Bonkers

That's right. Look at the dominant teams over the last 3 decades as an example. Geelong, Brisbane, Essendon & Hawthorn all had common traits, that they were big & aggressive. At the moment we are boys against men in this comp. I'm not convinced our rebuild has been perfect however I think we have some very talented footballers, a few won't make it but some of them are just being asked to do too much. The gap is more to do with our older players not being up to it & the club not being able to bring in ready made replacements or get the best out of them through their earlier football development mentally & physically.

Fact is strong bodied contested football teams that can win their own ball & keep it will win finals football. Nothing has changed in over 50 years except the professionalism. The media & most followers of the game think its a magic formula, when you strip it back it is a very simple game. Pick kids that can play the game, win their own ball & will play contested football!!!

If I was going to have a username named after a famous football manager I'd at least get the spelling right. Just saying.

There are a few that are worth looking at that would add a bit more quality & depth to our list. Have a look through the list below. Some may be unrealistic targets however targeting certain players makes the clubs work harder to keep other players on that list. FREE AGENTS Adelaide Crows Michael Doughty Unrestricted Chris Knights Unrestricted Brisbane Lions Jed Adcock Restricted Simon Black Unrestricted Jonathan Brown Unrestricted Josh Drummond Restricted Ash McGrath Unrestricted Carlton Heath Scotland Restricted Jordan Russell Unrestricted Bret Thornton Unrestricted Collingwood Travis Cloke Restricted Ben Johnson Unrestricted Harry O'Brien Restricted Heath Shaw Restricted Essendon Ricky Dyson Unrestricted Dustin Fletcher Unrestricted David Hille Unrestricted Nathan Lovett-Murray Unrestricted Mark McVeigh Unrestricted Angus Monfries Restricted Henry Slattery Unrestricted Brent Stanton Restricted Fremantle Ryan Crowley Unrestricted Antoni Grover Unrestricted Luke McPharlin Unrestricted Geelong Shannon Byrnes Unrestricted Paul Chapman Unrestricted Corey Enright Unrestricted Josh Hunt Unrestricted Steve Johnson Unrestricted Matthew Scarlett Unrestricted David Wojcinski Unrestricted Hawthorn Chance Bateman Unrestricted Luke Hodge Unrestricted Sam Mitchell Unrestricted Thomas Murphy Unrestricted Michael Osborne Unrestricted Brad Sewell Restricted Clinton Young Unrestricted Melbourne Demons Matthew Bate Unrestricted Lynden Dunn Unrestricted Brad Green Unrestricted Mark Jamar Unrestricted Brent Moloney Restricted Jared Rivers Unrestricted North Melbourne Brent Harvey Unrestricted Michael Firrito Unrestricted Port Adelaide Domenic Cassisi Unrestricted Troy Chaplin Restricted Brett Ebert Unrestricted Danyle Pearce Restricted Steven Salopek Unrestricted Jacob Surjan Unrestricted Richmond Brett Deledio Restricted Nathan Foley Restricted Luke McGuane Restricted Kelvin Moore Unrestricted Shane Tuck Unrestricted St Kilda Jason Blake Unrestricted Raphael Clarke Unrestricted Sam Fisher Restricted Brendon Goddard Restricted Jason Gram Restricted James Gwilt Unrestricted Lenny Hayes Unrestricted Justin Koschitzke Unrestricted Stephen Milne Unrestricted Leigh Montagna Unrestricted Sydney Swans Jude Bolton Unrestricted Jarrad McVeigh Restricted Jarred Moore Unrestricted West Coast Sam Butler Unrestricted Andrew Embley Unrestricted Darren Glass Unrestricted Daniel Kerr Unrestricted Quinten Lynch Unrestricted Mark Nicoski Unrestricted Matt Rosa Unrestricted Western Bulldogs Lindsay Gilbee Unrestricted Ryan Hargrave Unrestricted Will Minson Unrestricted

With the list & ladder position we are in we should already have dollars available for free agency. I agree with your opinion, just not about giving it a year or two. We should be targeting free agents now & contacting their managers as we speak.

It's a good idea, anything positive at this time would be helpful. Provided the proposed contribution is significant of course.

I wonder if the mfc could approach the federal government in collaboration with the reach foundation to seek a further payment as sponsorhip & form of cross promotion for reach & the government scholarships they recently announced? Apologies if someone has already suggested this.

Sponsorship has now been removed from the MFC website.

Seeing as all the Melbourne branded clubs are sponsored by EW the clubs could band together & put pressure on Colis to stand down as CEO. He would presumably still have majority shareholding of EW but be able to save his own brand? Not saying it will happen but it is one option.

Yeh pretty true, the club is caught between a rock & a hard place. FML.

