Whispering_Jack

Fair enough but several of these games have been shown on free to air in the past and there was a telecast done with local commentators for NITV. Given that Foxtel had been running nothing but repeats of last year's games on rotation for over five months (which would have cost them very little) they could have paid NITV for the feed (which would also have not been too costly) and done something for their subscribers.Alternatively NITV could show it - even if in replay, it would attract more viewers to the channel than some of their other programmes.

The problem with that is the fact that the game was not only close but we were the ones in front when the siren sounded. As obvious as it might appear to all and sundry, being "obvious" in circumstances where, had McMahon missed his shot from fifty we actually would have won, is not evidence of any value whatsoever.

Only up to a point because our legal system requires bodies which make determinations on the rights and obligations of their constituents to administer their judicial processes in a fair and transparent manner. The inequities of the manner in which the AFL has handled its processes therefore does, in addition to many other things, become a live issue.

I hope the game is replayed on NITV or Foxtel (how they can have a dedicated football channel and not show the first game of the season is beyond me) because the streaming coverage was appalling. From what I could see however, the All Stars, even without about a dozen of the best indigenous players in the land, were just sensational with their skills and enthusiasm and hopefully, that effort (notwithstanding that the Tigers didn't have their best side) demonstrates how short sighted are those who denigrate the idea of recruiting our indigenous players. Sure, there's a lot of educating to do, particularly with players from our remote communities but what was in display was to my mind pure magic and a welcome sight after five or so months without football but filled with some of the basest aspects that afflict this game and its participants. From what I saw of the Flash, I won't say he's back in town (oh dear) but it looks like he will force his way back into serious contention for a place in the opening round. Also, Nev Jetta had a tough defensive role on Martin and stuck to his guns really well. Even though it wasn't a game you would place all that much weight on, I would have liked to have seen Dom Barry (oh dear again) but his time will come.

I think you'll find that knowledge and intention (to use a banned substance) are irrelevant when it comes to ASADA, as was proven in the Wade Lees case. As I understand it, in that case, the player never even received the weight loss supplement he ordered but was banned from sport for 18 months. As a VFL player, he didn't have the benefit of the extensive education programmes that AFL players get. Nor could he afford a legal appeal against his suspension. Since we don't know yet what substances were involved in Dank's programme, we can't say whether anyone's guilty of anything yet but if something banned turns up in the evidence, the Bombers are stuffed and knowledge and intention won't help the players or the club.

You're right. It stinks and it stinks to high heaven and, irrespective of the outcome of the tanking inquisition, the stench will hang around the AFL for a long, long time. As a club, we've been treated with utter contempt by the AFL. This inquisition should never have lasted this long and the terms of the enquiry should never have involved an inquiry into us alone. I asked an Essendon supporter (who is quite rightly down and concerned at their current situation) how he would feel if the investigation into the drug scandal lasted half a year and those involved in the investigation refused to consider looking into other clubs connected with the use of drugs. You don't need to ask what was his response.

Surely, he doesn't need to be hauled into a witness box to determine if he's ugly?Redleg, what's the penalty for consorting with known criminals?

Thanks for the report faulty. We've really been blessed over the past months with many reports from different people with different perspectives. Now, with the smell of liniment well and truly in the air, the natives are getting restless. We want to see the real thing and while the intraclub (6 days to go) & NAB Cup (13) aren't exactly "real", we can't wait. It's also going to be a welcome change from reading about tanking and drugs although, thanks to the AFL's ineptitude, these things will keep running in our media to the detriment of the game for a long time still.

Redleg, the wheels on the bus continue to go round and around without stop. You won't convince those who simply don't want to understand.

What does streaming mean? I get about 15 seconds of vision before whatever's on the screen freezes and you lose the action. AS well ahead at half time.

Five minutes into the second quarter AS 6.1.37 Richmond 1.1.7

From Ashley Brown on twitter Dees have about 35 available for early NAB Cup games and expect most to play. Dan Nicholson & Tom McDonald still the pre-season standouts. Sorry, that's all folks.

Since the banning of certain posters has been raised here, let me assure everybody that we don't ban people here for no reason and in most cases the posters who are banned are multiple offenders with a record of being warned, often several times before a ban is invoked. I have no respect for Caroline Wilson and have criticised her for her appalling comments and views that in some cases border on the idiotic and vexatious. However, I will not permit posters to cross the boundary with tasteless, misogynist schoolboy smut that could for legal reasons see the site closed down. I'll also repeat that on threads that cover sensitive matters, our moderation standards will be tougher than normal and offending posts will be deleted and posters warned where warranted. Now let's stick to the issues of the thread please.

