Whispering_Jack

Does anyone have a link to SEN for the interview?

8

I've checked the Demonland rules for this thread and, in particular, our Rule 19 (A5) and I see no breach of the rule whatsoever. I maintain that on the contrary, by providing a legitimate quiz to exercise people's brains (something not normally required on this thread), I have actually performed a vital public service. I even attracted a well-respected Demonland poster in Fan back here after an absence of more than 14 months and therefore, there is no way anyone can claim that I've brought the thread into disrepute. As for draft tampering - pffffft!

Still mainly a repetition of what we've already read half a dozen times before and, quite frankly, I wasn't really anticipating any confessions from the individual board members. And what about the "infamous" vault reference? The only thing that's "infamous" about the vault is that the Age stuffed up the story nearly three months ago. At least Caroline, if she were writing now, would have given the story a conspiratorial twist.I reckon the football world is well and truly bored with the regular rehashing of similar facts in this never ending saga and the only people who read these articles are probably Demonland and Demonology posters. I reckon we should send the Age a bill for the publicity they've been getting from us.

Another useless rehash from John Pierik in the Age - 'Difficult' season still haunts Demons board

Phil Carman

That would probably have been Sean Charles who played junior footy against Blistering. They used to have some great battles on the wing and Sean was virtually a one man team who would surely have won the competition b & f bar for the fact that on some weeks he played for a team up in the country somewhere because other family members lived there. He was a fantastic athlete who, like our new recruit Dom Barry, had pace and good endurance. I ran in a local fun run and Sean was in it. He was about 14 and blitzed. Meanwhile, further back in the field was former Demon great Brian Dixon. I thought at the time a future Demon great and a past one in Dicko in the same race. At one stage John Beveridge (Luke's father & St. Kilda recruiting guru) tried to pinch him for the Saints but I alerted the club about him and he ended up playing for us. I reckon that he would have been a real champion if not for the injury and if he had a proper mentor at time to help him get over it.

Let's see if I can help out on the identification front without offending against the rules of this thread.Who am I ......... (1st Clue) My son was just appointed vice-captain of the GWS Giants. I am .....? Who am I ......... (2nd Clue) My pay is included in the GWS salary cap I am .....? Who am I ......... (3rd Clue) My weight is greater than more than any five other players at the club combined I am .....? Who am I ......... (4th Clue) Based on my age and football experience, I have just been appointed captain of the GWS Giants I am .....?

They were both outstanding players in the zones we had allocated to us and we got in before the change from part zoning/part draft to full zoning when it was becoming a national competition. We also signed Sean Charles at a very young age on the same basis and he could have been the best of the lot until he broke his wrist in a pre season comp game. The wrist got infected, complications arose and he was never the same player and never lived up to his potential.

I can see you weren't a fan but if he didn't express himself well on the Oxfam walk issue, I would cut him some slack because it was his first real exposure to our footy media in the early days of his chairmanship. Some of us can forgive these things and write them off as a good learning experience just as I wasn't concerned at Mark Neeld's performance in the media when we got flogged in round 1 last year. Others aren't always as forgiving.

With Scully much will depend on whether he really has overcome the knee injury which Dr. Peter Larkins claimed a couple of years ago would limit his training and prevent him from achieving full fitness. Could the medical profession have gotten it wrong?

Wasn't the game when Belly got injured, a night game late in the season (I think it was David Neitz' 300th game)? If I'm right then it wasn't Queens Birthday.

You can say that again and I'm glad I didn't post on this thread when it was started because, at the time, I was an unabashed fan of Brock McLean and still pumping up his tyres even well after he was destroying them in the Trinity Grammar car park at training. I seriously still had him down as a future captain of the club even though by mid 2007, he had suffered that serious foot injury that kept him out for most of the first half of the season. He also copped a bad one when he damaged ankle ligaments the next year against Brisbane and those injuries affected him for the rest of his days at Melbourne. He was never quick but by the time he was traded he was as slow as treacle. Many people forget that McLean was injured for most of the period late in 2009 when we stand accused of tanking. He was one of an injury list that reached up to 20 and there were times when we were that badly off that we fielded as few as three players at Casey (including rookies). Yet, the pundits expected us to not fumble, not play men in unusual positions, make more interchanges despite having players injured and perform miracles like beating the premiership favourites. But I'm now digressing.

