Whispering_Jack

I would have liked to see the number down to 100 or even less. I'm a big fan of old time contested footy and while we haven't been all that flash in the past, I can see our new coach exploiting our strength in talls both back and forward and doing everything to minimise our current weak suit in the midfield. Until we can develop more midfielders with big engines, a lower number of rotations will help us.

... or two.

According to the Mayan calendar the messiah is supposed to arrive this weekend. Not sure if this site can Handel that news.

Playing Geelong on its home patch and with the side severely depleted by injury anyway, it's safe to say we were always going to lose. The Cats apparently had18 AFL listed players. The situation changes for Casey from next week and I believe that after, eliminating the injured and retired players, there should be about a dozen Demons available including Jake Spencer and Max Gawn which gives the team a strong edge in the ruck against most VFL teams. And following this loss, the Scorpions are in the "safer" half of the draw with Werribee and Box Hill as likely opponents on the way to the grand final if they can find winning form. The big pity is that we won't see Jesse Hogan taking part in finals footy which would have been a good progression for him as he moves up to become a fully fledged AFL player. Given how Cam Pedersen went its a pity the club didn't qualify him for the VFL finals last week (they flew him to Adelaide to be first emergency instead) and what a pity Joel Macdonald and David Rodan had to retire? They would have added that extra ingredient of experience that is so important in finals series. In any event, we still have some minor interest left in the season.

As far back as July?How very James Hirdesque?

Again?

It's not in the same league as tanking but there should be some penalty applied to Fremantle for not playing games on their merit because what they're doing absolutely does affect the integrity of the competition. Imagine if St. Kilda was one of the teams with 9/10 wins and a chance to make the top 8. Fremantle's conduct in picking a second rate team might give St. KIlda an unfair bunk up and allow the Saints a free passage into the finals to the disadvantage of the other contenders. As a poster said above, there are hefty fines for this sort of thing in the US and this is one American example worth following.

David Rodan was brought into the club for a specific purpose and at a low cost and whatever one might have thought about the idea behind that, he worked his butt off both on and off the field for the good of the club. In his last AFL game, he picked up seven disposals in less than a quarter and the momentum swung against us only after he was taken off. He was on his way to a really big number game and I'm sure would have stuck around to support the kids at Casey in the finals. I know this won't resonate with some around here but he was a terrific clubman and my 7 year old grandson who is overseas at the moment absolutely loved him for the way he treated the kids as individuals during the clinic the club conducted over the school holidays. He'll be devastated to learn that David's career was ended by yet another knee injury. Well played DR.

I think we're currently oversaturated with NQR veterans so if we are to take Cross then he'll need to replace on of them rather than take the spot of a young up and comer. Let's see who we appoint as coach and whether he sees a role for him.

... and there is good journalism and there is bad journalism. A few years ago I was privileged to be a function where the keynote speaker was Carl Bernstein of Bernstein & Woodward/Watergate fame. During question time he was asked what he thought of today's breed of journalists and he was critical of exactly the type of journalism that Wilson practices at the Age - pieces that combine reportage (often but not always accurate) with the journo's own opinion (but not necessarily branded as "opinion pieces"). Bernstein was highly critical of that practice. Of course, he was speaking mainly of the political arena and that phenomenon was already widespread by then. Unfortunately, it’s progressed on to sports reporting and in my view, this has been a deliberate progression in the case of the Age and its chief football writer as it descended into tabloid journalism when its circulation began plummeting. Wilson is good at what she does but she’s also become exactly what Bernstein was critical about when he spoke that night. After question time, I spoke with him briefly and asked him when he first knew he was onto something with the Watergate break in story and he replied that it was when he started getting criticism and agitated reactions from his detractors, particularly unwarranted personal attacks. That was what made him more determined than ever to dig deeper.

I'll leave it to Redleg to slug it out with you. You've used one too many trains and boats trying to squirm out of the hole you've dug for yourself on this one.

Is today Groundhog Day?

Fitzy? Failed to recover from concussion?

