Whispering_Jack

You would think that having been Jack Trengove's captain and a former teammate that Junior would have excused himself. There's a legal principle which applies to such matters and the Tribunal is an administrative body which should uphold such a principle as the right to a fair hearing where an adjudicator has no conflict of interest.

You have a comprehension problem. Grow up.

I'm looking at the ladder as it stands at the moment and I see there are ten teams below us at the moment. Then there's also GWS which isn't yet in the competition but is fielding a side in the North East Australian Football League which lost badly yesterday to the Sydney Swans seconds. It seems to me that there are going to be a lot of new coaches in the market next year.

If I remember correctly, we banned a poster for 12 for spreading misinformation about an injury allegedly sustained by Jack Grimes a couple of years ago. I would suggest that our moderators will be consistent on this issue if the information turns out to be incorrect again this time (as I hope is the case). Twelve months is a long time but in that instance the poster was given the opportunity to 'fess up and show remorse but that didn't happen on that occasion.

I'm going to go early with gameday and say that today's game has important implications for the Melbourne Football Club. A good performance and hopefully a win will take the heat off the club while the spotlight goes onto Eade, Voss and hopefully, Craig. I think our danger man today is Dangerfield and I'd like to see Jack Trengove turn it on today. He's been one of honest hard workers throughout the early part of this season and I sense that he's ready to step up a little more in the not too distant future.

Questions asked but not necessarily in the form presented above. An interesting evening and I came away feeling quite positive. Certainly, the club isn't shirking from the fact that the team's performance last week was substandard. I'll report in detail as part of my match preview for the Adelaide game. Suffice to say there is a definite feeling among the players that it was they who let their coach down.

I'm about to go to a Devils Advocates function. Speaker is Todd Viney and a few of the players will be there. Should be interesting and I hope to report on it later. Any questions?

I'm a big fan of Grimes to the middle particularly while Tom Scully and Jordie McKenzie are out leaving us with a certain sameness about the midfield. I've seen Grimes play in the centre for a brief period in a NAB Challenge match in the pre season last year: he was impressive and worked well with Mark Jamar. The move was foreshadowed earlier in the season when Grimes was picked in the centre but it didn't eventuate. I sense that the football department is sticking to plan but I can't see why change can't be made when things aren't going well. Davey back to the quarterback role, Green up forward, the reintroduction of players with a bit of experience like Bate, Macdonald and Warnock. Mix things up for heaven's sake!

Bear with me because there's a point to be made here and I reckon I know a fair bit about Germans and WW2 because I was born in a displaced persons camp in Germany a few years after the war ended. Many fine and many not so fine Germans might have followed blindly in the 30s but they were never the intended victims of their Nazi masters. The victims were Jews, Gypsies, Communists, Homosexuals, people with black skins and anyone who opposed them and they numbered in the millions. My point is that I'm not trying to embarrass you but we should try to get our facts right first. The last four days have seen a festival of expressions of distress, criticism of the game plan and baying for the coach's blood. I haven't read anywhere where people are blindly following anything, let alone the "game plan". I certainly don't - all I'm expressing is my opinion on what might be done to get the team back on track. I reckon they won't listen to me anyway but I'm not and never will be a blind follower. Now to some more recent history. Almost two years ago Collingwood was sitting in 11th place with 3 wins 5 defeats and a percentage of 92.9. Their two most recent performances were an 88 point thrashing from St. Kilda (1 goal to half time) and an even more humiliating defeat by 51 points at the hands of Carlton. Many of their fans wanted Malthouse's blood and were trashing his game plan. Bring in Nathan Buckley. Guess what? They won their next seven games, made the top 4 and got to a preliminary final and the following year won a flag. Sack Malthouse after round 8, 2009 and do you think they would be where they are now? I'm not suggesting we'll emulate Collingwood and repeat their efforts but let's all calm down a bit.

Yeah, um, I was also going to mention my six year old grandson who is going to be the club's next great centre half forward when Jack Watts retires but I'm trying to keep him under wraps and away from the gaze of opposition recruiting scouts.

We didn't just win the week after that defeat, we gave Essendon a flogging. One of our posters was the team manager to Carl Ditterich in 1979 and I think it's time to do a feature article on Demonland about those two games.

