Vipercrunch

The draft and priority pick system is designed to equalize the competetion, so effectively, the first pick/s need to go to the team with the worst list. The current system based on ladder position and premiership points is not effective enough to ensure that the most deserving team gets the first pick/s. A team may have a good, deep list but get slaughtered by injuries or a team that is really poor might get a few lucky wins against injury riddled opponents and finish off the bottom. The Win/Loss ratio is not good enough for my liking to determine which team deserves the best draft picks. I think the draft order for the first 8 (or more) picks should be determined by two things. Firstly, at the end of the home and away season each club has to rank the player list of bottom 8 sides. Perhaps it can be made the responsibility of the coach, football department or whoever, but these 16 rankings are then collated and used to derive a draft order for the first 8 picks. A second, indepentdant panel is then responsible for going through this list (worst player list to best) and determine if the club deserves/requires extra "priority" picks. Each bottom 8 club can put submissions into this panel to argue their case and clarify all confirmed or possible retirements. The extra picks can be granted before the start of the first round of the draft (Pick 1), after the first 8 picks (Pick 9), or before the second round (Pick 17). The only drawback I have thought of so far is that clubs might hide young players, but that is really to their own detriment. If clubs are keen and focused on development, they will continue to blood youngsters as per normal.

I've decided to live in my own little world of make believe where all our football related decisions in the last few years would have been made exactly the same if there was no such thing as Priority Picks and the draft order was unrelated to ladder psition. Therefore, I will be able celebrate any future sucess with a clear mind.

One thing that does concern me with all the tanking talk and the events of yesterday is how the playing group feel. If they are getting told internally that we are playing to win, but because of the public attention and the "player management" going on begin to question things, can there be a respect issue with the coach. The players were either great actors, or were totally devastated by the loss yesterday. Could they now feel that Bailey isn't on their side and that he deliberately manufactured the loss? Can this cause long term trust issues? Some will say the players aren't paid to think etc etc, but I think that is a little bit simplistic.

The only way you can get away with calling someone else clueless is if you publically state you were joking with you hissy fit about Sylvia playing for Casey. I *think* you were joking, but if you are going to have a crack at Freak, then perhaps you better come clean.

That will do me heartbeatstrue. I wish I could have expressed it like that.

The golfing analogy was directly followed by the paragraph containing "If you enter the 'Premiership Season' your sole ambition should be to win it", which is why I queried it. The analogy that I would prefer is the one you used about a young golfer entering tournanments to gain experience with the hope/dream/ambition to win one in the future. The golfer takes up professional golf with the ambition to win tournaments, but there would be stages in every career where a tournament is more about gaining experience, points, ranking etc etc than winning them. I can only speak for myself, but I don't gel with the "sole ambition" part of the question. I follow football for several reasons, one of which is to see the MFC win a premiership. If it became 100% clear the MFC was so disadvantaged behind other clubs that we would never win a Premiership, I would still follow them. If I found out I had 12 months to live, I would still follow them. Ironically, one of the only reasons that would stop me from following them would be if they blatantly cheated (and I don't mean tanking). If they were so single-minded in their pursuit of a Premiership that they put players on drugs/steroids/blood doping or they willfuly and repeatedly breached the salary cap, then I would stop following them.

So you disagree with H's golf analogy then rpfc?

Time will tell Jack, time will tell...

Damn straight we are.

H, HT, others? Please explain this. Did we enter 2008 and 2009 with the SOLE ambition to win the Premiership in those years?

Most of those example are for players that wanted to leave and some could have left for nothing if the deal couldn't be done. Therefore the club losing the player most often gets a bad deal.

I didn't answer (A) because of the one word - "sole". The doesn't mean I don't think it should be one of the primary aims, but I can't agree that winning Premierships should be the one and only aim. Being so single-minded in such things opens you up to cheating. Jack Elliot wanted a Premiership so he cheated the salary cap to get one. And H, I very much doubt Melbourne made Winning the 2008 and 2009 Premierships their sole ambition. Does that mean we should have forfeited?

Nice post Akum. This is getting more and more complex.

From what I understand, GC17 will play in the VFL next year, so we will get plenty of chances to see him in action. I hope it works out well, but the mechanics behind it intrigue me.

I am after an answer to this question myself.

Did the overflow of emotion regarding Jimmy Stynes have anything to do with winning a Premiership? If the sole purpose of a football club is Premierships, then surely the club should have quietly moved him on, brought the next person in and continued head on towards the goal. Why waste energy on it if it doesn't bring us closer to our "sole" purpose? AFL clubs and sport in general is about a hell of a lot more than just reaching the ultimate sucess IMO.

I just had to laugh at this post.

The reaction to QBW loss was big in the media also. From several weeks of most media people singing our praises for our "honourable losses", they turned on us hard. It was from one extreme to the other. The hype the club created was partly to blame for this. If a club goes hard to hype something up, it is imperative the players turn up to play or the knives come out.

If he kicked all the easy ones, he would be easily averageing 2-3 a game, and would have a few bags of 4+. There have been comparisons made in previous threads between him and Hawkins. I am of the view that Newton would kick more goals if he was in Geelongs forward line than Hawkins does, and that is if he still missed the occasional easy one.

For me, following football is a entertainment past-time. I refuse to judge the sucess and failure of my team simply by premierships. I hope we win them. I expect it is one of the ultimate aims of the club, but I won't treat it as a failed season when we don't. I can handle short term pain for long term gain, but I expect the pursuit of a premiership to be done ethically. So no, I don't believe the sole purpose of a football club can be be to win premierships but it has to be one of the primary reasons. The members need to be looked after. The financial stabilty needs to be considered. Supporters with the same view as Hannibal would struggle following English Soccer, as only 4 teams have any chance to win. The strange thing to consider is even teams that rarely even make the top league still have thousands of loyal and passionate financial members. Edit: I just had a closer look at Torp's posts. Very good arguments.

I voted Yes. I do however think that it might take a switch of clubs to get him motivated enough to get to the standard. The good old "change of scenary" and "needed the reality check" sort of thing. I wouldn't be surprised if one day he kicks a bag against Melbourne, but I would prefer him to be kicking them for us.

It's a little late, but I wanted to add that this sums up my feelings also. Logically (and morally to some extent) crippled. I hope we get what most people think we deserve in the Priority Pick. I shudder to imagine the response from some people here if we get out tanked by other less deserving teams.

For me it was the injuries to Aussie and Garland and to a lesser extent Blease and Strauss. After the seasons Aussie and Garland had last year, I was very keen to see them progress. I can only hope that they can hit the pre-season hard and show us where they are at in 2010.

Very impressive win, with kudos definetely going to German. The next few weeks sound like they will be tough, but hopefully some of the injured players make returns and we stay in the top 4. Once the finals are here, several of the Melbourne players can come back. Casey have a great chance of having a good finals series.

Good point. There are going to be some really tough calls made at the end of this year. For that reason I think we may end up only freeing up 6 at the most spots. One spot could go to one rookie (Mackenzie would be my choice) and the others all used in the draft up to around the 4th round. It's going to be very interesting.