harry

That wasn't a real football match- there were no points on offer, it was a 16 man a team field- VFL kings would have shown something. Didn't Brisbane have a guy from their finance department in the team?

hahahaha your signature is awesome!

Favourite Allen Jackovich moment was when we beat the filth at Vic Park in 91 I think. Jako was playing [censored] and got dragged just before quarter time and got jeered by the entire ground. He came back on and tore them apart, kicking 7 or 8. By then end after every goal he'd give the maggots fans the finger. Hilarious. Chopper lovell kicked the sealer in the dying seconds.

Perhaps you should see a doctor?

Just highlighting my observations- we need to cheer louder and bring more colour to the game. The football admin has turned things around, the pplayers have turned things around - now it time for the supporters to do the same. Perfect triangle.

Well, I guess I can't really convince you of the colour/noise thing, as it's a matter of opinion, but I do take issue with the idea that the supporters need to 'turn things around'. In the past few years, the supporters have achieved the following:

- Raised over $5mil.

- Sourced a major sponsor (Kapersky).

- Broken the membership record 3 years in a row, including following our worst season in 25 years.

- Continue to have one of the highest, if not the highest 'member to supporter' ratio.

I'd also posit that we have some the most knowledgeable supporters, but I obviously can't prove that. Anyway, my point is, we have absolutely sensational fans. Leave it to the media and other clubs to perpetuate harmful and untrue stereotypes.

Just wait 'til we're Premiership contenders and a decent force. It may all start to happen then.

I remember it happenning when we beat Carlton in the finals in 94.

I quite like the collingwood chant. Better than our static supporters. We don't even wave flags and some don't even wear our club colours. Cheered hard one day and this prude next to me kept complaining.

You're kidding yourself. Our fans went bananas this season. I get sick of the self-loathing Melbourne supporter syndrome.

Are you a toff?

Yeah, I reckon.

In 1977 the grand final replay was a boring fizzer. Al the life and energy was sucked out the week before. Not like a grand final should be. But that was a long time ago. If this replay ends the same way then it would be a compelling case for an extra time decider.

No it wouldn't. Using that logic, if the first GF was boring, it should be cancelled the next year.

I'm surprised Davey isn't getting more support here. He's been our best player for years now and is unnerringly brave and committed. In terms of dealing with the extra attention, well, he's the first tagged every week and he's used to the responsibility of being the best player. Plus, it wouldn't nice to have a member of the world's oldest people as the captain of the world's oldest football club.

Recurring hamstring injuries for a young player who relies on pace... Some of the more negative news for the year.

It's pretty bad news, but I wouldn't say Grimesy relies on his pace.

Having been to about 8 out of the last 10 Grand Finals, I find the claims about a 'lack of atmosphere' to be utter nonsense.

As for the calls to take the tickets away from the non-competing Clubs who sell them to sponsors & travel agents. The revenue from those tickets is a massive percentage of the yearly income of each Club, so that romantic notion would financially cripple many clubs, very much including our own.

There isn't a lack of atmosphere, but it could be a hell of a lot better if the ground was full of fans from the competing clubs.

To say that the revenue is a 'massive percentage' of incomes for clubs is an exaggeration. But, it is true that it does represent some income. Nonetheless, there are myriad other ways of replacing this for non-competing clubs, without ripping the soul out of the biggest game of the year.

Geez, I was sure beamer was going to play this week.

The situation with Grand Final tickets continues to be an absolute disgrace. The 'commercial reality' argument does not add up. All 16 clubs get tickets which they then farm out to sponsors. Does anyone really believe that these sponsors will not sponsor football if they don't get a ticket to the Grand Final? Of course not. Big soccer matches, with exponentially more sponsorship money at stake, manage to allocate more tickets to clubs in what are usually smaller stadiums.

As I said, an absolute disgrace, and a bit of shame when you look around on Grand Final day and see little pockets of colour and passion in between all the theatre goers.

53,271.

Would get upwards of 60K if it were a Saturday game.

lol @ big bad hawthorn

harden up will ya, it's football.

Agree 100%.

haha I reckon rnd 22 in 96 might've been slightly bigger

I remember when he said this, it made me so angry! We were playing Hawthorn that week and I remember when Kennett walked down the race an irate Melbourne fan gave him an absolute gobful.

