VÌþÈR

Throughout his captaincy, Viney always thought we were much better than we actually were. Always took confidence from the wrong things. Gawn's message was spot on all last yeah, even when we won. We sucked and had a lot of work to do. This is a great call by the club.

Spot on. With a "normal" run with injuries, making finals is a pass. Hoping for some September wins though.

I have no problem with co-captains, but TBH, I've really gone off Viney as a captain. So many times last year (and prior) his message about how well we were doing was well off the mark. In contrast, Gawn's message was spot on.

How has Lever's disposal been this preseason? Before he did his knee he seemed quite reliable but last year he was our turnover king coming out of the backline. I'm hoping with a full preseason and more confidence in his body, he'll be much improved this year.

One of the most pleasing things about the whole concept of this series is that it is effectively removing all excuses. It's not a safe message. The media and general public will hammer the club for this if we have a bad season and I think those responsible for the series know it. Our collective balls are on the line.

Yep, definitely Bernie during a preseason fluff interview on SEN. He was involved with our preseason training and was asked which recruit was standing out. Got me pretty excited about the kid, especially when he was picked so early on in the season. Hopefully the non-fairy tale first season works in his favour and Sparrow has a great career.

This is why I hate when people say "it will all even out in the end" as an excuse to not use technology to make sure better decisions are made. Yes, the technology has to be good enough to truly assist, but "evening out in the end" is a statistical anomaly, not a norm.

25 metres or 25 secs? Thanks for the report.

I think (and hope) we saw Gartlett's farewell game yesterday. He's was a great pick-up for us, but I thinks his AFL days are over and now that our season is well and truly dusted, we should be getting games into others.

Great post. I’m getting sick of it. It’s a deadset cheap shot.

I reckon I'll check the VLine App to see what time the next train leaves about 5 minutes into the 3rd.

If so many of you are so sure the FD reviewed that game heavily despite the message over the offseason from the club that it wasn't (see post #4 which mentioned some of the times), please explain why that message came out? What did they hope to achieve by publicly downplaying how much that loss to WCE was analysed? I don't get it.

I'm glad this has been brought up. The loss to WCE should have been reviewed MORE than other games to find our why we didn't play the "Melbourne" way. The apparent choice to ignore what happened that day and treat it as just an off day was crazy.

Petty maybe at this stage. Keilty definitely.

I'd be ok with Ben Guthrie's changes.... Verdict: Garlett for Spargo, Lockhart for C.Wagner, Stretch for Lewis, O.McDonald for Jetta and Tim Smith for Weideman.

There’s a story in the good book about the wise man building their house on the rock and the foolish man building their house in the sand. When the wind and waves come, the house on the sand falls and the house in the rock stands firm. Substitute “House” for confidence and the MFC is the foolish man. Time after time we get confidence from the wrong things (the win against Sydney most recently) and when the heat inevitably comes, we crumble. We’ve been doing it for years and it’s been done by our on field leaders. Until this is fixed we’ll continually underperform.

No OMac, no Melbourne. I blame the haters.

A 5 year deal seems a bit long. Hopefully he doesn't drop off too much before it finishes.

For those who like me may have been wondering, our draft picks are:- 23, 36, 46, 54, 62, 91

I hoped for a smigde more, but right now I'm OK with this. We won two finals without Hogan.

Hogan and 65 for 6 and 23. It's done.

They just got 19 in the Neale deal.

If it's Hogan for 6 and 19 then that's two 1st round picks. That's what we asked for. Hard to mount an argument that we have taken significant unders.

I think this has to be done. Can't see a reason not to.

Why try and judge the performance of Mahoney or Bell or any of those involved until we see the final result? For all the posturing of Bell and diplomacy of Mahoney, the result may very well turn out to be a fair one.