Whispering_Jack

Emma Quayle has produced her top 25 list in today's Sunday Age (no link currently provided). As usual - a very interesting read. Not surprisingly, she thinks we'll take Jack @ 1.

Yes, we'll have to go through the papers Andy brought home from that trip to Fiji to see if we can find some more of those excerpts.

No scepticism, I'm only stating that the fact that someone was a top flight player doesn't necessarily make him a good coach. I'm hoping that West does help turn things around because our record with player development over the past 5 -10 years has not been good.

He said that because Carlton has pick 40. In actuality, there are only 39 good picks in this draft.

Not only that. It's one thing to be able to win the ball and weave magic with it when you're a player, its another thing altogether to be able to impart that knowledge and teach others anything when you've retired.

Thanks Fan but it's not my work. I merely transcribed it from the words supplied by Stevo and put it in the form of an article. He's pretty forthright about how some of the young players at the club have (not) developed over recent years. I suppose it's a case of watch this space.

I think there might be an even more obvious one in there.

The bloke he should really be able to help IMO is Brent Moloney who has a lot of fine attributes but could learn a hell of a lot from West about others in respect of which he has been lacking in recent years. If totally fit, Moloney could make a big difference if West can help smooth over the rough edges.

Why delete the threads about NC and CJ. Surely it's enough that both have been consigned to the history of the club?

There's a service for Tiger at the MCG on Saturday according to today's Age (no time given). I reckon he might be having a bit of a chuckle up in heaven at the fact that the Age announcement comes as a footnote to an article about the Collingwood Football Club losing millions of $$$'s over their hotel investments.

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):