Neeld no longer had the full confidence of all the playing group it's not clear that this was directly a consequence of his supposed "school teacher"/harsh approach. Again, it's not consistent with what I heard from the players at the time. I believe that rather than it being due to the harsh approach, it was more a result of a loss of belief in what he was trying to do. Neeld was given the task of hardening up a team that was known to be "soft" ("bruise-free") and below the required overall fitness; a team that fell apart in the face of pressure applied by the top sides. I can't see that Roos' aims will be much different although his methods and manner certainly will be. However, there will be times when Roos will find it necessary to work the players hard on the track and there will be other times when harsh words are required. I don't expect us to suddenly become a team of nancy boys who shun hard work or harsh words under Roos and I don't accept this was the problem under Neeld. IMO he simply wasn't up to it in his coaching methods and in getting his game style across (especially on match days) and the players knew this and responded accordingly.