Some are being a bit tough here on Paul Gardner and his board. Despite the fact that many of them were part of the old Szondy board, they still had to pick up the pieces of the train wreck they inherited from an incompetently run administration (the CEO "lost" the club's tax bill in the drawers of his desk, for heaven's sake) and I think they did that well for most of Gardner's tenure working hard against the odds for some years to steadily get the club back on an even keel until they were overwhelmed by tightening economic circumstances that, in the end, forced them to stand down. I certainly had no issue with Paul's walk for Oxfam (it indicated to me that he was the type who wouldn't allow anything to prevent him from following through with a commitment which I felt was a good thing). If anything, the main weakness of the Gardner years was that the eye was taken off the ball in respect to the core business of the club. By the end of 2006 the team was about to go into rapid decline with the impending retirements of many of the better players, our failure to promote a proper succession plan in on field leadership* and to recruit and develop younger players coming in to fill the void (see the recently revived "young guns" thread). In hindsight, I think we probably kept Neale Daniher on as coach for a couple of years too long and for the wrong reasons. From 2005 on, he was often the spruiker for the club when others should have been fulfilling that role. We really needed someone in the middle of the last decade to come into the club and to look at it from an independent viewpoint. Such a person might have seen the storm brewing that many of us couldn't (and I include myself in that lot). In the end, I think the Gardner Board simply lost momentum and became tired battling the odds. The McNamee appointment proved to be a poor one and, given its importance and the existing financial situation, I felt the 150 year celebration should have turned more than a modest profit. I think the tragedy was that one or two more of the board could have stayed on in the transition and that might even have saved us some of the pain we're still suffering to this day. [* not having a go at Junior here but rather commenting on the lack of leadership depth at the club when Dean Bailey took over]

Last year's premiers Sydney, conceded the lowest score of all teams over the home and away season - a little over 100 points less than their grand final opponents Hawthorn. The credit for that not only goes to the players who took their places in what we traditionally call the six defensive positions but also the others around the ground who, among other things, have to work to ensure that the defenders are not put under pressure to concede scores. Moreover, you have to give credit to the Swans' coaches for putting into place the appropriate strategies to enable the defenders to succeed in a variety of conditions and against different opponents from week to week. If you look at the Swans' main back six of last year and some of the others who played there from time to time, I don't believe that individually the quality of their players was any better than ours (I think potentially ours can be better) - Richards, Roberts-Thompson, Grundy, Mattner, Johnson, Shaw and Smith all had good seasons in 2012 and it helped that there were no major injuries, but I wouldn't have put them in my list of the top half dozen defences in the competition at the beginning of the year. However, it was the way in which Longmire and co organised the defensive structure and how they worked together as a group and within the wider framework of the team that made the Swans succeed from the defensive point of view and ultimately as a whole to win the flag. IMO the case for the defence is built therefore on a lot more than the placement of the individuals who fill the 6 spots that we once knew as the backline and half backline.

Definitely played in the Under 19s. I remember seeing him playing for them at the Junction Oval which was their home ground for a while. Also didn't know anything about him walking out which threw me. Sunbury qualifies for country.

Here's an except from Wikipedia (and I'm aware that it's not the foremost authority on anything in particular but it might help). I've left out the references but they can be found http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Priority_draft_pick]here.

I have but on the subject of what constitutes the offence of tanking it's fairly clear that there are different views as to what constitutes "tanking" and I doubt that the differing views are going to be reconciled. As a result, we're getting posters debating others and going around in circles in the process. The most helpful poster in all of this is DC who keeps telling us how many days to go before the next AFL commission meeting but even that doesn't tell us how far to go before we get an outcome.

I've just spent a wonderful morning at the beach and returned to this discussion. Is it Groundhog Day?

Yes ... I've been waiting a long time for this - what a comeback!

Not on. Wife wouldn't agree. There have been times past in the history of Demonland when we were winning games regularly. Call me a "cheerleader" if you like but they will return.

It's on again tomorrow at Casey Fields, far away from the madding tennis crowds. Since there are no Aussies left in the big stuff at Rod Laver Arena, can we expect some crowds and plenty of reports?

I think you'll find that Gary was a local product who came from Moorabbin Technical School which wasn't part of the country by 1967. Originally from the country but the question says "recruited from country Victoria". He was recruited by us from Hawthorn. A bit misleading in an MFC quiz to talk about where the Hawks recruited him from. Pardon me but I'm in a nitpicking mood today.

I don't think anybody's abusing anybody else. On that basis, I reckon it's a healthy debate by the standards of the other thread. However, I do agree that this part of the discussion has gone on long enough and the two viewpoints have been well and truly canvassed and covered. Let's move on to the next installment of whatever Pierik and Jay Clark have for us in tomorrow's "news".

In saying this, are you suggesting that Mifsud didn't lie after all when he said Aaron Davey told him Mark Neeld treated the club's indigenous players differently to the other players? I ask because when that news broke, Wilson insisted on 3AW that Mifsud would not have fabricated those allegations. She pushed the Mifsud line from the very beginning - http://m.theage.com.au/afl/afl-news/mifsud-deeply-offended-20120320-1vi0y.html'>Mifsud deeply offended and has since shilled for him claiming in one article http://m.theage.com.au/afl/afl-news/symbolism-v-substance-20120525-1zaab.html'>Symbolism v Substance that "Mifsud sacrificed his reputation in the short-term to protect Davey". Extraordinary, if its true that the AFL would be implicated in such deception.