Vipercrunch

+1 No idea why I chose the Spurs but such is life. Add to that the not so successful Buffalo Bills in the NFL and NY Knicks in the NBA. Just can't seem to pick em right...

Yeah, that had me dumb founded. Terrible excuse for a bad, game changing decision. The holding the ball interpretation atm is pretty much the reason why I only watch the Melbourne game each week and only snippets of any thing else. I often used to watch 5 complete games a week. Going back say 10 or 15 years the rule was perfect. Very predictable and a non issue. I think the only way to move on now is to make tackling a 1 on 1 event. No 2nd tackler allowed. No prior opportunity rule at all and the player with the ball must dispose of it legally. Easy to umpire and the rediculous cases of someone being pinged for not making an attempt when 4 tacklers are on top of him will dissappear.

Agree whole heartedly on both points. If you know/think the coach and admin are happy or even would prefer to lose, why go the extra mile and do all the things required. 95% at training will do. Half hearted recovery sessions. A few extra late nights and drinks? No worries. The coaches will get the desried result. That is why we are where we are at and will require a massive effort from Neeld, Misson and Craig to lift our standards. And I'd love to know where our Messiah complex comes from. So many supporters and apparently admin/coaches always looking to the superstar NOT on our list thats going to come in and save the day. Giving the kids significant numbers like 4 and 31 before they've even played a game is part of this. The endless threads on this forum about the 17 year old kid thats going to carry us to a flag. WE ARE NOT ENTITLED TO A FLAG!!! The are damn hard to get and require persistent hard work and even then are not gauranteed. Some and only some clubs can "tank" and not have it damage the culture like it has ours.

Tanking is all about the motives for those actions, not the actions themselves. All the actions except for the first are fine and probably expected by everyone if your season is shot and the focus has shifted to preparing for the following seasons. If the motivation for those actions is to avoid winning games for better draft position then you are "tanking" and deserve to be punished. I'm pretty balck and white about these sort of things even though I hate Collingwood.

Cop it on the chin and get on with it. If they find concrete evidence we did it, we deserve to be punished in my book. Very hard to prove what our motive for the questionable football related desicions was though. As it stands they are satisfied that we made those descions to develop the players etc etc.

The kids hardly played a game at any level in 2 years. Big guys take time to develop WHEN they are playing every week. Like many on our list he will be given time to show if he's got what it takes. I actually thought he was no worse than what Jamar has been for much of the year and did some good things at times, including a tackle on Brown which caused a turnover that led to at the very least a shot at goal for us.

Liar, liar, pants on fire. But No. 1 P_ick is gold.

Because if countries like Australia and England that refuse to play that way don't continue to bid and expose the problem it will continue. As with the Olympics, it also takes a few bidding processes to be seen as legitimate candidate. Melbourne's failed bid for the 1996 Olympics made it a lot easier for Sydney to win it in 2000. The contribution of the government's money can be questioned, but it doesn't stand alone there.

It failed because we don't lower ourselves to play by FIFA's corrupt rules. The bid itself was fine. We just wouldn't compete with countries like Russia and UAE who were willing hand the brown paper bags around.

My spin on the situation of 186 last year and the supposed rift between CEO and FD is that perhaps it was because CS could see that the standards weren't high enough and that if things kept going along as they were then we would never have any sustained success. The whole situation was about to unravel for him as allegations of interference surfaced when we got smacked by Geelong. The shattering result caused the board to have a good re-think about the situation and realise that CS was right on the money and the Coach and FD needed to be rebuilt from the ground. The direction of the search for a new coach that could re-create our culture and instill a much higher standard of professionalism was driven by the CEO. And we get Neeld, Misson and Craig as a result. As I said thats my own un-informed personal spin on the matter.

I only caught the last quarter on TV yesterday, but thats how I summed it up. Some really tired boys out there. Maybe they are being trained harder than normal during the week or our fitness is still behind where it needs to be (or both) but a lot of the players were out on their feet. We definetely have an easier draw in the 2nd half of the year and perhaps with a rest and some confidence from a win or two we might see the ship sailing in the right direction. 5-6 wins? Not sure if we can beat anyone other than GWS and GCS, and even those I'm not 100%. Time will tell.

I haven't been paying to much attention to the endless comments being made by the many football "experts" out there at the moment, many of who are lining up to put the boots into the easy target. David King was the latest to have a crack, probably the biggest crack so far, suggesting the board should come out and sack Neeld now and admit they made a massive mistake. A load of misguided, uninformed tripe like a lot of the stuff being said. One thing he did say caught my attention though. He likened Neeld to being a square peg being pushed into a round hole. He of course made out that this was the whole problem. Neeld didn't match our club in some way and therefore shouldn't be here. I actually think this is why he is at this club. We need someone like him to come in and force his way into our club, and change the shape of the hole until it is the shape it needs to be - fully professional, resilient and ready to match it with the rest of the AFL. Neeld signed up others like Misson and Craig who could help do this from a fitness and discipline area. The square peg is needed, and time needs to be given for the square peg to mould the hole into the right shape.

