Whispering_Jack

LMAO

A left winger with an annual pay cheque of $2m. Love it.

True to the Baghdad Bob tradition you still haven't overcome the tendency to put words into the mouths of others and coming up with ridiculous conclusions which allows you to avoid addressing the issues at hand. One example of this is your reference to my blaming the draw. This was first raised to me as a subject by a then board member of the club who you and I know well in the context of a diabolical draw (in terms of prime fixtures) around 2007 which he described as "premeditated murder". He was speaking of a fixture that was so slanted against our club that it was barely commercial. I wonder if the position has changed now that different people are in charge? The AFL can do without Demetriou, his leaks and the way he handles every issue that hits his desk these days. He's tired and he should go and I think your comparison with how the MFC is run is like most of your argument - completely irrelevant.

Good point and the answer is almost none. After all, we've had ten years to assess his value.I don't think you can really attack the recruiters for their choice of Sylvia and McLean in that draft which has turned out to be one of the most shallow in the recent history of drafts. The truth is that we picked the wrong year to tank list manage. If we'd done it in 2004 we could have picked up Roughead and Franklin instead and who knows what direction we might have taken then?

Relax. It's Jay Clark.

Latest report from Mrs. Redleg is that the cruise continues and the ship has docked at a port in the south of France after initially crossing into Italian waters. There's apparently a storm on the way and I suspect that Redleg himself might be a little seasick. Take this with a grain of salt if you wish but I tracked their course on a map of the Mediterranean and discovered that its shape perfectly matches that of a banana.

A bit precious to suggest that I snipe at "little" issues when you've done little else but snipe at others for the best part of the last two years (eg Neeld trashed Bailey's brand when he outlined how poorly the players came up after their first fitness tests) but I'll let that pass to the keeper.The little matters upon which I base my contempt of Demetriou range from his appalling mismanagement of the tanking affair, the doping scandal (which could still blow up in both his and the AFL's face), the disgraceful and conflicted manner in which he allowed a new franchise to poach a teenage player before the first year of his contract was out without giving his club any opportunity to match the offer funded by the AFL and the inadequate compensation given at the time. IMO his treatment of the state of the stadium used for the semi final in Sydney was contemptuous and an insult to all concerned and an embarrassment to himself. For reasons outlined by others above I don't think he's done us any great favours with his largesse in the face of the obstacles the AFL sets up for clubs like ours. My opinion is that it's time for the AFL Commission to delist him even if there are some fawning sycophants around who accept that we should remain beholden to him. The fact of the matter is that while his record might look good in the bigger picture, there are some large cracks emerging and I don't trust him to handle them. Moreover, when interviewed by Mike Sheahan on Open Mike last Tuesday, Demetriou denied that the MFC was on "life support" but rather had been given a "one off grant which was to help with redundancies and they'll be alright after that". He's talking about our financial position and not where we are as a football team and that comment is in direct contradiction with your assessment that the club is a basket case that would normally be in the hands of receivers. Now, if you're right about that, then what Demetriou told Sheahan in public was a lie and good corporate governance demands that he should be thrown out of office for that. On the other hand, if Demetriou told the truth ...

Judge for yourself.

Thanks for the correction. I was close but no ceegar However, it does outline the clever approach and good fortune the club experienced and shows the value of having good people in charge of recruiting. On Sam Mitchell, I remember him playing against Sandringham as a Box Hill top up player after he missed out on being drafted. I watched the game near his family on the grassy knoll at TBO and though Mitchell got a lot of the footy, he appeared slow and loped around the ground. The popular wisdom among the cognoscenti standing near me was that he would never make it. At the end of that year, he won the Liston Trophy and was drafted by Hawthorn. The rest, as they say, is geography.

Everyone seems to be assuming from Barrett's message that Sylvia won't be there because it's his choice and his alone. But what if Roos and Melbourne have taken the view that he's not worth the price? Personally, I reckon we would get more value out of a 30/31 year old Chappie than Colin but, in any event, like WYL, I won't be losing any sleep over his departure if that turns out to be the case despite his improved form in the latter half of 2013. When all is said and done, he is a product of the pampered culture that prevailed in the latter half of the Daniher years and the Bailey and Neeld periods. He had to be disciplined often over the journey. Perhaps it's a good thing, after ten years, for Colin to take his life membership and try himself out elsewhere and for the club to take the morsel of compensation that's doled out and for both to move on.

The last straw IMO was his abdication of the AFL Commission's power over the question of assistance to Melbourne, in particular the matter of draft assistance. He gave in completely to the clubs leaving the competition exposed to the muscle power of the stronger clubs. As a result, there's every chance that one or two of the weaker Victorian clubs might collapse in the next 2 to 3 years. I hope he gets the tennis gig. I don't particularly like the sport and I reckon he's a good chance to turn it into a minor world sport in the short space of time. Good riddance.

