Whispering_Jack

Appears they might have chalked up a bigger loss than we did this year and that's no joke!

Apologies to High Tower and others who want to be rid of threads involving Nathan Carroll and CJ but here's an interesting article from the AFL website - Carroll heads draft nominees "Carroll is one of the 43 delisted players who launched their draft nominations ahead of Wednesday's 2pm deadline. One of the players not on the list is former Fremantle midfielder Josh Carr. Carr has been in training with his former club Port Adelaide and could still be picked up in the pre-season draft. The same applies to ex-Demon Paul Johnson who has been in pre-season training with Carlton." There's an idiot at the AFL who can't tell the difference between loyal Demon Paul Johnson and the other fellow. Ah well ... Here's the list of players who have nominated for the national draft, to be held on Saturday November 29. Steven Armstrong (West Coast) Clinton Benjamin (Carlton) Greg Bentley (Port Adelaide) Luke Blackwell (Carlton) Jace Bode (Melbourne) Luke Brennan (Sydney Swans) Leigh Brown (North Melbourne) Bryce Campbell (Adelaide) Nathan Carroll (Melbourne) Tim Clarke (Hawthorn) Adam Cockshell (Port Adelaide) Jason Davenport (Geelong) Nick Davis (Sydney Swans) Zac Dawson (Hawthorn) Fabian Deluca (Port Adelaide) Chris Egan (Collingwood) Peter Faulks (Sydney Swans) Aaron Fiora (St Kilda) Charlie Gardiner (St Kilda) Blake Grima (North Melbourne) Tom Hislop (Essendon) Brad Howard (St Kilda) Sam Iles (Collingwood) Ryan Jackson (Carlton) Luke Jericho (Adelaide) Courtney Johns (Essendon) Chad Jones (West Coast) Andrew Lee (Essendon) Luke McEntee (Hawthorn) Kris Massie (Adelaide) Danny Meyer (Richmond) Wayde Mills (Brisbane Lions) Matthew Moody (Brisbane Lions) Gary Moss (Hawthorn) Aisake O'Hailpin (Carlton) Damien Peverill (Essendon) Darren Pfeiffer (Carlton) Michael Rix (St Kilda) Chris Schmidt (Brisbane Lions) James Thomson (West Coast) Toby Thoolen (Collingwood) Kristin Thornton (Sydney Swans) Ryan Williams (Port Adelaide) Ben Cousins has been given an extension until 2pm next Wednesday, November 26, to decide if he wants to nominate.

I think that's the point. Once upon a time the club with pick 1 in the PSD had a big advantage at draft time because it held this trump card which could enable it to get an extra quality footballer. Among other things, changes to the rules by the AFL, have emasculated this choice to the point where it's virtually worthless. If a team like Collingwood or Essendon was in this position right now, you'd find they would be making submissions to the AFL for some sort of special consideration as a result of the changed circumstances. Unfortunatley, we have other battles to fight and might not do anything about it.

I think the real untold story behind this is that if they're hesitant about GC17 then WS18 is just about dead in the water. At least one Sydney NRL club is in deep shyzen and we, in Melbourne. will not be immune to the fallout of this crisis. We still have to finalise a sponsor and work things out with the AFL and the MCC. I read a story in this morning's Age about a poor bloke who was drafted by Fitzroy in 1994 and arrived at Brunswick Street when it really hit the fan there. Let's hope the story isn't repeated.

Benny's apparently not happy with the onerous conditions the AFL has placed on him being permitted to return. Yes, they are tough and they are onerous but I would suggest that if he really wanted to come back to the game then he first should be prepared to bite the bullet and prove to the world that he's clean. The fact that he's already whinging about the conditions without giving them a try speaks volumes for me about the attitude he's adopted to his rehabilitation. Sorry Benny, but you've already failed as far as I'm concerned and I'm happy that you're not even a tiny blimp on the MFC radar.

No, nothing's changed. We're still committed to rebuilding the club with youth from the ground up.

What I liked about Ronald Dale, my all time hero, was the fact that he wore a Che Guevara T shirt in the Long Room of the MCC. Talk about not being frightened to confront reality (or do I mean unreality)! Yeah, I think I'd have to agree with him about the idea of people having passion for the club in responsible positions. You can feel it when Cameron Schwab and Chris Connolly talk about the club but it never showed out with Steve Harris (who was a St. Kilda supporter before he joined us) or Paul McNamee (Essendon). I'm not saying that they weren't committed to their jobs but that the passion was never translated into the way they appeared to me when speaking about the club.