Jones and Clark are the only ones any where near on op of their own game enough to lead others. Maybe Jamar.

Teams won't be up to about 6.25pm Eastern once Channel 7 announce them under some exclusive deal they have with the AFL. So we have to wait...

It would be nice to see Evans, Gys, Jetta, Strauss and Tynan fit and training. Learning the Neeld way and putting everyone on notice that there are other options if you don't perform. Hard to develop players when they aren't on the track.

At this stage I'd take 22 good, honest AFL footballers - stars are hard to come by. Surprised to see Blease and Howe mentioned so often. Howe works hard and is spectacular but is very untidy with his disposal. Blease can't crack a spot in our team when we are crying out for pace around our half forward line. He has a long way to go. Gysberts and Tynan are the only potentials for me, mainly because they can win their own ball in traffic despite under developed AFL bodies.

Surprised no one has brought up the free to Bartell resulting in his first goal. Slight forearm to the back by Bartram which was 50:50 at very best, but as it was just (less than a minute) after a very strong shove from Bartell into Bartram in another marking contest, there was no way it should have been paid. That descision and the free to JPod were terrible decsisions which resulted in goals. One day hopefully the wheel will turn, but I have no doubt that while we have no clout and no respect, we will continue to be at the recieving end of the umpiring and MRP.

Series 7 of Red Dwarf

I like that - it would allow the holding the ball rule to be simplified so much. No more prior opportunity interpretation. If you get tackled so well that the ball cannot disposed of semi-correctly (ie no blatant throws or drops) , you are gone. Most players should be able to get rid of the ball with one tackler, unless the tackle is perfect, and therefore should be rewarded. Easy to umpire.

For a lot of the game on Sunday, I felt that we were the superior team. It was the breaks in the possession chains that caused us the most problem and gave them easy scoring opportunities. When we don't have the ball we look kinda ok structurally except for commiting too many to the ball carrier, instead of adding pressure by reducing that players options. I can sort of see why the players and coaches would be happy with Desire Indicators. The next step is to gain confidence in each other that running to space, and running early even before we secure possession won't go unrewarded or wasted by poor disposal. As for a possible friendship divide, well it would be nice if it was a really tight group, but as Adelaide showed for many years, it's not the be all and end all.

Great post. Agree with a lot of it. The only difference I would put out there is that a lot of the cattle is looking very ordinary atm because of past development, new game plan and the big one for mine - confidence. Many of the players who look sub-standard now will IMO become OK footballers in the future, most likely next season. Time.

UGLY Disposal Efficiency - Just did the sums based on the stats on the AFL website. We average 194 EFFECTIVE disposals a game. In comparison, Goldcaost average 241 and the Suns avarage 246. West Coast sit at 290. Until we get that to improve the pain for us and the humiliation for the players will continue. I am a firm believer that this figure has far more to do with confidence than with talent. Neeld will need to man manage the players very, very well over the next 7 game stretch or things will get even uglier.

FWIW, Jones was pretty good yesterday and has been pretty good all year. His effort cannot not be questioned and I don't remember him making many bad errors/fumbles. Well and truly worthy of the promotion to the leadership group.

Out: Joel Mac In: Grimes The whole team made big blunders yesterday, and most of the doggies did too. Confidence is a massive part of footy and we are at rock bottom. Dropped marks, missed hadballs and kicks, fumbles galore. It really was ugly. There should have been a count on the scoreboard for the number of times the crowd groaned at basic skill errors. Not for one second do I believe that is a realistic example of our general skill level though. The few times last year when our confidence was up was a far different level of skill displayed. There is every chance we will hit the half way mark of the year at 0-11. The state of mind of our players at the bye will be a big concern and managing it will be a big focus of the coaching staff. Good luck Neeld and co. Whilst Dunn's tactics might not be to everyone taste at least he showed something. Effectively reduced the influence of Murphy. Joel Mac could be an OK depth player in a good team but isn't helping us where we are right now. Tom McDonald will be fine. Had the fumbles bad, but for me this was a exception. His skill level in his first game was far superior. Would be very surprised if Sylvia didn't get a run at Casey first. The bye at the VFL is absurd. Hopefully this gets rectified (more or less teams) by next season. Hoepfully our guys playing at Casey can really start demanding selection. I can't think of seeing in any Casey reports so far that players are really putting there hands up.

Neeld is a rookie coach and like all new coaches (and old for that matter), he will make mistakes on every level including game plan and player management. He is working with poorly developed players, players who have often been universally seen as the best talent in the country on draft day, but have not turned into AFL standard players. The players are damaged and shell shocked. Whatever confidence they might have before a game will dissapate when the going gets tough. It will take time to change all that around - experience will reduce coach error, time and better coaching will help development and most (but not all) of the players will regain their feet (confidence). The pre-season training reports mislead us to some degree about where the team was at, but I think it showed where we are going. The journey is just going to take longer than we hoped.