Whispering_Jack

According to my wife, the Redlegs' ship arrives in Valencia, Spain later today. No bananas but plenty of oranges in Valencia which sadly, could trigger off some painful thoughts in Redleg's head given the connection between the colour and the team that Voldemort plays for these days.

The message when I log on to the site is a bit misleading. It tells me to try again in a hour but then when I clicked on the link below the message I got on straight away. Otherwise, we're moving back at the old faster pace. Thanks.

Then there's this one - GWS Giants to push for extra handout In the normal course, the decision would have been made by the AFL Commission. Who decides now?

Hmmm ... AFL chief Andrew Demetriou at risk of legal safety breach

I don't think a day is allowed to go by without someone at Melbourne announcing that the club is likely to trade selection two in the upcoming trade period. In fact, it's getting to the stage where it's downright embarrassing to hear the trade pick two mantra from our officials because it sounds very much as if we're inviting all comers to make us an offer and nobody's biting. I know the official trades haven't started yet but I hope we have somebody or something lined up because, notwithstanding that the second pick will get us a very good player, we're going to look fairly incompetent if we come up with nothing during the trade period after so heavily promoting this idea.

Have I just jumped into Doc Brown's DeLorean DMC-12 and arrived back in 2006?

I know a fly on a wall.It's telling me we're going to trade pick #2 in the draft for a midfielder.

You're kidding.Right?

This past decade has delivered very little that's good for the Melbourne Football Club. Starting in the latter half of the Daniher period, going through the Bailey years and into the brief period in which Mark Neeld was coach, we epitomised all that was wrong and bad in our code. We had a poor culture, lazy work ethic and too many players appeared to lack the care of club and self that's needed for success. To me, Colin Sylvia represented much of all that. I'm not interested in apportioning blame - it could probably be shared in whatever proportions you like between the player, past coaches and administrations but that's no longer important. We simply need to ensure his departure brings closure to a sorry period in the club's history. I don't even particularly care about the compensation that we get for him. Just as long as he goes and in the end, our new coaches and our football personnel are free to develop a brand new ethos at the club. It's testament to the lack of player development evident at Melbourne in the past that the abiding memory that I have of him as a player is of a game he played at Sandringham at the very start of his first season (he hadn't even made his AFL debut yet). He grabbed the ball in the middle and, off one step, slotted a goal from more than 70 metres out. Had Bruce McAvaney been around he might have described it as a "delicious" moment. Sylvia's kick could well have been aided a little by the wind at his back (I can't really remember if that was the case) but I never saw him recreate that moment in ten years that followed and that is why, for the good of the player and the club, it's a good time to part.

Pardon me but there are double standards aplenty running through this thread. The OP mentioned several areas in which Demetriou has fallen asleep at the wheel during his watch but some would maintain these aren't big picture items and rather, we should determine the health of the organisation in terms only of the almighty dollar. We're financially healthy because our sport is a great product and over almost three decades of an independent commission the groundwork was established by a succession of good people at the helm. Demetriou also earned his hefty salary in the early days. But he's lost it of late and recent developments which show the stronger clubs flexing their muscles and dictating what policy should be applied, the lip service paid to equalisation and fair fixturing and allocation of funding is getting out of hand. Money won't help clean up the ills in this competition for which Demetriou rarely accepts responsibility. One case in point is the drug scandal which is only sitting at the tip of the iceberg. Essendon was running a supplements program that according to ­its own investigation produced a "pharmacologically experimental" environment. The AFL knew that the Bombers were looking at peptides, Demetriou was aware of the dangers of sports scientists but he wasn't looking closely enough until it was too late. Well, one or two might say (and it's been denied) not late enough to sound a warning to a club official but we are where we are and if when infraction notices are issued the cost won't just be counted in emotional terms at club level, there will be economic consequences and no doubt, at some stage, people are going to concede that the buck must stop somewhere.

I don't regard our recruiting efforts in 2012 as a disaster at all. We managed to get Jack Viney with a second rounder, got the player we wanted in Jimmy Toumpas at pick 4, picked up Jesse Hogan and Dom Barry in the mini draft, Dean Kent looks likely and mature age recruits Matt Jones, Dean Terlich and Mitch Clisby all showed a lot. Injuries aside, Chris Dawes provided leadership and will be a very handy cog in our forward line with a healthy body and a full pre season behind him.Given the turnover of 14 players in a season, the players you get at the end of the line are always going to be a bit of pot luck. I think Pedersen was a fair swap for Gysberts who didn't get a game at North. Byrnes cost absolutely nothing and is there as much as anything for experience and leadership. That leaves us with David Rodan who we picked up for pick 88 (and a similar role to Byrnes) and Tom Gillies, a flop who came as a delisted free agent and cost nothing. On balance, I think our recruiting at the end of 2012 was a plus given the necessarily high turnover in players. I'd be happy with more of the same with the rider that we should expect at least one high quality trade coming in if we let pick 2 go.

