Whispering_Jack

The cost of your rookie is normally less than a senior player but the other benefit is that the cost isn't included in total player payments so I would imagine that if you happen to be sailing close to your salary cap limit, you would want to have the maximum number of players on your rookie list to help keep you from going over. The other thing highlighted by our delistings is that we lost a couple of list improvement opportunities last year in the way we went about things. With the benefit of hindsight, the use of a delisted free agency pick to secure Tom Gillies was a complete waste. The space on the list could have been better utilised to secure Jack Hannath or Sam Colquhoun. We certainly wanted the former and whilst I don't know what Todd Viney's thoughts were on the latter, from what I've seen of him at Port Adelaide, he has a promising future.

Nasher ... George? Is that true?

Be very careful lads

I posted this elsewhere on the subject of draft assistance but I think it's appropriate here:- I wonder what it is about us as a club that I have yet to hear a single supporter from another club that would reject the prospect of getting a priority pick or that there would be any handwringing about the subject at all. I'm not sure but I often wonder if our weak kneed attitude and the fact that we've become so insured to victimhood and failure makes us a soft target for people like Denham, Barrett, Wilson and co.

I missed everything about the opening round with the exception of the first game last week. What happened to San Franciso?

Keep at it and before long you'll realise that the people you should be blaming are Don McLardy, Cameron Schwab, Chris Connolly, Mark Neeld and the Tooth Fairy.

Love your work Tecoma.

What bottle was that grapeviney? Johhny Walker Blue Label?

Well, surprise ... surprise ... AFL to drop case against Dr Bruce Reid

... and tell that to the Jamaican authorities who apparently only dope test one athlete every time a blue moon comes around and only if his name isn't Bob Marley or someone else famous.

Rhino, isn't it time for you to stop pulling wings off flies and take out a subscription to the Comedy Channel?

We had our N Smith a decade ago. Looked good for 4 to 6 weeks and then just faded away.

First it was Dustin Martin's "jail bird" salute and now this - Richmond star Jake King gave bandidos boss Toby Mitchell VIP entry into MCG rooms. The Richmond board has clearly been derelict in its duties leading the club into the vice like grip of criminal elements. Time for Caroline Wilson to highlight this blight on the club's culture and to call for wholesale sackings at Tigerland.

Spot on and I might add that if the result of that inquisition is then allowed to be used to punish us a second time by depriving us of the right to draft assistance that we eminently qualify for, then it would demonstrate how corrupt the AFL has been in selectively singling out Melbourne for a detailed investigation into tanking when the world knows that at least half a dozen others should also have been looked at. That being the case, we would be looking at something far more serious than the AFL bringing the game into disrepute.

And going by the scuttlebutt in the footy news ATM it seems that there are several Brisbane Lions players who want to jump ship so there's a fair chance we might pick up a banana bender or two.

There are some similarities and there are also differences.Cross is not the captain of his team as Junior was and he leaves a club that, unlike Melbourne at the time, still has many leaders and elder statesmen. I think that is why the Bulldogs have made the decision not to offer him another contract. From our point of view, we're crying out for mature players with leadership skills and ability and, at 30 years of age, he's significantly younger than Junior was when we let him go. At the time, I had no issues with the decision but rather in he way in which it was implemented by Bailey and the FD. I think we should grab Cross who will probably come relatively cheaply under some form of free agency or possibly even a low level trade.

It's precisely because the "way of the world" is what it is in many sports (i.e often corrupted) that anti doping agencies have been given teeth fangs to deal with the problem which, in the case of WADA and its national offshoots like ASADA have powers far beyond even the courts. The AFL is a voluntary subscriber to the WADA Code and its not going to be as easy as you imagine for things to be swept under the carpet. Certainly, any club and any player involved will need to prepare for the possibility of infraction notices as best they can and to deal with the factual circumstances in which they find themselves but I doubt this is going to magically go away because some back room deal is done.

The curse of Norm Smith is a very real one and it resembles many aspects of the cargo cults which thrive in the south seas areas. That Norm Smith dream period of 1954-1964 in which we won six premierships, were twice runners up and made the top four in eleven years, created a myth like dream period for our club and everyone and everything associated with it; we developed an inability to cope with the changes to the sport that modernisation brought with it and instead lazily developed a dependence on the glories of the past and a revival through charismatic messiah-like leaders that would bring about an abundance of goods in the form of premierships. The fact is that reliance on messiahs and quick fixes will never get us anywhere but hard work and smart practices can get us there.

My take is that Essendon has taken the action to close discussion on the subject for the time being and I doubt this action will ever see the light of day in a court. The Bombers simply can't afford the issue of whether what they did constituted "cheating" or not to be aired in public. The fact is that Carlton is smugly and justifiably asserting the validity of its place in the finals because Essendon breached AFL rules and that seems to be the case. I hope the Swans cream them tomorrow night but with so many of their stars either injured, out of form or NQR, anything can happen.

Actually, if WADA is dissatisfied with the way a sporting body deals with infraction notices issued as a result of ASADA's final report, it has the right to appeal to an independent tribunal.WADA has considerable clout in the sporting world and our sporting bodies who gain funding from federal authorities would do well not to defy or upset WADA. I think it was yesterday that the 2020 Olympic Games were awarded to Tokyo ahead of Istanbul and Madrid. The result was no coincidence if you look at the resepective records of each of the countries they represent in dealing with doping issues.

I caught up with Foxtel's The Back Page last night and Roy Masters made some interesting comments on the doping scandal. This is definitely not going to go away according to Masters who believes ASADA's final reports will be out by the end of the year and that between 20 to 30 infraction notices will be issued against players of each code (AFL and NRL). I sincerely hope that our club won't be one of those about to feel some pain.

I think you can take it as read in these days of more relaxed trading rules (including delisted free agents) and tighter salary caps, the players who are being delisted by clubs this early in the piece are of absolutely no trade value.

I agree with that assessment and I think it's fair to say that he was a better footballer than a midfield coach. In his early days as an assistant coach, he was often in the running for a senior coach's gig but he never quite made it. His capacity to show that he was a capable assistant coach would not have been helped by the fact that had not much cattle to work with and he was an assistant to Bailey and Neeld. We'll forever be asking ourselves whether it was the chicken or the egg but I reckon we got scrambled in the end.

I pray for the day when we don't have to scour the competition for other clubs' cast offs. Didak was a great player in his day but ... please god no.

The most significant change IMO is the midfield coach going.