Better you should leave logic and memory to me and revisionism to yourself. McDonald showed that poise, strength and judgement throughout 2012, not just the first half as you grudgingly state. He was picking up Bluey votes even later in the season after that unfortunate collision against Brisbane left him with a collapsed lung having to travel back to Melbourne by road. I've already pointed out the shoulder injury which derailed the first five or six weeks of the season. There's no evidence that his skill sets went into decline as a result of Neeld and the fact that he managed to finish tenth in the B & F suggests that your impression of the effect of Neeld's coaching is misguided or possibly even mischievous. As someone pointed out here a while ago, the propaganda campaign has reached such a ridiculous state that the old guard are being blamed for the troubles in Egypt and Syria. Now excuse me while I scour the vision of the rubble at Nairobi's Westgate Mall to see if I can find images of Cameron Schwab, Don McLardy or Neeld himself.

I beg to differ. From what I've seen of Savage, he would easily hold down a spot in our best 22. In fact, there's a fair chance he would feature our best 22.

That's pretty much consistent with what I'm saying. We don't want to pay too high a price but there's going to be room on our list for older, more experienced players, the teenagers and the 22 - 25 year olds and if we can get them in and make the right selections we can enrich our list and give it more quality and depth. Add to that, improvement from greater confidence and better coaching and we should see a major boost in our performances.

So far no answer from Colin whose manager would, I imagine, be fielding some offers from other clubs. If Colin isn't happy with our offer then he can become a FA on Friday and would be halfway out the door a day or so later. If he goes, there's a form of compensation available based on a scale which many of the affected clubs weren't happy about last year because the AFL was pretty vague about how it worked. Port Adelaide ended up getting two second round picks for Pearce and Chaplin while Melbourne got one third round pick for Moloney and Rivers. The thing is that the compo is based on the age of the player and the size and length of the new contract. If you get a player in, it can also affect your compo, although last year Shannon Byrnes was apparently not considered worthy of compensation towards Geelong, his inclusion at Melbourne affected ours. Go figure or, in other words, it's a crock. Don't expect too much for Col if he goes although if it's the right club in similar circumstances, we might be able to conjure up a trade but that's probably a remote possibility. Bottom line is that we should be trying to use free agency to get a couple of players in ourselves.

Hawthorn did make a few mistakes along the way but for the most part, the drafting and trading have been exemplary. I suppose it started when they traded Trent Croad, once a problem child for them, to Fremantle and got Luke Hodge. His two premierships now eclipse the other two in the trio of wunderkinder that year, the others being Luke Ball and Chris Judd who have one flag each. I also put Hodge down as the best leader among that group. They also picked up Luke McPharlin in that time who they traded to Freo to get Croad back when he matured and became a contributor to their 2008 flag. The next great acquisition was Clarkson himself and, after losing just enough games (strange how that happened so often), they managed to hit the jackpot in the 2004 national draft with Roughead, Franklin and Lewis (the latter a nice trade into pick 7 that got them three picks in the top 10). Then followed a mixture of good drafting (Birchall, Rioli) and trading (Dew, Guerra) despite some blemishes (Ellis, Thorpe, Dowler). After winning the flag in 2008 their trading has been impeccable as documented by others above but let's not forget that the drafted brilliantly as well given the lack of high draft picks. Isaac Smith was a late first rounder (at 19 after some genius took Lucas Cook at 12), Paul Puopolo (66), Stratton (46), Duryea (69), Suckling (rookie), Shiels (34), Savage (75) ... I could go on but it might make you ill ...

How so?In Neeld's first season, McDonald finished third in the club B & F. This year, he missed five out of Neeld's 11 games with injury, took a few games to get himself right and then came back to still finish top 10. There might have been players who struggled under Neeld and others who simply weren't prepared to do the work but this scapegoating of Neeld and revision of history is way out of line.

I'm not worried about the "pensioner" thing myself. List management is constantly evolving and, now that free agency has taken hold and is better understood, clubs are poised for a much different recruiting landscape that prevailed even two years ago. We've already shed eight players with delistings and retirements and I can see some more to come in the month ahead. I expect the total turnover of our list to number around 12 which means we should be able to include a mix of different players of varying ages coming from different places. The list under Roos will be vastly different to what we had at the end of the Bailey reign just two years ago.

Cut it out with the abuse please folks.

I'm interested in the option of recruiting the likes of Paul Chapman and Daniel Cross who could add their experience and talent to the list and help our young blokes in their development phase. I suppose this would be a continuation of the experiment with Byrnes and Rodan but the first two have a bit more class and ability and could make a more significant contribution to the team's overall performance. On what I've seen, Cross would improve our midfield while a fit Chapman crumbing at the feet of Clark, Dawes, Hogan and Howe might well kick 30 - 40 goals in a season. The question is whether Roos is inclined to go in that direction.

Fairfax is not letting up on this story and this offering on Sandor Earl and Stephen Dank is fascinating - Earl still hasn’t told the whole truth about drugs despite ‘coming clean’ And just in case you didn't know, CJC-1295 has been mentioned in connection with the supplements used in the Essendon programme. With free agency and the trades starting at the end of the week, life is not going to get any easier for the Essendon footy department. Still, it would be fitting if Bomber Thompson ends up getting the coaching gig this week.

Actually, So Long Ling is #57 on the menu of my favourite restaurant.

Sam Lane says "hello" from the other side of international waters!

And thanks for your input on grand final day 2013. It's made absorbing reading.

True but often it's because you're constantly under pressure that your disposal becomes erratic. That said, we have a few in our team whose disposal is godawful and if it doesn't improve they simply won't get games under Roos.