Its Time for Another

I don't know enough to comment. Leighoak with Pokies was bringing in $1.5mill a year. It will be interesting to see what revenue source they come up with to replace it. Especially now that all the capital from the venue has been used up in the past 2 years to pay off debt.

Easy enough question to answer. Just have a look at how many memberships we have from there. I'm guessing it's a very small amount.

It would be pretty sensational to get off at Richmond station and drop in to an MFC base around Gosch's for maybe lunch or a drink. Chat with other MFC supporters. The Club could make sure someone from the FD or a couple of injured players were available every week to give a breakdown for the game coming up. Have a look around the 12 Premiership Cups and other Club memorabilia. Maybe an MFC museum. Go over to the game had home via the club facility fpr a post game club event. etc. Doesn't sound too shabby to me. Bit better than trying to do that in Glen Iris. On the other hand smarter more experienced people than me have to know the economics of how many people would use a facility like that. The Swans had one in the Cross. The President Richard Colless sunk millions of his own money into it. It was a very modern facility but was an absolute bust. They all did their dow. So you have to know how to make money from it. Perty already has that experience with the Pies facility at Olympic Park. I dont know what the answer is.

It's an interesting question who or what is Luke Jackson. When he was recruited I was very worried he was going to be an inbetweeny. Not tall enough to be a first ruckman, not good enough as a forward. When Jason Taylor talked about him pre draft he mentioned that he hadn't been playing long and his rate of development over the previous season had been phenomenal. Or words to that effect. The kids 19 and he's played 11 games. His rate or should I say speed of development has been nothing short of phenomenal. Not only his play but his physical development. After one season he is already able to compete physically against seasoned rucks like Blicavs and Stanely. He's already shown enough to me that I don't have doubts about him being a legitimate ruckman. His vertical leap more than makes up for his lack in height for a ruckman. His innate footy IQ is elite. You can't teach what he's got. It's a more complex argument about his performance as a key forward. If you base it just on scoring like Dr D then 1 goal 2 points is a fail. But lets be honest here the kid wasn't recruited as a key forward and he clearly won't be one in his career. He's going to be a hybrid ruck/midfielder/resting forward. He's 19 and because of injuries, in his 7th to 11th games has been forced to play as a KPF taking the first or second best key defender with virtually no physical backup as T Mac has played a lot up the ground. Even so he's played a very good role competing in the air, not letting defenders get easy marks and clearances, knocking it down to our smalls and providing follow up pressure. That's all been very valuable but ultimately he won't hold out our 2 genuine key forwards. The dilemma for Goody will be when to bring them in and how to shuffle the rest of the team. They are saying they are now both fully fit so do you disrupt the continuity of the team to bring 3 players back including Fritsch into the front 6 in the same game against the Premiers. There is a longterm benefit in getting games into them to learn to play together but in the short term you'd expect it is going to be quite disruptive. Tigers played Pickett in the ruck last week so you don't need a second ruckman. T Mac or Weid would be a win in the ruck. Maybe BBB could do with another week in the seconds. I can't see Weid being left out he's an obvious in for M Brown. If it wasn't for an argument about disruption I would be bringing Weid and BBB in and giving Jacko a rest just this week because of matchups but I don't think that will happen. I think the disruption argument will win out and it will just be Weid and Fritsch this week. I think there will be games this year Jacko is rested from to help team balance and to give him a rest and have him cherry ripe for the finals.

I’ve noticed in the last 2 weeks that his problem seems to be he is jumping a fraction too soon so he is getting to the flight of the ball but it’s just a fraction too high and hitting the top of his fingers. When not if he works that out and jumps a fraction later he will be unstoppable. Then he and Gawn need someone to teach them how to kick goals and the Dogger will have truly arrived. King brothers what King brothers.

Sorry to derail the thread for a minute. I was always a bit dark on Stan that as a reigning Captain of MFC he took off to chase a Premiership at North. I spoke to him at a coaching clinic some years ago and that wasn't what happened. Bobby Skilton was the coach in '76 and at the end of the season he said sorry Stan even though you're the Captain we are going to go with a youth policy from now on and you're going to have to retire. Stan was shocked and very disappointed and thought his career was over. To put that decision in perspective at the end of that year it was thought the Dees were very close to a new era. In the last round that year the Dees were on the cusp of the finals they just had to beat the Pies (who finished bottom but the next year drew a Grand Final) and Blues who were on top of the ladder had to beat Dogs who were not even in the 5. We beat the Pies and as the players were going off the ground the score for the Blues v Dogs came up on the scoreboard and it was a draw costing the Dees their place in the finals. As the Collingwood players came off the ground and saw that result they clapped and laughed. Thus was born my never swerving hatred of that Club. I fantasise about the one point Premiership win we will have against them with a kick after the siren. Anyhow back to Stan. During the preseason he got a call from Barassi who asked if he wanted to give it a go at North. By the end of that first season in '77 he'd become a Premiership player and was famously doing cartwheels on the members wing after the final siren. As a side note Skilton was gone as coach at the end of that year. Joining a long line of failed MFC coaches. Back to Lingers and Choco's magical kicking coaching. :)

