Whispering_Jack

Neil Cordy wrote that? Well, it might be a good example of poor writing but he's still a better journo than he was a footballer.

I agree with many of your sentiments although playing the patience card is starting to sound very much like a broken record. Roos is currently coaching with one hand tied behind his back, the lack of ruck strength and forward power is particularly telling and whatever he does now is like shuffling deckchairs on the Titanic. The way things are, there's little sign of any relief for a while. Hence, we'll just keep rolling on hoping for miracles.

Looking at the Casey playing list on SportingPulse it would appear that Dom Barry was the emergency who travelled with the team to Sydney and Luke Tapscott joined James Strauss as mystery injury of the week. The latter two are first round draft picks who have struggled to get any continuity during their careers, a part of the Melbourne story this decade.

My spies tell me that Jamar and Riley were managed with their game time because of the fact that they were coming back after long lay offs. That's unfortunate in Jamar's case because, as was pointed out in the above post, we need both he and Gawn back in the Melbourne team ASAP.

Possessions: McKenzie 31 Nicholson 29 Clisby 28 Davis Panozza 19

Embarrassing.

Full time: Casey Scorpions win by 6 points after Neville Jetta goals at 34 minutes and Blease at 35 minutes after conceding 5 goals in six minutes to lose the lead. Casey Scorpions 0.5.5 4.8.32 6.12.48 12.14.86 Essendon 1.2.8 4.7.31 4.10.34 11.14.80 Goals Casey Scorpions Best 3 Blease Jetta 2 Clisby McKenzie Page Smith Trengove Essendon Jetta 3 Merrett 2 Aylett Dell'Olio Fantasia Kefford Mellington Tagliabue Best Casey Scorpions Jetta McKenzie Davis Clisby Best Page Essendon Aylett McLeod Edwards Jetta Dell'Olio Van Unen

Qtr time: Casey Scorpions 0.5.5 trail Essendon 1.2.8

Yeah, one or the other I reckon.

Apart from the virtually overarching Melbourne factor there are too many games these days that simply don't capture the imagination. Leaving aside last night's MCG game there's a sameness about many of the games and then there's the contrived teams like GCS and GWS built up through rules designed to ensure quick success at the cost of others. Too much dull colourless boring shyte that will be tested this year by the World Cup and even by the cricket next year. Attendances are down, the natives are complaining and the people who run the game believe its in great shape.

You're right Freudie. It's not their fault at all. It's mine. My expectations are waaaay too high.

Last night, the wife and I had dinner with friends at the Railway Club Hotel Steakhouse in Port Melbourne. Apart from the fact that the food's great, the other benefit is that there are a number of television sets placed around the walls so, if you strategically select your seat you can watch a game of footy as well as enjoy your food and take part in the conversation (in the case of the blokes you know what that's about). The game was Collingwood v Geelong and it was a ripper. The Pies were dominated in the first quarter, came back in the second to be level at half time and while neither team was at its top, the second half was close enough and exciting to retain the interest of all for the evening. If you like a comparison between the way these teams and Melbourne play, one of the ladies at the table who follows the Dees expressed it best when she said there's less stuffing around, less mistakes and more direct football. I would have added something about more endeavour from the experienced players in defence - the ones you rely on to save or win games - because as the game went on you could see blokes like Maxwell and Lumumba working their butts off trying to get their side up for a win. The former went off with an ankle injury early, got treatment and came back to play an important role in keeping his team in the game for its full duration. I wondered where are our equivalents? Why the hell do we have defenders not even chasing four minutes into a game? To make matters worse, at the bottom left hand of the screen they kept putting up the scores from the West Coast v St. Kilda game in Perth. To my astonishment, the Saints who a fortnight ago were about on par with us give or take some errant kicking for goal and the unfortunate circumstance of an injury or two incurred during the game, were in front at half time and there was only a goal in it at the final break. This was against a team that monstered us six days ago on our home turf in front of our own people. I was seething. It brought home to me how insulting that display from the team was to the coach and the supporters. I don't care about the fact that we have injuries to our talls or that some players have more important things on their minds like how much money are they going to be on at another club next year, I want to see them playing the sort of football today that ends up in a scoring opportunity and not turned over into an opposition score. Above all, I want to see the same endeavour and purpose shown by every player that Nick Maxwell displayed for Collingwood last night because that bloke plays as if he hates to lose and too many of ours don't. [Rant ends here...]

