Gibberish

My bad, I may have been thinking of the restricted free agent rules.

I don't think he qualifies as a free agent. Trade or delist if we don't offer him another contract.

Well I hope you will continue to post whatever it is you decide is relevant @Ghostwriter . I only have a personal opinion so I appreciate anything you are willing to share from your interactions. My sincere hope is that you are correct and that McVee has already agreed to terms. Not just that it would be disappointing for you to be on the receiving end of some deceiving information but that it would be detrimental to us to lose a known commodity and consistent senior player.

It is difficult for me to advocate for any of the candidates based on any sort of history or criteria. Can we really say for certain what they are bringing to the table? Simpson was quite enlightening talking about his process to becoming the WCE coach. He said that every club had this and that and that he focused on the 10% difference that he could bring to the club, LEADERSHIP. We all want a coach that can make the best of our list. Wether that is a coach with senior coaching experience or an well credentialed assistant. Edit: Some grammar.

Life is subjective. It's hard to compare eras. Money and professionalism alone can have such a profound impact on one generation to another. Most of our premierships were before my time. Neitz was my favorite player before our most recent success and, as much as I still admire him, it's hard to deny Gawn and his consistent impact on each and every game. I did name my little pooch MAXine for a reason!

Early 2000s was my favourite era, so nice to see some father sons and daughters coming through. Gives me a warm fuzzy feeling inside and a unpleasant realisation of my own vintage.

I mean do we really have enough depth in the half forward position? Footy smarts and AFL level players are a rarity, look at where we are after losing Jordan, Harmes et al. We've gone from a wealth of depth to the impoverished in a short few years. He may be a victim of our insipid forward craft, there's many players that lack speed but make up for it with good decisions and poise. Let's not be so dismissive of his talents while he's on our list. The romanticist in me doesn't mind him hooking up with his fathers team but we should consider keeping proven depth players and focusing more on developing players.

I actually think that Buckley is not the safe choice. It would be safer to pick an unknown. There's more expectation on picking someone like Buckley as opposed to an untried assistant. His standing in the football world, senior coaching experience and media presence puts him front and centre for criticism. I'm on the fence where it comes to Buckley's appointment, but he has been reflective enough of his shortcomings as a senior coach. Let's say he is driven instead of egotistical and it gives us a totally different perspective. I'm somewhat disappointed that Enright has withdrawn from the race but that is based on my own knowledge of him as a player and the media reports of him as an assistant coach.

A top second half team could indicate being blown away in the first half and junk time goals in the second half when the win is out of reach. We've had a lot of poor starts and poor finishes, seemed like when we tried to focus on fixing something another element of our games dropped off. I've seen a few key indicators used to show our supposed improvements or that our ladder position isn't truly reflective of our team. But not being able to put together enough four quarter efforts is no small thing and puts us squarely where we stand now.

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I'd get it now while it's on special and save yourself a few bucks.

Yeah maybe you're right.

Melbourne coaching selection panel .....

I agree with your premise, I'd like a season with a new coach to see what they can make of our current list before making any major decisions to trade out players. I think JVR deserves another go, he's not had much of a go in a forward line with any kind of quality entries. Petty back for me. Will be interesting to see how it pans out.

Horse highlighted this earlier in the season. Our last quarter in particular we were kicking it from too far out allowing the defense time to collapse and rebound easily. Old habits and all that stuff. A bit frustrating to watch but also could be rectified with some good systems by the new coach.

I think we're all wondering where it went so quickly. No long ago we were overrunning opposition in the last quarter. We had belief. We were desperate. We had a defensive structure and backline so well drilled making difficult for opposition to score. And we had the fitness to put in a high standard 4 quarters. We've long had inadequacies within the playing group but that did not stop us from competing. Yes, our list has aged, but the drop off has been alarming. We didn't seem to have the fitness to overcome an ageing Collingwood team that seemingly everyone else was able to do in the last 6 weeks. It reminds me of the Bailey era where the players were calling off training sessions. We seem to be focussing on, for want of a better word, peripheral issues and forgotten about the core principals and values of an elite team. Standards have dropped.

