Its Time for Another

Instructive about where the Club's at now compared to the past. PJ came in and his first comment was what a lack of experience there was in all areas of the Club. Neeld put together a bunch of raw coaches many of whom hadn't even been in the AFL system. That means in turn none of them had a broad network of contacts. PJ brings in Roosy, he has a massive network of contacts himself. He brings in experienced people around him, including George Stone who's been around as long as anyone and obviously has a huge network of contacts that stretches to this scenario. Those contacts contact George, he tells the Club, the rest is history. Another example is Dane Rampe at the Swans. Couldn't get picked in any Junior NSW Rep teams, went to Melbourne played with Williamstown, Dogs said they liked him but didnt' pick him. Went back to Sydney, gave up on the dream, played at UNSW. Roosy's son was playing in the same team, he sees him, tells the Swans and bingo they get another unbelievable recruit because of the network. Clubs like the Hawks have these networks and have been using them for years. We are just starting to get ours and its starting to reap rewards already.

Actually I read or saw an interview with him and he said his Ainslee Coach was friends with Georgie Stone and rang him and told him to come and have a look. It would probably have been Kelly O'Donnell or someone else in the Dept that did the actual looking. Georgie was a bit busy doing something else. ie Coaching the midfield.

34,041 30 April 2014. So looking like around the same result as last year. Although a very tough draw until July. Maybe a win against the Dogs & Saint. Its Freo, Sydney, Hawks, Doggies, Port in Alice, Pies, Saints (Etihad), Cats at Skilled, Bye. Membership tally for the year finishes after this run. Mind you we could well be 4-8 by then same as last year.

OK, MFC I get. But SS?

Gotta love the PJ. Good luck trying to strong arm him.

Interestingly when the final siren blew there was a close up of a D's player lying on the ground with their hands over their face and they looked like they were crying. I thought it looked like Garland. For some reason it was shown and there was no comment by the commentators. Did anyone else see this. I thought it was really odd. If it was Col I was wondering what was going on. Someone on here mentioned players changing clubs to chase Premierships. How sweat it is to see Clark playing so well for a team getting further and further away from that goal by the week. Wonder how his depression would have been feeling on Saturday night if he was still here reaping the rewards of seeing a team on the beginning of a journey back from oblivion instead of being in a team that is on the beginning towards it. As for Howey. Silly boy. Very different stories coming out of his mouth and his managers. Which is true. Probably both. That bloke wasn't the one acting for Twomey in his negotiations with the Pies a few years ago that nearly blew his career. Pull your head in mate. You don't start fielding offers unless you are prepared to leave otherwise you are wasting a lot of people's time. How would other clubs feel listening to these two different versions of what's actually going on. If he stays, I hope he ends up in the forward line. Backs punch balls, forwards catch them. There aren't too many that can catch a contested ball any better than he can. In the heat of battle in a final or GF when a ball gets bombed into the forward 50 on a wing and a prayer you want someone who will rise above the pack, take a screamer and kick the winner. Someone as well as Jesse that is.

If its equalisation you're after, I'd punt for the US System where the top teams can't get Free Agents at all.

Unfortunately the MFC Administrations over a long period of time highlight the fact that no matter what the AFL does for equalisation if a Club's Admin is sub standard it can create it's own massive competitive problems. At our lowest point we turned to the AFL or the AFL stepped in at their own insistence and Demetriou made one phone call to PJ and the rest is history. Without that intervention I wonder where we would be now. Lack of money over the years is no doubt a major cause of so many of our problems. But lack of judgement at Board and CEO level has a lot to do with where we've been over th past 8 yrs. PJ walked in the door and his first observation was the lack of experience at all levels in the footy dept and the Admin. He cut costs to focus spending on experience starting with Roosy and steadily filling in the Footy Dept. To be fair, the facilities headed by the move to AAMI and the appointments of Misso, Viney & Jason Taylor had already been made. But what a transformation PJ's made since. You wonder what state we'd be in now if he had been appointed instead of CS.

I wonder what will happen to the Dank appeal to the AFL Appeals Tribunal if WADA appeal to CAS. Dank is appealing the guilty finding on trafficking which is all he was found guilty of whereas WADA would be appealing his innocence on administering the drugs, as well as appealing the decision on the players. WADA will have to lodge the appeal before Dank's appeal is heard. So if his appeal is successful you would assume if WADA are appealing the administering they would also appeal a successful appeal by him on the trafficking but the timing will be different. I wonder if that means that in order to hear all cases together which you'd assume CAS would want to do that it will delay it's hearing until after the outcome of the Danks appeal to the AFL Tribunal. That could take a long time given the time the first hearing took to come on, be heard and the decision to be handed down. In theory this would be a much smaller hearing as if he can establish there are grounds for the appeal, ie a mistake in law, then the evidence would only be about his supply to coaches from several teams and baseball. A much smaller case than all the evidence about the 34 players but even so the process will likely take a long time to come on. Especially given how long it took the Tribunal to hand down it's decision on Dank compared to the players. I could see that process delaying a CAS hearing and final decision until after the end of the season. Another win for Essendon, assuming WADA decide to appeal at all.

Looks like Fitzy is definitely being groomed as a backman. Question is, who is he going to replace. I wonder if they will just groom him to only play games against teams who have 20cm+ forwards. Noticed we had no one tall enough to compete against Daniher in the NAB when we played the bummers. M Clark, Boyd and several other teams have forwards this tall now. Some other teams have 200cm+ backs. Eg Keefe at Pies. I guess they are also accepting he isn't going to make it as a forward. I would have thought we are in much more need of a 200cm forward than a back.