Posters - please keep it civil and respectful or there will be some mass bannings here very soon. Stay on topic too.

Thought exactly the same thing but then I also understand that the way to stop the media from treating as as an easy target is to actually perform the way people expect a football team to perform. We seriously need to harden up and work our butts off like Hawthorn does.

King gets it wrong as often as many of the others in his industry. He famously gave Geelong no chance of beating Collingwood in the 2011 grand final and sneeringly laughed off the Cats' chances. I've watched him in the past on the now defunct AFL Insider programme and was generally unimpressed to the point where I, like many others given the show's been axed, simply turned off. The fact that he's right this time doesn't mean a great deal and certainly not that he's worth listening to as far as I'm concerned.

Seems to me that the purpose of the meeting is to determine an appropriate exit strategy for the mutual benefit of the club and the player. I really can't see him staying in his current unhappy situation in Melbourne while his family and most of his friends are in Perth. It wouldn't surprise if, after time for healing in familiar surroundings, he continues his career at the Dockers from next year on. Good luck to him - he's been on a rough road.

Angus Brayshaw who trained at the club along with Billy Stretch as part of the AFL's work experience programme, continues to impress. Brayshaw, Lamb shine as Pies down AIS

Don't hold your breath Redleg. We saw what the AFL did under pressure from the other clubs and in the interests of preserving GWS' first pick. Not only that - there are a few Melbourne supporters who hold the view that we can recover without the handouts and who will loudly rant that priority picks are unnecessary or at least undesirable to assist in our recovery and will make a loud noise to that effect. This, despite the fact that the AFL has rules which indicate we're definitely entitled to draft assistance by any measure.

This is not about Melbourne but it's the story of an interesting man I once met who played one game at what was then the highest level but never really got on the ground:- Jack Clancy of the overflowing And here's the story in his own words:- The game that never was