Sadly, we remain hoisted to this day almost 50 years later. The old school tie, the hushed tones and plotting in the gentlemens clubs and the born to rule attitudes that won't accept others in control of the place. I was once told by someone who was close to the club at the time that Norm Smith was sacked because "they" didn't like the way he ate his peas and potatoes with his fork. At the time, I was incredulous. Today, I'm a believer.

Well, if he goes (and for the record I think it would be best for the club and player if he did) then we know the compensation won't be all that great because, like Moloney and Rivers before him, he's not young and he won't command a large or a long term contract. These are the major factors in determining compensation and you don't get all that much for what on the face of it are damaged goods.

I always thought we were a bit slow. Hopefully, the forthcoming draft will remedy this and give us a few blokes with both big engines and speed so they can peddle away on the wheels that drive Demonland's motor.

Sydney is a big market and there's only one club and a circus act in town at the moment. The Swans have little competition and a selection of Visys with which to make cosy third party deals to which the AFL has hitherto turned a blind eye. Then the AFL sends people on an equalisation junket who have no interest whatsoever in equalisation and this is what you get. Meanwhile the sycophants bow and pray to the neon gods.

A contract won't protect them but a fat man will try (and I'm not talking about the father of you know who).

I think the club and Davey should be congratulated on his final year as a player. It's probably 2 to 3 years since the injuries he sustained along the journey blunted his main weapon, his pace but he fought back well. That's not to say that his season was great - there were a few games when he really struggled. However, he kept plugging away and in the end, was a useful contributor to a down and out team who occasionally gave us glimpses of the player who was so exciting at the peak of his career. Well done on a fantastic career Flash. If Liam Jurrah's story was deserving of having a book written about him then more so the story of Aaron Davey.

It's interesting how so many club presidents are standing up to criticise the system that allowed Sydney to make its bold approach to snare Buddy. The Swans themselves didn't do anything wrong but they were aided and abetted by a system that prevented the majority of the clubs to even consider making a bid for one of the most exciting players in the competition. The presidents have been empowered by the AFL Commission which rolled over to them last week on the PP issue. Now they will win on this one too and the loser will be Demetriou and GWS. Anyone who heard their CEO, David Matthews being interviewed on Fox Footy last night would be aware that he was totally crushed to the point where he was arguing and aggressive with Mark Robinson. It wasn't a good look and he and the AFL have a big job ahead of them to ensure that club stops leaking $ in a market that learned to love the Western Sydney Wanderers who regularly draw crowds of 20k to their home games. I wonder if they publish details of the annual cost of that outfit to the AFL?

Opening day of the Draft Combine and Kevin Sheehan talks about three future stars we picked up last year - Combine graduates set to shine for Dees. When you add Dean Kent and a few mature agers in Matt Jones, Dean Terlich and Mitch Clisby to that list, we have a decent ray of hope coming out of a dark period in the club's history and a fair amount of fabric for Paul Roos to work on in combination with the better players from our existing list and hopefully an equally fruitful recruiting period to come.

OD. I think in the interests of Redleg's health, it's fortunate that he's sailing off the coast of France, heading in the direction of Spain and oblivious to today's developments. I reckon he might be saying that the game as we all knew it died today. I found it distasteful when that nameless person jerked the club around in 2011 knowing he was going to GWS but I found the news that Buddy's management approached the Swans soon after last year's grand final rather appalling. I'm sure Redleg would feel the same way. I suppose we have to get used to it but I thought free agency was designed to help battlers get to other AFL clubs. I'm not so sure that's happening the way the Player's Association envisaged things when it was first mooted.

Quite right. The first major broadcasting rights deal preceded Demetriou upon which Vlad has been able to hitch his wagon. It was Graeme Samuel who deserves the credit for making television rights the lynchpin of the AFL brand. Without the money, the new franchises would never have gotten off the ground let alone created the Ablett/Scully situations. I think Eddie McGuire got it right tonight on AFL360 by pointing out the danger to the game resulting from the path Vlad is taking. We might well be under the gun at the moment but the club to keep an eye on in the near future is St. Kilda. The vibes coming out of that place are disturbing. Oh, and by the way, South Melbourne became Sydney before the AFL Commission was established and Fitzroy was broke when it was shipped off to Brisbane. By that time they had languished in extremely poverty for years. I felt sorry for them when they died but they were unsustainable at the time.

Busy at work today and when I came up for air Buddy was on his way north but instead of GWS, it's Sydney. A bit of karma there seeing GWS getting snookered by another club but it's sad for the competition. One day, clubs will die as a result of this.

More on James - Aish, Billings restricted at draft combine

Seems like everybody's speechless but I'll ask the question. Why?

Well, yes. If that shot I took for goal at the 2:35m of the first quarter against Port Adelaide in round 1 had gone through the big sticks, it might have been us out there against Hawthorn and not Fremantle. Well that's my opinion and I'm sticking to it.