PJ_12345

I don't believe the AFL will do all the work. What my concern is that this is a pretty delicate situation. Letting Jeff become president would be like putting a bear loose in a china shop - well at least that are my impressions of him at Hawthorn events. I'd just like someone who is calm and collected right now, someone who wouldn't rock the boat with the AFL and PJ because it will take all three parties to function well together to get us out of this crap. I'll make a choice when I see his ticket and strategy.

No one at this stage. I'll make an informed decision when i see some tickets, plans, strategies, and actual confirmed candidates. Rather than an someone saying members have approached him to become president and stating the obvious like "we need a cultural change". Personally I want someone who can work well with PJ and the AFL and focus on the debt. PJ can focus on the FD Experienced coach can focus on the players AFL can help us out with tanking fine and priority picks for our list New president/board need to focus on memberships and revenue Right now I'm worried Jeff would want to do alot of the things his way rather than letting experienced people do their own thing - something which got us to this situation (see CS) What about you OD?

We have a new CEO restructuring the FD department, its very likely we will have a new coach by the end of the season, there is a board restructure happening and the AFL will bail us out financially and hopefully give us priority picks to help us with our list. Stop being so melodramatic - we are not dead without Jeff. I just don't see how an outspoken man who very recently was a key figure in suggesting we should merge would help the situation. Right now we need calm people to steer us through this and work with the AFL and PJ. Jeff isn't one of them, particularly considering his latest comments about the AFL and comparing GWS to Gallipoli. Good president, but wrong time.

Or to merge with North.

Ah well played! But he is originally the god of thunder - his insatiable appetite/role for killing giants is why people later called him the god of war. But you're right - definately someone forgot to pray. I blame the ususal suspects: Schwab, Morton and Watts. Too many people have been praying to Dionysus during the games...

Thor is the god of thunder - nothing to do with war

I wouldn't put Mitch anywhere near the ruck, he is ability to get a goal out of nothing and be a key forward is his best asset. We'll have most likely Gawn and Fitzpatrick to ruck, and also Hogan, Dawes, Clark, Davey/Byrnes, How/Watts forward next year so I can't really see why would should change our set up. I thought we learnt this year that there is no point in having a good forward line if you don't have a good midfield to get it to them! Preferably a tall utility and a smaller mid.

I blame Jack Watts Trengove

Preferably a taller mid... Dunn height

If we had Davey for one more year would you take a punt on Garlett? Reason I mention Davey is because he has been not only a leader but also an indigenous leader at our club, plays a similar style, hard worker and as shown by this year knows what its like to prove people wrong.

We already have talked about this. St Kilda has recieved more top 5 draft picks than we have, from 2000 to 2002, than our past 10 years. Difference is that abundant is key in your argument, my timeframe being out by a year is clearly not - you've been picking on semantics.

We are arguing the same point. Our drafting has been horrible over 10 years. We have had the most draft picks from top 5 to 10 to 20. Not an abundance which was what I was criticising you for considering there were three other clubs within 2 picks. My issue is your constant use of bias, blanket statements with no evidence to support it such that our amount of picks have been "legendary", when St Kilda recieved more #5 picks over 3 years than we nor anyother club has recieved over 6, and we have had an "abundant" amount of picks, when looking at it yes we have had more but not that much more compared to the next three... however you merely shift your view point to one of the lowest clubs to get picks on the list to suit your argument - any club compared to Sydney has had an abundant amount of picks, but objectively compared to the next clubs and their amounts ours havent been abundant (see above). Just bais, un-supported hyperboles... followed by nitpicking on spelling, semantics and putting the onus on the people calling you out to show the evidence dispite you providing no evidence originally.

More money from the AFL won't fix the whole issue. Money alone will just a band aid solution. We could pay off our debts for a bit, and contract obligations, and the tanking fine but we will be right back in the same situation again in two years because we still wont be winning games. We also need a priority pick to help fix our list. This leg up won't work if its half baked - we need some money and a priority pick.

You missed my point WYL: Jim's decision was to not axe DB and CS at the same time, wasn't over ruled by the board like you were saying Losing CEO, coach and president within a few months would have made the club to unstable (Jim would have known he was going to have to step down soon) The decision was therefore right not to axe coach and CEO at the same time BUT the the decision to keep CS past MN's appointment was wrong

It is known that Jimmy was one of the people who wanted to keep CS after the 186 event - mainly because they believed loosing both coach at once would have been to unstable for the club. Personally I think that was the right decision. Having both president, coach and CEO turnover in the same year wouldn't have been an ideal situation for the club to be in, would have been hard to control, possible adverse effect on sponsorship, effect on players, would be hard to manage and control, issue of who would be intrim CEO, care taker coach all at once and possible negative stigma on new possible replacements. Why CS was kept onwards after MN was chosen beats me, possibly to see if it could work with him and a new coach/FD including Craig. Clearly just prolonged the inevitable.

You're right Jman, I had included Toumpas but didn't include Hogan as it was a mini-draft. However I did forget about our Hogan deal which saw us lose a #3/#13 but we gained #20 but then used that for Dawes - last year was a confusing year...