I can't see Rich slipping that far. He's a quality player with superb delivery who has "future star" written all over him. As Stevo suggests above, had we lost that one game extra in 2007 he would have been an absolute monte to be part of a sensational 1, 2 combination along with Watts in the draft for Melbourne.

How good are East Sandy? Shane Warne bails out the boys Their cricket club has produced the greatest test bowler ever, their football club produced a Melbourne supporting wizard in Chri$ Judd who sold his soul for the almighty dollar. Soon the East Sandy football club will have a # 1 draft pick who is also an elite junior basketballer and who will be booting them through the goalposts long after Juddy retires from football to make cardboard boxes in an environmentally friendly manner.

One is the loneliest number Some are saying that this is the best and deepest draft in the past seven years, if not in the entire history of the AFL draft and Carlton recruiting manager Wayne Hughes who has only one pick between 1 and 40 feels sorry for his counterparts over at Melbourne which has pick 1 and another three picks before the Blues' second selection. Suffer!

We were divided up into about half a dozen groups (they were all colour coded and I got into the pink group - no smart comments please). Then within our groups we broke up into smaller groups that discussed ideas on various topics, mainly nuts and bolts stuff. As a result, I can't really give a comprehensive list of all ideas presented but I can say there were a lot passed on to the club, they were all documented and the club will study them and no doubt implement the best ideas. I was impressed by the enthusiasm of the groups, the number of very capable and articulate people and the quality of some of the ideas. One of the people I met was Stephen Grimes (hope I got that right) and you can understand why Jack is regarded as a potential future leader. And yes, both Jack Grimes and Cale Morton look like they've grown (heightwise at least) since August. The only one of those questions that was addressed was the alternative strip which will be red and navy blue as mentioned above. It sounds as if they're just doing some fine tuning with the logo for the jumper. And the Demon is here to stay. Someone said they wanted the Demon to look friendly but I prefer it to be more menacing. Jared Rivers looked OK from a distance but then again we were in the Long Room, not the training track.

That's not what it was about; nor was it a session where people could go and gripe about this and that issue with the club. It was a serious attempt to get feedback from supporters about how to build the club on a number of levels, particularly in its supporter base, membership and in ensuring its viability through sponsorship and partnerships with the community i.e. those off field issues that we’ve been grappling with for a number of years. There were about 350 to 400 people there including the Board, club greats like Ron Barassi and Trevor Johnson who thought it was important enough to fly over from Perth. Dean Bailey and Chris Connolly were there and some players James McDonald, Jared Rivers, Cale Morton and Jack Grimes. We have just passed 10,000 members but need to get 15k by Xmas. We were divided into several groups with three sessions devoted to bringing out ideas for the future. While it was all embracing there was a definite emphasis on improving our image and attracting more young people to become supporters and members, to develop partnerships with community groups and of course to find ways to build up on our sponsorships - we currently don't have a major sponsor and, at the next level, we have only 8 sponsors of the game day variety compared with some other clubs that have as many as 20. Studies show that we have the lowest supporter base and the lowest number of Auskick participants so the concentration on the young was understandable. I won't cover the ground that we covered over the morning, there were a lot of ideas thrown around in my group - some extremely useful, others were ideas that have been put forward before and still more that are already being implemented. My suggestions of more club involvement and assistance for supporter groups and for the club to promote itself and seek partnerships and sponsorships with eg. builders, developers and community groups in the Casey/Cardinia were well received. The way I see it, if every one of the 400 people put forward 5 ideas, that gives us 2,000 ideas. Even if 1% of them are of value to the club, that makes 20 things that the club can do to improve itself that it didn't have before 9am today. In that respect, it was an important event in the club's history.

Definitely in use currently. Received an email from the club signed off with the logo yesterday.

