Its Time for Another

Believe it or not here's actually science behind this. I worked with a cognitive scientist a few years ago who has worked with some of the top sporting teams in the US. He got them to implement telling jokes before going out to play. He explained that when we laugh we release endorphins which can help to relieve pain and trigger feelings of pleasure. It is also a very effective way of calming nervous players down just before they play and counteracts negative thoughts and fears. The Tigers got on to this a few years ago and you could see them coming out of huddles laughing. They actually specified players each week that had to have a joke to tell in the huddle. I don't know if that's the basis for the girls doing it but it probably is. I'm in awe at the massive leap in their standard of play even from season 6 to 7.

A mate spoke to a players father who said we had 11 injured players playing in the finals. We know quite a few of them like Lingers for instance carried injuries for a lot of the season. Injuries can limit how much they can train which in turn eventually effects their ability to run out games. Might explain a lot. More likely explanation than Cats got conditioning right and we got it wrong.

As Yogi Berra also said "You've got to be very careful if you don't know where you are going, because you might not get there."

As Yogi Berra said "In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is."

rjay I'm interested to know what announcements you and others want from the Club. Roffey and Pert have communicated earlier in the year that the Club is negotiating with around 5 different entities to make it happen and any announcements have to come from the Govt and not the club or they risk torpedoing it happening. I can't think of two better people to be involved in this for MFC than Roffey and Pert given they've both been heavily involved in the past with the entities we're negotiating with. They have advised two very promising developments which make it still worthwhile pursuing. One is that the Govt has spent from memory over $100,000 or hundreds of thousands on feasibility studies with very detailed plans which Pert has seen and said would be incredible for the Club. Secondly that the Govt has just spent, was it $2.3million on Gosch's upgrade for MFC which is clearly a sign they are very serious about MFC staying in the area. What announcement do you want from the Club? They clearly can't say more than this. I'm as frustrated as anyone at the lack of progress and I'm sure Pert and the Board are as well. Unfortunately I suspect that the Govt's decision to get and fund the Cwlth Games has probably put this back several years. As far as I'm concerned I'm prepared to wait as long as it takes to get something within the MCG precinct or until we know definitively it won't happen. The AAMI training facilities may not now be cutting edge but as I understand it they are also not second rate. The Melbourne Storm have remained one of the best NRL teams using them. They are continually funded and upgraded by the four teams that use them. Goschs is now AFL standard. As I understand it the biggest advantage of the new facilities is the plan for them to be ours alone. The other advantages will be more about non football. Like combined Admin and FD, social club facilities, museum etc.

Agree. It occurred to me the other day just how lucky we are that Grundy happened to be available just when we needed him. Imagine what state we'd be in with Jackson gone and no Brodie Grundy. It's such a serendipitous gift.

I'd suggest it's more a message to Peter Lawrence and anyone in the future who wants to do a Lawrence. The vast majority of people aren't interested and will greatly resent members getting their personal details as so many have in this case. I hardly call wanting to update the Constitution for some very necessary improvements politics.

Interesting. I've often wondered whether list managers divide the salary cap into areas of the ground and players get paid accordingly and how that gets effected when you have a player or players who are the best in the comp but in one area of the ground. For instance a few years ago May and Lever were probably our two highest paid players and I'd assume it would be unusual to have focused so much salary cap into the backline. We ended up seeing why and it's probably more than evened out now. Now we have two of the highest paid being ruckmen. I have always been a big advocate of the importance of having a good ruckman but I'm not as clear about it anymore given we've had the best on in the comp and arguably the best midfield for him to service yet it hasn't translated to stoppage dominance. Teams with average or poor ruckman have been competitive and even better. Dogs were interesting for a few years there being the dominant clearance team by a significant margin without having any decent ruckmen. Centre bounce clearances don't have an excuse, I realise some of this in stoppage clearances is due to our tendency to play with one less at the stoppage but still it's an interesting one. Will be really interesting to see what two elite ruckmen do for us. Especially when the opposition has to bring in their second ruckman against one of our two.