Sorry forgot to put them in there, I've now edited it. True re what we did with the talent - people were just asking about the picks

From 2008 - 2012, the Top 20 picks in order are: GWS = 16 Melbourne = 9 Gold Coast = 8 Freo = 7 Port = 7 Richmond = 6 Essendon = 5 North = 5 Bulldogs= 5 Brisbane = 5 West Coast = 5 Carlton = 4 Collingwood = 4 Geelong = 4 Adelaide = 3 Sydney = 3 Hawthorn = 2 St Kilda = 1 This is very interesting: From 2010 to 2012, we had 2 top 10 pick... compared to GWS with 11, Gold Coast with 5, Brisbane with 3, Richmond, Port, Bulldogs, Essendon with 2, West Coast with 1 and the rest with 0. From 2010 to 2012, we had a 3 top 20 picks... compared to GWS with 16, Gold Coast with 8, Brisbane and Freo with 4, Richmond, Essendon, Port, North, Collingwood and Bulldogs with 3, Carlton and Geelong with 2, West Coast, Adelaide and Hawthorn with 1 and Sydney and St Kilda with 0.

I quoted top 10 picks because that's what the article was talking about. The number of top 20 picks in the National Draft from 2002 to 2012 are as follows: (ranked) Melbourne = 18 Bulldogs = 16 Richmond 16 GWS = 16 Essendon = 15 Feo = 13 Port = 13 Brisbane = 13 Carlton = 12 West Coast = 12 North = 11 Hawthorn = 11 Collingwood = 11 Adelaide = 8 Geelong = 8 GCS = 8 Sydney 7 St Kilda = 6 Of note: St Kilda came off the back of several top 20 picks the three years before Not really an abundance... more yes. But an abundance is a bit of a hyperbole. I haven't taken into considerations the average games played by the clubs & their picks but it can be assumed ours would be on the lower end, but at first glance it is not too bad - just not skilled. All clubs make mistakes: Richmond chose Tambling over Franklin and Jordan Lewis in 2004, Hawthorn had two top 6 draft picks between 2005-2006 whom only played 18 games total, and we join the Top 20 pick players whom never played a single game club from 2002 to 2011 (excluding this years draft obviously) with Cook - other members include North (1), Collingwood (1) and Sydney (2). Be careful with blanket statements.

Over the past 7 years (since 2006) we have had 5 top 10 draft picks...interesting to note over the past 3 years we have had 1 top 10 pick Cale Morton #4 - 2007 Jack Watts #1 - 2008 Tom Scully #1 - 2009 Jack Trengove #2 - 2009 Jimmy Toumpas #4 - 2012 Over that same period (since 2006): Carlton had 3 [top 10 picks] West Coast had 4 Buldogs had 3 Essendon had 4 Port Adelaide had 5 Gold Coast had 5 GWS had 11 I think its pretty easy for an interstate footy boss to critise a Victorian team considering the money thrown at them over the past 20 years.

Mixed feelings about the AFL funding this restructure... but in a way they are also a reason why we are at this place. We have to take responsibility for our actions, and so will the people at the club, I'm not blaming the AFL 100% here. We made our poor choices. BUT, where other clubs have struggled they have had pure access to 1 & 2 draft picks, look at St. Kilda from 200 to 2003. However we had access to one year, 2009, before the AFL expansion clubs entered and were also competing. To make matters worse they essentially funded GWS to take $cully, and they gave us the third largest fine in history for not tanking. What I'm trying to get at is we put ourselves in this situation, but the AFL has kicked us a few times when we have been down. You'll never see a reporter say this because of the AFL information drip, but its true. I'd go cap in hand but I'm worried we will have the tag "only here because they got bailed out by the AFL"... I'll guess I'll have to say "remember you're playing our game, on our home ground" - First and (hopefully) forever

I think its a very premature statement by CW to call MN getting the boot at the end of this month - particularly considering we are playing WBD and St Kilda next. A win, which isn't that far fetched, from either of those clubs would keep him in there for a bit longer.

Brace yourselves, winter is coming

Blease and Silvia had 57% and 47% disposal efficiency against the pies. I don't mean so sound rude but Blease isn't an AFL level player. Happy for him to prove me wrong but when MN was saying how the team has some players who shouldn't be playing AFL because of our situation last presser he would have been thinking about: Blease, Magner, MacKenzie, and Bail. On paper the list looks ok. But once you factor in injuries, effort (no second effort), fitness (2 years off AFL standard) and overall skill (disposal efficiency) its easy to see why we have the worst list in the game. Just look at Collingwood's conversions from our turnovers...

You said: "... we have the worst list in 40 years. This despite having the greatest access to early draft talent in history." You cant simply cut out a clearly important factor (our access to high picks and priorities during the introduction of two expansion clubs) and then present as an accurate discription of the situation with a blanket statement which you would have presented no actual statistics to back up. Granted 2009, our access to talent has not been the greatest in history, compared to drafts without the introduction of expansion clubs. Clearly been hindered by GWS and GCS. We got the leftovers from two expansion clubs let alone have one of them poach our top picks because the of AFL flooding them with money. What we have had to choose from and our picks aren't legendary. Legendary would be St. Kilda's access to the 2000, 2001 superdraft and 2003 draft which got them Riewoldt, Koschitzke, Ball, Dal Santo and Goddard - all top 5 draft picks bar 1, all the backbone of their finals, minor premiers wins and grand final appearance. Look, I know you like to think you're the smartest man on DL, but behind your constant insults, belittling, rudeness, bias rubbish, and need to affirm your false belief in your 'superior' intelligence, you're just another keyboard warrior who likes the smell of their own farts and is wrong...