Its Time for Another

Mark Neeld announced his mantra for his coaching as the team being the hardest to play against in the league. He has put the focus on the players defensive skills and tackling. Hawks smashed Swans in hitouts, clearances and inside 50's but were beaten by 109 tackles, the competition's best defence and better conversion. Bring it on Neeldy!! For those who doubt the wisdom of picking Watts over Natanui, the proof was there to see. If you don't have the skilled forwards to kick the clutch goals you don't win Premierships. I'd take a clutch goal kicker over a ruckman any day, especially with the ruckman will have coming through on the list. In '05 Barry Hall kicked the clutch goals and the Swans won the Premiership in '06 he missed them and they lost by a point. He said it took him over a year to get over that game, wonder how long it will take Buddy, knowing that he cost the team a Premiership. Tough call but true.

Mark Neeld announced his mantra for his coaching as the team being the hardest to play against in the league. He has put the focus on the players defensive skills and tackling. Hawks smashed Swans in hitouts, clearances and inside 50's but were defeated by 109 tackles and the competition's best defence. Bring it on Neeldy!! For those who doubt the wisdom of picking Watts over Natanui, the proof was there to see. If you don't have the skilled forwards to kick the clutch goals you don't win Premierships. I'd take a clutch goal kicker over a ruckman any day, especially with the ruckman wel have coming through on the list. In '05 Barry Hall kicked the clutch goals and the Swans won the Premiership, in '06 he missed them and they lost by a point. He said it took him over a year to get over that game, wonder how long it will take Buddy, knowing that he cost his team a Premiership. Tough call but true.

Jude Bolton said on On the Couch that it was Stewie Maxfield when he became Captain. Said he was hard as nails and had an uncompromising requirement to perform for all the players. Said he would tell players home truths if they weren't measuring up and didn't sugar coat the message. Or words to that effect. Interesting it came from the Captain and he got the players to buy into it. It didn't come from the Club or coaches. Big ask for two of the youngest Captains of all time.

Reading the rules explanation on the mfc website today, if a club delists a player the player can go to any club he chooses. No compo to team that delisted him. I don't think WC will delist him but if they do he can be picked up for nothing if he decides to come to us.

Some unkind people might suggest the girls would be welcome and couldn't do any worse than a few people on the list at the moment

Ross Lyon would never have come to Melbourne. He only coach's teams that are right on the cusp of Prelim Final's or more. We don't satisfy his criteria. He wouldn't take on a rebuilding job like Neeld has. Who's saying that building from the base up drafting kids is the easy option. Surely buying in established players is the easy option. Neither Bailey or Neeld have done that so far. They have both done a massive clean out and started building from the bottom up. I don't see any easy paths taken in this rebuild. I feel for Neeld though. The team by Craig's estimate won't start to be competitive until the second half of 2014, the last year of Neeld's contract. Will the Club and the supporters be patient enough to stick with him when it takes that long.

Please don't spread this around, I don't want Sheahan finding out or it will be everywhere but I was the coach of my son's U14's Grand Final team and I was up for the job too but they didnt' ring me either. Don't know what the hell's wrong with them. Bugger them, I'm going to do a Sheedy, I'm going to poach Trengove and get him to play on his knees so he's short enough and no one will notice him in the U15's next year.

How depressing is it that our highlight for the year is sacking half the list. The Bailey era is looking worse and worse. Makes you wonder how much of the recruiting is directed by the coaches. Probably a lot. They went for a position player in Cook rather than best available. Bit of a lesson there. Looks like Neeld had a big hand in the last draft, no wonder BP is gone and not to recruiting. He looks like he's going for type not position. Hard at it, tough, big bodied. Who's out there that covers those criteria.

I wonder if he jumped or was pushed. Seems very strange that after everything the Club has done for him, he would just walk out and say he wants to play in SA. You'd think he would have gone to the Club confidentially and allowed them to try to trade with one of the SA Clubs which would have got us something. But by walking out like this he has made sure we get nothing. I can't imagine Adelaide going after him with the state their list is in. Port might but given the court case you'd think the best they would do is the rookie draft with special dispensation from the AFL that they can drop him from the list if he goes to jail.

"Hardest Team to Play Against" quote Mark Neeld, isn't a bad place to start if we can ever get to the starting line. IMO it's up to the players to create the player group culture in the same way Stuart Maxfield created the "Bloods" culture at the Swans. Sounds like he was tougher and more effective than the coaches at enforcing 110% performance from the playing group. Bring on the Jacks and other leaders setting the standard.