This is precisely why the choice of the previous CEO by the former board was such a disaster (Jonathan Brown indeed) and why his dismissal by the Stynes Board was such an important move at the time. If CS "meddled" in 2011 then he possibly did the wrong thing at the time but that, like the McNamee fiasco, is a thing of the past. Since the overhaul carried out after Dean Bailey's departure, we have a new football department and things seem to be working very well on all levels from administration to our core business as demonstrated last night. Now we need to get the results on the field but with the third least experienced list, its not going to happen overnight. I agree that we need to go past this "tanking" situation which has been going on for an obscenely long time and which IMO has been handled appallingly by the AFL.

Let me clarify the "frayed tempers" part. I was referring to peoples' feelings expressed in private discussions and not in public discussion at the meeting which was confined to Don McLardy's measured statement in which he was conveying the message that the club didn't want the players distracted by the controversy. It's a policy with which I agree and for which I believe the board should be complimented.

I started reading Would you want your son playing AFL footy? on Wednesday 6th February, 2013 at 11:10 PM and then I noticed this - ... and I thought well FMD, I'm in the Twilight Zone. She's writing stuff in the future now which probably explains its closeness to science fiction except I find that most Sci Fi is clever and this shyzen is plain dumb, mean spirited and pathetic.What about if your son was playing at Richmond in 2007 under a coach, who in clear contravention of an AFL rule downed tools and didn't coach the team on its merits because he was so desperate for his club to secure Trent Cotchin? Or would you want your son to be playing more recently for the Toigs sleeping in with a mate and missing a training session? (BTW don't expect any of this to be covered by The Shrew in commentary) Would you let your son or daughter become an AFL official so that they could turn a blind eye to the activity of some clubs and pick on others? We know what that means? Would you allow your daughter to become a journalist and make prejudicial comments about the guilt of others before an investigation is completed? To pick on people she might be running a vendetta against? I've got her pegged. A good journalist at times when it comes to gathering facts but when she does "comment", she's all over the place and not particularly logical or smart. And if this is an article on ethics ... One of these days people might start digging into some of the things that happened at Richmond in the past. I wonder what items of interest they might uncover?

Glad I didn't actually make notes.

* Russell Howcroft did a bit of a warm up plugging the mfc.com.au site and the club's face book page but he loses marks for his failure to mention Demonland - for heaven's sakes man, get your act in order * Club Chaplin Cam Butler was awarded the Volunteer Award for his service to the club since 1997. Great effort for a bloke who started off as a Bulldog supporter. Spiritually, we're in good hands. * We learned that the MFC has the highest rate of conversion of supporters to members in the AFL. Knowing this will help me win a trivia competition one of these days. * Board member John Trotter (also an accountant with Deloittes?) went through the accounts. We made a modest profit, had a positive cash flow and our balance sheet looks healthy. Our level of expenditure is trending upward from the bottom two or three to the middle of the pack but still well behind the big spenders. The audience was so bedazzled by the presentation that there were no questions. This is usual at football club AGMs - we all sit around like stunned mullets waiting for the footy stuff. * Don McLardy talked in brief about our tough year and the issues we faced. The AFL investigation in particular, has been costly and hard on the club and the people asdociated with it. He said that despite the troubles, we have a settled, united and focused club and football department. * Cam Schwab was interesting and as articulate as ever. He went through our main objectives, spoke about the continued investment in the football department, in particular recruiting and explained the concept of "first and forever". It recognises that we created the game but our absolute objective is to finish first and that when this is achieved it is a lasting notion. He also said there is something special and unique about how our members and supporters relate to our Club. Redleg who was sitting on my left said, "Amen". * At this staged I checked the cricket score on my iPhone and the Bravos were causing some flutters with their run chase against Australia's big score. * Todd Viney was next up and thanked the loyal supporters and members for their generous support to help them recruit to the best of their ability. He then introduced 12 of the 14 newcomers to the club. Absent were Dom Barry who is with the indigenous training camp in Alice Springs (along with Aaron & Nev) and Dean Terlich who was in SA attending a funeral. There was a big of by play between the shorter players led by DRod, Shannon Byrnes and Jimmy T and Jack V (the latter isn't as small as I thought - perhaps he's grown a couple of cm's?). * Revelations of the evening - Jesse Hogan will possibly play in a NAB Cup game this year and both he an Jimmy T are living at the Viney home. On that basis, I reckon Todd's wife is crucial to the club's future and I hope she's a good cook (male chauvinist comment # 1). * Mark Neeld was interviewed and wasn't keen to give much away but he did say we were doing things faster and longer at training this year and the intensity was 15% greater. There was more purpose in the way we trained. He said that we were still well behind the leading clubs in terms of vital games played. Swans averaged 130 in the grand final, Hawks 113 - we're not even close to that. Neeld said he's not selling fairy tales but is looking at getting better. He explained that the club put in significant research before deciding on Darwin for the training camp. The camp tested the players both physically and mentally. * There was a wide range of questions that covered everything from the players' facial hair, a female chauvinist () comment about how good looking the players were to questions about our improvement, the future of indigenous players in the game (brilliantly answered by Neil Craig), our continuing role in China and the fate of the Hankook and Kaspersky sponsorships. All handled well and, as I mentioned above, no avoidance of any issues. * We were reminded about the first intraclub practice match on the morning of Friday 15 February at Casey Fields, the Family Day @ Luna Park on the morning of Saturday 23rd February and ... oh, we happen to be playing our first NAB Cup game the night before that. * got home to watch us beat the Windies. And in the end there were no revelations about the tanking inquisition (although I can say that tempers are fraying among some of the supporters at the way we've been treated by the AFL). Nobody sang the club song at the end either which was a first but I don't mind that. We can sing the song when we win a flag, not when we win four games, three against Mickey Mouse teams and one against a club being investigated for using something that might be prohibited.