Yep. Go to afl.com.au into the MFC matches and the player stats. It's there for every player for every game. ToG%. Makes for very interesting reading. I was checking it out last year and noticed how Viney's time was down compared to other midfielders. Bit the same this year. I suspect he's being managed for the rest of his career. His stat's are amazing when you see that he plays less game time than the other top midfielders. It also probably tells a bit of a story on how they are managing players loads week to week. For instance Lingers game time was down after the 100% Saints game. There's sure to be a lot of science around that stat.

Do you have any idea why. Was it an issue with players or coaches and what's changed. Would love to know.

Dr Smith maybe.

Would be an interesting situation if he did nominate us as an RFA. I know I'll get howled down for this. I realise it's probably a ridiculous statement but Dodoro might have learnt a bit of a lesson from the Daniher fiasco. I don't think Merritt is worth more than Daniher and in the end Dodoro accepted the compo pick for him. He'd probably get pretty much the same compo pick for Merritt or even a higher one as they'll probably finish even lower this year. It would probably be a top 5 pick for him. That's pretty fair. Hope and prey T Mac continues to play really well and we manage to offload his $750k that's the required salary cap space right there. Negotiate Merritt into a reasonable salary in return for being in a team heading to a flag. Done.

Hitouts v Cats. Blicavs 14, Jackson 12, Stanley 10. Clearances: Blicavs 1 Jackson 4 Stanley 3 Disposals: Blicavs 9 Jackson 10 Stanley 10 I was looking forward to him v Blicavs who is similar type of tall, athletic player who plays ruck and a key position. I thought physically he held his own against him in the stoppage ruck contests and didn't look physically overwhelmed at all. This is a huge step up for a 19 yr old tall. One of the pre draft worries about him was that he was an athlete first and a very raw, project footballer second. In fact, as these examples show, he's got elite footy IQ. Go Jacko.

That kick of Langdon's was the best i50 kick he's done. I didn't think he had that sort of low direct pass in him. If he can do that consistently it takes him to another level.

Brilliant. Thanks for doing this. Can you believe those two years. Can't imagine there was another recruiting era like it. 19 players who all played a significant amount of games in one of the best eras for the club. That '87 run to the finals is still my favourite. The legendary '87 Prelim then the shocker '88 Grand Final.

Theres a bunch of others to add in around that 1986/87. For instance Sean Wight, Jimmy Stynes. Also traded in Doug Koop, Dean Chiron '87. Garry Lyon, Ricky Jackson, Steven Stretch & Brett Lovett, Simon Eishold ( I know I know) debuted in 1986. Plus junior players that came up from our U19's to our Reserves to our 1sts care of RDB and Slug Jordan. They all debuted around 1986/7. Tony Campbell, , Stawbs O'Dwyer, Glenn Lovett, Rod Grinter (Honourable mention year b4 1985)

I don't think Jason Taylor would agree with you. I'm sure he'd be saying there was no luck involved just elite professional talent spotting and pick negotiating. Rivers was always going to be the litmus test for me for that draft. I was in the get Young at pick 3 at all costs camp because we so needed his elite kicking. But the hope was that once we got Jackson, Rivers could produce a similar output to Young, then Jackson becomes a bonus compared to getting Young at pick 3. As it's turned out Rivers has delivered in spades arguably out performing Young. He went at 100% DE against GWS. In my book it's hard to argue against 100% all some on here no doubt would

Actually we turned it into Langdon.

Thanks for both these explanations. I thought that was what you were getting at. It's probably a matter of semantics but I don't think with the dominance created by Gawn and our midfield beasts that there would ever be a plan to lose a stoppage. I think your example of that first centre bounce is possibly more a demonstration of a better game plan on how to clear the ball from a clearance to the outside instead of having too many players inside and none in an effective place outside which is what has been happening the past couple of years. The Doggies are masters of setting up outside clearances. The irony is that we were losing clearances with more players at the ball than we are with a better structure. From my observation so far this season the players are setting up better away from the ball so they are better at defending the first kick away from the clearance and also better at being in a position to receive the clearance in attack if we win it.