It's not just emails though is it. It's the combination of those and names and home addresses. If you want to pay for it I'm happy to put you in touch with the cyber security guy I know. If he is prepared to he can educate you on data mining. He was appalled this could happen and he was the one who told me to ask Lawrence what cyber security he put in place so he could check it out but Lawrence never responded. Hopefully this is over now and he's disposed of the data in a way that doesn't continue the risk. I really don't want to talk about this anymore. It just makes me bloody angry to be honest with you. I just hope it never happens again. I'll be discussing with the Club how I can be a member without having my home address on the database. It's been an eye opener. I'll probably spend the money on a PO Box.

I've enjoyed the debate on this topic and have learnt quite a lot. It's clear you and the people who have liked your post have an underlying distrust and dissatisfaction with this Board and probably will have even more after this. My personal view is that Board unity and member support is crucial for Club success. I think the current Board has done an outstanding job for all the reasons others have previously mentioned so I'm genuinely interested to find out what it is about the Board that has led to this. The two things I am aware of are people didn't like the Board having a preference for certain candidates for the elections and there is some universal frustration with the lack of progress getting the facilities approved which many people seem to be blaming on the Board. Is that it or are there other issues. I'm interested that people think the Board shouldn't engage in trying to get the best possible people elected. Personally I think it's very important on a small Board of 7 people that there is the right mix of complimentary skills required at a particular time. I think it's highly professional to set up a nomination committee that has the time to encourage anyone interested in standing for the Board to present their credentials and for the committee to also go out and actively find the best candidates with the best complimentary skill sets. Why shouldn't the Board support the candidates that come up who offer the best skill sets. Why would it be helpful to have Peter Lawrence elected who doesn't offer any required skills but is just has the same skills as other people on the Board. He being elected would have cut out getting someone with required skills. I know over the past ten years or so Directors have been sort out to come on the Board because they have skills that were required at that particular time. For instance property experts were brought on when the Bentleigh Club acquisition was going on. Lawyers were brought on when the Tanking saga was going on. Corporate Governance specialists were brought on when this was required by the AFL after the tanking saga. Fund manager specialists have come on now because of the Future Fund. Property specialists were on the Board for expertise on the sale of Leighoak and Bentleigh. Do people think there is something wrong with promoting those people for the Board. You also obviously want people who will work with and for the Board not against it for their own agendas. I understand if a Board is doing a [censored] job that people will understandably work to get rid of it. There's always the ability for groups to get together and depose existing Boards if necessary. I'm interested in why some of you seem to think this Board shouldn't be supported now and why you want to support Lawrence instead. My experience of Lawrence's conduct since he got our data has proven that he actually doesn't practice the democracy or accountability you all seem to be supporting him for.

Why do you say that. We can't know that. The attack on me was totally random but now we are in the middle of an epidemic of data hacking. Lawrence had front page coverage in the national press about obtaining 66,000 people's data. Why do you think that publicity exposure wouldn't make him a far more likely target for hackers who are very active here at the moment. I just hope he's deleted now and in a technical way that protects it from still being hacked. Anyhow hopefully we can get back to footy now.

I realise talking about Hannan in a Hunter thread is getting off topic but I spoke to him in the preseason after this and told him no matter what happens to him for the rest of his career we'll all never forget this moment. He was thrilled. I asked him what he was thinking as he was getting closer to goal. He said if you have a look at it you can see me glance across looking for a better option. I really didn't want to kick it myself. He said the kick didn't go well off his boot and he was crapping himself it was going to miss. So his initial emotion was relief. Back on topic, I reckon by the end of next season we will be looking back on this trade and putting it up there with the Langdon trade as a quiet trade that turns into a massive bonus.

I don't remember now. It's not enough to just right down someone's email address. There is some hack where they introduce a trojan program that gets into the data behind your email address. There's DNS's and IP's. Nasher would probably laugh out loud at me saying that because I really don't know what I'm talking about other than they exist behind your emals. That's what the cyber security guy told me who was helping me. He also advised once this is done there's nothing you can do about it. It usually runs down over time. Every now and then I still get emails from people this has happened to more than 10 years ago.