I noticed a thread on Demonology with some great pictures of The Ox in his heyday and I realised how bloody good it can be when you have a dominant key forward. In saying that I'm not drawing a comparison between Schwarta and Jack Watts but it did occur to me that we were at our most dangerous as a combination when we had more than one strong, tall KPP in the team - much the same as the combination of Buddy and Roughead is having on the Hawks - especially with someone as dangerous as Williams around the goals as well as Junior Rioli. Remember the times we had Schwartz and Lyon working the forward line together with Martin Pike thereabouts? And Neita when he wasn't at CHB. This leads me to the belief that we would benefit greatly if we could snare another tall key forward in this draft to combine with Watts in future years. Robbo is in the twilight zone, Brad Miller has yet to put together a truly consistent season up forward and, as today's Hun said, "Michael Newton has not stepped up." I know that we have a lot of deficiencies everywhere but with seven picks in the upcoming draft, another tall KPP forward is on my wish list.

I'll be there and I'm coming with an open mind and a few ideas (perhaps someone could make a list on a point by point basis of the ideas raised on this thread so that they can be presented tomorrow morning). One of the points that I will be making is that the club has not gotten the most out of its various supporter groups and how a better effort should be made in this area. An example I've been discussing with George from Demonology is the utter frustration we have had over the past two years in organising functions for our Demonland/Demonology Supporters Group. We have had terrific support from our sponsored players over the years - Clint Bartram has been superb giving up his time both in 2007 and 2008 but it's hard to grow the group when you come up against a brick wall and red tape. We have about 25 members but I can't see why we can't build our sponsorship to around 80 to 100 like the Richmond internet supporters who have superb access to club officials for their events and functions. Since the object is to engender club spirit among supporters, inform members and raise funds for the group, I can't see why the club doesn't support us more strongly. If anyone's going to be there tomorrow morning and agree with the above, I'd appreciate your moral and verbal support if you're around when I raise this. Otherwise, I hope the morning doesn't become a wankfest like the federal government's 2020 effort earlier this year. The morning should be about what we can do to help the club and not just a sit and chat, getting information and going home and feeling good. What we need to do is get a hell of a lot of committment from Melbourne people. On that subject, I was lucky enough this week to attend a fund raiser where the keynote speaker was Sir Bob Geldof. He ended his fantastic speech with this quote from W. H. Murray on Commitment and Providence which I think might be the cornerstone to our football team's survival in these difficult times (apologies for comparing the plight of a football club with the horrors of famine and war in other parts of the planet):

Congratulation Rollo but I've already got three, the first was a girl and the other two are boys and will be CHB and CHF for the Demons around the time Jack Watts retires. Not that I'm putting any pressure on them. BTW - how's Rivvo?

Strangely enough, this one's not about me - JACK OF ALL TRADES, MASTER OF ONE I've always been in the Rich camp but I'm slowly turning.

I'm due to become a grandfather (again) on the day but should be right. In view of today's news, perhaps we could have another award for the game - the Nathan Carroll Spitoon!

To the Ridley family my sincerest condolences go out to you. It seems like only yesterday when I was a kid and I started my first scrapbook about the Melbourne Football Club with a picture of Tiger wearing #24 and roving at the feet of Big Bob. Sadly, both of them are gone and even more sadly they won't be around when the club they loved returns to the greatness that they were a part of so many years ago. RIP

Hi Deb ... wishing you best of luck for your function. Have you ever considered having another function between Xmas and early in the New Year when there are lots of Victorians holidaying on the Gold Coast? Could make for an interesting function and a fundraiser for your group.

There must be a story here - Club Statement – Wayne Oswald

Not Jack but Jennifer Watt of the Melbourne Football Club, our hard working General Manager Marketing and Communications. When she heard the Morning Glory crew talking to CEO Cameron Schwab and discussing the fact that they were prepared to become paid up members of the Melbourne Football Club, she went straight into the SEN studio and signed them up on the spote before 9am. Spoke well and positively about MFC supporters and our membership drive. Also said our membership is up compared with this stage last year. Good to see some initiative taken at the club. Well done J.W.! TO SIGN ON CLICK HERE - MEMBERSHIP 2009

It's probably as much, if not more, an insult to Johnson himself than to the Melbourne Football Club but I think it probably went over the kid's head.

If we decided that we wanted him, we could negotiate terms with his management and if there was agreement, he could nominate for the PSD. We would then get him with pick # 1. There's a lot of "ifs" there, mind you!

Jim Stynes has posted this BOARD UPDATE on melbournefc.com.au