As much as we've heard about the love within the group this season it hasn't translated to connecting on field. When pressured we have defaulted to poor habits and panicked disposals. We've been close many times but have just lacked the belief and confidence that should translate to composure.

I know there's the Shakespearian "The lady doth protest too much, methinks" and without knowing what goes on behind the scenes it may or may not be true but we'd never know because no-one publicly says anything (apologies for the long sentence, I'm almost nearly certain it's grammatically incorrect, but I'm a few cans in celebrating the end of our season). I'd really like to have a figure head that called out the inequities more often.

You say that the AFL field is a workplace, but it's not like any normal workplace. It's a contact sport. It's a competitive game. It is unlike most workplaces as we know it. The problem I have is not that the AFL is sanctioning players for this unacceptable language. The problem is that we see many examples each week of cheap shots from player that could be considered physical assault that largely go unpunished. There are also many examples of other unacceptable abusive language that the AFL turns a blind eye to. There were reports that Houston had said or suggested that he'd knock out Rankine like last time, but there's no report? So it's okay to threaten violence and harm but it's 4-5 weeks for using a derogatory term. What did Willie Rioli get? The AFL, as usual, totally lacks any sort of consistency with these issues, they are picking as choosing the issues as they please. If the AFL want to take any moral high ground and set an example then they would take threats of violence and other actions more seriously. But they AFL, along with a lot of big corporations, just want to be seen to be doing something.

Fair point. There were more changes last week from memory, switching around the magnets. Throwing Langford forward for example. Our entries in to the forward 50 has been our biggest shortfall, no leading patterns, not rewarding leads and bombing it in long. It's not something that is going to be changed dramatically in 3 rounds however much we wish it could.

Nice to see Wilbur in the wild (terrible pun I know). It was before my time but I recognise Jane Clifton, quite a voice, I had no idea she was a singer. One of the record groups I subscribe to mentioned Dutch Tilders, again a bit before my time, but then again so much good music was. This is a more recent song. I don't think I was fortunate enough to have access to the wealth of artists you may have seen, but I was regularly exposed to live music. I think as time goes on it is becoming more of a rarity, unfortunately, well maybe just less accessible. The last outing was being dragged along to the Red Hot Summer Tour. Jimmy Barnes, Bird of Tokyo and The Living End being the acts I was looking forward to seeing. Then along came Kasey Chambers and lifted the bar so high it felt like we peaked too early in the day (actually Mahalia Barnes + The Soulmates put on a great show).

I too agree that we have overpaid to trade up but you can't highlight a player going at 31 to prove a point. How many other teams and picks passed on them before he was picked up? There's always going to be some gems in later rounds, it's more about the success rate the lower the pick (in theory). Our player development has dropped off in the last few years, so having extra picks may be a moot point.

You say motivation but I would counter with accountability within the playing group, to the club and to their teammates. Our standards have dropped dramatically. I recall a post game interview from Gawn after one of our finals exits saying that they were cooked after maintaining such a high level of defensive effort for so long that they need the extra time off (or something to that effect). I can understand the burn out and not getting the reward for effort, but when I watch them play it almost looks like some of them are silently protesting. Houston was put off by the reports coming out of Melbourne, so it's no stretch to think that there were other players reluctant to sign on.

I think Verrall has to either be delisted or elevated to the primary list after 3 years on the rookie list. I suspect delisting which is a bit of a shame, I thought he could have been a better option as the second ruck but hasn't been given the chance. Doesn't seem to effect the game enough outside of the ruck contest for Casey.

We've lost a year or two of development because we haven't tried players in different positions. We have been so inflexible that it makes it easier for the opposition as we're so predictable. I don't think we are in the position to get any value out of Petracca or Oliver (no that I want to see them leave) but we needed more experimentation for what has largely been a lost season.