I hope we [censored] them.

Go Dees!

Over on bigfooty on the richmond board, a tiger supporter started a thread called "why we will beat meltank" (which them calling us meltank is funny enough considering their former coach admitted to tanking to get trent cotchin). In this thread they say they will beat us because they have the "good" Jack... Jack Riewoldt and not the "DUD" Jack Watts. I thought to myself do richmond really have that shorter memories?!

I remember Riewoldt didn't set the world on fire in his first few seasons and has only been regarded as a good player this year after turning 21 years of age and playing over 50 games of footy. I remember 1 game against the saints a couple of years ago when young Jack Riewoldt had a shot 30 metres out with barely any angle to put them in front with 2 minutes to go and he missed it. He copped some criticism after that game too.

So i went to footy fire and thought i would compare Jack Watts to Jack Riewoldt at the same age and as you can see below, Wattsy has Riewoldt well covered. He has had nearly 100 disposals more than Riewoldt with playing 3 less games and same number of goals. I know stats can be misleading especially number of disposals but the fact he is finding the ball alot more regularly which is very promising for his future development. Once Jack has added some more muscle, got a couple of pre seasons into him and got 50 games under his belt i have no doubt that he will rise up as an exciting forward for this club much the way Riewoldt has this year. Jack Watts is a good mark of the footy, a great set shot and great below his knees, all the signs say that in 2012 a 21 year old Jack Watts will be heading towards 50 games and be ready to make his mark on the competition and im guessing in an even bigger way than Jack Riewoldt has this year.

2010 Stats for Season 2007

JACK WATTS JACK RIEWOLDT

11 Games 8

83 Kicks 34

67 Handballs 19

150 Disposals 53

47 Marks 25

7 Goals 7

3 Behinds 3

8 Tackles 12

5 Hitouts 3

13 Frees For 3

11 Frees Against 2

I made a prediction in 2008 that we will win a flag in 2012. It took Hawks 4 years so i saw no reason why we cant do the same if we recruit the right players and develop them well. In 2012 we will have Scully, Trengove and Watts all potentially playing their 50th games. If those 3 boys can come along as we all hope and think they will and with further development into guys such as Bennell, Jurrah, Morton, Tapscott etc i can see my prediction from 2008 coming true. It seemed like a dream when i made that prediction in 2008, more of a hope if anything, but with what Jimmy has achieved in the last 2 years with this footy club i am getting more and more confident every week that 2012 will finally be our year!

This is by far the most excited i have ever been about this club in my whole life and i already cant wait for next year to come as i think we are a real shot at top 4!!

Hopefully power hungry Vlad doesn't move the grand final to sydney next year like he is threatening, because we may just find ourselves playing in the grand final a year early!!!!

Go Dees!!!!!!

Mate, I wouldn't worry about what Richmond supporters on bigfooty think of our players. I highly doubt the person who wrote that has ever been intimate with a woman...

Even though we are debt free, my understanding is that we will still receive part of the AFL's special assistance allowance.

It is designed for clubs with smaller supporter bases and financial capacity than the Pies, Bombers, Blues, Eagles etc.

It may be reduced to a degree though.

We currently receive a million per year from the AFL, if I'm not mistaken. Our profit was 2 mil this year, but that was because of the govt money for AAMI (We didn't spend it all - kept 1 mil for future rent) and the back pay we received for the new stadium deal (also 1 mil). The impression I got is that we pretty much broke even. You'd still have to think we would be losing a mil a year if the AFL stopped giving us money. In addition, the MCC also give us a mil. I'm not sure if this is something they'll do every year or did it just because we were in trouble. So, we have to find a way to make an extra mil or two per year. I'd be interested to find out how they plan to do this.

I don't want to be a wet blanket but I reckon 27,000 is about par for Melbourne vs Adelaide. Out of all the interstate teams (not including those that are historically from Melbourne) they are the ones with the biggest following in Melbourne. We would've lost some attendance because of the weather and the fact the match was at one. 23K is 'ok' rather good in my book.

For the record, that crowd of 39K against Adelaide was boosted by all the people participating in the 'pink lady' initiative which, from memory, was between 5-10k.

