Roost It

The problem for this club lies squarely at the feet of the senior players, Bar Green they were inept yesterday and the incident with Grimes left me utterly disappointed. That Hawks player should of found himself flat on his arse. Over the next few weeks if they don't improve I'd just drop Bruce, Dunn, Miller, Bate and MacDonald and bring in Gysberts, Maric, Jetta, Watts and Blease. They are the future, let's run with them. F Maric Green Petterd HF Garland Watts Sylvia C Jetta Jones Davey HB Rivers Frawley Bennell B McDonald Warnock Strauss R Jamar Scully Grimes I Moloney, Gysberts, Blease, Martin With Morton and Jurrah to come back in The future needs to start now. If our senior players can't help us win then why play them. I reckon this team would give it's all and would at least get them playing together sooner rather than later.

It's sad but true Newton(there I go again) deserves a game ahead of Bate who is clearly not ready and I am just not going to discuss his game yesterday, there are no words to describe it.

OUT: Dunn (he's completely done), Spencer (FFS he needs game time in the 2's - I'm a long way from convinced), Bate (You can't play like that and stay in the side), MacDonald (Don't know why we recruited him in the first place, I thought our defence was a strong point) Bruce (Not fit or brave enough), IN: Martin, Sylvia, Newton(I seriously can't believe I just wrote that but he kicked 4 and played well unlike any of the forwards against the Hawks)(I still can't believe I wrote Newton, someone needs to slap me and slap me hard) Garland (To play forward), Jetta/Maric (just to get game time into them. I'd play Green as FF, Sylvia and Trengove as HF, Newton(oh my god I've written his name again) FP, Petterd in the other pocket and Garland as CHF In the middle I'd have Scully, Jones and Grimes Jamar to ruck against Jolly.

You clearly have no idea about modern football.

Name these ordinary players that turn out very good players. I'll bet they are surrounded by a clutch of A graders who take the heat and bring them unto the games. Look at the list, these are ordinary players who when surrounded by the Neitz's, Yze's, White's etc were made to look good. Without this surrounding talent they are what they are ORDINARY FOOTBALLERS, no amount of coaching is going to turn that around. I'll agree it would be nice to have the league's best coach but who is that exactly?

The senior players Bailey inherited from Daniher that he hasn't already cut are the following. McDonald - solid captain easily in our best 22. Dunn - Watches, doesn't do Miller - Try's hard - not upto the level required Jones - will be good but never great. Moloney - is he good enough? I'm not sure. Davey - great player, clearly not fully fit. Rivers - serviceable Sylvia - injured but had a great year, his first one, last year, under Bailey Jamar - average today, we started thinking he was good but is he? There's others but tell me which one is an A grade AFL player who played today fully fit and prepared The answer of course is none of them. This is not Bailey's doing. He inherited an absolute trainwreck His new players include Watts - we'll just have to wait 2 -3 more years for his best Scully, Grimes, Morton and Trengove - clearly topline players in the making Jurrah - potential match winner Blease, Strauss, Tapscott - talented youngsters When the club says be patient they don't say it because we're shite and have no hope they say it because we have no A grade senior players (not even one!) and until we do we will struggle. We need to wait until the likes of Morton, Grimes, Sylvia(hopefully), Watts, Frawley, Garland are leading our club as 24 - 25 year old players. Sorry folks you can bash the coach all you like but until this happens days like today will happen. I suggest you get over it and take from the game what you can. Start with Scully,s debut. If that doesn't cheer you up then barrack for someone else.

The thing that hurt most today was when Grimes was flattened and only Davey gave a mild shove to the culprit. What happened was a junior player was unfairly knocked hard on his arse and left lying on the field. Not one big bodied defender went over and put the Hawthorn player on his arse. Unacceptable. Oh and I finally realised why Dunn will be lucky to ever play AFL again. He's a watcher not a doer. Unacceptable Our senior players bar Green and the Captain completely went missing today. Unacceptable I'm not even going to mention the game played by ----, possibly the single worst game I seen from someone who many rate as an AFL player, including myself. Thank god we recruited Scully and Trengove. I say bring Garland, Watts, Blease, Gysberts and Maric in and get games into them. Ricky Petterd is our best forward by a country mile. A truly sad reality. No axe with Ricky I think he's a good one. I think we should persist with Jamie Bennell, there's something about this kid even though it was far from his best game. Moloney has always and continues to worry me. Davey needs to get his fitness up to scratch ASAP Jordie McKenzie could well be another great rookie find for us. One of our ruckmen should not be seen in a Melbourne jumper until he vaguely resembles an AFL player We tackled really well today We played really poorly today Thank god we recruited Scully and Trengove.

If Dunn is our tagger he is finished as an AFL footballer.

52,981 The 2 clubs combined membership closed at over 82,000 last year. This is the first round, a good day and the only match on in Melbourne. Less than 50,000 is a massive fail. Ideally I'd like to see 60,000 but that will probably have to wait until next year

Bruce on Hodge Jones runs with Mitchell McDonald to help out. Moloney to run through them at every opportunity. Scully, Grimes and Trengove to cut loose Dees by 6 goals. Headlines read "Bookies rewrite the market as Dee's burn Hawthorn" "How good can they be?" "Grimes comes of age against Hawks" "The fire has well and truly started" "Demons on song as Fire engulfs the Hawks"

Bet of the day

Is Watts playing this weekend and if so where?

I don't bet, never have. Membership of 26,800 is a great start after 3 dismal seasons. Looks like we'll comfortably get to 32,000

Buy a 4 game membership for $80, pay it off by the month $6.66per month

So because I like to Boo and I will boo Brock I can't lie straight in bed? - I don't understand.

I really rate Booing. I find it very enjoyable and usually have a good laugh after each good boo. i always enjoy the footy and a bit of good humoured vocal banter is a great part of it. If you want to hear some cretins go no further than the MCC members where I sit. The words "kick it" are used as a solve all by many of my fellow supporters.

Why not just try and keep the Hawks as our first round opponent on a Sat at the MCG. That should get over 65,000 once we start rolling. The game I think the club should really push for is a home game against Essendon on a Sat at the MCG, every year. It's been 4 since the last one. (70,000 + when we start rolling) Include Queen's Birthday and these 3 games alone would double our current profit!

I say Boo him anyway!

I'll boo him anyway but what did he say?

Consider my post deleted

The facts are that we've had substandard facilities since we left the MCG. The fact is that at Olympic Park we have first class facilities which, in practice, we won't share because we will have our times to use them. Casey is a summer precinct which by next summer will have excellent facilities for the club and also gives us an opportunity to grow the "Brand" In the future the club may well move to a stand alone base in the docklands. Is this as good as Carlton's arrangement? No Once settled in Olympic Park will our players be finally on level pegging with the big clubs? Very, very close but not quite. Would it be ideal if we moved to a stand alone facility in the Docklands whilst still maintaining a presence in Casey? Yes

In your honest opinion. How good can he be?

If you remembered it was pissing down rain that night. Had that game been a stand alone Sat arvo game in fine weather you would expect the crowd to have been 60,000+ What I would add is that an inform Melbourne against in form Essendon, Richmond, Carlton, Geelong, Collingwood or Hawthorn would pull 60,000+ at the MCG. The fact remains ont of the reasons we pull poorly is we rarely get the chance to host such games.

First week of Footy, Saturday at the G, solid opponent, does it get any better than that? Of course we can bloody well win. We're in it to win it now. They have some big outs and our team looks pretty solid. Cam Bruce, Mark Jamar, Aaron Davey and Nathan Jones need to stand up and lead this team from the front

Great to see you finally talking sense