I found it very interesting that out of 66,000 members only 42,000 were eligible to vote. So wonder if Lawrence only got his hands on the 42,000 or the whole 66,000. I wonder what type of memberships make up the other 24,000. Also interesting that slightly less than 10% were interested enough to vote. I wonder what the percentage is for normal Board elections.

Email addresses together with our names and private home addresses

I don't really understand your first paragraph. If by here you mean demonland. I was not referring to demonland. You raised the damage as being caused by receiving emails, I explained it was about people sending emails. Not sure how you don't see what happened to me as being a threat but each to his own. I call my personal address my personal data. For personal reasons we have to be very careful about our home address getting into the public domain. I am now going to have to speak to the club about how I can be a member and not have my personal address on their database. Obviously we will have to agree to disagree about him getting our data. It would have been far more acceptable to me for the outcome of his court case to be that the club sent out an email saying he wanted to contact us and providing his email for us to respond to him and say we do or don't want him to contact us or have our data. I don't know where this is going to leave us going forward and what we are going to have to do about it. We now know if we are members of the Melbourne Football Club any other random member can get what you don't call but I call our personal details that I don't want them to have. I think you would find that a majority of people in the community would regard their private address as personal information that they don't want released to anyone without their permission.

Thought I'd been careful by saying "might" that it was clear it's my opinion. We're on a forum. But I will say it's my opinion developed from the facts of his conduct. I've never met him. He might be dee-lightful for all I know but the deemocracy he practices certainly isn't democracy or transparency or accountability. "In my opinion" his actions are deestructive not constructive.

Nasher all respect to you but please if you're going to respond to my Posts please represent them accurately. In my post I explained that the damage I suffered was caused by the hackers hijacking my email address and sending emails out using my email address. That was what caused all the problems not them sending emails to me. I don't know how it is done but it is a well known hack. It's clear from my post I talked about Optus and Medibank and Lawrence in the context of each ones cyber security. I didn't compare the type of data that is exposed. I also didn't say all my data. My grammar was poor when I said all our data what I meant was the data of all 66,000 of us. This is starting to go around in circles. In summary some people like you and Tim and Dr G evidently don't care at all about the risk of this data being in the hands of Lawrence and his faceless group. Others like me do care. I've asked for their details and a description of their cyber security. They ignored the requests. They are faceless and practice being unaccountable. There's plenty of other risks of having personal addresses and emails hacked. Maybe in a community of 66,000 there's domestic abuse sufferers who don't want their details exposed. Maybe people with personal security risks. Maybe these people like most of us didn't know that an MFC membership exposes their details to someone like Lawrence. He was given the option at the end of the court case for the club to send out his emails so our data wouldn't be at risk from him. He insisted on getting our data for himself. Why? Don't you think we should have a democratic right to decide where our data gets used and that right is greater than his right to pursue his personal agendas for the Club.

That he might think he's entitled to a seat on the Board because he is a financial contributor and that makes his opinions more valid than everyone elses.

Mate have a read of my earlier posts. I made it clear I am totally unconnected to the Board. My only agenda is I am a passionate Demons supporter who sees Lawrence's actions as being very damaging and not a positive for the Club at all. Being a big contributor to the finances of the Club thankfully unlike other Clubs doesn't give you an entitlement to a seat on the Board although that might explain his actions. I'd be a lot more confident a professional organisation has better cyber security than an individual who is part of a faceless group who take our information but won't share their own and won't explain what cyber security they have when asked. So are you one of the faceless deemocracy group? If there is more than one member.

