Whispering_Jack

Sure to happen at some stage this year.

I know it's ANZAC Day tomorrow but could posters please leave their personal conflicts off this site. They have been/will be deleted or censored if detected by the moderators. The month of May promises to be an exciting one for the club. It would be a pity if some of you couldn't post here during that time. Cheers

Please stay on topic ... argy bargy and personal comments will be deleted.

Dejavu. The chance to win and break into the group of contenders, to be on an even keel with Adelaide and West Coast among others. This is not the first time we've been in this place but every time in our recent history when we've been here, we've disappointed. Tonight will decide whether we're in a new reality for the club or whether it's the same old same old. What's it to be?

Car or phone?

It's pretty safe to drive down. I can't see them making Petracca the emergency for tomorrow if they reckon he needs more time at Casey.

I wouldn't get too excited. He's probably the emergency.

Sounds like trouble in the Tiger camp.

I sometimes feel guilty about this but I've done the same to my three kids (and their spouses) and nine grandkids, a couple of who have already sucked their friends into joining up.

Your brother is 100% right about Rio. The bay where the aquatic events (including the long distance swim) is to be held is heavily polluted endangering not only the health of the humans who use it but it's especially toxic for the marine life and birds that, among other things, suffocate on plastic bags that get there through being dumped into the nearby river systems or the bay itself. There is another area suitable for water sports at Buzios (100k away) which is relatively clean but apparently when this was suggested as an alternative by an observer sent to examine the conditions, he was summarily sent home. The waterways are not the only problems facing the Rio Olympics. A number of infrastructure projects are well behind, the economy is collapsing and the government is about to fall. The country lives on corruption. It might be time for Gillon to mosey along and attempt to organise a home game for GWS. They would make a good fit.

Did the server go down last night? If it did, I didn't feel the earth move. ?

I watched Tom Papley play a few times as 23rd player for the Scorpions last year. He was mainly used in a forward goal sneak role and played well in every game. I didn't see him as a midfielder and he has certainly kicked on with the Swans where he was rookie listed at the end of last year. Half time today - he has 15 disposals, a goal and 85 DT points. Another one who got away.

Gentlemen, gentlemen ... this issue is never going to be resolved to the satisfaction of all because each of us looks at it from their own perspective. I like Redleg's idea of catching up one day soon to discuss the progress of our team going forward. If you like, I can add to Blistering's story and explain why it is so compelling as proof that a deal was struck very early in the piece which left the club in a blind alley over Scully with no possible way of convincing him to stay and nothing that the club did with the kid was mismanagement. There were certainly mistakes made by the club in that era as there have been since time immemorial with many football club administrations and we can finger point in every direction but the club was well and truly ratted on by the Scully camp, GWS and the AFL over this one. Incidentally, I'm loving what's going on at the moment at Collingwood, Essendon and to a lesser extent at Richmond. May they all keep losing and may at least two of them do so this weekend because the unsuccessful clubs are where the backstabbing always usually occurs.

An interesting Brayshaw family story ~ Angus Brayshaw's close family ties

I can. Firstly, Williamstown is the reigning premier. It lost last week to the previous season's premier Box Hill Hawks and in all likelihood would have been sitting undefeated with a percentage of over 300 had it played the opposition Casey has faced in its small sample of two games. Secondly, history says that when less than half of the Casey team is comprised of MFC players, it struggles. In round 1, Casey had 16 Demons and the number was down to 14 last week. After seemingly being well off for injured players earlier in the week it was disappointing to learn we would be down to a maximum of 11 against a strong side like Williamstown. Thirdly, you can't downgrade the quality of the missing players. They are all AFL listed and will have to be replaced by kids coming up from the development league, many of them being smaller and lighter-bodied. Fourthly, I saw what Williamstown can do, albeit in a practice match earlier in the year. Despite being a stand alone side with no current AFL listed players, they do have a good number of former AFL players who have big bodies and used their greater physical strength in that game to wear down Casey's young, inexperienced team. Casey led a quarter time with three goals, kicked one goal in the second and lost control of the match and failed to kick a goal at all in the second half to lose by ten. They had 11 MFC players in the team that day and most of them were monstered by the opposition. The exceptions IMO were Jayden Hunt and Heritier Lumumba who are now playing for the Demons (in fact, when I raved a bit about Hunt's potential in that game, I copped some flak for saying so). Finally, Casey struggled in the ruck. It did best last year when it had Mark Jamar and Jake Spencer - neither of them are playing tonight and that spells trouble for tonight's game. The Scorpions need Jake back ASAP.