It wasn't well said, it was up there with the most pathetic posts I've read in a while. And all that waffle in your post about sticking true to the club and whatnot has nothing to do with maintaining the support of a six year old. Kids this young do not owe the footy club this level of loyalty. They just want to enjoy a day out with their parents, and when the team is unable to offer anything at all to cheer about, they're unable to offer anything that children will be interested in. It then becomes up to the parents to keep it interesting.

Obviously neither of you have young kids.

(Note to pitmaster: this is me getting 'upset' about something )

I was referring to the general hand-wringing and gnashing of teeth evident on this website as if we're the first team to ever get belted than saying the kids should 'harden up'.

Nothing like a smug, baseless observation of another poster's personal life to make yourself sound more intelligent is there?

Well said Curry & Beer.

Fair bloody dinkum, you'd think you lot had just witnessed ethnic cleansing. Look, it is a bit sad that the youngster mentioned at the start of this topic has never seen us win. And the first half on Saturday was bloody gutless, pathetic, soulless, whatever you want to call it. But you know what, our's is the greatest footy club in the world and I wouldn't go for any of those other d!ckheads for all the tea in China. When you support a club, you support them for life. You stick with them, through thick and thin. You NEVER NEVER NEVER give in. Melbourne supporters have done this in the past and we'll do it now. We'll come good one day, and when we do, we'll all be able to say we were there at half time versus freo in 08, Adelaide 09 when we didn't kick a goal till the third quarter and hawthorn 10.

I can't wait till we play the filth next week because it will be another opportunity to see the greatest club in the world.

Come on Dees, UNLEASH HELL!!!

Other people\s thoughts on the dvd?

Mine:

-shane woewoeful.... widely recognized as the worst brownlow medalist ever but the DVD attempts to make him a hero

-we;ve just had one of the worst seasons of all time, but the Brisbane game was a turning point? Cmon we lost all our games after that too

Just the absolute optimism of the dvd is so incredible it distorts the reality

-suffers badly from litte, photos, video available from the our glory period in the 50's

-nothing I hadn't already seen or knew about norm smith

-god that purple color from the 80;s was horrible wasnt it?

-didn't realize how bad barassi was when he came back to coach in the 80's

-um yeah. I agree 100% with what I read on here not long ago for a long time we have had no genuine superstars, just very good players Neitz a gun but lets face it he wasnt an Ablett or a Dunstall for that matter. Same with Flower who despite being amazing couldnt get us in finals

lets hope watts and scully change this?

Mate, if you don't think Flower was a champion or superstar, you are an absolute disgrace.

It's funny how the only side in Melbourne that still plays at their original home ground gets referred to as 'homeless' quite often.

Good stuff.

The 87 Western Oval game is still the greatest day Ive ever had at the footy. It was just magical. I think part of what made it so great was that it was an away game, which back in the old days always gave us that extra special tribal us-against-them feeling.

We played a brilliant last quarter and in the end, it all very nearly came to nothing. Hawthorn totaly stole that game against Geelong. On the video you can hear the crowd murmur a little as Dunstall took the mark, about 20 seconds before everyone goes nuts when he kicked the goal.

If Geelong had won we'd probably remember the day as an awful experience, getting our hopes crushed.

The Brian Wilson goal in the last quarter is still my favourite goal of alltime. Out on the wing I was right behind it as it sailed through the goals. I rode it home all the way and lost my 13year old mind with everyone else. If there is a heaven, I think eternal joy would feel pretty much like I felt as Wilson kicked that goal.

How many of you like me, watching that video and can recite every piece of commentary word for word?

I was only 2 so obviously too young to go to the game and i can't remember it all. But I've watched the video a thousand times and Wilson's goal is my favourite of all time as well even though I wasn't even there and I've seen a fair few in the flesh! 87 was such a special year, Robbie's last season, making the finals for the first time in 23 years, having to win our last 5 or 6 games and then almost making it all the way to the big dance! That season really brought us out of the wilderness. Melbourne supporters my age think we've got it tough, but at least we make the finals pretty regularly.

We would've beaten north if the game wasn't played on a cold, dewey friday night. If it was a hard track we would've won. Then we would've beaten Adelaide the next week. Malcolm Blight said in an interview after the gf, 'the team we were really worried about was Melbourne'.

The jump between 97 and 2000 is too far! We should've won the bloody flag in 98! Which means next year...