THE GAME GWS Giants v Melbourne at Spotless Stadium Sunday 6 April, 2014 at 1.10 pm HEAD TO HEAD Overall GWS Giants 1 win Melbourne 3 wins At Spotless Stadium GWS Giants 1 win Melbourne 0 wins Past five years GWS Giants 1 win Melbourne 3 wins The Coaches Cameron 0 wins Roos 0 wins MEDIA TV - Fox Footy Channel at 1.00 pm (live) RADIO - MMM 3AW SEN ABC ABC Grandstand THE BETTING GWS Giants to win - $1.30 Melbourne to win - $3.55 THE LAST TIME THEY MET GWS Giants 19.10.124 defeated Melbourne 12.15.87 This was Melbourne's ultimate day of shame among many for the club in 2013. The previously winless Giants ran the Demons ragged in a game in which only Nathan Jones looked adequate in the role of an AFL footballer. THE TEAMS GWS GIANTS B: Nick Haynes, Sam Frost, Curtly Hampton HB: Heath Shaw, Lachlan Plowman, Adam Kennedy C: Toby Greene, Adam Treloar, Tom Scully HF: Jacob Townsend, Jeremy Cameron, Dylan Addison F: Devon Smith, Jonathan Giles, Jonathan Patton Foll: Shane Mumford, Stephen Coniglio, Callan Ward I/C: Tomas Bugg, Will Hoskin-Elliott, Josh Hunt, Josh Kelly EMG: Jed Lamb, Adam Tomlinson, Zachary Williams In: Will Hoskin-Elliot Out: Lachlan Whitfield (Inj) MELBOURNE B: Alex Georgiou, James Frawley, Lynden Dunn HB: Jack Grimes, Tom McDonald, Dean Terlich C: Daniel Cross, Bernie Vince, Jack Watts HF: Matt Jones, Jack Fitzpatrick, Jack Viney F: Jeremy Howe, Cam Pedersen, Rohan Bail FOLL: Jake Spencer, Nathan Jones, Dom Tyson I/C: Shannon Byrnes, Michael Evans, Jay Kennedy-Harris, Dean Kent EMG: Dom Barry, Sam Blease, Jack Trengove IN: Michael Evans, Dean Kent, Jack Viney OUT: Viv Michie, Jimmy Toumpas, Jack Trengove INSIDE OUT It would seem that if you want to properly preview a match involving the Demons then you need to know all about the club from inside out. The complexities of a playing group that has been whacked around the park, hit by injuries and publicly whipped by a series of media feeding frenzies are breathtaking in their scope but it's not hard to fathom why this team performs as it does or to figure out that it doesn't take much to push this team past the tipping point. "I knew". That was the simple response I got from Supporter X who I met this week and who, a month ago on the weekend after Melbourne's relatively respectable loss to Geelong, told me that the club was in for far greater pain this year than last. Supporter X is one of those negative types for whom the world is always ending tomorrow. He says that he knew back then that the injuries to the club's talls were more serious than the official version, that Mitch Clark's problems ran deeper than ongoing soft tissue injuries in the wake of his recovery from the Lisfranc injury and that certain players are not as particularly committed to the cause as we would like. Whether he had inside information or was guessing, the team's insipid performance from the get go last week allowed him to command the bragging rights of the day. Still, it's not that difficult to work out because Melbourne has developed a formidable track record of total collapse under pressure (and even sometimes not under pressure) in recent times. I heard one alarming statistic during the week that in the period from 2007 to the present Melbourne has lost 21 games by 75 points or more - a figure that tells a disastrous story and a tale that covers the tenure of a number of coaches (including a few fill ins and now the incumbent). This makes last week's walloping part of a long series of telling blows to the psyche, startling with the year of the coaching demise of Neale Daniher to Dean Bailey's opening couple of games to his last, through Mark Neeld's many lows, to the day at Etihad last year when North Melbourne carried out the ritual slaughter of a team that had shown signs of improvement for a few weeks under Neil Craig. And now, round 2 of last week. You have to ask yourself what is wrong with this lot that they are so week, mentally and physically and perhaps morally judging by the lack of apparent effort and desire to chase just four minutes into the game as was demonstrated last week? This is the enormity of the challenge that faces coach Paul Roos who promised something different this week. He could easily have axed ten players for this week's game but only dropped three. He foreshadowed a number of positional changes and one suspects that he will need to deliver if he is to turn things around against a young enthusiastic GWS Giants who start Sunday's game at Spotless Stadium with the rare distinction for that club of being the firm favourite after beating the Swans at the same venue in round 1 and missing out narrowly last week to the Saints. The three players who were dropped were among quite a few who ran as slowly as treacle last week and they have been replaced with a trio of youngsters who all have a pulse - Michael Evans, Dean Kent and Jack Viney. In the case of the latter, he has the same take no prisoner attitude as co-skipper Nathan Jones and while it's unfair that you need to rely on a 19 year old to set an example of courage, toughness and sheer mongrel, this kid has it. If only that attitude could rub off on the rest of the group, this game would be a cakewalk. There's no doubt that Melbourne's midfield is well on the way to being fixed with the advent of Bernie Vince, Dom Tyson and Daniel Cross to join Nathan Jones and Viney. The problem is the forward line and the question of who Roos throws into the mix up there. One thing for sure is that it can't be left vacant as it has been in the opening two rounds that have yielded an aggregate of 81 points which is barely enough to eclipse Hawthorn's half time score against last year's runners up Fremantle. The big if is whether Roos' promised changed forward set up can generate scoring opportunities that become goals and not missed points or failures to convert as has been the norm over the past fortnight. No more fumbles, no more turnovers and some more direct football would be nice. Despite the humiliation of last week, I still have a glimmer of hope for this lot, mainly because of the belief I have in Paul Roos, his band of assistants and those working in the background at the club. I think back to George Stone's recounting of the story of the piano player in the brothel from this week's Devil's Advocates Dinner and wonder if and when the Demons will become part of the action action again. Something tells me that even if he doesn't turn the team inside out, Roos' action in the form of the changes made at selection and on the field might just do the trick for this week at least. Melbourne by 1 point.

How did they get off?

This is the Fremantle team that demolished Collingwood in Round1?

Preview here

I get it - pre-emptive bad governance. I know a member of the Board who's a doctor who would never fall for that sort of think. It was never close to rolling anywhere except in Dank's brain. He'd already been told to buzz off.

I trust you then repeated the exercise with James Frawley and got the same result.