A champion of the club as a player and then did some great work saving it from extinction when he took on the role of chairman in difficult times only to be taken from us and particularly his young family far too soon.

Taken from my little blue book in which I recorded weekly Melbourne results from my school days right through to the early 80s when I decided enough was enough. I can't guarantee that he went to Mentone Grammar but it sounds more likely than Camberwell, only because Mentone was then in the club's recruiting zone. Now that he has family in the senior team, someone who knows might give us the correct answer.

We were 2 and 2 this time last year.

Earlier in the week, the injury reports were promising us that the Scorpions would be fielding a super strong team to take on last year's premiers. I thought at one stage we might get to 15-16 MFC players which would make this game very winnable. However, the number is likely to be down to 11 with one player acting as emergency for Sunday night (cf 14 last week). Players missing from action this weekend:- • Chris Dawes (injured but said to be close to a return); • Clayton Oliver (rested); • Billy Stretch (?); • Jake Melksham (suspended); • Jay Kennedy-Harris (injured - several weeks away); • Oscar McDonald (injured - possibly back next week); • Jake Spencer (injured - once in the 426 category but beyond that now, could be back soon, but then again ... ); • Mitch King (ACL - season); • Aaron vandenBerg (injured - a month); • Joel Smith (?); • Matt Jones (general soreness - probably back next week); and • tomorrow's emergency. I suppose we should be grateful for the fact that we have such a small injured list. In any event, as far as this game is concerned, Williamstown will start favourite tonight.

As much as I would like it to be otherwise, I don't have Melbourne down yet as a finals challenger, mostly because the spectre of the Essendon game looms so large. However, if it turns out that the Bombers' game was an aberration and our form in the others is the indicator of where we are placed in 2016, then we become a contender for the finals and the next few matches could tell the tale. In that event, the Crows are one of our main rivals and because of their tough draw, their loss to Hawthorn might turn out more helpful to us in the long run. I don't think there's much chance that the Hawks will fall far enough off their perch to miss finals but I do see signs that they could go into decline swiftly when their current batch of elder statesmen leave the scene. For the moment, the battle for finals places looks more open than it has been for years and hopefully we can be in the thick of it for a while yet.

I was in both Beijing and Shanghai not all that long ago and I have come to believe that the experiment of playing a game there, no matter how lucrative for the clubs involved, is in the present climate, a potential disaster for the clubs involved. Whilst the Chinese economy has been booming during periods when other economies have struggled, there have been recent signs of economic slowdown. The progression from a socialist society into a combination unique to China of the old with capitalism is bringing its own problems and then there is the environment. Who is going to construct a stadium to meet the specifications and size for AFL and who can guarantee clean air for the participants? Beijing is one of the most heavily polluted cities on this planet and Shanghai is not far behind. Large numbers of people get around wearing face masks to assist breathing and also apparently to ward off infectious air borne diseases (nobody's sure how effective they are). We were in Shanghai for two or three days and never saw sunshine - the city was shrouded in a dull fog most of the time. Our guide, a well educated man who had good contacts told us that the authorities released dodgy figures of smog readings which are bad enough in themselves but the real figures are much worse and whilst other Asian countries are trying to clean up their acts in this area, the government in China lags far behind. The AFL did not hesitate when the CAS sanctions were handed down against Essendon, to cite health and safety reasons in order to give the Bombers massive concessions to enable them to prop up their team. I wonder if the AFL will take the same concerns with it into the China project. Will it undertake studies into the pollution issues? Can it trust the authorities to provide decent grounds, issue visas etc for the games to go ahead and will they stick to their promises noting the stories about the ground set aside for football during the Melbourne experiment of five or six years ago remains untouched to this day. I suspect that this all boils down to one thing in the end and that's money. The health and safety of the players and the interests of those who follow the game can be damned as usual.

That goes without saying for the ANZAC Round and dare I use a cliché, our game against Richmond last year set the bar at a high level. The lighting and the atmosphere at night made it a much better spectacle than the following day and the celebration was perfectly done. The fixture sets up a number of interesting contests, even the last one on Monday which, at one stage was looking like a one-sided blowout in favour of Collingwood but not so now.

I don't have the attendance numbers from last year but I have this feeling that the gap in numbers between the Sunday night attendance and the Anzac Day crowd this year will not be substantial.

ANB has already made his debut. He played games last year and impressed on occasion (he kicked three goals in our win v the Cats). However, to paraphrase the legendary Jack Dyer, I hope that if he plays this week, ANB will make "an even better debut" the second time around.

No. Just making up the numbers in the club's longest ever Mystery Injury of the Week list.