I noticed on the telecast at half time in the rooms that a physio was working on his left shoulder (which was strapped) and neck.

I suspect the plan straight after the Decision was for WADA to appeal straight to the CAS and not waste time with ASADA appealing to the AFL's Appeals Tribunal where there would likely be more of the same. CAS is used to applying the appropriate standards of proof for an anti doping case. The AFL Tribunal looks to have got this wrong. I'd be surprised if WADA don't appeal. Maybe the inability to force Charters and Alavi to give evidence leaves too big a hole for an appeal, otherwise I can't see them not appealing.

DANK????? Sorry if this has been answered elsewhere. Does anyone know what has happened to the decision on him. ASADA were expecting it two weeks ago straight after Easter. They were already disappointed they were being given a week shorter at that point to assess their decision on Appealing which would be largely effected by the outcome of the findings on Dank. As far as I can see there has been no announcement at all on what's happening with that decision.

I'd be more than happy with the 11th pick.

So you'd rather have kept Scully than get Hogan and Dawes. Time to let go and enjoy the ride.

To me this is the key. If the foot holds up and he gets his speed back he should end up fulfilling his early promise and our depth gets a massive injection. If the foot injury means his speed is gone permanently then unfortunately he isn't likely to play again. Other people with this injury have fully recovered, some haven't. If there wasn't a chance of a full recovery you would assume we would have heard about it by now.

Mitch Clark, Scully, Chris Judd, Robbie Warnock..... Have all taught me a lesson. They all rejected MFC and the result was often better for us. I really liked Clark's replacement's game last week. He gave MFC something it's been missing for years. A player who can single handedly change the momentum of a game. Who know's this might be more important for us in the next few years than a Full Forward. It really doesn't matter if it doesn't because it is what it is. Let's move on and enjoy the resurgence. I bet you on Monday night no one would have been more aware than MC of how differently he would have been feeling if he'd been there on Saturday instead of Monday. He picked a team that is undoubtedly on the way down. None of their wins are going to mean as much as our wins over the next few years. That's what he gets to look forward to. Time to move on. Go Heritier. (Had to check the spelling three times) He's the only person that is relevant out of the MC saga.

32,324 after round 1 last year. So in the past two weeks we have finally passed last year's tally. Another win against GWS and hopefully we'll get more of the unbelievers coming back to the fold with a nice boost to membership. Might yet crack the old record but 40,000 still seems like a big ask.

Can't help wondering if that last ditch GWS trade offer might still be on the table with Treloar & Shiels up for possible trade at end of year.

Oh! How do you know? Do you know who the upset mother was. I thought no one knew.

No one in that place seems to have the remotest judgement. This problem was created by them not by anyone else. Instead of going on the attack when there is no defensible attack, how about learning how to be a small target and shut the f%&$ up. The thought of the absolute BS that will run non stop from these people if they get off is going to be completely unbearable. Please Mr Tribunal for the sanity of the entire AFL world except these muppets, find them guilty. Put all of us out of our misery rather than extending it.

Also, now that I think about it, if they don't get suspended they then get a massive advantage of being fixtured out of their "division" under the new fixturing system and would get the easiest draw of any team in the competition including the bottom 6 by only playing the bottom 6 twice. So they would get a great big reward for causing all this drama and getting away with it. By the time the decision comes down I guess it is too late to revisit the fixture which would be the fairest thing to do to preserve the pointy end of the competition.

And what's worse, the rabble, ring in version just beat us. So some might still argue the same applies to any games played against us this season. I raised this issue on here some time ago. It will have a massive impact on the make up of the top four and beyond. Sydney play them once in rd1, Hawks play them twice by about round 11. Port only play them once around rd18. Hawks could get a 10% boost over Sydney and a 20% boost over Port and Sydney up to a 10% boost and both potential bonus wins over Port, who may play a full, fit and fresh version by rd 18. Same applies to Cats who only play them once in rd 10. Freo play them once in rd 6, so on a 6mth suspension would probably play the last round of a weakened team. You can't say this won't have a massive impact on the competition between these likely contenders for the top 4. Cancelling results won't be the answer because then the teams playing them twice have a massive disadvantage. Hard to know what the answer is but it will have a big impact on the competition this year. If the AFL were smart they would have set up the fixture so that only the bottom 6 teams played them twice and the top teams only played them in the second half of the season. At least that way it wouldnt' threaten the outcome of the season. Don't know why they wouldn't have thought of that ahead of time.

I tend to lean to your explanation. Timing is probably due to being pushed for the interview and asked that specific question. Sue I'm sure if WADA wanted to make a statement to the Tribunal they would have had many ways to do that well before now. It would be virtually too late to leave it to now. I have absolutely no doubt they will review everything that went on in this case win or lose. I would hope they would want to make sure that in future the process is much much more quick than this fiasco. Plus I would say the discussions with the Aus Govt would be about changing the legislation so that in the future if there is positive evidence of a substance being taken, like there was here, that the onus will fall on the athletes to prove what they took. It is ridiculous that the onus is on ASADA to prove what drug the players took when they have no idea and the players are the ones via the Club who took the substances.

Thirdly, maybe it isn't about him at all. Maybe it's about the fact that Frost was recruited to replace Frawley but has shown that he might be more important filling a role in the forward line replcaing M Clark, than replacing Frawley in the backline. If that is the thinking then they need to find someone else to be the big gorilla back and maybe Fitzy could be that with his height on the increasing number of 200cm forwards. Think what Daniher just did to us because amongst other reasons we didn't have a tall enough back to line up against him.