Nine AFL listed players against a very strong Geelong. Looks like Troy Davis is this week's mystery injury of the week

No. I think you're struggling to follow. Read Redleg's response to you. Sound of penny dropping.

Can you believe this? Earl nearly defected to AFL after Danks secret tryout

Sandor Earl charged with trafficking peptides which he has apparently admitted.

I think that's the crux of the matter. A journalist supposedly reporting news and, at the same time, colouring the story with his or her own views to further a particular agenda and then attempting to pass it all off as objective reporting.

Nevertheless, Dank did what appears to have been some freelance consulting with Dr. Bate about which the club might not have been aware and which might also be a problem for one of our players one of these days.

Canberra Raiders player.

You can keep going but I didn't close that thread. It was Andy (Demonland) that closed it and quite rightly. I never was into the "faceless men" thing - that was a description attributed to me by others. I still very much believe in the truth of the claim made to me by a poster on 30 October 2012 that a disgruntled former employee caused the enquiry to proceed when it would otherwise have died and that he was encouraged by others to do so. I have no doubt that history has proven that claim correct because unless you had inside information about what the AFL knew (and indeed Wilson knew) on that day it would have been nigh on impossible to guess the identity of the person who told the vault story to the tanking enquiry. As for that poorly run football department, it certainly did make three finals series but by 2005/6 the seeds of poor recruiting, list management, player development etc. had already been sown and we've paid the price for bad decision making in that area ever since (and I'm not excusing what went on under Bailey or Neeld). The majority of our list is made up of players recruited in the past decade - the administrations of Gardner, Stynes and McLardy all bear responsibility for what we have now. "Also Gardner didn't create the debt he just didn't eradicate it, something you've not recognized that I've seen. The $5m debt that existed at the end of the financial year in which Gardner left included such things as the payment to Paul McNamee which had nothing to do with Gardner. Given that Schwab in effect replaced McNamee you can hardly argue it was a good move." That's a complete cop out if you then turn around and blame the Stynes/McLardy/Schwab admin for presiding over a loss this year. At least they eradicated the debt or most of it (depending on what this year's figures reveal). Anyway, when are you going to take your own advice and "move on".

Bob,I don't know why you continue to misrepresent my position which is that the Stynes/McLardy administration did some very good things along with some bad which included a failure to improve the club's core business which is to produce a successful football team. I'm also on record as saying that to some extent this was due to what it inherited from previous administrations which left a horrendous debt of $5m and a poorly run football department. You might translate that into excusing our club for questionable actions but if it's questionable to do what the AFL CEO explicitly approves of then you're quite right but if you think I'm extending generosity to anyone you should consider what you did recently with the Gardner administration in a recent post when you glossed over the fact that it bled several millions in less than a year before it was replaced. Other than that, perhaps you and indeed all of us would be best off by taking your own advice which is to "move on".

You mean getting arrested for drunkenness twice on an overseas trip, consorting with gangstas and doing wheelies tearing up the carpark of your training venue is not the work of a social misfit, not to mention an axe grinder of the highest order?

And rightly so in this instance because, unlike the so-called tanking investigation where Wilson accepted the evidence of one set of witnesses to what happened within the vault meeting (Flack, Prendergast and one other all not involved in match day decisions) and entirely dismissed the evidence of others including Dean Bailey, in the Essendon case Wilson has had the benefit of a few fine journalists whose excellent research was available to assist her (in addition to what appear to have been leaks from the AFL). The work of Richard Baker and Nick McKenzie of the Age (mentioned in the above post by hogan's heroes) cannot be overlooked in the case of the material uncovered during this saga.

This article from the satirical site The Onion best explains how sociopaths around the world work - So, Whats It Going To Be?. I was thinking of Jimmy as I read it.* [* Not suggesting he's a mass murderer or anything like that either although you'd think human rights lawyers would be more interested in Assad's victims, past, present and future] ... and some more grist for the human rights lawyer's mill - North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un's former girlfriend shot by firing squad over porn scandal