You've got to wonder where they get this stuff from. Neeld has just come out saying no offer was made to Cloke yet half the papers were full of the 5yr $5mill deal we'd offered. If you apply a bit of logic, the Cloke deal made no sense to where MFC's list is at and the idea of a young team desperately in need of some hard bodies giving up picks 3 & 4 for 17yr olds who can't play for another year and will take at least 2 - 3yrs of development to be contributors is just rubbish. I'd be very surprised given the state of our list if they participate in the MD at all. More likely to try to get a gun at pick 3 in the draft and possibly trade pick 4 for an existing player such as Boak or whoever.

My memory was that the Geelong v Hawks game finished with about 5 minutes to go in our game. The whole crowd went ballistic as the ball was rolling over the line around half back with no significance so everyone who wasn't listening to a radio was wondering what the hell was going on until it was explained. It was amazing Cats were up by about 3 goals going into time on, so looked like we were going to be stuffed even if we won. Then Dunstall exploded with I think 3 time on goals to win it for Hawks. Sadly that game is still the highlight of my D's following career which goes all the way back to just after '64. Look at all those massive scores in that round. Different era of footy. What's better, high scoring like that or the dower defensive game it has become nowadays?

Does anyone know when Royal's contract ends. Is it this season or next. From memory he got a 3 yr contract when Wellman walked. This is the end of the second year. Or am I wrong. I hope so.

How lucky are we, we didn't get him last year instead of Mitch Clark. Sounded like we were going to offer him much more than Clark too. MFC have had a few trading coups the past few years through no choice of their own.

And yet Scotty West with none of the extra assistants or IT guys providing instant footage or training facilities or Neil Craig's performance expertise or Dave Misson etc etc got much more out of a weaker mid field than Royal has out of this bunch who are a couple of years further down the track.

I'd normally agree with you on this one but look at how the midfield was performing under Scotty West, infinitely better than this year's version under Royal. Royal had the back line last year and look how bad they were compared to the year before under Sean Wellman. This year under Rawlings they are looking more like they did the year before Royal had them. You don't need to be in the inner sanctum to see how badly the areas he has coached have gone backwards under him. Facts speak for themselves. One of the really great players and probably a good assistant coach in his time but that time has well and truly gone.

That is indeed the trick. It's very easy to delist players. It isn't very easy to recruit better ones. As we all know too well from the past 10yrs.

Fair points. I also like the look of Mitch Clark's leadership and passion this year.

When I saw this topic I thought this is going to be a beauty, it is really the issue that is most responsible for us being where we are right now. But when I read your opening comments it was obvious you should have named it The Sack Neeld thread. Now back to what this topic should be about. NO SENIOR PLAYERS!!! Why are there no senior players providing guidance and leadership. If you look at all the rebuilding teams (ie not the expansion teams) they all have at least one or more champions guiding and leading the young players. We don't really have any 27+ aged players who fall into this category. Rivers is doing well, Jamar has only emerged in the past two seasons. You obviously can't blame Neeld for this. You've got to blame years of bad drafting and List Management. Why are our senior players with the exception of Rivers and Jamar not providing leadership. I believe the culture that started under Bailey that if you are too old to be here in 5 years you are out the door has caused a lot of damage to our leadership. Neeld's decision to chuck virtually all of the senior players out of the leadership group has carried on that mistake. In terms of a coach getting the best out of his players you would have to wonder what he was thinking in treating the senior playing group like this. Clearly with the exception of Rivers and Jamar who he left in the leadership group, you would have to say that the Senior Players have sucked big time this year and I don't blame them. I went to the Swans first intra club game this year and was able to stand right on the boundary line. It was fascinating to see how minutely the senior players guided the junior players on the ground during the game. Goodes was guiding a player right to an exact spot, within centimetres, to stand to execute the team structure. You could see and hear other senior players doing that for the junior players all over the ground. That's what we are lacking. I think that also shows you that the senior players know the game plan and structures so well that they can bring the younger players up into it much more quickly. Whereas we have an entire playing group having to learn a team structure than no one knows. So you get the double whammy of no one knowing the game plan and no senior players experienced enough to have got onto it quickly and then lead out on the ground. The outcome is to be expected. A much longer adoption and execution of a new game plan. A much longer wait for the future leaders to have to develop without the guidance onfield and off field of a decent senior group of players who grew up playing AFL to elite standards. We know from the preseason that those standards didn't exist at the club until this year. One thing I really like about Neeld/Craig/Misson is how they have the knowledge base to set standards and be able to compare where our list is at against what an objective benchmark is. Eg last weekends comparison of games played between us and the opposition. Misson's fitness and conditioning database he has brought across from other elite teams. There's no [censored] just objective explanations based on facts. I like it.

So if GC get him who would we get. Isn't he regarded as the likely pick 3, who is regarded as the pick 2 we'd get instead. Is it Wines or someone else.