I thought the AGM was a well run and professional affair but if anyone went there to learn something new in this age of the internet, social media, twitter et al, forget it. Notwithstanding that, I left with a little warm and fuzzy feeling about the future. Notable to me was the fact that nothing particularly critical came up from the audience in question time and there was not a single attempt to muzzle any questioner and all questions were answered in a forthright and as far as I could judge honest manner. So to those critics who were cynical about one or two questions being avoided last year for sensitive reasons, that didn't happen tonight. Perhaps the audience used their discretion in some areas but there should be no complaints. Conspicuously absent were those who bag the way the club is run from the top in terms of finances. I expected someone to get up and eplain why it was better for the club to be $5million in debt (as we were when the Stynes board came in) than $6.4 million in surplus as we are today. It didn't happen. Personally the most pleasing aspect from my point of view was Mark Neeld's comment that the club still has people who are in touch with Liam Jurrah and offering them our support even though he left the club because he wasn't in the right space to be concentrating on his AFL career. Of course, the second part didn't give me comfort but the fact that as a club we remain loyal to a former player in trouble is a mark of what we should be aspiring for (and that's not a comment on all of things of which he's been accused. He's a troubled person from a troubled community and it's good to see the club wishing only the best for him. A brief comment was made in relation to the enquiry into Essendon over the use of prohibited supplements. The club has done it's own internal investigation and does not believe it has anything to worry about. Phew, phew. I didn't make notes tonight but I'll report some points later (with the aid of some tweets I've read on Twitter. Anyway, as I said above, I remain warm and fuzzy and I really believe that the club's in good hands. And by the way, the young 11 year old who asked the first question in question time is a relation of mine. He's my cousin's grandson and it's the second year in a row that he asked Mark Neeld a question. This time it was whether he thought we'd improve. He's already working on next year's question but in all modesty I say he's an even better footballer than questioner and he's likely to be the first family member to play AFL. Go Dees!

It's on tonight at the Members Dining Room in the MCG starting at 6.30pm. I just wonder how much information we're going to get tonight? We should get a good rundown on recruits, the pre season and the coach's hopes for the team in 2013 but I would expect the stuff that's dominated the months since the last game was played will probably be off limits. What are we expecting? Any bombshells?

Rumour has it that Clothier and his sidekick Haddad are preparing for this investigation by boning up on waterboarding and the old bamboo under the fingernails trick. Can you imagine the Bombers playing against us in round 2 after a night of electric shock treatment and torture at the hands of those two?

Dead right. The serious stuff starts in a few weeks' time. I think we should be reflecting on round 2 myself. The game against Essendon will be important for both sides and should attract a mammoth crowd give it will be their first game in Melbourne. And if they lose to us their fans are likely to be so angry that they'll probably revert to Roman times and the team will get stoned or something like that.

Tell Maurie. He's claimed the IP rights - I only get the royalties.

I suspect that the afl.com.au site is down. Haven't been able to read the stories about the Weapon's apparent demise but it looks like there's an element of damage control there ATM. The bloke I feel really sorry for is James Hird. Saw him on the Fox Sports News bulletin and he looked absolutely shattered. I hope he stays away from Caro's article.

I read that the captain of the team is now Nathan Lovett-Murray which is a great choice. I don't believe there's any need to discriminate against any of the Essendon players at this time over the other issue. I would have liked Aaron Davey to be part of the team's leadership group. He really has done a lot of good things for his people and notwithstanding his last couple of seasons, I'd like to think he could help lead this side and do a good job as vice captain.