I happen to be one of those who is and has been reasonably happy with the direction in which the club has been travelling over the past few years. That is not to say I'm pleased with the way the team has been playing since it won those games in the first week of the NAB Cup back in February. To the contrary, it's been a matter for despair watching the way the have played in the regular season to date and, in many ways, last Thursday's debacle was the inevitable accident waiting to happen. I'm not making excuses but rather looking for reasons and answers that might help us get things back on track which I'm sure the football department is searching for as well. Others have alluded to the team's lack of experience and lightness of body. The selectors can determine to go the way it has over the past two months or they can reintroduce Matt Bate, Joel Macdonald and Matty Warnock into the side and throw in Neville Jetta, Addam Maric and Ricky Petterd. All six have been going well at Casey and (yes I know there's a suitcase load of difference in standard) couldn't do any worse than the bottom six from last week did. I'm old fashioned but there used to be a time when the selectors used to send messages to players by dropping them. That shouldn't be a difficult task this week and I would hope that some or all of the six I mentioned above will be in the team to take on Adelaide even if some might claim it's a case of rotating deckchairs on the Titanic. It won't be because the added experience will help the likes of Green and Davey to lead the team. Snoopy says we have a third world midfield but I disagree. It looks third world when it's playing without confidence but if you add Tom Scully and Jordie McKenzie when they return from injury and if Jack Grimes is ever tried there, then the midfield gets much better. Add development and weight onto Jordan Gysberts and two impressive rookies from Casey (Evans and Nicholson) and, in the medium term, that midfield suddenly becomes much more potent. And then the opportunity might arise in the trades to add some icing to the cake. There's more. We have no true key forwards at the moment but I see good things ahead of us when Jack Watts and Liam Jurrah get another 20 games in their legs and add Lucas Cook and Jeremy Howe into the mix. Incidentally, unlike some others I think those young blokes and Tom McDonald have a lot to learn from a player of Fevola's calibre. If anyone's concerned about our lack of "mongrel", I'm sure they would agree. As for the coaching position, that will surely sort itself out by the end of the year. I can't see any advantage to any club in trying to knife the incumbent at a time when the team is in the top eight (albeit by dint of a friendly fixture). We should all be pulling together to achieve positive results at this time rather than the destructive attacks on the club that have abounded in the past few days.

Thirty minutes is a long time in football. GC17 win the second quarter. The Bomber revival is over and some of their fans are muttering "sack Hird" under their breath. Where do I find the sarcasm emoticon?

... made our performance on Thursday look like Champagne football. See, there's always a silver lining

I agree with Ed. I'm locking this up. This site is about supporting our club. We know the team performed poorly today and that some blame must attach to the way it was coached. Without endorsing the criticism elsewhere, there is room on here to have your say about the coaching and to vent your spleen if you like but a poll of this sort is not helpful to the cause and makes us all a laughing stock among other supporters. Think about another club that had a habit of sacking every coach it had over the last two three decades.

I don't believe in coaches or players making apologies. If they feel they need to repay the supporters for their poor performance then come out and do better next time and continue to do so regularly after that.

It's not as if we haven't played like this before. In last year's game against the same club at the MCG, we played with the same mindset and adopted the same game plan and came up with the same sort of result. Next game we beat Port Adelaide in Darwin. A couple of games later we drew with the eventual premiers. Not long after that we were flogged by Adelaide at AAMI. Then we beat Essendon a few weeks after that and then we smashed the Swans. We're young and we're inconsistent. Now, I've maintained and accepted the line that we are a young and a developing team and I really believe this but at the same time we need also be aware that we can't allow that to become the crutch with which we excuse every poor performance by the players and by the coach. All of those people have to get better and I'm sure that from the top down everyone is aware of this. The next few weeks will test everyone's character starting with the coach and going all the way through to the players who will inevitably get dropped to play at Casey.

We've travelled back in time to Round 1, 2008.

I don't see why playing Watts as a sub was a mistake. Dean Bailey explained it as picking the team for the occasion and that Watts was the player best placed to be the substitute. My view was that the team for the Gold Coast game was similar in forward structure to Carlton's which beat the Suns on the same ground a fortnight earlier. In respect to any given game being important to win, I accept that we're still in that part of our development where the future is part of the bigger picture we need to strive for but we can't be accepting of performances like Q3 v Hawthorn and a win v last year's spooners should be part of our expectations if for nothing else than to show they've moved ahead from last year.

There will come a day when you'll be able to work out the selected side through Twitter before it's been officially announced. Judging by the banter on Twitter from Juice to Fev, I'd say that he's not on the plane to Perth and that he'll be sharing inside 50 duties at Casey with the former Lion.

This debate has been going on for a long time now and it's all predicated on a theory that only makes sense if you look at it in general terms. In the real world there are numerous factors that influence outcomes in sporting contests and competitions - the vagaries of the draw, weather, injuries, a good or a bad umpiring decision, the strength of your football department, money and just plain luck. Imagine how different the 1990's might have been had Wayne Carey endured three knee reconstructions while, at the same time, the Ox (and a few others) had remained fit and healthy? There are too many unknowns to enable us to predict the future with great accuracy. It's true that we have to do the development time but we can also make things happen with the resources we have available ... and a bit of luck.

Anyone know the record crowd for a game at Casey Fields?

And if I'm not mistaken that's exactly what she was criticising Eddie McGuire for recently on Footy Classified. At least she's not the only person in the media who we can accuse of hypocricy.

It would seem that the boys did indeed train at Gosch's Paddock today. Craig Lees of the MFC tweeted an hour ago as follows: From the look of things, there weren't too many spectators around on this Good Friday morning so today's training report reads as follows: The boys trained at Gosch's Paddock this morning. They trained the house down and are looking forward with great anticipation to Thursday night's game at Subiaco against the West Coast Eagles.

Another good write-up on the VFL site - Scorpions Take The Sting Out Of The Roosters