Ok. Some responses to your comments just for clarification. I call him a joker because he pretends to say he is about democracy transparency and accountability but is joking. His email was faceless as are all the other people in his group. I emailed him to discuss. He did not respond and obviously isn't interested in discussing. I call him that bloke because his email doesn't use his name or anyone else's. One of the articles in the press advised the club had told them at that point they had received over 350 complaints. Have a read of this OP for a lot more. Everyone I have spoken to unanimously are furious he could get their details for this purpose and they are at risk. He wants to change the entire Constitution to the one he wants. Every single word. He has stretched the purpose from the Constitution to include dirty smearing electioneering. Deleting data doesn't destroy it. You have to do much more. I very much doubt he knows how to do this. Fido is the name of a dog and Daffy a duck. I was ironically implying his dog and duck are the other members of his group. I wasn't disparaging any humans. I'm sorry but I don't understand your point about the election. He stood for election and lost twice. I'm afraid I don't agree with your philosophy that just because someone stands for election they shouldn't be condemned if you think what they are doing is damaging not helping. Yes my post was about my cautionary tale of what happened to me. It is an important warning to 66,000 people who's data he has taken and has potentially exposed. And he has failed to reply to tell me or anyone what he's done to protect it. That does define him. It doesn't define me.

Oh well. Maybe it will be useful to any people attending the meeting.

Nah. Caught one. From someone I never wanted to have contact with

Dr G normally love your work. But this is not your finest. I'll tell you a cautionary tale. I got my email address hacked a couple of years ago. The hackers used my email address to send out automated emails to 30,000 plus addresses every hour all over the world. This lead to my email address being registered on international registries as a spam address and being permanently blocked. That leads to it being rejected everywhere and everyone of those emails that goes out generates a detailed anti spam warning back to your email system. It literally means you're getting up to 100,000 email rejection notices per day. And it's impossible to stop. It goes on for weeks. This jammed our work email system and caused it to shut down so the entire business lost it's emails for some days. I was forced to quarantine and shutdown my email address. Have a think about how many places you use your email address. All had to be scraped and started again. I can't begin to tell you how many hours were lost over many many days for me and our whole business. Plus it damaged our corporate and personal credibility with people getting hundreds of these emails. They don't care it's from a hacker not you. You might think that's hilarious but I can assure you my business and I didn't. We've just seen the devastating impact of hackers getting hold of people's information at Optus and Medibank. It's turning into 10's if not 100's of millions of dollars of damages. Both these companies had excellent cyber security. This joker has got front page publicity in national newspapers about getting all our personal data and how unhappy a lot of members are about it. What cyber security do you think he has to stop the scenario above from happening especially as he has made himself a target with his publicity. I have contacted them twice asking for their details so I can contact them and to find out what cyber security steps they are taking to protect our data. I have not had the basic courtesy of a reply on either topic. I am extremely concerned about this. Don't be fooled by this bloke and his faceless group. They might claim Democracy, transparency and accountability but they practice the opposite. They won't even tell you who they are, how many of them there are or their details so we can contact them. But they have litigated to get that information from all of us. If there were enough to be relevant they would have said so. I'd be very confident it's just a couple of people he's drummed up. A couple probably called Fido and Daffy. This is not an election. It's not a campaign with a couple of policies, it's a Constitution with hundreds of paragraphs and he wants to change them all. Do we get hundreds and hundreds of emails from all members voicing their opinions about what they want or don't want on each paragraph of his new Constitution. I could have done that. So could have other people I know who submitted suggestions that didn't make it. How do you go about doing this practically. You are never going to get everyone agreeing to the same thing. I accepted the process the Board set up with a Committee of experienced qualified people. We all got the opportunity to respond to changes that were sent through to us. If this gets stopped whats next. I don't agree with virtually all his amendments. Some I strongly disagree with. So what negotiations are going to go on. How do we ever move forward. I find most of the proposed amendments important and necessary. When you go on to his email which is supposed to be about responding to the Constitution you find content referring to Bartlett's legal actions as some sort of blight on the Board members he is suing. In my opinion that is a dirty political smear campaign which has absolutely nothing to do with the Constitution but everything to do with his naked ambition to get elected after he's been rejected twice. I urge people to get out there and send in their Proxy's to vote Yes. And to be clear I've got no ambitions to get on the Board. I have had no contact with anyone on the Board or the Admin about this process other than sending in my suggestion. My only agenda is having the Club in a position to do it's best work. I believe a stable Board is essential for that and this bloke is actively working to do the opposite. I'm appalled he's got my private details and won't tell me who his group is or what he's doing to protect my details. This bloke and group need to be kept as far away from our Club as we can get him.

Out of interest are you one of the members of Deemocracy referred to in their email.