Carlton survived their association with Dick Pratt even after his name was soiled through his price fixing shenanigans, frolicking with hookers & passing brown paper bags under the table to Chris Judd. The club needs to distance itself from the remarks & have the EW CEO publicly apologise. I don't think the club should be held guilty by association on this issue, the MFC & EW are two different entities. Losing EW as a sponsor without a replacement could mean we are back into a 2-3million dollar debt by the end of the year. I don't like that the EW CEO has made these remarks, however I'd rather the club wasn't put into a position of debt again. A middle ground position may have to be found by the club in this instance if that is possible.

Some people are so Naive!

The source was a player from within our club. The problem came from within our club & it just so happened that there was no confidentiality between Mifsud & that player as Mifsud then went & blabbed to Grant Thomas.

Pretty much! If the AFL investigate & he can't provide a source wouldn't surprise me if it came to that.

Ok, fair enough the wording of that statement could have been better thought out, however when you break something as serious as this as a journo you are risking your career without having a source of information. http://www.heraldsun.com.au/afl/hurt-mark-neeld-demands-afl-find-race-claim-source/story-fnctrk3q-1226316946582

I'm not settling for a name, that would be ridiculous. Why would a journalist risk their own reputation & continuously put forward unsubstantiated damning articles based on fiction? There has to be a source. In this case if I was Mark Neeld I would be considering having my own private investigation as well as the AFL's. He would have grounds to sue on defamation of character charges I would think. There is no way he should have to deal with that type of false allegation & whoever was Grant Thomas's source needs to be dealt with whether they are inside or outside the club.

How do you explain all the murmurings regarding Cam Schwab from Caroline Wilson repeatedly last year, do you think Eddie made up those rumours as well? Give me a break, something stinks at the club & the sooner the club deals with it the better off we will all be.

My point was that journalists don't just make things up, if they did they would be without a job pretty quickly. The first example that comes to mind are the allegations regarding Matt Rendell. The smoke initially came from a source & the source was later found. I'm glad Neeld has asked the AFL to do their own enquiry, whether or not we will ever find out the results of it is another story.

Of course it is an inside job, the only reason anyone outside the club would go with the information is if it was from an inside source. Many aspects of 186 still haven't been answered & it makes you wonder which of the senior players is responsible for airing the dirty laundry to Caroline Wilson etc continuously over the last year or whether it is someone in the FD that wasn't moved on last year.

What a crock, so because Neeld has put the hard word on the playing list they all of a sudden forget how to look for a leading target or to hit up a loose man? How do you forget to do this after you have been doing it your whole football life all the way from juniors through to now? Some of our players are not able to do the 1%ers, be accountable to their man at stoppages & be disciplined. Some of our midfielders are just dumb footballers, poorly disciplined or both. Until they learn to be accountable, more disciplined & work hard without the ball this list is going nowhere. Neeld is aware of our defensive deficiencies as well as work rate off the ball & is trying to teach these guys what it takes to play winning finals football. He has already stated that some of them won't be up to it, it's up to the players to put their hands up & take responsibility for once & actually mean it by showing it through their actions. IMO ball movement patterns are easily implemented & are the least of the teams worries, Hawthorn were able to change their ball movement patterns & game style within a season.

That rumor is in regards to Grant Thomas's racial allegation of talking to aboriginal players only in a group. He has asked the AFL to investigate as he said he was quite hurt by it when speaking about it "on the couch".

One observation of mine is that he seems honest almost to a fault, hard nosed, confronting & some times aggressive which I like. The reason I like these things is because they are the charecteristics of elite competitors & winners. The character of premiership players often reflects or mirrors the coach, if Neeld doesn't see these traits in his players they will not be at the club. That is my impression of Neeld & I hope the club has the conviction to back him when the questions will inevitably be asked.

That's right the quality at the ages of 25 & above has either diminished or is just not there. IMO the club needs to bring in free agent mids whether they are elite or not, anything will be better than what we have at the moment. There is a group of players I wouldn't hesitate to delist & we could even look at bringing in a couple of VFL players on the rookie list for next year. IMO there will be a minimum of 8 delistings at the end of this year, probably more.

If you were an elite midfielder would you leave to come play for Melbourne when you can get double the pay at GWS? We need to develop the elite mids from the high draft picks we use & bring in sufficient talent around them. Sure none of the players I have listed are elite but if you look at the way Sydney have built their team they are at a minimum competitive from bringing in often NQR players from other clubs let alone B grade players. We have so many young players on our list I would assume it would be a lot easier for us to find room in our cap to entice a B grade midfielder to move clubs. I'm not talking about bringing across just one unrestricted player by the way I'm talking about bringing in at least three unrestricted players if possible.

From that list I'd target Chris Knights, David Wojcinski, Clinton Young, Steven Salopek & perhaps Gilbee as realistic targets.