I'll never forget standing at the MCG one day in the early '80's and hearing this rat bag with a high pitched voice just ripping into the players, screaming out expletive after expletive. I couldn't believe the MCC attendants hadn't done something about it. After a while I looked around to see who the bloke was. It was coming from the Coaches box and it was Ray Jordan absolutely letting fly. I'll never forget it. Went to training once during the week at the G. It was a really foggy night and you could hear this one voice echoing around the whole ground. Jordan! What a character, jeez he got results. Those U19's boys he was yelling at were the nucleus of the team that went on to the GF in '88 and many years of finals.

It's very easy to slam the picks but to do the exercise properly you have to look at the other players available after the picks. If you look through the drafts you would be surprised to see how few there are that would have been better. There are plenty of smokeys that were picked much later but obviously weren't picked by any team in the rounds where we picked our players. Hindsight is a great thing but pretty useless. I had a look through Sydney's draft picks over a similiar period. They are renowned for recycling players they get for nothing. Very interesting how many duds they've picked in the draft. They have done worse than us. I bet if you went through the exercise for most teams it would be the same. It shouldn't be called the draft it should be called the lottery. You still don't know what you're going to get, even nowadays with the feeder comp;s etc. Cook over Darling looks like a howler now. Darling was probably a West Coast set up. The word on him at the time was he was a real head case. Suspended from school then night club fights before the draft. Now he seems fine but he could have been a disaster. Also who's to say there wouldn't be a major go home factor for him. (Trying to see the good side to this story ) People are very quick to diss Gysberts who's been totally hampered by injuries. You don't have a first game like him against Geelong at Geelong in a losing team and play that well if you are a dud. The Cats are still in to him big time and were then and there recruiting track record is as good as any. Give the kid a bit of time. We didn't need another key back like Talia, we needed a gun midfielder. Give him an injury free pre season and I'm betting he'll come through next year. Watts v Natanui. This debate will still be going in 10yrs. Watts is going to be a fantastic footballer wherever he ends up. Natanui will never be the same calibre of pure footballer. He can't read a game and his numbers outside of the occasional spectacular Ruck contest are way less than you'd think.

You won't get the Walls of this world bothering to mention that.

This is just about the only informed post on this discussion. What a lot of uninformed drivel. When Schwab went to Freo it was a financial basket case with massive debt, no membership base and no sponsors. When he left he fixed all of that. He set up a solid viable financial future for the Club. It's absolute crap to say he was a disaster for Freo. He came here with a Club in even worse shape. In his time the debt is fixed, the worst facilities in the competition have been fixed, the football dept has been addressed, the membership is building, he has put into place the beginnings of a financial base for the future of the Club through the MCC relationship, rumoured to be worth $1mill plus per year and the Bentleigh Club purchase. Sponsorships are building and a huge amount of work has been done to engage our supporter base in a way that hasn't been done before. Eg Foundation functions, Mates of Melbourne etc People are carrying on about him meddling in the football dept but what do you want the CEO to do when he can see it isn't functioning up to standard. We are only learning after Bailey has gone how bad his development of the list and the players was. Schwab obviously could see this and had to step on toes to get it fixed. Who isn't happy that he did that and we have moved on. There's a structure in place now that I am confident Bailey didn't have the experience to create. As far as I am concerned now that those things have been done the CEO's role going forward is to work out the long term strategy for developing a sustainable membership and revenue base for the future survival of the Club. Casey is supposed to be part of that but Connolly who is responsible for that told a function this year that the Club has spent $2.4mill in Casey and has 1500 new members since they moved there. Is that the solution to our future membership. Doesn't look like it at this stage but at least it's a start. Rather than bag him out of hand I'd like to know what the next strategies are that are being implemented before I make a judgement. Does anyone know? I haven't seen any evidence of it here and yet so many people want him flicked. We need a CEO who will grow long term membership and he has a track record of doing that at Freo and it has grown significantly since he has been at MFC. I would like to know his next steps before carrying on like so many uninformed people here. Hopefully he has presented that to the Board and they like it enough to renew.

How sweet would it be to do the Lions on the weekend. This place is going to go off. We are about where I was hoping we'd be before the season started. I hoped to see evidence of a game plan on the field some of the players improving and I thought 1 to 2 wins by the end of round 1a, plus a solid win over GWS. I'm seeing all that now although I it wasn't looking too good after the Swans game. This weekend will say a lot about the rest of the season but I'm expecting to see the team improve considerably as they get on top of the game plan and start to be freed up to play more creative footy. I hope to see Blease, Strauss and Tappy as permanent fixtures for the rest of the season. Perhaps a few games later from Cook where he kicks a few bags full.