If T Mac keeps playing the way he has he will be valuable by the end of the season and will be expendable with all the other options we have. If he was traded to say the Pies that would release the money we need for a Kelly who would take the wing that Gus is on. Gus could potentially move on to play with his brother. One or both could be the solution to getting Kelly but he'd want to be playing better than last season and he'd have to be prepared to take a salary cut at least back to what Oliver and Trac will be getting.

Good point. I don't know if anyone else feels the same way but I thought in the second half after fighting back from that Saints run on you could palpably see a growing confidence in the collective body language. It felt to me like they were thinking hey this game plan we've worked on over the summer is actually working. We can do this. The play seemed to reflect what you're saying the longer the game went on. I have a feeling that second half is a lot more significant than we realise.

The other thing I should add is that I think one of the keys to all of this strangely enough is Tomlinson. He is becoming a very good key defender which is freeing up Lever to do what he was recruited to do as the intercepting floating back and also releasing May to attack out of deep defence. They can do this because they know Tomlinson can cover their man if they leave. He has strength and agility and speed. Lever isn't the same player when forced to be a lock down key defender as we saw last season. Because of that May was also more restricted from attacking out of defensive 50. So in combination all of the above two posts results in better ball movement i50 before the oppo can flood back and choke the forward 50. Problem is there was a lot of bombing still going on often to an outnumbered T Mac. The amount of balls dropped on or behind his head instead of out in front was a killer. I'm still waiting for them to deliver low direct sharp passes to leads like the Saints did.

I don't see how wanting to score from clearances means you win less clearances. Could you explain your thinking there. Here's some very interesting clearance stat's from the Saints game which support your theory about putting the ball carrier under pressure when we lose clearances. - We won the centre bounce clearances 14 to 11. Not that great a difference. But look at i50's and metres gained from centre bounces. The stats are to say the least a revelation. Saints 11 centre clearances = 3 i50's compared to 11 out of 14 of ours. Even more dramatically metres gained from centre bounces was 821 for us and incredibly only 195 to them. Hard to believe. Clearly there's some fantastic defensive work being done at these stoppages which I for one wasn't aware of watching it. I'd love to know how this stacks up against the rest of the comp. I think in our case there are a lot of factors causing our forward line to be more open. - We have a better structure with some defenders remaining deep and not all getting sucked up the ground. So on transition we have better shape to stop being easily opened up. - The dominance of May, Lever, Tomlinson, Salem has meant our defenders can run straight down the corridor to get back deep and can afford to concede more possession on the wings because by the time they are ready to deliver i50 we are back there. You could see the Saints having to stop in their tracks because they had no where to deliver the ball i50 - The new rules allow half backs to take off and get much more penetration. For instance Salem off half back had the 3rd most i50's in the team with 5 only Trac with 7 & Oliver with 6 had more. This fits in with pre season predictions that the man on the mark rule would mean half back flankers would get record amounts of possession. - I believe the dominance of the backline is creating a predictability to our ball movement so more players are creating options up the field. This is allowing our ball movement to be more deliberate causing us to retain possession and control rather than bombing long all the time. Dare I say this is looking more Clarkson/Hawthorn like. Thank you Yze. - All of the above ultimately contributes to better delivery i50 although lets face it there's still a lot of work to be done there. But the signs are good. It should be cherry ripe particularly for a leading forward like BB.

Hmmm

O Mac makes history. First ever injury sub. Comes in after half time to replace Sylvani.

Excellent Post. This is a perfect example of culture or lack thereof in practice. The rest of your post about players calling him out and what you appreciate about Viney could be more spot on than we realise. I have actually been wondering if all the rumours about Oliver wanting to go to Carlton in the off season were a result of him being called out by Viney for exactly this type of issue. There have been rumours for a while about fractures in the playing group, then Viney lost the Captaincy, then Oliver is rumoured to be investigating leaving. It's all complete conjecture. I have absolutely no idea. But it wouldn't surprise me. Gus also has the same lack of defence. I was told that after a Saints win in 2019 the Saints coaches discussed the fact they targeted getting the ball to Oliver and Brayshaw's opponents because they knew they wouldn't get chased by them.

Would love to hear if he thinks its changed yet. Also love to hear what role he thinks supporters have in setting and driving a Clubs culture.